POWERED BY TWO STRONG COFFEES, Claire strode into a room buzzing with overlapping conversations, chirping cellphones, and keyboards being tapped. An array of large TV screens covered one wall. The operations room in CFB Halifax was full of activity. It was the nexus of the effort to track down the smugglers, whoever they were. She recognized multiple uniforms: navy, of course — but also Halifax Police and RCMP. She was also the only woman in the room.
Her phone buzzed. She turned it off without checking to see who had texted or when.
A civilian stood beside Captain Hall.
“Sir,” she said, saluting, “you wanted to speak with me?”
Hall turned, returned the salute. “This is Cliff Whitby. Detective Inspector. RCMP.” Whitby, dressed in a grey uniform, looked like a retired park warden with dark secrets behind his eyes. Claire thought of Deliverance, which she had seen in film class.
Whitby smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about your encounter, Lieutenant Commander.”
Hall seemed to be waiting for her to respond. When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “I want you to sit in on the briefing. We’re coordinating all of the information we can gather, and then we’ll decide what our next step should be.”
She followed the two men to a separate room with glass walls. There was a long table with eight chairs, a projector on one wall, and a whiteboard on the other. Two seats were already taken. Hall and Whitby took places next to each other. She sat opposite Hall, feeling that, although she was the most junior, she was the one everyone most wanted to talk to.
Hall called the meeting to order. “Thank you for coming at such short notice. Let’s begin with a round-the-table update. I’ve asked the captain of the Kingston to join us to answer any questions you might have.” He motioned to Claire. “Lieutenant Commander Marcoux.”
Nods all around, but no one said anything.
Hall grabbed a marker and started writing on the whiteboard. “Let’s summarize what we know so far. The Atlantic Mariner is seen leaving Boston early Sunday morning. It’s identified by a coastal patrol flight from Greenwood Monday evening. It doesn’t respond to radio requests. The Kingston encounters it. It fires on a search-and-rescue helicopter. The Kingston is forced to sink her.” Hall glanced at Claire. “No debris was recovered. That’s what the navy knows. Cliff?”
Whitby stood and watched Claire as he spoke. She didn’t like the way his eyes bored down on her, a suggestion of violence behind the stare. “The FBI sent us what they know. The ship was owned by a shell company listed in Barbados. IRS can link the account to a former Blackwater operator who’s serving ten years for manslaughter. He was a private military contractor who killed a local family while on duty in Iraq. He disappeared after that. But the account is still active. We think it belongs to someone higher up in the company. Probably used it to cover operational expenses. It suggests there’s an operation underway right now. But we don’t know for whom. The company owns another ship still in port. Boston Police are watching for anyone to show up. That’s all we’ve got.”
Whitby sat down and Hall read from a piece of paper in his hand. “Thanks, Cliff. Mr. MacKinnon?”
The next man stood up, the police detective she had met with Daniel, after the demonstration. He was early forties, with dark hair and alert eyes. He turned toward Claire and nodded in acknowledgement. “Matt MacKinnon. HRM Police.” Then he swung toward the others. “We’ve detected nothing suspicious in either the Halifax or Bedford docks. Wherever that ship was going, it wasn’t to Halifax. We’ve added patrols along the coastline within city limits, just in case it was going to Sambro or one of the other outports. So far, nothing of interest.” He took his seat.
Hall tried to keep the momentum going. He motioned to a trim, dark-haired man in his late thirties, sitting at Claire’s right. “Brett?”
Brett stood up. “Brett Lansdowne, CBSA.” Claire nodded at the Canadian Border Services Agency agent. Lansdowne didn’t acknowledge her nod. He talked to the others as if she weren’t present. Maybe he thought she should get them all coffee.
“We have a Zodiac on standby in case we need to intercept,” he said. “Homeland Security suspects drug smuggling. The cartels have restricted supply for the last few months; now they’re trying to feed the demand, raise prices, and ship a lot of product north. We think that Halifax was only a transit station, and that most of it was to be shipped west to bigger cities,” he concluded. He returned to his seat.
Hall stood. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. “Now I would like to ask Lieutenant Commander Marcoux to tell us what happened out there.” He looked directly at Claire. “You’re the only one who has had direct experience with these people.”
She stood, trying to calm her nerves and not let her nervousness show. She knew she would be doubly judged — once as an officer, once as a woman. She tried to blur the men around the table, but Lansdowne stood out. There was something familiar but unsettling in the way he looked at her. She sensed dual messages from him, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what the second message was. She took a breath. “Well, it was a brief encounter. They tried to hide. They didn’t acknowledge our hails.”
Lansdowne waved his hand. “So you obviously provoked them.”
“No, sir. I gave them time to respond.”
“You lost your cool, perhaps?”
“They fired at us first. Then they tried to ram us. It wasn’t me who lost their cool.”
“You could have given them a chance to surrender.”
“I did. But I don’t think that they wanted to be rescued at all.”
Lansdowne turned to face the other end of the table. “I think we need someone cool at the helm if there’s going to be a next encounter. We lost a critical opportunity to gather intelligence.” He turned to Claire. “All we have from you is a story. No boat. No suspects in custody. No evidence. Just a story.”
Claire controlled her anger. “I was cool, Mr. Lansdowne. And we have more than just a story. Have you ever commanded —”
Hall cut her off. “Brett, I am satisfied that navy protocols were followed. Lieutenant Commander Marcoux took appropriate action.”
Lansdowne pressed on. “So you won’t assign another officer? Someone more seasoned? Now is not the time to have someone prone to emotion.”
Claire glared. What an asshole. He knew virtually nothing about her, but he felt qualified enough to judge her actions? She opened her mouth, prepared to launch into an impassioned rebuttal, but then she looked at her commanding officer at the far end of the table. His eyes could have shot twin laser beams at Mr. CBSA.
“Brett, this is not your call. I don’t tell you how to do your work. Don’t tell me how to do mine.”
Claire watched Lansdowne deflate. He nodded, and that was the end of the dispute.
Whitby broke the tension. “Lieutenant Commander, what do you think was in that boat?”
Claire turned to face Whitby and to block Lansdowne’s leer. “Hard to say, sir. It must have been quite valuable. The crew took on a navy warship. They had serious firepower with an RPG, and they knew how to defend themselves.”
“Speculate.”
“Can I ask you all a question first? How many kilos of drugs could fit on a ship like that? A fishing boat.”
Mr. CBSA spoke first. “A few hundred at least.”
“What would that be worth?”
MacKinnon said, “Tens of millions of dollars on the street. An impressive catch for sure.”
Claire looked at MacKinnon. “Do you believe that a drug gang would fight to the death to protect a shipment worth tens of millions of dollars?”
“What’s your point?”
“Why wouldn’t they just give up, throw their cargo overboard, or abandon ship? Why fight? Ten million dollars may be a lot, but it seems to me that amount would be small potatoes for a multinational drug syndicate. They’d recover the loss somehow.”
“It was drugs. Homeland Security says so,” Lansdowne said.
Claire grinned. “Do you always let them do your thinking for you?”
She heard a few snickers. Lansdowne’s look implied that he’d like to commit some form of serious, maybe sexual, violence. “It was drugs. Case closed.”
“If not drugs, then what?” said MacKinnon.
Whitby answered with a serious look, “Something worth a lot more.”
“What’s worth dying for?” Hall added.
The answer came to Claire immediately. “A cause.” Her sociology class replayed in her mind.
“You mean like global warming or save the seal pups?” said Lansdowne.
“Maybe, but the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that they reacted not so much to save profits but to save their cause, their fight.”
“Eco-terrorists, then?” MacKinnon said.
Whitby was nodding. “Sounds plausible. It wouldn’t be the first time radical environmentalists took on a navy. I’ve read that they’ve tussled with the Japanese navy several times.”
“But never fired an RPG at them,” added Hall.
Lansdowne leaned forward. “You can’t be serious. What would their mission be? Take down a navy vessel to save seal pups?”
“No, I think they were just unlucky with the weather, unlucky running into you,” Whitby said.
Claire stiffened. “No, sir, they weren’t unlucky. They weren’t sailors at all. Any sailor would have known about the storm and how to avoid it. These people sailed deliberately into the storm. They did it on purpose.”
Lansdowne flung his arms high. “So they’re crazy and amateurish.”
“I think they were hiding.”
Arms in the air again. “Jesus, why would anyone take a boat into a winter storm?”
Whitby seemed to be at a loss. “Research?”
“It could have been part of lying low,” Claire said. “Maybe they didn’t want anyone checking in on them or following them. A storm makes that all the more difficult.”
Whitby leaned forward, both elbows on the table, head cradled in both hands. “So if they were hiding, what was their mission?”
“Delivery of something very time sensitive. Otherwise they could have waited until after the storm. They saw it coming, but they had no choice. Their cargo had to be delivered on time. And unobserved.”
“Definitely dodgy,” said Lansdowne, checking out her figure.
“If they were eco-terrorists, it could be explosives. Maybe they wanted to blow something up.” Whitby looked at MacKinnon. “But you said their destination wasn’t Halifax.”
“If it’s time sensitive,” Claire said, “when does the clock strike zero?”
Whitby grinned and turned to face her. “That, Lieutenant Commander, is the right question to ask.”
“So what’s the plan, then?” Claire said.
Captain Hall nodded. “If it’s a cause, as you say?”
“They will try again. And soon,” Whitby said.
“And they’ll be more desperate than before,” added Claire.
Hall said, “When they move, the navy boxes them in. RCMP or Border Services picks them up. If they’re found in HRM, you nab them.” He pointed at MacKinnon.
Nods all around. Lansdowne continued leering at her. She knew what he was thinking.
Hall looked across the table at Claire. “Now you know what to do.”
Keeping Lansdowne in her view, she said, “I certainly do.”