Go to the previous Chapter: Pirate’s Folly – The Gauntlet
Chapter 3
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Hellhole
We arrived in Ketchikan by lunchtime. Dani was just getting up.
“Where are we going today?” she asked. Her bedhead was a mess and hilarious.
“We’re already there,” I said, laughing. “Ketchikan.”
She looked around at the Marina, nodded.
“Okay.”
“Look, I was thinking, why don’t you take the next flight out. I’ll make some arrangements to store the boat up here, then I can meet you back home.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not going anywhere and leaving you here alone. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“There’s nothing to worry about here. We are way far away from those pricks and they don’t care about us anyway, not enough to come looking up here. Let me just sort out the boat and meet you back home.”
“No,” she said firmly, looking at the town. “It would just be weird to leave you here, after everything. I want to wait for you.”
It probably wouldn’t take long to find storage for the boat. I needed to do it quickly, then we could really relax. Maybe stay a few days in a nice hotel before heading back.
“Alright, wait here. I’m running into town to see where we can park this thing. Keep an eye out for, you know, bozos.”
Dani nodded, still a bit groggy. I’d be happier if she wasn’t such a magnet. She had too much gravitational pull on people for us to go under the radar in the marina. I would be away for 20 minutes max and someone would stroll up to have a chat. I would need to make this fast.
One of my dad’s best friends lived in Ketchikan. Gerard Martin. I didn’t know much about him, but I needed to look him up. Someone who had been around for a while and knew these waters might be able to get my head straight on what was happening. All I knew was that he owned a gun store at one point. I didn’t even know if he was alive now.
Cell service was fine. I did a search for his name and I found that, in fact, he was alive and he still owned a gun store. It was on the edge of town, not far from the marina. That was my first stop. Gerard’s Gun and Ammo.
It was a fairly modern store compared to the rest of the vibe in Ketchikan. Most of Ketchikan had a ‘trying to survive’ feel. Gerard’s Gun and Ammo seemed to be thriving. I half expected some bells attached to the front door to jingle when I entered, but there was an electronic bell. The styling was really sharp and uncluttered. A minute later a man emerged from the back of the store. He was tall and fit, but had some years on him. He looked at me then turned his head down for a moment, thinking.
“Can I help you?”
“Yeah, is Gerard Martin here?” I asked.
“Yep, that’s me.” He smiled slightly. “Are you Bill?”
“You remembe me?” This was hard to believe.
“Yeah. You look just like your dad now.” He looked down again. “I heard he passed. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing alright.”
“Oh good.” Gerard was nicely dressed in a woodsman style and carried himself with purpose. He wasn’t shaggy like some people you find in this area, but had his hair cut short and combed forward. He had a beard, but it was trimmed and clean. “Are you still living in Seattle these days?”
“Yep. Looking for a change, though. Too many tech startup wannabes.” This was meant as a joke, sort of.
“Well it’s a bit of a trend these days. I don’t see that train stopping.”
“No, you’re right.” I walked over to a wall with some black, assault-style shotguns on it. Not really the hunting sort of gear. “We were cruising up this way and I knew you were up here. I thought I would stop by. Dad said you owned a gun shop.”
“Oh, that’s great! I’m really glad you stopped in. You know, I’m not sure if you remember, but I think the last time we saw each other was, well, you must have been ten. In Campbell River.”
“It’s a bit hazy but I do remember a few things. We went fishing and caught a bunch of salmon. Hard to forget that.”
“Yes, it was pretty spectacular. The minute we put lines in, we had fish on. They didn’t have the same limits back then. We filled the boat with fish in a few hours.”
“I think I caught my biggest salmon on that trip.” That memory started to come back, now that I had a better visual of Gerard. “Forty-three pounds.”
“It was a monster!” Gerard laughed. “We were all working to get that one in. Your dad was turning the boat this way and that, chasing it down when it ran, so you didn’t get spooled. I was moving the coolers so you wouldn’t trip on them. What a great catch!”
That memory started to affect me but I suppressed the emotion. I had learned to do that well by now. My dad’s absence was more prominently featured in my memory banks than other memories. I thought of Dani sitting on the boat alone.
“Do you have a few minutes to talk. Something’s happened and I need to get your read on it.”
Gerard looked at me intently.
“Sure, it’s lunch time. Let me lock up and we can get a beer.”
There was a bar with a rich past around the corner. Warm, with an all-wood interior and a smell that spoke of a history of spills and barfights. Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ was playing from a jukebox. Gerard ordered a double IPA from their craft beer selection. I had something not as strong. I started to explain our situation.
“We had a run-in with some guys down south of Port Hardy. We managed to get away but it seems like they are part of a group. It might be my imagination, but it looked like we were being followed by a few different boats at different times, like an organization. We saw several boats that had similar-looking guys and they had sat phones.”
Gerard’s face went white and he was looking at me with concern. I continued.
“Before we got to Port Hardy, we saw a cruiser heading south that had around 50 people onboard. Sorry, this seems ludicrous. Have you heard of anything strange like that?”
Gerard looked around the bar, which was already getting crowded.
“We should head back to the store. It’s too busy here.”
Gerard slammed the rest of his beer and waited for me to do the same. He put a twenty on the table and we left. When we got back to the store he led me to an office behind the showroom.
His office was really interesting, but confusing if you thought about it for a minute. A mix of old pictures from his past sat on shelves that had a modern styling. He had this great red Chesterfield couch for guests, and the chair at the desk was also a nice leather office chair. Sort of a retro look but modern in a way. His desk was made from some local old-growth tree with knots on the legs and a nice clear polyurethane finish on the grainy surface. I didn’t expect such an expensive setup. Gerard pulled a bottle of Jameson from his drawer and poured two glasses.
“It’s a bit more relaxed here.” He took a large swill and pinched the skin between his eyes. “You had a run-in down south and you got away from some guys? You had to run?”
“Not quite. But it’s starting to look like someone was taking interest in us and it was more than one boat.”
“Hang on, who is US?”
“I’m here with my girlfriend Dani. She’s on the boat down at the marina.”
This somehow changed the picture for Gerard and he put his hand up.
“Look, I’m going to take a leap for a second and just focus on making sure you and Dani are, uh, organized. Come over here.” He led me out of the office to a door across the hall. There, he took a minute to punch a code into a keypad on the wall. The latch unlocked. We walked inside.
What I saw in that room was completely unexpected. It was 30 x 30 foot vault with track lighting all around and walls stocked with modern firearms. These were not hunting or weekend warrior target practice guns. Several were assault rifles, some were urban warfare shotguns, and there were a lot of large handguns.
“Organized?”
Gerard’s jaw clenched.
“Exactly. Are you nervous about guns? Kind of guessing not since you came here.”
“Not.” I was going to ask where he was headed with this when he put his hand up in a calming gesture.
“Look, to steal a quote from Jaws, you never want to be in Quinn’s boots saying, we need a bigger boat.” Gerard pulled a black duffel bag out of a cabinet and opened it on the granite counter that sat in the middle of the room. He then walked around the room removing several guns from their racks and bringing them to the counter.
“What are you guys driving?” he asked.
It was embarrassing, considering.
“A Pershing 8X.”
“Oh shit.” Gerard looked let-down. He spent a moment thinking. “Look, give me your cell number and I’ll text you some coordinates. Top off and meet me out there at three. Are you okay working the nav?”
“Yeah.” I held my phone up.
Gerard laughed.
“Who needs to spend twenty Gs right?” he said, grinning and shaking his head. “The coordinates will be a ways out there. It’s a beautiful spot. Great fishing.”
That last comment was clearly an indication that things needed to stay quiet. This was somewhat alarming. It meant that we were not in the clear in Ketchikan and that we would need to make plans quickly.
When I got back to the boat, Dani wasn’t there. This made an extremely tense situation much worse. I couldn’t imagine what reason she would have for leaving, considering the conversation we had had earlier. I pulled my phone out and was about to text her when I saw that she had texted me a short while ago.
feeling like a sore thumb here. everyone is looking at the boat, and me. im going into town. let me know when you get back.
Thank god she had the sense to get out of sight.
Where are you now? I’m back at the boat.
in a store
Do you think maybe it’s not the best time to go shopping?
im not shopping dumbass. just getting some essentials. i’ll be there stat
Go to the fuel dock. It’s about a mile south on the road along the water.
k
Don’t delay.
I made a beeline to the fuel dock but had to wait for another boat to finish up. Filling boats isn’t like filling cars. It can take a while due to the size of the fuel tanks. Plus, a lot of boat owners are in no rush. The guy ahead of me was this type. He had probably retired some time ago and was bored out of his mind sitting on his boat alone all the time. He chatted with the attendant endlessly after he had paid. The attendant was a boy who had not yet developed the skill of brushing off someone who was too chatty. He nodded vigorously and tried turning his attention toward Annabelle but the man reeled him back. The man must have had some Italian in him. He gesticulated to such a degree that he hardly needed words. This went on for a good 5-7 minutes. At last, he teetered toward his boat, took another few minutes to get her started, then motored off.
It took me about 20 minutes to fill up. Dani was nowhere in sight and it had been 40 minutes from the last text. Nobody else was waiting to fill their tanks, so I stayed put. The boy was fascinated by Annabelle.
“How fast does she go?” he asked. He had a ratty green baseball cap on and his greasy, long hair hung down underneath it like worms.
“Forty-eight knots. Can outrun most pirates.”
The boy chuckled, then drifted deep into thought, staring at the stern platform.
“My dad’s boat can almost go that fast.”
“That’s pretty cool.” I saw Dani in the distance and was relieved. “This is a girl magnet too. Just watch. In a few minutes some girl will walk up.”
The boy shook his head.
“Right, you wish.” He smiled insecurely.
I gave the kid my credit card and he went to charge it, Dani walked down the dock toward us. The boy looked over at her. I gave him a wink.
“That was a long walk,” she said, annoyed. In her hands were a few bags. Couldn’t you wait a few minutes at the other dock?”
The boy shot me a suspicious look, realizing Dani was no stranger. I laughed.
As we were pulling out, a couple of guys in a sporty center console rolled up to the dock. She had four Merc 300 outboards. Again, guys under stress looking at me and Dani. This shit wasn’t promising. I thought about Gerard’s sense of urgency and didn’t dwell on them. I punched in the coordinates Gerard gave me and hit the throttle.
It took about an hour to get to the spot. It was a cove in Vallenar Bay. Gerard’s coordinates had us stationed away from the shore a distance. Dani vented with some choice words.
“So you leave me like a sitting duck on this boat while you go for a…what, back-in-a-few, trip? It was really fucking bad waiting. No less than 8 different dudes walked by, stopping for a few minutes to have a good look! Most of them were not just hard-ons, either. These were guys that looked like the ones we’ve been avoiding. Two of them are on that boat we just saw at the dock. We’re not out of the woods.”
“No, you’re right. I am so sorry.” I explained my meeting with Gerard. “I wasn’t sure he would remember me and I didn’t want to…I don’t know. He’s a friend of my dad’s. Look, he’s meeting us there. I think he knows something about what’s going on.”
Dani gave me a hard look, then nodded.
“We should just get the fuck out of here. Catch the next flight,” she said, grabbing her backpack and dumping the contents on the lounge. “Until then….” There were two pistols and 6 boxes of rounds. I was floored.
“OH, so that was your shopping?”
“Yup.”
The sound of a motor approached off in the distance. A small cabin cruiser came toward us. It was Gerard in Grady White. I don’t know why but I grabbed the guns and ammo and put them back in the bag. As Gerard pulled up, he looked at us both and laughed.
“So you two know each other?”
I looked at Dani, then at Gerard again. Everyone laughed. “Your store seems to be a focal point, Gerard.”
Gerard nodded and tied a line to Annabelle.
“And not for all the right people,” he said, shaking his head. “You got any beer?”
I went to the fridge and brought three back. Gerard opened his and took a long pull. He sat down on the lounge next to Dani’s backpack and put his arm on it.
“Look, after our talk Bill, I didn’t want to stick around in town. You mentioned a run-in. Do you mind if I ask what kind of run-in you had?”
Dani looked at me and I paused, not sure how much to say.
“Well…” I cleared my throat and took a sip of my beer. “We anchored in a cove south of Port Hardy about 40 miles. We were totally alone for about half an hour when a couple of guys in on jetskis rode up. They said they were having boat trouble and asked us to help. We drove over to their cove. Wasn’t long before their real intentions became clear. They tried to rob us. There was a fight. We got away.”
“What did they look like?”
“Like convicts,” said Dani. “Australian convicts.”
“Australian?” Gerard seemed mystified.
“So the next morning a few guys pulled through our cove in a Zodiac,” I continued. “They gave us a good looking over and started talking with someone on a sat phone. We weren’t sure if they were with the convicts so we decided to move on. We went to Port Hardy. On the way there we saw that boat with all those people. I told you about that. Then to Port Hardy to get gas, and we saw more similar guys there. They were having a hard look at Annabelle here. On our way out of Port Hardy, those guys in the Zodiac turned up and they were headed in our direction. We punched it and started heading up here. That’s pretty much it.”
Gerard had already come to some conclusion.
“It looks like you got mixed up in this,” he said, finishing off his beer. “There’s a big presence here, an organization. My guess Ketchikan is the center of it. You wouldn’t believe what’s happening in this place right now.” Gerard looked at Dani, then her backpack. “Kinda different for a woman to come into the store to get a .45 and a .38. But not stupid if you’re looking to cover two different scenarios. Who taught you?”
“My dad. He had some experience there, let’s say. He was a little protective and was always…preparing us. I used to think he was a bit whacko, but not now.”
Gerard nodded. He picked her bag up and held it in his hands. He wrapped a hand around one of the guns through the canvas.
“A big gun like this is great for an up-close showdown. Intimidating and powerful. Makes the other party think twice. The small one is great for around town with it tucked away.” Gerard stood up and walked over to his boat, grabbed a duffel bag. “This should finish out the set,” he said with a wink. He unzipped it and pulled out the contents, placing them on the lounge. First there were some heavier guns. Two short shotguns and an assault rifle. “Shotguns are great in the mid-range, in chaotic environments. But this one,” he said, lifting the assault rifle, “is better when the target isn’t moving quite as much.” He then pulled some odd cylindrical objects out of the bag. They looked like grey plastic balls the size of grapefruit.
“What the hell are those?” I asked.
“These are party poopers,” he said, smiling. “You get bored in a place like this and you start tinkering. So listen, best I can tell, these guys are armed traffickers. Ketchikan would be the center on the coast here because of the lax gun laws.” He gazed out over the water. “They started coming into the store about 6 months ago looking for hunting kit. Then it was more diversified, stuff you would only take to the range.” Gerard shook his head. “Then there was lots. I was raking in the cash with these guys before I knew what they were up to.”
“Hence, meeting over here,” I said.
“Yes. There are eyes everywhere. This thing you’re driving isn’t going to help you go under the radar either.”
“No shit,” Dani blurted out.
Gerard’s head perked up and he looked out toward the bay’s entrance. A fast boat was rounding the point and heading into the bay. He pointed to a little island not far from shore.
“Head over there. I’ll let some line out on my boat and we can tow her.” Gerard’s uneasiness spoke volumes.
I put Annabelle into gear and gave the throttle a nudge, lightly at first but then faster. Gerard stayed onboard and made sure the line to his boat was secured. He then started placing the guns out of view.
“Nice and easy, Bill. We’re just looking for fishing spots.”
“Got it.”
The other boat was still a few hundred yards away when we pulled behind the island and stopped. Gerard grabbed 5 of the orbs from his bag and dropped them in the water.
“Stay right here.” He walked over to the fridge and pulled another three beers out, tossing one to Dani and handing the other to me. “These guys look like party crashers.”
It was the center console with the Mercs. There was no way we were outrunning that. They pulled within 40 feet of us. Six guys with SWAT-like outfits looked like they meant business. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were paramilitary. They spent no time beating around the bush.
“You guys look like you’re lost,” said one of the men who walked up to the front of their boat. He had a pistol in a holster and made no effort to hide it.
“Nope,” I said. “Just looking for place to jig.”
“Yeah man, I like your fishing boat,” the SWAT leader laughed.
Gerard looked at me and pointed to a spot about 100 feet in front of Annabelle.
“I think there is a nice hole over there.”
I touched the throttle a bit. We coasted forward in the calm water behind the island.
“I don’t think you’ll get very far guys. We’re been looking for you,” said the lead guy. Several of the men on the boat chuckled, shook their heads. As Annabelle inched forward, they followed at the same pace. “How about you put her in park and let us onboard.”
I looked at Dani, then at Gerard, who had a grimace on his face that seemed to say, I guess it’s going that way. He put his finger up in the air.
“Sorry, hang on a sec, I have a call.” Gerard pulled his phone out of his pocket slowly and lifted it up in full view. “Let’s see, I barely know how to use this new phone.” Standing behind the lounge, he dropped a set of keys on the deck. He looked over at Dani. “Sorry sweetheart, can you grab those?” She bent down to get them. Gerard squinted at the screen, then pushed a button.
At that moment a loud snap came from all five of the orbs that were silently bobbing in the water. They were now next to the hull of the SWAT boat. A second later, they exploded. It was a cataclysmic eruption of water, fiberglass, metal and pink mist. Those orbs he had dropped in the water were IEDs. The spout of gore was incomprehensible. Blood and body parts rained down on Annabelle like a biblical storm. A hand landed at Dani’s feet, a burning head bounced off the bow. Small bits fell everywhere. Dani and I were stunned in disbelief. Even Gerard was spellbound for a full minute.
“Shit, everyone okay?”
No words.
“Alright, well that was a bit bigger than I expected. The good news is, it did the trick!” Gerard grinned sheepishly at us.
Dani looked at Gerard.
“WIKID!” She smiled and put a fist toward him for a bump. “WooHOOO!!!” she screamed out. “Takedown number 2!”
“Looks like red’s your color Dani,” I laughed.
Watching Dani and me make light of such carnage made Gerard go silent.
“What the hell did you guys do south of Port Hardy?”
Go to the Next Chapter: Pirate’s Folly – Hotel Gloria
