Go to the previous Chapter: Pirate’s Folly – A Fool’s Trap
Chapter 2
———
The Gauntlet
We spent the better part of an hour rolling around on the lounge, then another hour in one of the guest beds, since the master bed was no longer onboard. Then we tried other cabins, even one of the crew beds, but that was really tight. The galley was out of the question, so we went back to the stern lounge and decided to take a break. Dani wanted to go for a swim.
“That’s going to be cold as shit,” I said. There was nothing more I would like to see than a drenched Dani climbing up the ladder onto the deck with nothing on. “Plus, are you forgetting about those things with razor sharp little teeth down there?”
“Oh that’s right,” she said, a flash of horror in her eyes.
We stared at the black sheet of water in front of us, transfixed by what we knew was down there. How many other boats and people had Nick and Drew lured into their sick scheme? Had they been working that cove for a while, bringing unsuspecting fools into their trap, then sinking the evidence? That black, unforgiving water left a lot to the imagination.
“What the hell is that?” gasped Dani. There was a slight glow moving slowly under the surface.
I recalled seeing this a while ago when I was up in these waters with my dad. The plankton here have a bioluminescence that makes them glow when disturbed. Something swimming through the water underneath must have been lighting them up in its wake. Whatever it was, it seemed pretty big, a sea creature in search of something. We watched as the glow moved around the cove and approached the boat, then faded down into the depths.
“That’s nature’s incredible flashlight,” I said. “We’re going to be discovered.” I winked at Dani.
The next morning we woke up and I made us some breakfast. Bacon and eggs. Homefries. You could hear the bacon popping across the water. Dani sat on the lounge in a bit of a haze. She was one of those people who takes an hour to wake up and figure out where she is. Some massive reboot goes on in her head at night.
“It’s kind of surreal, like nothing has happened. Not a trace of the boat or those fuckers,” she said.
“Yeah, nature here can just swallow you up. Glad it wasn’t us.”
“Yeah. What do you say we move to a different venue. This place is giving me the creeps.”
“There are endless coves up here,” I said. “We can find something different.” There was a slight buzzing in the distance that grew nearer. “Jesus, this place is busier than I remember.”
A fairly large Zodiac pulled into the cove with a couple of guys that were searching for something. They seemed thoroughly confused. They motored toward us.
“Bote here?” asked one of the guys.
It looked like they expected to find somebody here. I shrugged. There was a heavy pause, then the driver struggled with the throttle for a moment and the zodiac drifted against Annabelle. Finally, he figured it out and they sped off, heading south. No apology or goodbye.
What the hell? They knew those a-holes? I thought. I looked at Dani and I could tell she had the same question in her mind.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she said.
I packed away the dishes and fired Annabelle up. We went north for a while. Pretty soon we would hit the northernmost point of Vancouver Island. There, we would have to decide whether to proceed onward. There would be an open stretch of ocean that could be rough, but then there was the Inside Passage that could take us to countless other places where we could anchor and stay out of view for a bit.
It turned out to be a beautiful and warm day. We sat up on the sundeck to take in the surroundings as we sped through Johnstone Straight. Dani’s hair was really a sensation, whipping around, whipping me. I wanted to put Annabelle on autopilot and wrap myself in it downstairs.
“Wohooo!” she belted out.
We passed another cruiser heading south. Four guys were on the rear deck drinking beer. The boat had tinted windows but as they passed us you could see silhouettes inside. There seemed to be dozens of people hidden in there. The boat was riding low.
As everyone generally does in these waters, I waved, but there was no response. One guy was on a sat phone and looking intently at us, nodding.
At this point my mind started wandering to some strange thoughts. Was I being paranoid, or was there a coordinated thing going on with more than one boat? Those guys in the zodiac were looking for Nick and Drew, that seemed clear. On the other hand, we made no indication we had seen them and there was no way they would know that bottom feeders were feasting on them now. But if they had been staying in that cove long-term, a straight up disappearance would raise some questions. Instead of Nick and Drew, there we were, eating breakfast and drinking mimosas, happy as clams. Ugh, I was overthinking it. I spent the next hour sorting out the autopilot and then slowed Annabelle down a bit. At the moment, nobody was within miles of us and I wanted to bury my face in Dani’s breasts.
“Oh Mister, won’t we crash?” she laughed.
“Entirely possible,” I said, running my fingers through her hair.
—————————-
The channel started to widen and Port Hardy wasn’t far away, where we would refuel. The range on the Pershing is about 300 miles. We still had a third of a tank, but something was eating away in the back of my mind, and a full tank seemed wise. We could also get some more supplies. Done right, you could stock that boat and live on it for a few months, comfortably.
We pulled into a fueling dock and topped her off with gas and water, then drove over to the Marina closer to town. Port Hardy is a small town. You can walk from end to end in about 15 minutes. We just wanted to grab a bite to eat then go to the grocery store. There were some tourists walking around with fishing poles and some tackle.
After lunch, we went to the store and bought as much as we could carry. Some more bottles of champagne and some vegetables, a few steaks. We made our way back to the Marina. Rounding the last corner, I noticed that there was a tender idling near Annabelle, checking her out. She attracted attention everywhere, that’s for sure, but there was something about these guys that looked off. One of them was on a sat phone talking in an animated way. Dani noticed it too. They cruised back out of the harbor and disappeared.
“Let’s go Dani. We better get out of here.”
She looked around at the town.
“No doubt.”
We ran down the remaining road and onto the dock. I gave the dock guy $100 and we jumped onboard. I fired her up while he untied us and threw the lines onto the deck. As we shot out of the harbor, I spotted the zodiac we had seen earlier. It was racing in our direction. We pretended not to see them and opened Annabelle up.
Under normal circumstances, the zodiac might still be able to catch up to us but as we went further out into the channel, there was considerable chop. It was nothing for the Pershing but the zodiac had to slow down. We slowly pulled away until the zodiac was just a dot behind us. I eased up on the throttle to conserve gas. At this point I saw no option to go south. There was an organization behind this and there was no way to know which, and how many, boats were involved. They were interested in us and the best way to distance ourselves would be to go north.
There is a 40 mile stretch of unprotected water between Vancouver Island and Calvert Island, the southern part of Queen Charlotte Sound, and it gets a bit rough. Again, a benefit to us and not to smaller boats, though we couldn’t go full steam. Some large swell rolled through here. Dani was a trooper. I imagined her to be a modern Bonnie, from Bonnie and Clyde. We were shaking and bouncing for a while, but she just put her arms around my neck and held on. I could barely see where we were going with all that hair in my face. In the early afternoon we were back in protected water and hit the throttle again, putting more distance between us and the pirates of Vancouver Island.
I couldn’t shake the visual of the cabin cruiser and all of those people onboard.
“Seems to me this is a human trafficking operation,” I observed. “That boat we passed this morning was loaded up with as many people as it could carry. The guy in the back had a sat phone just like the one we saw in Port Hardy.”
Dani looked at me with some confusion.
“What would those dickheads we sank have to do with it? Why risk exposing the whole operation by trying to take down some vacationers?”
“There was money in it. They might have gone rogue to make some extra money. They thought it would be easy. Maybe they were a transfer point waiting for that other boat. That zodiac was a scout.”
“Shit. What do we do?”
“Let’s just go north for a while. I don’t see why they would need to find us so badly. They don’t know anything about what happened. They’ll lose interest.”
We cruised north for a few hours on the Inside Passage. It was more travelled than I wanted, sort of the main highway in these parts, if you could call it that. I couldn’t shake the feeling we were being watched by each boat that went by. Why they would stick with it?
“I think there’s a better way to go. We can duck out for the night in some hard-to-find places up here.”
“Where?”
“This coast is a massive maze. It would be impossible to search all shorelines up here, even with a bunch of boats. They’re more likely to be in this passage…if they are even looking at this point. Let’s go outside the Passage for bit and find an inlet over there.” No gas out there, but we could top off in Bella Bella first. From there, we would leave the Passage and circumvent Swindle Island. There was another nice passage out there as well, but a bit less protected, and less travelled. “Look here. This place looks really hidden away.” I pointed to an inlet on the GPS that was tucked into Anger Island.
“Oh definitely!” chirped Dani. “Maybe we can relax a little once we get up there.”
“Sounds good to me!” I said.
It got dark pretty late in the summer now. I was sure we would be able to make the full journey and have time to anchor, then get dinner on. Maybe take that naked swim I’d been waiting for….
The scenery, as always, was amazing. You would be cruising along and not see much wildlife, until you did. An orca pod might pop up nearby. Bald eagles were one of my favorite things.
The inlet reached deep into Anger Island and was like a catacomb. We were completely alone. We found a nice spot to anchor and I started to prep a crab trap. My dad loved to fish and he had several rods and traps onboard. I hadn’t done this in ages but I thought I would give it a try. I had bought a few chicken legs at the store in Port Hardy just for this. I tied one to the bottom grate of the trap then lowered it off the back of the boat. While that sat there, I started preparing the steaks. Dani went downstairs for a few minutes and returned in a bright orange bikini.
“This is fun, we’re on the run!” She was sort of joking but understood that we shouldn’t just brush it off. There was palpable stress in the air. She made us some drinks, handed me one. “I’m going to sit on that mat up there. Isn’t that what you see on all the yacht ads, some girl in a bikini sitting on the cushions?”
“Believe it or not, it’s called a bunny pad,” I said, laughing. “That’s going to get canceled soon.”
“Well, we don’t want to let the bunnies down, do we?” she winked.
I put dinner on pause.
About an hour later I pulled the crab trap up. There must have been 30 large Dungeness crabs in it, all vying for that chicken leg. This was one of my favorite things to eat. I put a pot of water on and took out 6 of the largest crabs and laid them on their backs. I dumped the rest back in the water to live another day.
Dinner was unforgettable. Surf and turf with fresh crabs and steak. A bottle of rosé. Dani fumbled around trying to crack the red crab shells with a seafood cracker, looking for a method. I took a crab out of the bowl and broke a claw off.
“Like this,” I said. I put the claw on a cutting board and with a small mallet, smacked it a few times. I pulled the shell off the meat.
“Like a caveman,” she joked. Nevertheless, she was fine with simplifying things and whacked her way through several crabs before tapping out. “Wow, that was an experience!”
“Yeah, we’re living a life of adventure.” We sat in silence for a while watching the darkness settle in, pondering the day ahead. As we grew tired, we heard an engine off in the distance. It came and faded just as quickly. Someone passing by.
I didn’t sleep well. At one point in the middle of the night, Dani got up to go to the bathroom. Though there was plenty of track lighting, she bumped around, trying to make her way to the head.
“What the fuck, what’s this? Where are we!? OW!”
Early in the morning, while Dani slept, I made a thorough search of Annabelle’s lazarettes, hatches, cubby holes, even the bilge, for anything that could be used to help us in a pinch. All I could find was a speargun. Better than nothing, but not great.
I got us underway early and made a beeline for Prince Rupert to fuel up again. From there I set out for Ketchikan, a place I had always wanted to go. Ketchikan was wise for us too. It was back in US waters and it was unlikely that the traffickers were wandering around up there. I had another reason though.
Go to the Next Chapter: Pirate’s Folly – Hellhole
