Every Obstacle, An Opportunity

 

Sean watched the night sky for Coast Guard patrols while fighting a nicotine fit. The smell of brine, high-octane fuel, and who-knew-what else filled his nose and did nothing for his nausea. He gripped the flaking, corroded top hatch of the old Grumman seaplane. 

A bobbing beam from the penlight in Guillermo “Memo” Torres’’ teeth oscillated across the open left-engine cowl. Memo, the copilot, had said the swells were only half-a-foot, maybe a foot. Only. Like that did anything for Sean’s churning gut. 

Sixteen-million-dollars in coke, Sean thought, and the geniuses trusted transport to a thirty-year-old wreck. 

“What about now?” Weyland, the pilot, called from inside the rung out old wreck. 

The weak light flashed and Memo called back. “Nada.”

How can I be this damn nauseous and still need a smoke this damn bad? 

Light flashed on the western horizon and then disappeared. “We got movement.”

“¿Que?” Memo asked from the engine.

“What?” Weyland said, popping up through the hatch. Even in the weak-beam flashlight lumination, worry played across his normally open, amiable face.

We’re way too far from our drop point for it to be the trawler.

Sean waved them silent. “I got movement in the west.”  

“Puede ser un barco de pesca,” Memo said. 

“Maybe a fishing boat,” Sean agreed. “Maybe a Coast Guard patrol boat out of Port Aransas.”

“Mierda,” Memo said.

Sean nodded in agreement. “How much longer to prime that pump and get in the air?” 

Weyland shrugged. “Could be seven minutes, could be another hour.”

Sean bellied down on the bobbing fuselage. “Get back inside and keep running that line. Memo, mata la luce.”

Memo’s penlight died and Sean counted for what seemed like a year and then the light flashed again. Maybe brighter? The light disappeared but an engine hum replaced it. 

Small. Most likely a skiff attached to a patrol boat. 

In less than two minutes, the light flashed again, disappeared and then flashed again. Definitely closer. The light and the hum carried over the water, painfully closer. 

Sean turned and shimmied back to the hatch. “Memo, entra y ejecutar la linea de gas.”

“Si, jefe.” Memo crawled up the wing to the fuselage.

Sean called into the hatch. “Weyland, get up here and bring the fuel-pump bag.”

“You just told me—”

Memo handed Sean the tool tray and dropped down the ladder into the plane. “¿Dame mis herramientas?”

Sean dug a half-handful of bearing grease from a can before he handed the tray down to Memo. 

Weyland shifted around the copilot and climbed the ladder. “You just told me to—”

“You’re a talker,” Sean said.

Weyland handed over the heavy plastic bag. “If I’m a talker, what are you?”

“If you talk fast enough, I’m just part of the audience,” Sean said, smearing grease over his face and wiping the residue on his neck. He unslung a Vietnam-War-era carbine from his back and yanked the toggle bolt, chambering a round. He set the safety before pulling the bag over the short gun. “Talk fast. I’d rather not stake our lives on this piece of crap.”

“Look, all this might not be necessary,” Weyland said, passing him a roll of speed tape. 

My business partner—big as hell, combat vet, peacemaker. 

“¿Debería iniciar el frequency jammer ahora?” Memo asked.

“No, not yet,” Sean replied, wrapping the bag flap with the airplane tape. The oily residue on the bag made tearing the tape a hassle and it tasted like crap, to boot. 

Weyland completed his thought. “Wait until they’re about 100 yards out. The transmitter for the frequency jammer will burn through the battery fast.” Then, to Sean, he asked. “What if it’s not Coast Guard?”

“Then there won’t be much for you to talk about.” Sean handed his ball cap to Weyland and slid off the plane and into the waves. Warm, oily seawater immediately permeated his sneakers, clothes, and the crack of his ass. If possible, bobbing in the swells, alongside the plane, made his nausea worse. He peddled as best he could to the tail, keeping the plane between him and the boat.

Seven minutes after Sean first heard the boat it finally came alongside the plane. Massive spotlights lit up the horizon. The roaring outboard motors quelled to a thrumbing drone.

“Evening, boys,” Weyland said in his amiable Georgia drawl. 

“United States Coast Guard, what is your—?”

Sean dove under the fuselage at the first sound of an official voice. One hand dedicated to the rifle hampered his swim-stroke but he cleared the plane. Spotlights lamplit the surface of the water, silhouetting both plane and boat. His lungs burned from the exertion and his eyes stung from the salty, oily water. 

Wary of the outboard propellers, he swam against the anxiety and broke the surface, two yards aft of what looked like a 30-foot lifeboat with a pilothouse. Radio squelch competed with the outboard-engine drone. 

The radio jammer Weyland cobbled together is working like a charm. There will be no living with him, now.

Sean could almost hear his partner but distance and a wall of radio static and motor noise sapped the power from his friendly demeanor and smooth Georgian charm. 

“Say again, Chief?”

Silhouetted against the backwash from the spotlights, the Coast Guard chief shouted from the top of the pilothouse. “I said, I want to see everyone out on the wing, now!”

Weyland called back. “My copilot is sick—”

“If I have to board, we’re coming in knocking heads,” the chief yelled. 

Sean counted two others, on the forward bulkhead. 

Means there’s at least one more coastie somewhere on this bathtub.

“All that ain’t necessary, Chief,” Weyland called back, as Memo stuck his head out of the hatch. “I told you, it’s just the two of us. We dropped some guys on a plat—”

“And you ain’t shown up on any land-based radar from here to Corpus Christi or on Gulf patrol air radar,” the chief fired back. “We know what you are. Now, is he coming out or are we doing this the hard way?”

That’s when the fourth crewman stuck his head out of the pilot house.

Bingo.

Sean dog-paddled to an egress on the port-stern bulkhead, low enough to roll cargo off of a gangplank or allow divers easy boarding from the water. 

“Why doesn’t the Chief use the PA?” One of the coasties asked, loud enough for Sean to hear. 

Whatever the other said was lost in the engine-drone-and-radio squelch. 

Our transmitter jams your radio and your PA, dumbass. 

Sean sat the plastic-wrapped carbine on the deck and used a grip bar to haul himself out of the water. He crouched in the shadow of the pilothouse.

“Damn it, Moretti!” The chief snapped over his shoulder. “Would you kill the radio? I can’t hear myself think up here.”

Moretti ducked back into the wheelhouse and the radio squelch died. 

The chief cast his voice low. “Benton, put a burst at that black son-of-a-bitch’s feet. He wants to shuck-and-jive, let’s see him dance.” 

“Roger that, Chief,” one of the two at the bulkhead said. And the sharp snap of a selector switch cracked over the other noise.

Weyland called back. “What was that, Chief?” 

Low to the deck, Sean moved as quickly as slick sneakers would carry him. Moretti started out of the pilothouse. Sean grabbed the lifejacket collar, yanking the coastie off balance and over the bulkhead. 

Moretti splashed as Sean flew at the two on the bow. “What was—?” 

Sean slammed the carbine butt into the machinegunner’s head, catching him in mid-turn. The coastie dropped from the M60 to the deck. Sean rifle-jabbed the second man, across the bridge of his nose. The coastie dropped his shotgun, as he fell over the bulkhead.

Sean wheeled, flipping the selector switch through the plastic on the carbine, and sighted the chief in mid-draw. “You’ll be dead before you clear the holster.”

The chief weighed his chances for half a second before letting the pistol drop back into the holster and easing both hands up. “You’re all kinds of stupid, there’s a cutter behind me with an 57mm can—”

“There’s no cutters in this neck of the Gulf,” Sean said. “And I bet you haven’t told the patrol boat about us or where you are. So it doesn’t matter what size gun they got.”

“But there’s no reason to go home empty handed,” Weyland said, friendly as ever.

“I got a shot at him, Chief!” A woman called around a mouthful of water.

Moretti is a woman. Fantastic.

Sean shouted without breaking sight on the chief. “You got a shot but I know my ammo is dry. Did the seawater foul the primer in yours? Are you willing to cha—?”

“Moretti, we deal!” The chief bellowed. “That's why we’re out here.”

Not as stupid as he looks. 

“What?” Moretti demanded.

She didn’t know that plan. Must be new to this crew.

“I have a kilo of pure coke here. I’ll just drop it right on your deck,” Weyland said as a plastic bundle thumped on the deck skid pads. 

He didn’t even wait for me to secure these—

Weyland continued. “We amble away and you got $10,000. No muss, no fuss.”

“Make it a kilo apiece or I’ll take my chances that at least one of my six has a dry primer,” Moretti shouted.

Well, she came around to that quickly enough.

“Done,” Weyland said.

“Wait,” Sean snapped. “I want them all on the deck first.”

“Bullshit, I’m not giving up my pistol,” Moretti said.

“Keep it. I got a man with a long gun trained on this deck,” Sean said. “But you and that broke-nose idiot get on the deck, now. Or we’re just gonna clip every last—”

“No!” Weyland shouted. “No, that’s not necessary and it’s not what we’re going to do.”

He sounds more afraid than they do. 

“Fine,” Moretti answered. “Benton, get over here before a shark bites off your ugly face.”

“Kill those spotlights,” Sean said. “Chief, I want you off the pilot house and on the deck.”

Moretti sloshed from the bulkhead to the pilot house and the spotlights died. Her hazel eyes flashed in the pilot house lights. 

Looks like a kid right out of Maritime Law Enforcement School. 

The chief dropped to the deck. In low light from the pilot house, Sean made out the chief’s name patch, “Geary.”

“Sit with your back to the pilothouse, Chief Geary. Spread your legs out and put your palms on the deck, right next to your crotch,” Sean said. “You move your hands from the deck and my man will put a bullet in your brain.”

“I heard smugglers are hiring military,” Chief Geary said. “You a Marine or a SEAL?”

Sean snorted. “I got beat up by a girl scout once. Alright, they're squared!”

One, two, three, the bundles of cocaine hit the deck. One rolled to the pilothouse. Sean met Moretti’s gaze. Ready for a rematch, she watched him like a seahawk. 

Sharp, she won’t get taken by surprise a second time. 

All the fight in Benton bled out of his nose and all over his hands. The other kid began to stir.

Gotta trust my bluff. 

Lowering the short gun, Sean called to the plane. “¡Limpia esas pinche gas líneas y prepara este avión para volar!”

“Si, jefe,” Memo called back. 

Sean grabbed the shotgun off the deck and shucked the rounds out of the shotgun into the drink. He pulled the ammo-boxfrom the M-60 and slung it aft. He directed his voice to the Chief. “You all got an even split, you’re all in, and no room for grudges.” 

“That is what we’re out here for,” Geary said. “This was her initiation.”

“And if she didn’t pass?” Sean asked. He snatched the groggy kid by a vest strap and dragged him to where the Chief sat. 

Chief Geary shrugged.

Sean nodded and eased to the pilothouse and Moretti. He spoke low but loud enough for the others to hear. “Get into a vest, load dry rounds in that revolver, and keep your back to a wall until you’re back in port. Transfer out of this duty station as soon as you can. If these morons don’t kill you, they’re gonna get you killed.”

Shedding her lifejacket, Moretti showed her palms, and then reached into the pilothouse. Her strong features complemented her hazel eyes. She showed six bullets before dumping the wet rounds from the revolver and loading the fresh bullets into the cylinder. With a smirk, she stuck the revolver back into the canvas holster. 

Sean stepped back as she pulled a Kevlar vest over her head. 

“¡Lo tengo!” Memo called. Metal slapped on metal as he put the engine cowl back together. “!Pruebalo ahora!”

Weyland dropped down the hatch. After maddening minutes, a ragged starter motor whined and then the number two engine caught, coughing to life. Seconds that seemed like a half-hour later, the number one engine hiccuped into a duet. Sean nodded to Moretti and then hopped the bulkhead, back into the Gulf. 

By the time he reached the Grumman, Memo had the side hatch open. He took the carbine as Sean hoisted himself into the plane. 

Memo turned back for the ladder to the cockpit. Sean secured the hatch as the navigation lights flashed to life at the wingtips and the Grumman began to wallow away from the Coast Guard skiff. He sloshed through seawater leaking into the flying death, following Memo.

The plane churned over the waves and Sean missed his footing twice. At the top of the ladder, he snatched his ball cap off of Weyland’s head. Then he collapsed onto the jumpseat and took a relieved breath as the plane finally bounced out of the sea and labored for altitude.

Shouldn’t be hard to find Moretti in the Coast Guard. Good to have a line on a sharp asset. 

After climbing for long minutes that felt like hours, Sean leaned forward to Weyland. “Keep us below the radar.”

Weyland nodded. “We’ll be at the drop point in 40 minutes, tops.”

“When we touch down, keep the engines running,” Sean said.

“The trawler skipper won’t like that,” Weyland said.

“He’s getting paid for transport, not for what he likes,” Sean replied. “Unless he’s a better aircraft mechanic than you two, he’ll keep his mouth shut while we offload this shit or any delays will come out of his money.”

Memo, in the copilot seat shrugged. “¿Como si este espectáculo de mierda saliera de nuestro lado?”

  

Like this mess will come out of our end? 

Sean nodded, wiping the grease off of his face with a shop rag. 

The hurdles I jump through to maintain my cover without shooting some E2 coastie girl in the face. He patted a shirt pocket but found nothing. And I still need a smoke.

Do not underestimate the value of little snipits of work to keep you interested in writing.

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