Crime Writing—Why?

 

Why crime? Of all the fiction genres, (most are WAY more popular and lucrative) why do so many writers choose crime fiction?

What is crime

Crime is a catch-all expression. Hardboiled PIs, police procedurals, serial-killer thrillers, juvenile-delinquent sleuths, are all grouped under the heading of crime. So, as the reader might suspect, the answers will vary as wildly as the subject matter.

“Most newspaper reporting is some kind of crime story,” -Carl Hiassen

Carl Hiassen was a newspaper man at the dawn of the cocaine-80s in Florida. To say he saw some things would be an understatement. His first crime novels, (written with William Montelbano) were high-stakes thrillers playing out against the rising drug culture in 1970s Florida.

But Hiassen wanted to write a different kind of story with honesty only possible through humor. He saw the inanity in cocaine cowboys and the ridiculous propaganda from the politicians as well as the shrug-and-wink response from the cops.

The absurdity in Hiassen’s crime is the same absurdity at the root of the country.

The Jamestown settlers, the New Netherland Dutch traders, and William Penn’s Religious Society of Friends all snatched land and brutalized the indigenous people. In his excellent history, Meeting House and Counting House, Frederick B. Tolles cites a 17th century diary entry recounting the hanging of a Scots immigrant by those peaceful and pacifist descendants of the Mayflower Quakers. The Scot's crime? Drunkened-disorderly conduct.

“Necessity is just a mother” -conversation overheard on a bus.

When flight-attendant Jackie Burke was busted smuggling drugs for her airline-pilot husband, he dumped her. Unable to get a job with the big airlines and unable to live on the wages from the discount carrier that does employ her, Jackie begins smuggling cash for gun runner, Ordell Robbie. But when the police sweep her up, Jackie knows she is truly screwed, especially after she learns that the same police allowed another one of Ordell’s flunkies to get “got.” With the only options being prison or death and no one to trust, Jackie decides to rely on herself and comes up with her own plan. 

“What interested me was the border states. I wanted to write about Apaches and Mexicans.” -Elmore Leonard

An ad-man by training, Leonard had a strong command of telling a story in condensed circumstances. But he yearned to explore injustice and culture clashes. His early efforts were in fact westerns. But his horse-operas were different. He did write about Apaches and Mexicans as well as Civil War veterans and European immigrants who could not/would not conform to social norms all thrown together in border towns awash in culture clashes and injustice. His Hombre is as much an indictment of Joseph McCarthy’s HUAC as High Noon has been lauded for. But Leonard gets to the bigotry at the heart of McCarthy and Cohn’s tactics.

So, again, why crime?

By the 1960s westerns had become passé for a lot of reasons. Mostly, readers were looking for different stories. Western book sales cratered. 

Meanwhile, authors broke new ground in science fiction and fantasy, horror and literature. But while those are all rich genres, that's not where Leonard found the drama. It was the stories of (sketchy) cops and (charming ) robbers that Leonard found the magic and music of humanity in a churn of unjust situations with cultural complexity. 

The deadbeat who Chili Palmer is chasing doesn’t owe money to Chili. Still, Chili has to collect the cash or face the consequences. In light of those very real, very likely circumstances, Hollywood looks like an elementary-school drama: silly.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens’s intelligence and drive springboarded him out of backwater Kentucky poverty. Then a comedy of errors result in his reassignment to the same backwater. After years of complex assignments and honing his skills as a lawman, Harlan County looks like a middle-school musical, just with guns and meth instead of bubblegum and songs.

Some stories simply can’t be told in the Young Adult section

In light of our reality: the absurdity of our divisions, the deadly hilarity of our political system, atrocity spun as international conflict, and corporate theft that we all pay for is the exasperation that the crime writer feels in our bones. Yet in writing our stories, our thieves and killers, our hustlers and misanthropes we process the injustice in the world. We process the cruelty and explore the roots and failed attempts to address injustice. But best of all, we have a sense of control over our mayhem and our madness. Mostly, we get to write some justice into what is, and thereby create some of what should be.

The author owns none of the photos above. They are used here for instructional/educational purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.

Problematic Writing: Renegade Cops

The renegade/rogue/lone-wolf cop trope goes back a long way. Most of our ideas are rooted in Hollywood images of the lone sheriff taming the lawless town like Gary Cooper in High Noon (really an allegory against Hollywood blacklisting in the wake of  Senator Joe McCarthy’s HUAC). Or the virtuous inner-city cop standing up to corruption like Frank Serpico. Obviously, there is some basis to the notion. 

Your (factual) result may vary

Unfortunately there is a lot more fiction than fact and a lot of the fiction is all-too often skewed behind social or racial biases. Hollywood LOVES Wyatt Earp. History, (documented, recorded, and corroborated) mostly, history remembers Earp as an abusive police officer who regularly pistol whipped men he suspected of committing a crime before he even charged them. It’s easy to call him a man of his time but the practice known as “Buffaloing” was reviled and Earp was fired from one office because of his excessive use of force on the townspeople who paid his salary and the cowboys who supported the town.

In Tombstone, (the town, not the movie) the Earps, Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil used their  position as town marshals to exercise petty grievances. When Billy Claiborne beat up Earp-family friend Doc Holliday, Wyatt arrested Claiborne by busting the boy in the noggin with a pistol barrel. When Claiborne’s friends came to get him from jail and refused to disarm Virgil attempted to arrest them. If you’ve seen any of the half-dozen movies, you know the rest.

It’s been almost 150 years since that ugly day at the O.K. Corral. Policing has become a profession with training based in education, psychology, and criminology. There are fundamental roots in law. Very little translated to fictional depictions.

“What’s wrong with a little street justice?” -Clint Eastwood in reference to his most iconic role, (not involving an empty chair).

Dirty Harry has not aged well. A joke to younger audiences, the movie presents a two-dimensional caricature of American policemen. Harry doesn’t “solve” mysteries, he doesn’t stop crime, he just shoots everything with a ridiculously BIG gun. Far from a Freudian slip, this is an entire neurosis underwear department.

But in the wake of the Summer of Love, the anti-war protests, and the Civil Rights Movement white men felt a little scared. Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry landed like white-male-wish-fulfillment Christmas. 

Unconcerned with rights or due process or the tyranny that concerned Constitution Framers enough to enshrine specific rights as amendments to the Constitution, Harry Callahan tortures suspects and kills suspects, after they’ve surrendered, even if they are unarmed. Laugh riot, right? Except cops like Harry—and you read/hear about them almost daily now—get it wrong. 

A long-standing police tradition

In the 1980s, police in East Saint Louis got it so wrong, (means police brutality, wrongful arrests, abuse of authority, I can go on...) so often that the city ran out of money to satisfy all of he civil awards against them. As a result, the city’s credit rating was so bad they couldn’t sell municipal bonds to raise money. 

At the next civil trial, the judge simply awarded city hall as a judgment. That’s right, the city had to pay rent to the victim of police brutality in order to occupy city hall. 

Still, love him or hate him, Dirty Harry is the father of a lot of tough-guy cops completely unencumbered by policies/procedures, rules, or laws. Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport, and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher all owe WAY more to Harry Callahan than Sherlock Holmes. So, what’s the problem?

Loose canon isn’t a term of endearment

The funny thing is, film fiction does a better job of illustrating the failings of the renegade cop than a lot of print fiction. Case in point, Lili Fini Zanuck’s 1991 movie, Rush. Her undercover police officers use the very drugs they’re supposed to be getting “off the streets.” First, the cops (played by Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh) use drugs in order to get next to dealers and their suppliers but over time drug use becomes recreational. Hilarity does not ensue. By the end of Rush, one cop is dead and the other is on trial while dodging a murderous drug dealer. 

Of the authors I cite, Only Sandford, (aka reporter John Camp) accurately depicts rogue-cop behavior. His cops beat confessions out of witnesses and torture informants. Sandford's hero, Lucas Davenport, even threatens to drown a 60-year-old woman to get her to roll on a criminal suspect. As a result the city that Davenport works for shells out a lot of actual-and-punitive damages. 

Actual criminals go free—that doesn't even include the cops

Like Rush, Antoine Fuqua’s 2001 film, Training Day gives a glimpse to another consequence of the renegade cop—entrepreneurship. See, it’s a short jump from disregarding rights to break the case to outright breaking the law for personal gain. Undercover narcotics officer Alonzo Harris, (Denzel Washington) steals from dealers, bribes prosecutors, and murders other cops. Way beyond “the ends justify the means,” Harris is full-on “means as an end to themselves,” territory. 

But it’s all fiction, right?

Len Davis was a decorated New Orleans police officer known for his aggressive approach to policing. Also known as “Robocop” for his brutality, Davis beat suspects, coerced confessions, and graduated to shaking down drug dealers for protection money. When Kim Groves reported Davis for beating a teen boy he suspected in a shooting, Davis was tipped off by an internal affairs cop. Davis then had Groves murdered. 

Davis was sentenced to death in 2005 and remains on death row. The city of New Orleans settled a wrongful death case with Kim Groves’ three children for $1.5mm. There are police like Davis all over the country.  

I believe each author has to decide for themselves how much realism and/or how much social relevance, they want in their story. I also believe that if all the birds in your story are chickens but never ravens, grackles, or vultures, you’re missing a lot of opportunity. You’re leaving a lot of drama on the sidelines, too.

The photo at the top "Tombstone" movie poster is the property of Buena Vista Pictures, et al. It is used here for educational/instructional purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.

Hollywood Crime and Bribery in the Real World

 

In one of the 76 unnecessary subplots in Michael Mann’s crime film Heat, Donald Breedan arrives for his first day on the job. A recent parolee, Donald wants more than working the grill at a diner but options are limited for ex-cons. Then the scumbag restaurant manager tells him that in addition to working as a line cook, Donald will be mopping floors, pulling trash, in short, everything other than cooking.

Oh, and 25% of Donald’s pay kicks back to the restaurant manager. Rules of the game.

Really, though? Do people do that? 

In 1977 my stepfather left the Texas Department of Corrections with $50 in cash, a polyester suit, and a thousand dollars’ worth of tools. The man who hired him “allowed” my dad to sleep in the shop, for a fee. The parole officer who arranged the job kept my dad “out of trouble,” for a fee. This went on for two years. The shop owner got master-mechanic work (during a booming oil economy) for a little over minimum wage. The tools that the TDC gave the old man belonged to the boss. 

Rules of the game.

In The Big Easy Detective Remy McSwain barges into a squad room, interrupting “the count” or the division of cash for police officers in on “the take.” The “ill-gotten” part is implied by the two cops jumping to cover the stacks of cash on the table. This scene could’ve been taken directly from Peter Maas’ biography of NYC cop Frank Serpico. 

Serpico, testifying before the Knapp Commission on police corruption, said the “take” could be anything from free lunches for cops who didn’t write tickets on restaurant delivery trucks all the way to mob payoffs for information and/or “looking the other way” on mob business. Have you never wondered why there was no random police patrolman just happening-by around any of the mob hits of the last 100 years? Statistically, that is impossible.

For consideration: a 2020 cost of living study cites the Bronx as the lowest cost of living (3-times the average rent) of the five boroughs at $5000/mo before taxes. The starting salary for a New York City police officer in 2020 was $42,500 or $3541/mo. Oh, and NYC requires all NYPD cops to live in the city. 

Reads like a recipe for corruption, to me.

In Thief, a judge negotiates his payoff from the bench, trading hand signs with an attorney attempting to buy his client’s release from prison. Again, credulity rears its ugly head. It’s a valid question. Who jeopardizes their liberty, gives up a judge’s bench over crooked sh—tuff?

A lot. A lot of people give up their good government jobs for crooked cash. 

Pennsylvania Judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella aggressively convicted juvenile offenders for low-level offenses, (trespassing and underage drinking) and then sentenced them to for-profit-juvenile-detention facilities. Investigative journalist William Ecenbarger wrote that 6000 children were sent to for-profit detention centers for which Conahan and Ciavarella received over $2mm kickbacks from the prison owner and the developer who built the prison. Both men are still in grown-up prison after convictions on multiple counts of racketeering and civil rights violations. 

In HBO’s excellent television series, The Wire we see Maryland State Senator Clay Davis exercise his influence to get his bagman released from police custody after an arrested—with a literal trash bag full of cash. Coleman Parker, chief of staff to Baltimore Mayor Clarence Royce, tells his boss to ignore a developer’s entreaty for a meeting. When asked what the meeting is about, Parker replies that the developer wants a median break in front of his new building but is only offering $5000. 

Fiction, right? It’s not that cut-and-dried in the real…um…

Kenneth McDuff was convicted of killing three teenagers in 1966. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Furman v. Georgia, (striking down existing death-penalty sentences) McDuff’s death penalty was instantly commuted to life in prison. 

Texas Monthly Magazine—in an article that would roil the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles—reported that Addie McDuff paid a board member to parole her son, Kenneth. A separate report cited $25,000 as the bribe amount. Within two years after his release in 1989, McDuff murdered a woman that he kidnapped from a carwash in front of witnesses. He would kill two other women (that we know of) before he was apprehended in 1992. 

After two years living in a shop and paying over 30% of his pay to his PO and boss, my old man started his own business. My dad would be self-employed for the rest of his life. At different points he owned an auto-salvage yard, a tire shop, and finally an auto-repair shop.

But no matter what side of town he set up shop, after a week or two, a couple of police sergeants would show up and speak with my dad. Every week there after they would come for a visit that would end with my old man handing over an envelope of cash. For that cash the cops “look out” for my old man and made sure he didn’t “jeopardize” his parole. 

My old man had to fence stolen car parts, TVs, and guns to keep those envelopes full while also making parole and covering the bills. The cops were good enough to look the other way about those activities, too.

So, yes, bribery really does happen, just like in the movies. Street corner corruption to Wall Street corruption, it all costs. The woman or man who works for a living is hit the hardest in higher prices, higher insurance costs, and higher taxes.

All rules of the game.

The image at the top is in the public domain.

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.

The image at the top does not belong to me. It is used here for educational and informational purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.