The Breach

by Edward J. McFadden III

  The limo pulled away and Tanner watched the carefully choreographed falsehood playing out before him. The women entered the apartment building, and in a few minutes, the senator’s car would be back, and he’d slip from the long stretch limo like smoke. He’d be in the front door of the apartment building before the limo pulled away. Tanner settled in for a three-hour wait. The captain said the meeting would go down at 11PM, and it was 8:56.

  Things went to shit ten minutes later.

  The senator’s car pulled to the curb across the street—right on schedule. Tanner heard a car door open and then shut. The limo tried to pull away but a black Lincoln Town Car blocked it. A man got out of the Lincoln and sat on the hood of the senator’s limo.

  The street was deserted. “Let’s talk,” said the man sitting on Donald’s hood. “I won’t hurt you. I just want to finish this, and you’re the most predictable asshole on Earth. No, man, in the universe.”

  Tanner strained to see the man and was surprised to see none other than local dickhead and Russian mobster Victor Reznikov. Tanner reached for his gun, then checked himself. Instead, he pulled out his cellphone and started shooting video.

  Tanner heard muffled voices and Reznikov got off the hood and disappeared into the limo. Tanner reached for his Glock again and checked himself a second time. What did he have at the moment? Nothing. So he called for backup.

  Within minutes, the street was blocked with patrol cars and Tanner slipped from the shadows. Reznikov’s men didn’t put up a fight, and neither did the senator. Plenty of pictures were taken as the ranking member of the senate judiciary committee got yanked from his limo, marijuana joint in hand, along with the most wanted Russian mobster in New York.

  It was 10:41PM when Tanner arrested Donald, and the time had come to go out for beers.

  A shadow floated like a giant monster from the depths of the ocean. A black leviathan with claws that could crush the world, and a spike as hard as iron. It was cold, and he was engulfed by the sounds of water and wind.

  ***

  Tanner came awake with a start. That night would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life, and he was thankful he’d woken before its conclusion.

  “Easy, buddy, you’re all right,” Randy said.

  LS jumped on the bed and licked his face, walked in a small circle, then sat next to Tanner’s pillow.

  Tanner’s shirt was soaked through, and his throat was so dry it hurt to swallow. “Can you get…?”

  Randy handed Tanner a tall glass of water.

  “How’d I get here? I thought I was heading to Davy Jones’ Locker.”

  “You don’t remember anything?” Randy asked.

  “Last thing I recall is the bay sucking me under as that thing broke apart our boat. I see you and LS made out all right. Looks like you guys didn’t get a scratch.”

  “The pilothouse protected us pretty well, though we got tossed around like we were in a clothes dryer. I’ve got bruises all over my body, but LS made it through OK. He was limping around last night, but he seems fine today.”

  “What happened?”

  “When the sea scorpion chomped the boat in half, I lost sight of you in the whitewater. Jefferson came roaring in with her boat and the coasties opened up on the thing. The monster must have had enough because it dove, and disturbed the mud on the bottom, turning the bay into sewage. We found you unconscious, floating in your life jacket. Jefferson rescued LS and I, then we retrieved you.”

  “Why wasn’t I airlifted to Stony Creek University Hospital?”

  “Dude, I knew you wouldn’t want that,” Randy explained. “I told them you don’t do hospitals. If you were admitted, your hunt would be over and I knew you couldn’t abide by that. Jefferson didn’t buy it, though. She wanted to take you in, but when the boat’s medic examined you and your vitals were stable, he said you could go home after an X-ray of your noggin. No surprise, they found nothing up there. How’s your head feel?”

  “Like your daughter’s orchestra is going full tilt in my head,” Tanner said. “But it isn’t that bad. Feels like most mornings.”

  Randy said nothing.

  “They just let you bring me home?”

  “You woke briefly—twice actually—and you told them you were fine and threatened holy hell if they brought you in. You must have a pretty bad concussion if you don’t remember any of that.”

  “It’s coming back now. Jefferson called me a baby.”

  “She did, and she was a bit more concerned than the rest of us. I think she likes you.”

  Tanner harrumphed. “How long was I out?”

  “Twenty-four hours. It’s Sunday afternoon.”

  Tanner sat up, and LS jumped to attention, his tail going back and forth so fast it blurred. Tanner stretched his neck and cracked his back. He got up on shaky legs, and Randy reached out to help him and LS woofed. “I need some air. Let’s go outside,” he said.

  With Randy at his side, Tanner made his way through the trailer’s screen porch out onto his small patch of grass and they fell into folding chairs. The trailer park sat in a sheltered cove off Montauk Highway in Stones Throw, and half the people who lived in the town didn’t even know the park existed. Tristin had nearly destroyed the Brightlights Residential Park. Several trailers were overturned, and trees and other debris littered the entire area. Tanner was lucky that his metal hovel still stood. He’d tied down his shit-shack, and cut the screens on the porch, and that had helped, but Tanner thought it was the age of the trailer that had saved it. It was an old-school thing from the sixties, made of metal, as opposed to the newer trailers in the park that were only aluminum stretched over wood studs.

  “Any sign of the monster?” Tanner asked.

  Randy shook his head. “No sign of it since your epic battle.”

  “Real epic.”

  “Looked pretty epic from where I was.”

  “What’s happening now?”

  “The bay is filled with search boats and in your absence, the command structure is even murkier.”

  As if his demotion didn’t muddy the waters enough. “Sounds dangerous.”

  “It is. There was a debate about whether the hunt should be suspended and a more experienced team be requested from the Navy. Not surprisingly, it was decided the locals could handle it.”

  Tanner said nothing. He didn’t like the idea of the Navy taking over in his backyard, but if he didn’t catch this thing, and soon, he’d have the Navy up his ass for sure. “What do they plan to do if they find it?”

  “I armored up a bit since you went down,” Randy said. “We got grenades and other weapons from the Army and some citizens have brought some of their personal arsenal to the fight.”

  “We’re gonna have to do better than that. I’ll make some calls Tuesday.” Tanner passed his hand across his forehead and leaned forward as vertigo took him.

  Randy said, “You OK, boss?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Get some rest. Why don’t you come by the house tomorrow? Have a burger and a beer or four for Memorial Day.”

  “Nah,” Tanner replied. “I’m gonna lie low, rest up, and be ready to get to it Tuesday at sunup.” He wasn’t up to answering all the questions that would come his way, and Randy’s wife would baby him and dote on him as though he were a child. He loved her for it, but it made him nuts.

  The wind picked up and stirred the leaves and debris and brought a slight chill. Tanner hugged himself, and his ribs screamed with pain. He got up, went inside, and flopped onto his bed. He was asleep in minutes.

  12

  If God existed, he’d forgotten about Long Island.

  Memorial Day was damp and rainy and miserable. The full moon kicked the tide into high gear, and much of the progress made in the prior week was erased. Floodwaters pressed inland, and though some areas had seen improvement, the low-lying areas on the south shore were still under several feet of water.

  Then there was tropical storm Dan ripping across the At
lantic Ocean like a jilted lover, following in Tristin’s wake.

  Tanner felt much better after another night’s sleep. His head only had a dull throb, he could see fine, and he didn’t get dizzy when he stood. He skipped his pain meds because he didn’t think he needed them. The pills made him feel like shit, and he’d struggled with them in the past because of his bad back. Tanner slapped some peanut butter on bread, ate it with a glass of water, and went back to bed.

  He woke to the sound of tapping on his screen door. Tanner pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt and found Jefferson waiting on the porch.

  “It’s Great South Bay Hopsy Dazy IPA,” she said, holding up a six-pack of beer. “Kid at the gas station said it was good stuff. He looked sixteen.”

  “That Randy’s pickup?” Tanner pointed to a red Ford parked in his short weed-infested gravel driveway.

  “Yeah, I got a lift to his place and he let me borrow it. He said you wouldn’t mind a little company.”

  “He did, huh? You off-duty?”

  “Kind of.”

  “You want to open two of those beers?”

  Jefferson smiled. “Yeah.” She leaned forward to snag a couple of beers and her blue uniform shirt fell open a crack, revealing her deep cleavage. Tanner diverted his eyes as fast as he could, but she still caught him and a sly smile crept across her face.

  Tanner dragged two lawn chairs into the screen room and they sat. Mosquitoes and flies dive-bombed through the duct-taped screens, and the crickets chirped even though it was mid-afternoon. “So it must be bad. Cough it up.”

  “What do you mean?” She took a long pull of beer and her face looked like she’d just eaten a bad piece of cheese.

  “What did you come here to tell me?” Tanner asked. It hadn’t occurred to him until that instant that she’d come to hang out with him.

  Her eyes widened and her lips tensed into a thin line. Tanner’s eyes shifted to the cracked concrete slab that served as his porch. “I wanted to bring you up to date on the sea scorpion. Figure out what’s next,” she said.

  “I’m glad you came.”

  They were silent for a few minutes, but to Tanner it felt like an eternity.

  “So how does a marine cop who makes six figures end up living in a thirty-year-old trailer?”

  “Didn’t get the subtlety merit badge, did we?”

  “Never tried for it.”

  “My wife left me. I wanted the kids to have a normal life, so they stayed in the house and I came here. It’s not bad, really, and…let’s just say you’re not seeing it at its best.”

  “I could say that of your entire island.”

  Tanner laughed. “You could at that.”

  “So why’d she leave you?”

  This was dangerous territory for Tanner, and his experience had taught him to say as little as possible. Not because he had something to hide, but because the probability of him saying something inappropriate or stupid was high. “It’s complicated.”

  A light rain still fell. “We got time,” she said.

  “OK, so maybe it’s not that complicated,” Tanner said. He’d just meet this woman, but he felt like he’d known her a long time and owed her the truth. The crisis they’d shared and their battle with the beast had melded them together quickly like lava hardened by the sea. “I wasn’t there, and I didn’t prioritize her in my life.”

  “Don’t give me that counselor psychobabble. That the real reason you didn’t want to go to the hospital? Afraid of the psych evaluation to get back on duty?”

  “No, really. I would have agreed with you a few years ago, but the counselor had a point. I was distant, and it was a problem.”

  “Why is that?” Jefferson asked.

  “Why you grilling me?”

  “Curious to know what I’m dealing with,” she said. Then she laughed and took a long pull on her beer and Tanner’s heart raced as a sheen of perspiration broke out on his forehead. Jefferson’s light brown skin was flawless, her deep brown eyes wide with life, and they sucked him in and stirred feelings he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  A bird sang as the rain stopped. She was looking at him with eyes that deserved an answer, so he gave the best one he could. “Two years ago, we were supposed to go out to dinner one Saturday night. I had a real bad day and had to cancel because of a stakeout. When I got home that evening, she had some of my stuff packed and asked me to leave. She said it was a long time coming, and that she was sorry, and that this was the best thing for both of us even if I didn’t understand that yet. So I left. My kids are in high school and couldn’t give two shits about me anyway, so I split.”

  Jefferson looked at the cement floor and said nothing.

  “Hurt more than I wanted to admit, but like our marriage counselor, Audrey had a point. She deserves better,” Tanner said, and he meant it.

  “Sounds like a real battle.”

  “Not really. With me out of the picture, they seem to be doing fine, which is confusing since I was hardly ever there to begin with. I guess knowing I’d come home at some point affected their lives. The life of an unwilling asshole.”

  “Sorry I asked,” she said.

  “No, it’s OK.” Tanner shrugged. “It’s one of those things. I’m not even mad anymore. Hurt that my kids never come around, but they’re teenagers. I figure that might change someday.”

  Jefferson glanced at the row of empty booze bottles on the windowsill, then down at the cracked concrete, but said nothing.

  Breaking the silence, Tanner said, “On to more important stuff. Any news on our underwater friend?”

  “No. Those pictures we got are OK, but unless you saw the thing with your own eyes, it’s hard to believe.”

  “I get that. How can such a thing exist?”

  “The Atlantic Ocean covers forty-one million square miles and has an average depth of twelve thousand feet. The Hudson Canyon isn’t that far from here, and it’s deep in spots. The coastie big heads think that might be where this thing came from, as you thought from the beginning. Seas cover seventy percent of the Earth, and it’s believed there are countless species in the depths we haven’t discovered. The sea scorpion is most likely one of a kind, or part of a tiny family. A long-lost hybrid of a creature that hasn’t lived for hundreds of years that’s also part lobster. The spike most likely developed over time for protection, like its relative the horseshoe crab.”

  “And nobody’s ever seen this freak of nature before?”

  “Like I said, it’s a big ocean and it may be the only one, or one of a small family,” Jefferson said.

  “The question is, where the hell is the thing?”

  “If you were a huge bottom dweller, where would you go?”

  “Out of the bay for sure, but maybe it can’t find the breach? Like a crab stuck in a crab trap?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t want to leave. Maybe it likes it here,” Jefferson said.

  “I can see how it might. Food, mud, and plenty of places to hide.”

  “So, if not out on the bay, then inland?”

  “Exactly,” Tanner said. “We need to hit the flood areas.”

  “The thing is smart, not your normal brainless creeper. It could be hiding in a flooded building.”

  “I’ll go through the charts tonight and mark the low areas. You do the same with your fancy equipment onboard the Vigilant and we’ll compare notes in the morning. You’ll be surprised to see that some areas have drained considerably while others remain badly flooded due to differences in elevation, heights of bulkheads, and natural and manmade low areas. Several channels have been formed. I plan to bring Big Boy, but we may need to switch to smaller crafts to go deep into the flood zones.”

  “What’s our objective? Search and destroy? That hasn’t worked out very well so far.”

  “We’ve upgraded our armaments, and we can always run and lead the thing out into the bay where we’ll have support.” Tanner took a long pull of beer. “Listen, the captain will take me off the hunt in the m
orning, bring in other people, so I need to get out early.”

  “Why?”

  “With the visibility and seriousness of the situation escalating, this loosey-goosey command structure we’ve been working under will no longer work for him as he shifts into ass-covering mode.”

  They sat in silence for a long time, and the rain picked up again. Dusk shrouded the world in a gray haze. Jefferson finished her second beer and put the empty back into the cardboard six-pack holder. She got up and stretched her back. “I’ll meet you out there tomorrow? Sunup?”

  He wondered if she saw the disappointment on his face when he said, “Leaving?”

  “Yeah. I got to get back to the cutter. Just wanted to touch base. Have a good night, Tanner.” She turned and pushed through the screen door. Tanner watched her as she got into Randy’s truck, started it up, and pulled away.

  His stomach tightened. Why did he care so much what this woman did? He hardly knew her, but a chill ran through him and he was sweating. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and pulled his flask free. He took a hit, grabbed the beers, and headed inside.

  13

  The trip to Carey Creek only took five minutes. Tanner drove through the predawn dusk, yawning, and wondering who would voluntarily get up before dawn every day. It explained why so many people were already pissed off by lunch most days when he was just getting into the groove. Randy was picking him up at Carey Creek instead of the station because the captain was known as an early bird and he might throw a wrench in the works and show up extra early.