by Frank Perry
weather had been better in southern California during the day, it was blanketed with fog at the harbor as the cold Pacific air took over. As he drove past the dock on the frontage road, he could not see the channel. Fog diffused the few ship lights along the dock, creating a kind of yellowish-grey corona affect. Water conditions were the same as before, murky and scum-covered. You could smell the harbor a mile away. Later, he would irrigate his ears with isopropyl alcohol once he found a hotel and a pharmacy.
He drove farther down the frontage road which turned to dirt, then to ruts closer to the mouth of the harbor. The area was devoid of anything structural, except for a few piling clusters offshore that looked decayed. In the 1920’s and 30’s the hills around San Pedro and Long Beach were pocked with oil wells that produced thick oil sludge. Large ships, much deeper than fishing trawlers, would moor against the pilings, and oil would be transported by giant rubber hoses. These operations ceased fifty years ago, but the remnants still scarred the harbor and hillsides.
There was a lone stone jetty at the mouth of the San Pedro Channel into the Los Angeles Harbor and the open Pacific not far beyond. He parked close to the jetty near two old rusty pickups used by fishermen on the rocks. There were signs, warning against eating anything taken from the sea in the harbor, but desperate people ignored them. Hunter opened his laptop, using his mobile network antenna to check progress of Sea Fury, which was still a couple hours out. The computer screen illuminated the whole interior of his car. He jumped when someone tapped on the window beside him, flashing an intense light beam through the window. He pushed the “down” button. “What’s the problem, officer?”
“Sir. Can I ask what you’re doing here? You don’t look like you’re planning to fish.”
“No. That’s right. I had some time to kill, so I came down here exploring. I wanted to do some computer work while I’m waiting for my brother coming in on a fishing boat.”
“Okay. But be watchful. Most of the time I just scare away kids making out, but there’s also some dangerous people around here.”
He hoped that he wouldn’t have to answer questions about his equipment in the trunk. “You mean drug dealers?”
“Yes, sir. You got any packages with you?”
“Yes, officer. I have my computer bag with me up here in front and scuba gear in the trunk.”
The young officer seemed content after flashing his light around the interior. “How much longer you plan to be here?”
“Ah, probably a few hours. His boat is supposed to be in the channel around midnight. I thought I’d sleep a little until then.”
“Suit yourself, sir. Keep the windows up and the doors locked. I’ll be around from time to time and try not to disturb you. If anyone pulls up beside you, my advice would be to leave and find another spot to rest.”
“Look, I appreciate it. Thanks.”
“Have a good night, sir.”
He let out a breath and hoped the patrol wouldn’t come around while he was working. He hoped to be out of the area before midnight.
Farther North, in suburban Sacramento, John Richards (Fleming) arrived at his modest rental house after a long day and stopping for groceries. He pulled into the carport behind the house and carried the bag in the dark toward the back door. That’s when they grabbed him. One man in front of him with a gun and another behind with vice-like arm strength held him, disarmed him, threw him to the ground and bound him with duct tape. When he was helpless and silent, the big unseen man carried him over his shoulder, tossing him roughly into the trunk of a car.
Hunter closed his computer after checking the tide table and waited. He had half an hour to kill and wanted to gauge the timing of police patrols. Where were you guys on the docks last week?
At nine o’clock, he checked Fury’s position one more time then locked the computer in the trunk. Both pickups had departed, and he was alone in the dark, surrounded by fog and the perpetual sickening harbor smell. He would wash all his equipment with bleach in the hotel later. Across the mouth of the harbor, he heard a fog horn. There was a vague rotating light somewhere across the water, but it was otherwise dark and forbidding alone at the jetty.
He grabbed his gear, making two trips between the jetty and his car. This time, he would bring his demolition tool belt and a swim float to carry the extra weight until near the dock. It was freezing cold as he stripped and concealed his clothes in the rocks. He sat on one to help pull the wetsuit over his legs. He did it all by feel in the darkness. It was rare that SEALS operated in lighted conditions. He’d practiced this hundreds of times.
Once he was fully dressed, and the equipment sled readied. He slipped off a rock into shallow water, barely up to his knees. With the sled floating beside him, he walked backward into deeper water. Each step, and each stroke to follow would be done slowly and cautiously. Old harbors were full of structural debris just below the surface. He’d known more teammates who were injured seriously by invisible rusty beams or broken pilings than by enemy weapons. SEALS almost never operated in sport diving conditions.
Toward the center of the channel, leading into the San Pedro canal, he swam more freely, pushing the sled ahead. He had to stay close to the edge for occasional visual references and to avoid any ships moving through. When he got to the end of the fishing dock he cautiously pushed the sled underneath in the blacked goo, filled with floating debris, decaying fish and sludge from the boats. He tethered the sled to one of the old wharf pilings far underneath, careful to avoid sharp barnacles and mussel shells. He waited, resting with arms across the sled. The foul air was hard to breath. The dock canal was about one hundred yards wide and marked by single red and green lights across the end. In this weather, the trawler would need to use radar to locate the mouth of the canal.
Hunter checked his watch periodically and waited about half an hour before hearing the sound of a ships horn. Moments later, a searchlight from the bridge indicated that Fury was edging cautiously into the dock canal from the wider San Pedro Channel. It was tight quarters for a ship to be maneuvering in this weather at night. A legitimate fishing Trawler would have anchored off-shore and entered in the daylight.
It took another twenty minutes for Fury to press up against the dock several hundred feet into the canal, at the same berth used by Wanderer many days earlier. He waited until the running lights and searchlight were off before opening the tool sled. He wrapped his legs around the piling while securing the tool belt around his waist. Even though the tools were all made with titanium for the SEALS to be the lightest weight possible, the belt still acted as an anchor around him. He put his weight belt inside the sled and latched it closed.
Once ready, he drifted silently into the middle of the canal using his hands to move forward and his flippers to keep his head above water. He checked compass angles and gauged the distance to Fury at three hundred feet and set his watch ring to zero, before descending to the bottom. With zero visibility, his only references were compass and watch dials. He knew his swim pace and estimated the tide effect at zero. In seventy seconds he was at a point roughly opposite Fury and changed course for the berth. When he got close to the hull, there was a dim lighted area directly under the keel. The clamshell hatch was open!
He swam closer and touched the edge of one hatch cover. The shipping container was being lowered from inside. He watched it inch slowly downward, presumably operated by a manual hoist above. It settled on the bottom about ten feet below. That’s when someone jumped in beside the “A” shaped frame secured to the top of the container. This was the frame used by the crane to lift it to the dock. Someone in a wetsuit, wearing only a mask and snorkel jumped from the opening beside the package on the floor of the harbor. Hunter treaded backward, farther into darkness. The dim light began fading as the doors closed. The swimmer was treading water, holding the orange ball clear of the doors. He had to wrestle with the ball which wanted to float to the surface. As
the doors closed further, the diver swam with the ball forward along the keel. Just as the doors were closing completely, the diver pulled the last slack of the tether away then swam between the doors as they slammed shut. The buoy and tether were contained under the keel until the ship moved.
At this point, Hunter was alone again in complete darkness. The ship’s hull blocked any light from above along the dock. He swam slowly, feeling for the A-frame structure. When he found it, he reached down along the sides of the container for latches. The fiberglass box was a cube, about four feet in each dimension. He could feel a seam along the top with hinges on one side and twist locks on the other. He couldn’t turn the twist locks by hand, so felt for the vice grips tied inside his tool belt. The tool had a four-foot tether. He had all three latches opened quickly. When he lifted the lid, there was sudden release of air. He stopped for a moment, listening for any alert sounds on the ship. The box wasn’t water proof, but it hadn’t fully filled with water when he opened it. No one entered the water and the doors in the hull remained closed. Inside the box he felt bricks that he assumed was cocaine. Each brick measured two inches by six, and ten inches long. They were
