Lack of sleep didn’t matter now. Her senses were alive, thinking about the capture of McAllen. She did not know why she wanted him apprehended so badly. She guessed it was because he was outside the law: she represented the law. Cut and dried, black and white, that’s how she saw it.
The shower was cold as she got in. It jarred the last recesses of her brain awake. Now everything was on board, ready to fire.
Throwing her evening clothes and shoes and toiletries into her bag, she slipped back on her standard travel clothes. Jeans, tee shirt with a V- neck sweater over top, and lace-up boots. Anton had given her a GORE- TEX rain jacket to wear the night before. She stuffed her leather jacket into the bag. Leather, she realized, did not do well on this wet coast.
A mere fifteen minutes later, she rode the elevator down to the hotel lobby. The lobby was quiet. The only occupants were maintenance and front desk staff. Anton was waiting beside the elevator with a large coffee in his hand.
He smiled as he offered the coffee to Bernadette. “Two sugars two creams?”
“You’re amazing,” Bernadette said as she took the coffee. The mere smell of the caffeine and sugar was heaven.
“Where’s Pierre?” Bernadette asked as she took the first sip of coffee.
“Pierre’s a civilian, won’t be allowed on this trip, and actually, neither will I,” Anton said as he ushered Bernadette to the Lincoln Navigator. He took the keys for the SUV from the doorman and placed Bernadette’s bag in the back.
“Why not?” Bernadette asked as she climbed into the passenger’s
seat.
“Bernadette, I only have basic weapons training. I’m really an agent analyst. I’ll be watching from CSIS headquarters here in Vancouver.”
“You’re going to miss the fun stuff.”
Anton looked over at her as he started the SUV and pulled out of the driveway. “The Italians have a saying: Quelle sono le interruzioni nella vita, which basically means ‘Those are the breaks in life.’” He smiled as he headed for the heliport.
Bernadette laughed in between gulps of her coffee. “So when will we meet again?”
“Hopefully soon. Pierre will pick you up at the Comox Airport in the Synthetic Oil corporate jet later today and fly you back to Fort McMurray tonight. I’ll be heading back to Edmonton in a few days. How about we all meet in Edmonton at a great Italian restaurant I know once you get settled in your new place in Red Deer?”
“Sure,” Bernadette said. She sat up in her seat as the heliport came in view. There on the landing pad was the Canadian Forces helicopter. It had just arrived. The helicopter was yellow and black with red rotor housing. In large letters on the side were the words CFB RESCUE. Neither the looks of the helicopter or the name on the side gave Bernadette any comfort. Rotors on top and on the tail seemed odd. She knew that if the back rotor stopped functioning, the thing came down in some kind of rotational maneuver that seemed unnatural.
Anton turned to Bernadette. “There’s your ride. Now when you get to CFB Comox, Sublieutenant Prefontaine, a navy liaison, will meet you and take you to Naval Supply to get you fitted with the gear you need.”
“Gear? What gear are you talking about?”
“Oh, yeah, that was the one thing Pierre and I forgot to mention last night. You’re getting combat gear: bulletproof vest, gun, helmet— the works. You see, the people in Ottawa want pictures of you next to McAllen when the arrest is made. To show we always get our man.” Anton smiled again and this time winked. “And, not to worry, you’ll be taken care of during the arrest to ensure nothing happens to you.”
“So, I’m in a photo opportunity to be used by our government?” Bernadette had just realized the position she’d been given.
“Detective Callahan.” Anton looked hurt as he put a hand on Bernadette’s arm. “We all play our part to ensure we present a good picture to the public of how we protect them.”
Bernadette smiled back at Anton. She couldn’t be mad at him. Government bullshit was government bullshit. They would capture McAllen and show him like a prize stag hanging on the wall. She would be arm candy. What the hell.
Bernadette climbed into the helicopter. The two navy pilots gave her a thumbs-up after she put on her life vest, buckled in and they lifted off. The chopper did a quick hover and headed out of Coal Harbor, and the lights of North Vancouver. They would be in Comox in less than a half hour.
Harbor lights gave way to the dark expanse of the Georgia Straight. Moonlight shone on the ocean, making a silver glow on the water. Small ships and freighters plied the waters between the islands. The helicopter climbed higher; fog obscured the ocean below.
Bernadette looked down to the sea below when they were halfway into the channel. The fog parted. A long Haida war canoe appeared below. The paddles flashed in the moonlight. The fog closed in again—was it a vision? A dream? She wasn’t sure.
The chopper’s altitude dropped, and land came into sight—the coast, then a golf course, and then a runway: on the left was a commercial terminal; on the right was the military. A small commercial commuter plane was being prepped for morning takeoff. The chopper landed in front of the naval base, and the blades came to a stop. Bernadette got out; thankful her first helicopter trip had been successful. She counted it a success that she hadn’t died at sea in the thing.
A dark green truck pulled up to the chopper, and a young officer came towards Bernadette. He was dressed in dark navy with gold bars on his lapel. HMCS ALGONQUIN was embroidered in gold on his baseball hat. “Sublieutenant Marc Prefontaine. I’ll be your guide to the Algonquin, Detective Callahan.”
Bernadette climbed into the truck, and they sped off to the Naval Supply room. The supply clerk handed Bernadette naval combat gear and offered her a change room. As she donned the standard issue naval bulletproof vest, she wondered if it was any better at stopping a .50 caliber sniper round than an RCMP vest.
She had been thinking of McAllen and how he had killed Emmanuel Fuentes on Galiano Island using a .50 caliber sniper rifle. She wondered if McAllen still had them—would she face them that same morning?
From the Stores room, they made their way to another helicopter. A large gray machine was warming its blades up slowly on the pad. The officer informed Bernadette that this was a Sea King, her ride to the naval destroyer Algonquin.
Bernadette looked at the sub lieutenant with mild fear in her eyes. “This large thing is going to land on a ship?”
The officer looked at Bernadette with a knowing smile. “Not to worry, they’ll be using a bear trap this morning.”
“A bear trap?”
“Yeah, it’s a line that the Sea King drops down, and then the helicopter is pulled to the landing pad. We do it all the time, nice and safe.” The officer took her arm and guided her to a seat inside the helicopter. Seats with buckles and webbing lined the walls. Gear had been stowed that was being transferred to the destroyer, and a mean looking machine gun was locked in position beside the door.
The helicopter took off long before Bernadette was mentally ready. The ground gave way, and this time, there was no window to look out of to see the relationship of the craft to the ground. Bernadette adopted her best nonchalant face and stared at the back of the pilots’ heads.
She was told the flight to the destroyer was only thirty minutes. It seemed longer. Bernadette had gone from a corporate jet the day before to flying in something that sounded like a cement mixer. She inadvertently said a few Hail Mary’s softly to herself.
The helicopter slowed and hovered. Bernadette felt a tugging motion, the helicopter inched lower with the help of what she knew was the bear trap. Finally the chopper came to rest in a lurching motion, and Bernadette’s tailbone met with her throat by way of her stomach. Not her best experience.
The cargo door opened. Bernadette stepped onto the deck of the destroyer. Her view was gray: gray metal, gray surfaces with gray paint. The sea formed a backdrop of black waves tipped with foam set under cloud and fog. It was 6:00 a.m
. The sun would not rise for another hour and a half.
Bernadette immediately felt the rise and fall of the ship, something she never experienced before. She had been on a rowboat and a motorboat on a lake, but never a ship, not even a ferry boat. The motion: her legs moved to fight it, to stay steady. Her stomach was wondering what to make of it. A square-set man introduced himself as Chief Petty Officer Keller. Bernadette and Prefontaine followed him forward and, thankfully, below deck.
Bernadette tried to follow as quickly as she could as Keller shot down the stairs, walking the narrow corridors as if his feet had magnets attached to them. The motion of the ship and the narrow corridors reminded Bernadette of a maze she had been in once. She hadn’t liked the maze—wasn’t sure if she liked this.
They arrived at the mess hall, another narrow room with rows of tables. An opening at one end was the kitchen. The aroma of eggs, bacon, and sausage assaulted her nostrils, smells that normally would wake a craving in her stomach for salt, fat, and sugar. Now, strangely, her stomach found these smells confusing.
Bernadette found a seat at the mess table and sat down. Her legs no longer wanted to navigate the motion of the decks. Just as she was about to explore what the sensation of her stomach was all about, a hand rested on her shoulder. She turned and looked into the eyes of a tall RCMP constable. She thought about what she would tell Cynthia when she saw her next. He has dark hair, olive skin, brown eyes, and the charming good looks of one of those great-looking men in travel commercials that say, “Come to this island and you’ll meet someone just like this.”
“Detective Callahan, we finally meet. I’m Constable Chris Christakos.”
Bernadette forgot her flip-flopping stomach, her fatigue and raw nerves. This was the Constable Chris Christakos of Galiano Island. The one she had spoken with numerous times on the phone, the one who had helped her ID the dead body of Emmanuel Fuentes on the beach.
Here he was, flesh and, well, very good-looking flesh, she thought. She was speechless. Of all the places to meet someone she had checked out on Facebook and had a mini-fantasy over, here he was, on a naval destroyer.
“What a pleasant surprise,” Bernadette finally managed to squeak out.
Chris grinned and sat down beside Bernadette. “I know this is kind of a surprise. I was hoping our first meeting would be on my salmon boat off of Galiano Island. I heard from my commanding officer that you were joining us on this mission.”
The sub lieutenant returned to the table with a coffee for Bernadette and said, “I see the RCMP is forming a posse. Would you like to fill the detective in on our plans while I check in with my commanding officer?”
“My pleasure,” Chris said. He watched as the sub lieutenant walked away and then turned to Bernadette. “So this is a pretty big operation they’ve mounted—looks like they’re serious about apprehending McAllen.”
Bernadette took some exploratory sips of navy coffee, added some sugar, and asked, “So what’s the master plan?”
Chris paused a moment, looking into Bernadette’s eyes. “Well, this destroyer has four large zodiacs on board, the new Hurricanes with 600- horsepower engines. They’ll have nine personnel each on board. We launch for McAllen’s island just after sunrise, which is 0730 hours, but there’s some heavy fog out there so they may delay a half hour to an hour.
“The four zodiacs will hit the beach just in front of McAllen’s island, which is just below a large house on a cliff. Army Special Forces officers will rappel from a Griffin helicopter to the back of the house, and the Sea King helicopter you just rode in on will provide covering fire from above with a large caliber machine gun. Plus there will be three navy Kingston Class coastal ships with capability of covering fire.”
"Wow, sounds like quite the armada. You think that McAllen will surrender without firing a shot from that .50 caliber sniper rifle or the M16 he used previously?”
"I guess there’re chances of that. The joint command thinks this is a complete surprise. They’ve had a spy drone overhead for several days without an increase in activity from McAllen.” Chris shrugged the shrug of an RCMP officer about to go into harm’s way based on the decision of command. His shrug said it all—it’s what we do.
"You know, back home, we always say that the angriest bear is a surprised bear. I really hope joint command is right,” Bernadette said. "Me too. I’d hate for our first date to go badly.” Chris smiled. Bernadette couldn’t help herself—she smiled then blushed, and then her cheeks went another shade of red that gave her away. Damn this is bad timing, she thought.
Everyone in McAllen’s cabin had been awake since 4:00 a.m. McAllen, Sebastian, and Theo moved a large tube, tripod, and base plate out of the shed, assembled it under the overhang of the front porch, and stacked a dozen shells beside it. It was a French long-range mortar, capable of lobbing shells a mile into the channel.
Theo made some final adjustments to the mortar then they covered it with a tarp. Sebastian looked anxiously into the sky to see if the spy drone was overhead. The wolfhound stood beside Sebastian, also staring up at the sky, as if he could help.
They all went inside, except for the dog, which now paced back and forth and growled into the dark morning. Grace brought a batch of her famous high fiber muffins out of the oven, and some Salt Spring Island Canopy Blend coffee was brewing.
Margaret and Percy were in deep conversation at Percy’s computer. They looked up at the men as they walked in.
“Can we do it?” McAllen asked as he walked into the kitchen and helped himself to some coffee.
Percy looked at Margaret, then at McAllen, and then threw up his hands as if the air had the answer. “Maybe, if we hit the right database and the virus goes viral throughout their system and their firewalls don’t block it. Yeah, if not . . .” He left the words hanging.
They looked at each other and wondered if they had ever been in a tougher situation than this and if there was a way out. They would find out soon. Dawn was two hours away.
Bernadette and Chris were lost in a bubble, the bubble that forms around two people attracted to each other. Thirty or so navy and RCMP officers provided a wave of conversation around them, and their bubble sailed amongst them.
They talked about RCMP basic training in Regina, drill sergeants they hated, commandants they admired, and why they both loved the RCMP. There was comparisons of good detachments, not so good, and the in-between.
Two officers, lost in attraction to each other, oblivious to their surroundings. Somewhere in that time, breakfast appeared for Bernadette. Her stomach had miraculously recovered from its queasiness—funny thing. She didn’t give it another thought.
Then the loudspeaker sounded. “Task force to the zodiacs.” The voice broke Bernadette and Chris out of their trance. They gathered their gear and followed the rest of the RCMP and navy personnel through the narrow corridors and up on deck.
On deck, the fog surrounded the ship like a soft cloak. The sea was now a dark blue, only light waves rolled by the ship. A group of officers stood in a ring of conversation. One was on a cell phone, the other on a radio.
Bernadette heard one officer say to the other, “Ottawa wants to proceed anyway—air cover or no air cover, it’s a go.”
As they stood waiting to climb down into the zodiacs, Bernadette could see the flight deck where the Sea King helicopter was. A group of technicians were scrambling over it. It did not look in ready- to-fly mode. It looked like in ready-to-sit mode.
A young sailor behind Bernadette said to his companion, “Looks like we got a SNAFU.” Bernadette knew that term. It meant “situation normal all fucked up.”
Bernadette climbed into the zodiac. She was dressed in her brown navy combat pants, jacket, bulletproof vest, and life vest. She felt like the Michelin Man: big, bulky, and slightly inflated. Chris sat down in the seat beside her. She was sandwiched between two large RCMP officers and sitting behind the command controls.
The coxswain of the zodiac looked around as they
took their places. He smiled at everyone and said, “Okay, minor SNAFU. Air support is down as radar is out. We’ve been informed we’re going in regardless, so check your weapons and stay sharp. We’ll have cover from the three Kingston Class boats in the channel.” He took the zodiac’s controls and steered the boat away from the destroyer.
A ship appeared off to their left, one of the Kingston Class coastal boats. It dwarfed the zodiacs as it plowed through waves. They were called boats but were actually 180-feet long and 37-feet wide with 4 diesel engines. The coastal boats were to get there first, get close in, and then the zodiacs were to land. That was what Chris told Bernadette as they took position behind the big boats, rocking in their wake.
Bernadette looked over her shoulder to see the Sea King on the destroyer deck. It was going nowhere. Its large rotor blades hung limp. Bernadette wondered if McAllen had done that—sabotaged the aircraft radar. A strange feeling developed in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t sea sickness this time—it was a feeling that things were going wrong.
The coastal boats disappeared into the fog, and the zodiacs bobbed on the ocean, waiting for the command to advance on the island. A radio came to life, and the words, “Engage, engage, engage” came over the radio. The coxswain hit full throttle, the zodiac rose up on its prow. Sea spray and cold air whipped Bernadette.
There was fog. Fog and dark blue waves. Somewhere ahead was the outline of an island, which only the coxswain could make out. They made a sharp right—Bernadette could see the outline of dark trees with waves crashing on a shore. It must be McAllen’s island.
They came around in another sharp right. This must be it; this must be the beachhead, Bernadette thought. She looked over her shoulder to the left. The coastal boats were supposed to be close in. She could make out an outline of them, but they seemed far away. Large plumes of water were erupting around them. Like geysers or columns, water shot up into the sky.
Polar Bear Dawn Page 26
