Rocky Island (12 page)

Allison just smiled and poured more coffee.

He went on to explain what had happened in New York and how the entire operation fit together. Toby gave him a statement, which he had written out.

“You will both probably have to be witnesses when this thing comes to trial, but that will likely be at least a year away, maybe more. Just sorting out all the information we have is going to take almost that long and then the lawyers get time to prepare their cases. One thing we don’t know yet is how the three fishing boats Allison found for us fit in. They don’t seem to belong to the same organization. But we’re working on it.”

“Are they talking?”

“Not yet, except for one. They’re demanding lawyers, but they haven’t hired any yet, so they’re staying put in jail. Believe me, the jail is full with all the crew members from the vessel and the nine fishermen.”

“How’s the guy I shot doing?”

“Oh, he’s going to be okay, but he’s not going to be running any marathons for quite a while. I’m not sure they’ve got all that buckshot out of his legs yet. Must have been a full load that hit him.”

“Well, at that distance, the pattern was pretty close, so I imagine he did get pretty near the full shot. Can’t say I’m sorry. What kind of rifle was that he had?”

“A Russian AK47 automatic. That tell you anything?”

“Yeah, some international connections. He was German, right?”

“Austrian. He and the Captain and the other Mate. The engineers were all Chinese and the rest of the crew was Filipino. That means lots of deportation hearings after the trials are over. By the way, the Second Mate is the one who’s talking and he’s singing a wonderful tune. He’s only a kid and scared to death.”

“Tough. Am I supposed to feel sorry?”

“Well of course. Shouldn’t you feel sorry for a navigator who runs his ship aground because his GPS broke and he didn’t know it, so he had no idea where he was?”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, that’s what happened.”

“Looks good on him.”

“Lucky break for us. By the way, we also found a handgun, a thirty-eight pistol, in a desk drawer in the captain’s cabin. There was a box of ammunition with several bullets missing from the box.”

CHAPTER TEN

Manfred Koch heard about the drug busts at Antonelli Imports and at NA Transport on the car radio as he was driving through Maine en route to New Brunswick. For a few minutes, his brain didn’t register all the details. When the enormity of what had happened hit him, he was approaching Bangor, so he turned off the freeway and drove to the airport where he parked his Mercedes at the back of the long term lot, took off the licence plates and ditched them in a garbage dumpster. Then he took a taxi to a motel and checked in as Harold Connors of Philadelphia.

His first act was to call the Presque Isle office of NA Transport. The phone was answered by a DEA officer which made Manfred hang up quickly. Then he tried the Bar Harbor office with the same result. He left the motel before the calls could be traced and walked a couple of blocks down the street where he found another taxi back to the airport. He left it at the terminal and walked to the small hangar of Maine Air.

Inside, a middle-aged red-haired man wearing blue pilot’s coveralls greeted him. The man was obviously not a stranger to him. “Well hi, Mr. Koch. Haven’t seen you for quite a while. What’s new and what can I do for you—as if I couldn’t guess?

“Hi Red. How’s chances for a run across the border tonight?”

“No problem. Same place?”

“Same place, same routine, except no pickup this time, just a one way trip.”

“Well that’s different. How’re you going to get back?”

“Ask no questions and you won’t get in trouble for having no ready answer, if you get

asked.”

The red-haired man laughed. “That bad, eh? Okay. How about one a.m. take-off? The tower will be closed and we can go on our happy way. Got a thousand bucks?”

“Take a cheque?”

“Sure, if it’s good.”

“Solid gold.” Manfred took out a cheque book and wrote a thousand dollar cheque to Maine Air, drawn on a New York bank. He signed it with the name printed on the cheque, “J. Donald Hartley.”

Red looked at it. “That’s a name I ain’t seen before. But then, I do charter flights for a lot of people I ain’t seen before, either. See you after midnight.”

Koch took a taxi to a second motel and checked in where he lay on the bed and thought. He was definitely in a tight spot until he got across the border and then he had a plan all laid out. About a quarter to six, he used his cell phone to call a number in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The perky female voice answered, “Quality Rentals. How can I help you?”

“Get me Alfredo.”

“One moment please.”

Another voice came on the line, a deep voice with a hint of Latin American accent.

“Alfredo.”

“Gonzalez. Meet me at the usual place about two a.m.”

“Will do. Anybody with you?”

“No. Is the safe house available?”

“Always.”

“Okay, see you at two o’clock.”

Then Koch, obviously known in New Brunswick as Gonzalez, went out to eat. He found a reasonable restaurant and dawdled over his meal until he had killed as much time as he could. Bangor is a small city, and he didn’t want to be conspicuous, so he walked back to his motel and lay on the bed again, watching CNN. He learned that the entire Antonelli empire had been shut down in the biggest drug bust in recent memory. Nothing was said about the DEA or FBI looking for him, and the only Canadian connection made was the cargo carried by the
Helen of Troy
aground on Rocky Island. No mention was made of the Canadian Navy submarine tracking the vessel, something that would have interested Koch in his alter ego as Gonzalez very much.

“Damn fool Braun,” he thought. “How did that happen? Can’t the stupid bugger navigate? Even Georgio did better than that. Maybe I should have kept him and let Nicolai stew for a while. Poor old Nicolai. He’ll be in jail for the rest of his life. Dumb cluck letting himself get busted.”

Koch didn’t consider his own part in the problem, his duplicity that led the
Helen of Troy
to go off course and into dangerous waters.

About twelve-thirty, he left the motel without checking out and walked a block up the street to a bar that was still open and stood in the doorway, using his cell phone again to call a taxi to take him back to the airport.

“Terminal’s closed,” said the driver.

“That’s okay. I don’t want to stay at the terminal. Just let me off there.”

When he arrived at Maine Air, lugging his suitcase and a brief case, Red was making a last minute check of the little Cessna 140, a two-seater used mostly for pilot training.

He had a critical look at Manfred’s luggage. “How heavy are those two pieces?”

“Not heavy enough to make a difference. Don’t worry about it. Just find a place to stow them in this puddle jumper.”

“Sling the suitcase behind the seats—in the middle. The briefcase rides on your lap. Push your seat way back so the yoke doesn’t hit your briefcase. You ready to go?”

They climbed aboard, Red started the engine and without bothering to taxi to the runway, took off on the taxiway leading from the apron. He levelled off at five hundred feet and headed northwest. As they approached the Canadian border, Red descended to about two hundred feet and crossed the border flying over a heavily forested area where there were no houses, no lights showing for as far as Manfred could see in any direction. He kept flying at that altitude, skirting populated areas. There were a few low clouds, which he ignored and the little plane droned on through the night.

Soon, the small city of Fredericton was visible off to the right as the plane flew north for about ten minutes and then turned northeast, again flying over alternating areas of sleeping farmland and heavy forest. Finally, about an hour after take-off from Bangor, Manfred could make out a clearing in the forest ahead. As they drew closer, he made out a short landing strip that he knew would be the paved strip near the village of Renous. The landing strip was used in forest fire fighting season for water bombers and helicopters, but in late winter it was abandoned.

Red flew down along side the strip checking to make sure it was clear of snowdrifts. There was some snow on the runway, but nothing that looked particularly dangerous, so he turned into the wind as indicated by the somewhat tattered windsock and prepared to land. At the far-end of the strip a car flashed its headlights twice. The landing was bumpy as the plane went into and through small rifts of snow. At one point it slid to the left side, but Red hit the right rudder pedal and the little craft straightened out and finally came to a stop.

The pilot kept the engine turning over and the two sat and waited while a black sedan drove up from the end of the runway about five hundred feet away and pulled to a stop beside the passenger door. Manfred reached over and patted Red on the shoulder.

“Thank you, my friend. Until next time.”

Red said nothing, just nodded. Manfred got out, taking his luggage with him and got into the passenger seat of the car. The driver had no greeting, but drove quickly back off the runway where he stopped, and the two waited until the Cessna had made a successful take-off and headed back toward the U.S.A.

As the car drove away on the dirt road back toward the highway, the driver said, “I’m sure glad to see you my friend. I’ve got more bad news to tell you than I even want to think about.”

Koch, or Gonzalez as he was known in New Brunswick, was silent for a few moments, obviously jolted by that statement. Then he heaved a huge sigh and asked, “What’s up, Francisco?”

“The cops raided us about ten minutes after you called. They were looking for drugs.”

“How the Hell did they know about us? Did they find anything? I guess not if you’re free.” Manfred was obviously rattled by the news. He pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket, offered one to Francisco who took it and pushed in the dash lighter.

“They found nothing, because the last shipment went out yesterday morning.”

“Thank God for that,” Koch interrupted.

“How they knew about us? The RCMP in Nova Scotia picked up Robichaud on the road to Round Bay and traced the truck to us.”

“What did they pick him up for? What were they doing out in that part of the country? What stupid thing was he doing?”

“He was driving out to meet the boats with the cargo from the
Helen of Troy
. I’ll get to the part about ‘how they knew why he was there’ in a minute. This is not a pretty story, my friend and we are in big trouble.”

“Gimme the whole story.”

“Well, they followed him out the road and caught up with him when he got stuck in a snow bank. How they knew about him? They found out about Plummer and Jones and Landers somehow, I dunno how, and they were waiting for them to leave for the rendezvous with the ship and then saw the cube van head off down the Round Point road. Nobody drives down there, especially in the middle of the night, so they followed him.”

The lighter popped out and Francisco lighted both their cigarettes. He took a deep drag of the tobacco smoke and continued his story. “Robichaud wouldn’t give them his name, still hasn’t. He just sits in jail in Shelburne yelling for a lawyer.”

“Let him sit. We’re done with him. We’re also done with Quality Rentals, too. Neither of us shows up. We’re not going back to Fredericton tonight.”

“Good. I was going to suggest that. Me, I’m heading for Moncton and catching a plane for Montreal for a flight to Puerto Rico. Where are you heading?”

“I’ll go to Moncton with you. What else happened in Nova Scotia?”

“You ain’t gonna believe this. The Canadian Navy had a submarine—”

“A what?” Manfred interrupted. “A submarine? The navy? Doing what?”

“Following the vessel until it went on the rocks on that damn island. They knew all along it was carrying that container with the coke. Would you believe they found three containers? That must have been worth a couple of hundred million?”

Koch believed it. He didn’t tell Francisco that he was working two jobs at once in the drug business. Nobody knew it but himself. He didn’t comment on the driver’s statement and Francisco let it drop and looked at his cigarette. “American. Good. Can’t buy that brand here.”

“Anyway,” he continued his story, “they heard Landers calling the vessel on the radio and not getting a reply, so I guess that tied him to the whole operation. Then they heard the three fishing boats talking to each other and heard Plummer order them to the rendezvous point. I guess they figured they’d missed the vessel on the way in. They didn’t know it was on the rocks. So the sub followed Landers and when the three boats met up, the sub surfaced and arrested them. The Coast Guard came along with some cops and took them all to Halifax. Landers, the dumb oaf, is talking, hoping for a light sentence, I guess.”

“How’d you find out all this?”

“It was all in the paper this morning. Didn’t you know?”

“No. I was getting news from US radio and CNN. They don’t report much about Canada. Not a word about the submarine, and very little about the ship. Most of it was Antonelli and the trucking company and the value of the drugs they picked up there.”

“That’s normal. Canada doesn’t get much play in the USA.”

Francisco turned toward Miramachi where he would then go south to Moncton. “What’ll we do with this car? You want it?”

“Hell no. It’s probably hot now. We can park it at the back of the lot at Moncton International.”

“I already changed the plates from the original ones. It will take them a long time to go through all the paper work at the rental place. All they’re going to find is Quality Rentals business stuff. There’s never been any drug business paper around; I saw to that.”

“Good man. Anything else? I got a lot of thinking to do.”

The two drove silently for a couple of hours, stopping only for coffee at an all-night Tim Horton’s coffee shop in Miramachi. As they approached the turn-off to the Moncton airport, Manfred looked at the clock on the dash. “That clock right?”