Thin Blood Thick Water (Clueless Resolutions Book 2) (12 page)

“Just in case,” he responded to Maggie’s curious look. Once inside they left the door open for light and looked for a lighting switch. An overhead enclosed bulb had a pull string which looked promising so Maggie grasped the string as Max closed the steel door. “Try it,” he suggested to Maggie. Success! There was light. The dim direct-current bulb was barely sufficient but could be a giveaway if it shined through the cracks and spaces around the door. Quickly, Max scanned the closet for anything solid to place under the door latch which would prevent it from allowing access from the exterior. Then he noticed a key-operated deadbolt attached to the interior side of the door. He slid the manual catch and the bolt snapped to a locked position. Unless someone had the key, the desperate fugitives could remain unseen for now.

A folding step-stool proved to be the perfect wedge and, once in place for extra insurance against forced entry, the light was extinguished. They had noticed shelves lined with various cleaning chemicals, equipment, and mops in buckets, stacked in a corner.

Sitting on a folded tarpaulin in the darkened, temporary security of the utility room, the fugitives caught their breaths and whispered their thoughts to each other as they took stock of the situation at hand. Max asked about Maggie’s hands since he had noticed her rubbing them nervously while making their escape.  She winced and uttered a stifled cry of pain when he felt along her wrists. She explained how she had bitten, kneed, and slammed her captive’s face with all of her strength while her clenched fists were taped together. Suggesting that they may be fractured, she held out hope for extreme bruising. Max could feel substantial warmth in one of them and realized that extreme inflammation could cause heat, and probably meant a fracture, but he felt it better to withhold that suggestion for the time being.

“Man, I don’t envy any youngster withstanding that kind of damage all at once,” he quipped, trying for a distraction from her suffering. That was all he could do for her in their grim situation.

“Shhh, I can hear voices,” Maggie whispered. And voices they were, unfriendly ones at that. The words were hard to comprehend but the tone was unmistakably hostile. She and Max held their breaths while rapid footsteps along the deck went by the passage way. “Hold up!” one of them shouted, as steps halted and were retraced, coming toward their position. One set of steps went past toward the engine room sign, and one set stopped at the utility closet door. The knob twisted and the door shifted against the deadbolt. Voices from the engine room doorway were heard and the door clanged shut. “Not there,” one voice shouted. “This is locked,” said the other. The footsteps then resumed in a hurried pace as the pursuers continued forward along the side walkway decking.

“My guess is that we’re heading north,” Max said quietly. “It felt like a stiff headwind as we ran up the side rail to here, and the rain was letting-up. The storm system should be passing by to the south and the wind direction would be shifting to the north, then northwest. The only open waterway north of Halifax would be the ‘Bay of Fundy’ between Nova Scotia and the Canadian mainland. I was knocked out for a while, but it would have been about a two hour ride from Halifax to the bay area. I think we’re in the ‘Bay of Fundy’.”

“It was around sundown when the van got to the ferry dock,” Maggie recounted. “I think I came out of whatever knocked me out about a half hour before that. I must have been totally buzzed for around one and a half hours.”

“That must have been the same for me. I remember seeing you going down at the same time I conked out,” Max mused quietly, rubbing the back of his neck. In a dim glimmer of light from the luminous dial of some sort of time clock, Maggie noticed and asked if he had been hit with something. Max indicated he felt a stinging sensation just as he got really dizzy. Maggie asked him to turn so that the dim glow would show the back of his neck. She noticed a slight lump at the site of what looked like a needle puncture, below and behind Max’s left ear.

“I noticed that I had a stiff neck when I came around but figured it was because of the way they tossed me into that van,” Maggie related. “So, we were drugged with something really potent,” she added. Max told her that he had almost the same reaction that night during the first trip to Halifax. “Because I drank it, the effect took a little longer to hit me,” he conjectured, “and I never went totally out like I did this time.”

Agreeing that there was no time and energy to waste on the questions of why they were abducted, or where they would be taken, Max and Maggie spent the next half hour racking their brains on how to complete their escape. They were hoping that the pursuers would have noticed the missing life preservers, and would have assumed that their captives had jumped overboard just after they left the dock. That being the case, they probably would have called some cohorts to check the local area there. Max and Maggie felt satisfied that under the circumstances, having not registered their captives for the ferry trip, the abductors would not have reported the missing subjects to either the ferry crew or the port crew.

Maggie and Max decided to stay in the utility room until the ferry docked at the mainland port. After things quieted down, they could first, try to sneak out onto the dock. Second, if it was too exposed, or if their pursuers were watching, they would slip into the water at the stern end of the ferry and move around the boat to find a way to get onto land. If that worked they could try to find the nearest police presence. ‘Plan C’, if a crewman came to unlock the utility closet door, they would stand up, kick the stool out from under the latch, and Max would wrap his arms around Maggie as if locked in a passionate kiss. They would act surprised and embarrassed like lovers caught up in an illicit tryst, brush past the intruder and hurry off to find another safe spot.

“A lot of things will have to go our way, but that’s all we have Mag,” Max whispered, holding Maggie’s shivering face in both his hands. Maggie nodded with a slight sob, and she huddled closer to him as he enveloped her shoulders with his arms in an attempt to keep her warm in the damp steel enclosure.

Late on Tuesday afternoon in Lakeside, the USAP headquarters was coasting through an uneventful day. Most of the Partners were either on international assignments or vacations, and the office staff was aware of it. Conversations between cubicles and around the coffee stations were longer and more relaxed than usual. The head secretary Heather Copeland, had been dealing with personal matters while monitoring the comings and goings with ‘half an ear and half an eye’ on her charges. She realized that they needed some occasional kick-back time on the job and knew that they were trained to gear-up and perform at high levels when asked. She was caught in a rare occurrence of unawareness when she realized that ‘Dannie’ Uhlman was on deck, meaning in the building.

Heather was aware of all other Partners’ localities and had been left in charge of USAP headquarters by Chip Chaplain while he was on assignment between Nova Scotia, and Montreal, Canada. The one exception was Danyel Uhlman, whom she was lead to believe was meeting up with Chip in Montreal, but wasn’t told that, exactly.  An urgent communique had been processed through the USAP confidential network from Chip to Danyel which displayed on her internal confidential file, of which even Heather did not have access.  But the fact that the file had been opened indicated an emergency communique had been sent. Immediately Heather’s announcement over the general loudspeaker system sent every USAP staff-support member scrambling back to his or her assigned stations and duties.

Within twelve minutes the metallic-whining sound of a turbo-prop aircraft could be heard from the hangar section of the headquarters building. Shortly thereafter the sound repeated from the lake area northeast of the headquarters building meaning that Danyel had departed. Heather knew now that, even though she had no direct communication from Danyel, according to the Partnership Operations Structure, she was ‘in charge of operations’ of USAP until further notice. She made a mental note to remind Chip Chaplain about that in her next review session.

Meanwhile, Chip and Brad had managed a harried, but flawless IFR landing of the Lear 45 in Halifax. Once he and Brad had taxied through the rainstorm to their assigned parking area Chip had called Max, Lamar, and Mario. He had not been able to contact any of them and he was concerned. Chip knew from his head secretary, Heather, that Danyel had gotten his private communique and had left Ithaca, flying the specially-outfitted Cessna Caravan. A little later on Chip was able to contact Danyel by satellite cell phone and learned that she was due to arrive around 6 PM in the Bickford-owned guest/boathouse via their under-the-radar pre-arrangement with certain Canadian Port Authority operatives. Danyel had agreed to meet with Chip and Brad there upon her arrival.

With the Lear 45 in the hands of the service and concierge network at the Halifax Airport, Chip signed-out an Audi service car and he and Brad drove to the Bickford family guest house on the cove. Chip had been there several times when former Partner, Ernie Bickford was alive. He had stayed with Ernie and his wife at the guest house multiple times. They stopped at the Laboratory on the way to find out when, and/or if, Max, Maggie and the two assisting Partners had been there.

After ringing the doorbell and banging on the entry with no response they went around to the side service door and tried the same ringing and knocking. There was no canopy at the service door and they were both soaking wet by now. There was an older car and a later model pickup truck parked near the dock at the waterfront end of the structure.

Chip and Brad trotted to the dock and clambered up onto the covered portion, out of the rain. Just as they walked toward a closed door off the dock area, a muffled rumble from boat propellers could be heard from beneath them. Through the gaps in the dock planking the movement of a boat was evident. Brad stooped down to get a better view and was surprised to see some type of submersible craft was moving out of an underwater basement-level chamber and out into the harbor channel. The elliptically-shaped boat was sinking lower, and lower, relative to the surface as it progressed further from the dock and into deeper water. A metallic grating sound accompanied by the whine of an electric motor rose up from under the dock. An inspection through the decking showed that twin concrete doors were closing over the underground water chamber.

“They keep a submarine here?” asked an incredulous Brad.

“They do deep water experimentation and testing under some of their contracts, according to what Ernie told me,” Chip responded. Brad, no stranger to unorthodox vehicles and unorthodox modifications to mostly aeronautical vehicles, was consumed with curiosity. Chip had to break him away from his staring out into the channel where the boat had submerged.

“It’s after hours here now, I gather, so we had better get over to the guest house and dry off.”

Brad had been to the house, once, to repair the Beaver floatplane which became un-airworthy from taxiing through a herd of harbor seals. As they neared the guest house Brad was reminded of the incident which had occurred three years earlier, at which time Chip was the pilot of the floatplane. Chip had a stoic look at the mention of the incident.

“What a f…..ing mess that was!” Brad said, rubbing salt in an old wound to Chip’s pride. “It was like I had to go into a butcher shop and clean up after a meat slicer ran wild.”

“Okay, okay, don’t rub it in. You bring that up every time we have a party and it grosses everybody out,” Chip said irritably.  Brad wasn’t bothered by that, it only augmented his resolve to color the story with a little more of the gory details at the next opportunity, all the more to perpetuate Chip’s embarrassment. The two Partners generally got along well but Brad was a perfectionist where flying was concerned and Chip had a tendency to ‘show-boat’ and take unnecessary risks at times.

Harbor buoys could be heard clanking to the cadence of the choppy bay waters, as the ferry transporting Max, Maggie, and their three abductors, crossed the Bay of Fundy. It was now approaching its destination. The boat slowly advanced to the New Brunswick shoreline as a docking port at the mouth of the Forty Five River loomed in the gloom. The ocean storm was whipping the area with its last gasp of wind-driven rain as the ferry slowed to enter the docking zone.

Max and Maggie had dozed slightly, exhausted from the stress and hung-over from the drug residue. They were alerted by the ferry’s foghorn and they could feel the change in the engines vibrations through the floor and walls of the utility closet as the propellers were shifted into full reverse.

“This is it,” Max said, not needing to whisper due to the noises of the boat maneuvers. They followed their plan, standing by the locked door. After several minutes of swerving and bumping the jolt of the final docking occurred.

“We’re backed in so the vehicles can off-load. The passengers will be exiting the same way, so if we have to get into the water we need to run along the rail toward the bow,” Max reminded Maggie and himself. They could hear the dozen or so vehicles being started and being backed out onto the landing area. Overhead, a stream of footsteps indicated passenger movement. After five to six minutes the idling engines and the lapping of waves along the side of the ferry were the only sounds.

“Let’s go, Mag,” Max whispered. He removed the footstool from under the door latch and quietly unlocked the deadbolt. Turning the latch handle slowly, he cracked open the door and peered out. The dock flood lights were on, the ferry decking was wet and the wind was now blowing a heavy mist.

“Do you see anyone?” Maggie asked. Max shook his head, took her arm and they tip-toed along the passageway toward the side rail. According to their plan, each popped their head out and pulled back quickly, Max looking aft toward the dock and Maggie looking toward the bow. Maggie didn’t see anyone along the side rail, and beyond that there was nothing but light rain reflected by the on-shore lights, falling into the black ocean.  Max saw the lighted staging area on shore with several people milling about, meeting and greeting and loading luggage into cars. As they stood huddled in the passageway opening, the engine room door was being opened at the end of the passageway behind them. That became the deciding factor. They would reduce the risk of being spotted by going into the water. Quickly, before being seen, they stepped around the corner onto the side rail walkway and fast-walked toward the bow, away from the dock, staying in the shadow from the upper deck walkway as they hugged the steel wall of the engine room.

As they moved toward the ocean end of the ferry Max spotted a small, floating dock alongside, within a short jump. The rotating beacon atop the ferry wheelhouse was intermittently illuminating the wet surface of the narrow, shifting dock, for a few seconds each time the light beam passed above. Max stopped, took Maggie by the arms and, nose to nose as he looked intently into her eyes, he told her to follow him over the side railing.  He waited till the beacon light had passed and lifted first one leg, then the other over the railing. Holding the rail supports he kept his toes scraping down the side of the ferry boat hull and slipped into the cold, black, rather calm water there on the leeward side of the ferry hull. Maggie waited until the next light beam passed over and she repeated what Max had done. She felt Max grab her waist as she slid down beside him. A kick against the ferry hull pushed them away, far enough to grasp the hemp bumper ropes of the floating dock.

Silently, they inched along, hand-over-hand until they were at the extent of the dock. They moved around the end and with only their eyes and noses above the water, they moved back toward the shore, out of sight from the ferry and the staging area. Freezing in the water and wind, they were nearing the seawall on shore when they bumped into the aft end of a small, partially enclosed fishing boat. Max pointed upward to Maggie with his finger. As she reached up, he gave her a boost over the boat’s gunwale and she tumbled into the open area between the cabin enclosure and the stern-mounted, up-tilted outboard motor. She leaned over and extended her good hand to help Max heave his wet and soggy body up over the side, and in. Exhausted, he slumped there face up in the black drizzle, heaving heavy breaths. Maggie tried the small door to the cabin and it opened readily. Max’s rest only lasted a few seconds and both crawled in and pulled the door closed.

Within ten minutes, the foghorn again signaled activity connected with the ferryboat and the diesel engines barked their distinctive tone into the night.  Shortly thereafter relative calm surrounded the hapless escapees. The dock area lights went dark.  A welcomed calm from the storm was accompanied by a break in the clouds whereby moonlight penetrated the misty New Brunswick environment. 

Stealthily they rummaged around in the cramped, smelly moonlit cabin of the fishing boat. and found a butane heater, a lightweight tarpaulin, candles, and oyster crackers in clear plastic packages. An un-opened bottle of cheap port wine and a scissor-type spark-producing lighter made up the survival inventory at their disposal. These items did not belong to them but they were willing to leave their names and addresses for reimbursement plus a generous gift befitting their gratitude. The owner was either well prepared for emergencies, or a fisherman with a suppressed romantic outlook of life on the open seas.

Within ten minutes the heater was giving off some much-needed warmth inside the small enclosure, some of their clothes were drying, hung across the windows, concealing the glow of candle light to avoid detection. The wine bottle was opened with great difficulty which resulted in some splashed wine and the cork floating inside. Taking alternate hits on the wine bottle while savoring the oyster crackers, they tried to invent a way to leave, somewhere on the boat, information on how they could be contacted. They had no identification on them since Max’s wallet and Maggie’s shoulder bag had been confiscated by their abductors. The answer came when Max, as he was drying his shirt, noticed a soaked, but still legible business card in the breast pocket, which he had been prepared to present at the laboratory, if asked. As dire as their straights were, the two fugitives were sensitive to the phantom fisherman’s inevitable dismay upon discovering the ravaged provisions cache.

Maggie found a crumpled-up, waterlogged, American twenty-dollar bill in her slacks pocket. Once the port wine bottle had been relieved of its well-appreciated contents, the twenty dollar bill, curled up in the coiled business card was stuffed into the bottle top. The bottle was returned to its hiding place.

With most of their clothing damp-dried, and with the butane heater and the candle extinguished, the beleaguered fugitives took turns outside of the cabin to relieve themselves. Maggie first, using a metal bait-bucket which she then rinsed over the side. Max was able to bypass the bucket. Once he was back in the cabin they cuddled together in the moonbeams under the light-weight tarpaulin and fell into a much needed slumber.

Wednesday morning the activity started early at the mouth of Forty Five Mile River in New Brunswick. Maggie and Max were awakened at dawn by bright sunlight streaming through a scum-coated cabin window. Maggie threw back the tarp and, shielding her eyes by her swollen, blackened hand, reached over and shook Max. He broke through his grogginess and, rubbing his eyes he blurted “Shit!” “Maggie, we should have gotten out of here before daylight!” With that, off-balance, he rolled over on top of Maggie.

“What the hell!” Maggie exclaimed. “Why is everything crooked?”

The boat was tilted to one side on a 45 degree angle and was not moving. The sleepy-eyed inhabitants looked out of the higher side window and saw nothing but blue sky and circling sea gulls. The opposite side window was showing only wet sand.

“Did we break loose and drift onto land?” Maggie asked rhetorically.

“I think we are in a very low tide,” Max replied. “We’re still tied up to the floating dock and it’s sitting on sand, right next to us.” The fishing boat and several others were lying tilted at varying angles on the sand, about twelve feet below the surface of the ferry port docking/staging area. The fugitives stepped out onto the sand and broken seashell fragments, and trotted along the stone seawall, away from the port dock. Around fifty yards along the wall they came upon a seawall ladder. Max climbed it first and, with only his head above the wall, quickly scanned the surrounding seashore. Auto traffic was moving slowly along a cobblestone street which paralleled the shoreline, approximately one hundred and fifty feet inland. Weather-beaten structures of various bleached colors were scattered along the street, some having rear waterside docks, or decks. Most buildings were one story with corrugated metal roofs and wood shake shingle siding. Other than the drivers and a lone bicyclist, no other human presence was in view.

Max stepped down and, following the plan decided upon during their harrowing arrival the previous night, they set out to locate the nearest authority. Up on the street level seashore, Max and Maggie strolled between two street-side structures and glanced up and down the narrow street of, what they could see by window signs, was Alma Village. Their hopes of quickly locating safe refuge sagged a bit when no police signs or patrol cars came into view. They consulted each other on which way to search, or whether they should split up to decrease their profile in case anyone was on the watch for them as a couple. Maggie was okay with going separately with a planned meeting place within a short time span.  Max, on the other hand, was not able to overcome his protective instinct for the love of his life and wanted to stay together. Just then shouting broke the quiet scene, coming from the direction of their previous point of refuge, the fishing boat on the sand near the ferry dock. Running footsteps could be heard thumping in the sand below the seawall and coming toward them.

“Somebody must have found the boat!” Maggie exclaimed, with dread evident in her tone. “Yeah, and they’re probably following our foot prints,” Max responded. “Let’s get up the street and duck in somewhere,” he added with urgency. They noticed a vendor setting out his wares on a sidewalk cart outside of a small shop one block away, on the opposite side of the street. Ducking traffic, they crossed the street and strode to what turned out to be a Native-Indian souvenir shop.

With a fake smile from Maggie they stepped into the shop. Glancing back through the shop display window, Max saw five or six men emerge onto the street around the point they had just left. Acting nonchalantly while looking at some souvenirs on a rack, he noticed the group scanning up and down the street, then splitting up to walk up and down on both sides to systematically inspect every building and alleyway. Maggie was pretending to inspect some beaded neckwear as a woman came from a room behind a counter and asked if she had any questions.

“What is the price?” Maggie asked, holding the item up for the woman to see. She was an elderly-looking Native Canadian with braided pigtails, a buckskin apron and few, if any, teeth. The women held up both hands with open fingers indicating ten, assumedly Canadian, dollars. Max was trying on a raccoon-skin cap, looking in a mirror with his back to the shop doorway.

Just then, one of the ‘search party’ strolled by. He stopped to speak with the shop man outside briefly then glanced inside. Unnoticed by Maggie, he gave her the once-over, and didn’t seem to notice Max at all. Max watched in the mirror as the searcher, bronze-skinned and barely more than teen-aged, walked away. He moved over to Maggie with the bushy fur cap on his head and asked her how it looked. Under stress, she uncharacteristically frowned and simply shook her head indicating ‘no-way’.

After another minute of browsing, they left the shop and walked back along the part of the street which had just been inspected, hoping to find signs of a police presence. Finally, they saw an Alma Parish Police cruiser parked at the curb in front of a small coffee shop. They hurried to the spot and entered. The patrolman, who turned out to be a patrol-woman, was paying for coffee and bagels at the counter with her back to the entrance. The cashier made a muted comment to the payee and the policewoman whirled and with her service pistol drawn and pointing at Max, issued a loud command. “Down on your knees, hands over your heads!” Startled, Max started to explain. “I said down on the floor right now!” the officer commanded.  Maggie and Max knelt on the floor with hands aloft. The officer stepped deftly behind them and, standing with her feet between the four lower legs, pulled Max’s right hand down and snapped on a wrist restraint. Then she took Maggie’s left arm down and restrained her wrist to Max’s. She then stepped around to the side. A pair of locking handcuffs was applied to each of the other wrists, connecting those in front of them. Maggie had winced when her damaged hand was touched and the officer relaxed the tension somewhat.

“Okay, on your feet,” was the officer’s next direction.  Maggie and Max struggled awkwardly to their feet. At that point, two of the four men that had been searching along the street came up to the doorway.  The policewoman turned the stunned, manacled couple around to face the entrance. Max didn’t recognize either of them but Maggie let out a slight gasp. One of the two pursuers was a young lad with a bruised swollen lip and tape bandage across the bridge of his nose.

“That’s them,” stated the young lad as the other two pursuers arrived on the scene.

All of the captors bore the features of Native Canadian-Indians, including the local policewoman. The shop cashier also had physical signs of the lineage. Max was confused, since he didn’t recognize any of the gathering group, as to why the policewoman had instantly arrested him and Maggie.
“Had the authorities been notified that fugitives from justice were in the vicinity? If so, who would have notified them, and why?”
he wondered. His mind was spinning trying to rationalize the situation. Maggie as well was stunned. To be in custody based on the word of one of her abductors was beyond reason. Seeing the youthful, bruised and bitten, attempted rapist pointing her out to the authorities was preposterous, to say the least, and for a police officer to act on it was absurd. She didn’t understand why the policewoman wouldn’t listen to her, or to Max’s objection, or explanation.  At that point the delivery van from which Maggie had escaped on the ferry voyage, pulled up at the curb behind the police cruiser. To the shackled couple’s amazement, the group of captors pulled and pushed Max and Maggie through the open sliding door on the side of the van, and onto the floor. Two of the abductors climbed in after them and the door was rolled shut.