Breaking Creed

3

The water churned around them and the winds had picked up. Creed was impressed with the smooth landing that Commander Wilson had managed onto the deck of the Coast Guard cutter. Its crew had already halted the boat in question. The commercial fishing vessel, named Blue Mist, was a beaut. A seventy-foot long-liner that Creed guessed could keep at least eighty thousand pounds of fish in its hold. But the Coast Guard had reason to believe there might be something extra under that day’s catch.

Commander Wilson had explained earlier to Creed that the Coast Guard had been watching the Blue Mist for a couple of weeks now. It usually long-lined for mahi-mahi in the Gulf, following the fish’s migratory path. But recently the boat had started going down into the Caribbean Sea as far as the coast of Colombia. That in itself wasn’t unusual, except that the Coast Guard tracker watched the fishing boat pass by several mile-long stretches of sargassum. The brownish seaweed floats on the ocean surface, and mahi-mahi traditionally feed on the creatures attracted to it.

Now on board the Blue Mist, Creed looked down into the hold. He was struck by how beautiful the fish were, even piled up on top of one another. Their sides glittered gold, blue, and iridescent green, their bellies white and yellow. They were bigger than he expected, three to four feet long. The heads varied in size and shape, and he suspected that the difference was linked to whether they were male or female. Most of them had rounded heads, a few protruding above the body line.

“Mahi-mahi used to be bycatch fish,” Wilson said, and only then did Creed realize that the commander had followed and come up beside him. On the deck across from them, two guardsmen were getting an earful from a barrel-chested man in a ball cap, baggy trousers, and a white T-shirt, most likely the Blue Mist’s captain.

“Fishermen thought they were a pain because they’d end up on their longlines when they were trying to catch tuna and swordfish,” Commander Wilson continued without any encouragement from Creed. “Now restaurants are going crazy over mahi-mahi — including the European market.”

“Could be their hold was already full when they passed by the sargassum,” Creed said while he took out the items he needed from his backpack.

“True. But if that were the case, why continue south?” Wilson asked.

Thankfully, it wasn’t Creed’s job to have an answer. He pulled rubber waders up over his hiking boots and slipped a mesh pouch with a nylon strap over his head and shoulder. He had no idea why people did half the things they did. One of the reasons he preferred the company of dogs.

He did know, without Wilson giving him any more details, that there was a new Colombian drug cartel trying to establish itself. Choque Azul—“Blue Shock”—had been busy in the last six to eight months reclaiming old drug routes up through the Gulf. The routes had been abandoned in the 1990s, when it became easier to cross the Mexican border into Texas and Arizona than it was to chance bringing their product up the Gulf.

But these days the brutal wars among the Mexican cartels — the Zetas and the Sinaloas — had sent the Colombians looking for new and creative ways to do business. Chocolate bars and peanut butter jars were small snatches, innovative and quirky tests. But homemade submersibles and commercial fishing boats were for the serious hauls. If the Coast Guard was correct about this vessel, then it was possible there was cocaine somewhere on board. Most likely underneath the piles of mahi-mahi.

Creed had never done a search of a fishing vessel before, and now, as he adjusted Grace’s vest, he realized this wouldn’t be easy. Wilson must have seen Creed’s indecision.

“Bet you’re wishing you’d brought a bigger dog,” Wilson said as he watched.

Grace was wagging and panting and anxious for Creed’s command so she could dive down into the hold and get to work.

“Bigger isn’t always better,” Creed told him.

Then, with Grace’s eyes focused on him, Creed patted his right palm to his chest. Grace jumped up into his arms. He tucked her under his elbow and into the mesh pouch that hung from his shoulder. He attached her harness to clasps inside the pouch and let it drop to his side. This way Grace would travel comfortably above the fray while Creed waded through the piles of slippery fish. All she had to do was sniff, when he cued her to what she was to search for. Ironically, the cue word he used for drugs was “fish.”

“Go find fish,” he told the dog as he felt her getting excited and wiggling in the carrier. But as Creed headed down into the pungent smell, he wondered if this might be too overwhelming a task for any air-scent dog.

They worked a grid for almost thirty minutes. The fishing vessel’s captain was still yelling at the guardsmen about his “dorados spoiling in the sun.” Grace’s nose moved back and forth. Twice she went into rapid breathing, but still no alerts. Not even for secondary residue. Creed tried to shove aside the glittering fish to see the bottom of the hold, but he was knee-deep and it was like trying to dig a hole in sand. The fish slipped quickly back into the hole he tried to create. He never saw the bottom.

Without warning, Grace started squirming. Her nose lifted higher and began twitching. Her breaths came fast, with hardly a break in between. Creed slowed his pace, listening and watching, treating the small dog as if she were a live Geiger counter.

Suddenly he felt Grace’s body go rigid. He stopped. Her eyes came up to his and she stared at him. It was their signal, her alert. But then she did something she’d never done before: she started whining, a low, soft cry that made the hair at the back of Creed’s neck stand up.

“We’ve got something here,” he yelled to the guardsmen above.

They stared down at him. Even the Blue Mist’s captain had gone silent.

In minutes four men in rubber waders made their way down to the hold. They carried what looked like snow shovels, the blades three feet tall and just as wide. The shovels were able to push aside the fish and keep them from slipping back into the space the men cleared.

Creed kept his eyes on Grace. He’d pulled her close to him and stuck his hand into the mesh pouch so he could pet her. She’d quieted her whine but she was trembling now. Creed had sweat running down his back and forehead from the sun and heat, but Grace was shivering.

He didn’t like this. He’d never seen her do this before.

The men cleared a ten-by-ten space all the way down to the bottom of the hold, hitting wood. And although Grace stared at the empty spot, she didn’t stop shaking.

“There’s nothing here,” one of the men said, and looked at Creed. Then the man craned his neck to look up at Commander Wilson, who had stayed on deck above them. “We’ve got nothing.”

“Maybe your dog isn’t so lucky this time,” Wilson called down.

“Under the floorboards,” Creed said without having a clue as to whether Grace had been thrown off by the overpowering smell of fish. There might be nothing at all under the boards either.

The men looked to Wilson, but before he could respond, one of them yelled, “There’s a plank loose!”

And suddenly the others were pulling crowbars from a canvas bag that Creed hadn’t even noticed until now.

“Careful,” the one in charge told the men.

The wood creaked and snapped. Grace began to whine again, and it seemed to make the men go slower, but with a new sense of urgency. Nails screeched loose. Two boards popped away. Only then did Creed realize that Grace had stopped whining, but he still heard a low hum, almost a cry, that wasn’t coming from Grace. It was coming from under the floorboards.

He heard more wood crack, and then suddenly one of the men said, “Holy crap. There’s someone down here.”