“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.”
4
They were kids. Creed guessed the oldest was maybe thirteen, fourteen at the most. Three girls. Two boys. One boy looked younger than ten. Each of them crawled slowly out of the hold like a timid animal, needing assistance, then jerking and blinking at the sunlight. Wild eyes darted all around, looking for permission as much as trying to anticipate what came next in this terrifying journey.
They were filthy. Hair matted and tangled in clumps. Faces dirty and feet bare and bruised. Despite the stink of fish, Creed could smell the sweat and urine and feces that soiled their clothes. But through the smears of dirt and grime, one thing was obvious. These weren’t Colombian kids. They weren’t being trafficked from their South American homes to the United States.
Now, in the sunlight, even the dirt and grime couldn’t hide the obvious. Smears revealed blond hair and streaks of white skin as pale as the fish bellies that surrounded them.
These kids looked like they were from the United States.
Creed remembered what Commander Wilson had said about this vessel bypassing feeding grounds for mahi-mahi, its hold filled but continuing south, out of the Gulf of Mexico and closer to the coast of Colombia. Usually traffickers smuggled people into the United States. When did it start to go both ways? Were they delivering this cargo to South America?
Everyone on board had gone silent, even the guardsmen as they helped the kids up. They’d been looking for smuggled cocaine. Not human cargo. And certainly not kids.
The wind had calmed, almost as if it, also, were gasping at their revelation. In the silence Creed could hear the lapping of waves against the boat. A few gulls dared to hover closer to inspect the load of fish. But there was still a faint humming, a sad whimper like that of a scared or wounded animal. The same sound Creed had heard before the floorboards were yanked away. Grace had heard it first, and she still cocked her head, listening. Creed saw that her eyes were staring at the source, and he followed her gaze.