I repeated the message and put the mike back on its hook. I had to fumble for the hook in the dark, but this was important. If I left the mike loose, it’d fall off the counter and maybe break the cord. As I climbed up the hatch ladder, I heard Dave’s garbled reply coming from the radio. I couldn’t make it out. Probably he still doesn’t know what the fuck was going on, probably never did.
Two men dressed in blue jackets stood by John. One of them held a flashlight pointed at John’s face. The other guy was sniffing. We couldn’t smell the pot anymore, but they probably couldn’t miss it. In the water next to the Namaste, I saw a small skiff with a man wearing a matching blue jacket operating the outboard motor, keeping up with us as the Namaste idled serenely down the creek, her engine chuffling softly. The Namaste only dealt with problems of the sea, but I felt a little let down that she ignored our plight—at least the engine could quit, couldn’t it? I stood in front of the hatch to block the Customs agent’s view. The man flashed his wallet. I saw the glint of a badge. “U.S. Customs,” said the man. “We’d like to see your identity papers.”
“We’re Americans,” John said.
The Customs agent nodded. “I’m sure,” he said. “But it looks to us like you’re coming from beyond the three-mile limit. We saw your light for miles. We have to check your IDs. Do you have driver’s licenses? Passports?”
John nodded and looked at me. All our stuff was down below in a nifty waterproof bag we’d bought at Brasington’s Trail Shop in Gainesville. “Yeah. We do. Stuff’s down below. I’ll go get it.” John turned and walked toward me. Nice try—he figured the agent might just stay where he was until John came back up with our identification. The agent followed him to the hatch. My heart stopped beating. My nuts dropped off. I stepped aside. The agent stood beside me and watched John climb down to the counter and lean across it to get the waterproof bag we’d stuffed in the rack where we kept some books. He flashed his light inside. “Need a light?” the agent said.
“No,” John snapped. “I can see fine.”
“No bother,” the agent said. His light flashed from the counter and illuminated a burlap bale. The agent turned to me and grinned. “Have a little extra? Something to declare?”
I didn’t answer. The agent said, “Roger. Come take a look.”
The other agent came over and saw the marijuana. “My, oh, my. What do we have here?”
The first agent called to the man in the boat. “Sam, call the state police, Coast Guard, local sheriff. Believe we have a little importation violation here.”
“They have pot?” the man called back.
“Oh, yes.” The agent laughed. “Lots of it.”
I heard the guy in the boat, Sam, his voice tinged with glee, as he called every cop within fifty miles. The first agent had gone down below and stood beside John, looking at our papers. The agent nodded, calm and businesslike, as John showed him our passports and the faked ship’s papers that said the Namaste was a leased sailboat.
“Ali,” Ireland called. He was standing in the cockpit, holding the tiller. “Would you steer? I’m not too good at it.”
I nodded and went back to the tiller.
I steered along the channel without lights. I could see the banks just fine. The agent in the boat tied his bowline to our safety line and climbed aboard. He ducked his head into the hatch, whistled, and said, “Everybody’s on the way, Chuck.”
Chuck. The head guy was Chuck. Then there was Rog and Sam. Three guys out working late. Or early. I checked my watch. Three-thirty. The Namaste’s engine chugged gently as we motored up the creek. I could see some buildings about two hundred yards ahead. Sam walked back to me. “Hi,” Sam said, smiling a really big smile. I nodded. He said, “See that wharf up ahead?”
I nodded. A scruffy shrimp boat was tied up next to a dock. The dock was about twelve feet above the water. The tide was out. There were a couple of buildings about fifty feet behind the docks.
“Good. Pull up there, okay?”
“Okay.”
I steered toward the dock. When we were about a hundred feet away, I put the engine in neutral and drifted. “Where you guys coming from?” Sam said. “Colombia?”
“We never left the three-mile limit,” I said.
“Oh.” Sam nodded. “Unloaded from a mother ship, I guess.”
The dock was coming up and I suddenly realized I’d never handled the Namaste under power. All I knew how to do was sail across thousands of miles of stormy seas; I didn’t know how to dock.
“John,” I called. I saw him and Chuck look up. “I don’t know how to do this. You’d better handle it.”
Chuck nodded to John.
John looked grim; the weight of the bust had broken his indomitable spirit. He came up and took the tiller like a zombie. He muttered, “I’m sorry, Bob. I’m really sorry.” I nodded and stood on the deck next to the cockpit. I looked up and down the creek. Not a sign of our shore team. They said they’d be here, in a skiff. Must have seen the intercept, boogied. Thought about that for a while. No. They couldn’t have been around; they would’ve warned us.
John put the engine in reverse and salvaged my rotten approach. Moving like automatons, Ireland and I went fore and aft and tossed our bow and stem lines up over the piers, pulled in the lines, and tied us off. We were numb, working in a dream state—at least I was. John cut the engine and put a bumper between the Namaste and the dock so she wouldn’t get marred.
Sam came to me and asked me to turn around. I stared at the nylon thing he held in his hand. “Cuffs,” he said.
“I thought they were steel,” I said.
“Naw. Everything’s plastic nowadays. Want to turn around? I have to put these on. Regulations.”
I nodded and turned around. Sam put my wrists together and cinched the nylon handcuffs tight. I watched John and Ireland being cuffed.
“Elephant luck, eh, Bob?” I said quietly.
Ireland nodded, looking forlorn, dumbfounded.
We all stood on the rear deck and stared at the dock twelve feet above the water. There was no ladder. Chuck, Rog, Sam, John, Ireland, and I stood there thinking about how we were going to get off the boat. We saw blue lights swinging through the morning mist. In a minute we saw a cop peek over the edge of the dock. “Damn,” he said. “Tide’s real low, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” Chuck said. “Give us a hand. You got help up there?”
Another cop joined the first one and looked down on us, grinning. “Shit yeah,” said the second cop. “And a bunch on the way.”
The smiley cop lay on the dock and reached down to help Chuck up. They pulled Rog up next, leaving Sam with us. By now there were about six cops standing on the dock, stomping their feet against the cold, lighting cigarettes, shooting the shit.
It was hard for them to get us up because we couldn’t grab anything to help. I said to Sam that they should’ve waited until we got on the dock to cuff us. Sam said I was right, but the cuffs couldn’t be unlocked, they had to be cut. Finally somebody agreed with me. Two cops grabbed me under my arms and Sam held his hands together like a stirrup. “Here,” he said, “use this.”