Billy shook his head no and advised, “No, sorry, like the musician,” to the accustomed look of non-recognition.
Ted and his gang forced a smile, “On to the cobia!”
“Sure thing.”
««—»»
As they rounded the breakwater and headed out into the rising morning dawn, the sea appeared smooth and calm. Might not be a bad day. They had a few miles to go before they got to the big oilrig structures where the cobia — if they were in fact still around — would be hiding. He had Lance rig up some trolling lures to give the AWG’s some rod time until they got there.
Lance had started circulating the clipboard for everyone to fill out for their state salt water fishing licenses as soon as he saw the big white Coast Guard cutter appear low on the horizon.
“We got Cap’n Crunch on us, boss,” Lance said as he poked his head in the cabin.
Before he could even finish, the VHF radio cut him off. “Attention recreational vessel to my port side, this is the Coast Guard Cutter
Fish Hawk,
heave to, and prepare to be boarded,” a firm metallic voice boomed out over Channel 16.
Billy shook his head as the mate laughed. Lance lit up a menthol and disappeared back out on deck. Billy grabbed the radio mic to plead his case, “I copy,
Fish Hawk
. This is the charter craft
Fooly Involved
out of Gulf Shores. We are just doing some trolling today on our way out to the rigs with a charter…”
“Copy,
Fooly Involved
, heave to and prepare to be boarded,” came the stern reply.
It was worth a try. Billy shrugged and yelled down to the deck that he was killing the engines and that the coasties were coming.
The cutter grew closer to within a football field and stopped. Within seconds of coming to a drift, out of the cutter’s stern popped a small rubber boat full of blue uniformed coasties with orange crash helmets and black tactical vests. Billy looked at the gleaming white cutter; she was more than twice as long as his own boat and he could make out a pair of machine guns covered with bright blue canvas on deck. Inside the wheelhouse of the cutter, he could see a few more coasties looking back out at him with binoculars.
The small rubber Zodiac boat launched from the stern of the cutter came loudly alongside Billy’s craft within seconds. He recognized the senior-most man in the boat from a prior boarding. The mustached and tattooed Coastie smiled a yellowed grin at Billy as he gave him a hand onto the deck from the rubber boat onto his.
“Fishing any good today, Cap’n?” the Coastie with the thick mustache asked.
“Wouldn’t know, just cast off an hour ago.”
“Hey don’t blame me, the new boss is a real law-dog,” said the mustache as he arranged his clipboard. “I’ve done more 4100’s in the past six weeks than in the past six years.”
It had always been a matter of common and professional courtesy that the local charter boats were given a wide berth by Fish and Wildlife and the Coast Guard. The Charter Boat Association came down hard on people that ran unsafe boats much less on people that wanted to bend the rules on fish limits. Gulf Shores had a population of just over 5,000 and sported a fleet of nearly 200 charter boats. The charter captains themselves all carried Coast Guard OPUV
6 pack
master’s papers they had spent a lot of time and money to get—and they wanted to keep them. The captains also passed on good intelligence to the coasties on suspicious activities, loose or missing buoys, and often helped with search and rescue cases. None of this was taken into consideration by the new skipper of the Cutter
Fish Hawk,
and the boarding rates for the last part of the summer were the number one complaint around the docks.
The Coasties ran everyone’s IDs, checked the empty live wells for undersize fish, and asked the customary questions about drugs, alcohol, and weapons on board. Other than Billy’s old snub-nosed .38 special that he kept in the wheelhouse for rowdy sharks on the line, all the answers were no.
“
Fish Hawk
to small boat,” the small radio barked in the mustache’s vest.
Mustache muttered into his radio, “This is small boat, we’re looking pretty good no citations here.”
The radio answered back, “Copy, return to boat.
Fish Hawk
out.”
The mustache and his crew waved goodbye as they climbed back into the rubber boat and shoved off back to the Cutter.
“Well, Ted, let’s get back to the Cobia,” Billy said as they stood watching the small boat roar back to the nearby cutter.
Billy had gotten into being a charter boat captain after a series of three disasters. The first had been Hurricane Katrina, the second had been his marriage, and the third had been the Deep-water Horizon oil spill cleanup.
An older boat, she had been made the last year Hatteras produced the venerable 36-foot series of ‘yachts for the everyman’ as a quarter million dollar craft. After going through at least three owners, the
Captain Tony
was tossed neatly from the water onto Biloxi Beach during Hurricane Katrina. Picked up, taken to a marine salvage yard, and put on blocks, she sat for five years with a $40,000 sticker on her. Billy drove past her day after day and thought that somehow, someday he would get her.
The stress of the Hurricane, coupled with the extended multi-year recovery and the time spent from home put the last nails in the coffin of Billy’s marriage. It had never been very sound to begin with. She got the kids and the house. He got a one-room apartment loft and worked as much as he could part-time around the Fire Department’s dive schedule.
When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill had affected the Gulf Coast, he applied for a temporary job with the response effort. The fact that he owned a small 19-foot boat, and had HAZWOPR training with the fire department put him at the top of the list among the 800 local Biloxi boat owners that signed up for the Vessels of Opportunity program in Mississippi.
He had taken two months of built-up vacation from the City and skimmed oil for $1200 a day. When the program wound down and he was deactivated, he went back to work with the fire department’s dive rescue team full time. His next regular off day, he paid the marine salvage yard a visit.
After some negotiation with cash in hand and the sale of his oil-beaten skiff, the
Captain Tony
became his at last. Another $15,000 spent repainting and blasting the hull, repacking the rudders, new electronics, overhauling the engines, renovating the galley, new carpet, two new air-conditioners, new generators, tackle, rods, and coolers she was ready for the water.
A few weekends spent scouting houses in Gulf Shores and a long talk with the ex-wife about custody put him and the kids back together in a new life fifty miles away in Gulf Shores. Cashing out the ten years he had put into his retirement with the Department paid for the closing costs on the new house and the move.
Now as the
Fooly Involved,
the old boat and Billy had come through their storms together. He patted the boat’s emblem of a firefighter sitting at a bar-room table with a dragon about to arm wrestle, then throttled the old girl back to life and away from the sleek Coast Guard cutter.
««—»»
On board the
Fish Hawk
, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Orlando Jarvis placed his binoculars back into the saddle by the bridge as he watched the rigid inflatable boat leave the charter craft.
“Small boat to
Fish Hawk
, ready to notch,” came Hoffman over the radio.
Jarvis triggered the mic and said, “Notch when ready,” as he watched the rubber boat come up to the open stern deck of the coast guard cutter then run up the back ramp where a seaman threw the securing deck line over the bow of the small boat and locked it into place.
The USCGC
Fish Hawk
(WPB 87375), was an 87-foot long
Marine Protector-
class Coastal Patrol Boat. Built at Bollinger Marine in Louisiana for a little over $3-million, she had spent her whole career within a few hundred miles of her birthplace. The cutter was relatively new compared to other Coast Guard vessels, an organization known for keeping floating relics in service from as far back as Pearl Harbor. She was based in Mobile and her zone of operation was on the Gulf of Mexico between St. Marks, Florida to the east and Gulfport, Mississippi to the west. The
Fish Hawk
and her eight-man crew were Jarvis’s first command.
“What’s the run-down, Chief?” Jarvis asked Hoffman as he came into the
Fish Hawk’s
wheelhouse from the small boat.
Hoffman shook his head, “Just a charter boat captain. He seemed a little pissed that we pulled him over but he’ll get over it.” As he spoke, his blonde moustache danced over his top lip.
The Chief had removed his tactical vest to show the standard blue t-shirt flecked with dried salt. The t-shirt had the familiar drawing of the
Fish Hawk
on the back, a sunglasses-wearing bird of prey flying over a map of Mobile Bay and the mottos
Sentinel of the Bay
above it and
87-feet of Rock and Roll
below it.
“Yes he will, Chief. These charter boat guys need to remember that everyone out here is playing the same sheet of music,” Jarvis intoned. “This isn’t a black-hull; we are a patrol boat.”
Jarvis was referring to the so-called black-hulled coast guard ships such as buoy boats and tugs that made up half of the organization’s vessel list. Being in a ‘white-hull’ such as the
Fish Hawk
that was more high-speed, as their mission catered more to law enforcement and homeland security tasking. Jarvis had graduated from the Coast Guard Academy (in the top 5% of his class) just eighteen months prior and had spent his first year on board a large high endurance white-hulled cutter chasing Russian trawlers and Alaskan crabbers across the northern pacific before landing his current command.
“Roger that, Skipper,” said Hoffman. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Hoffman had spent 10 of his 12 years in the Coast Guard on black-hulls. Boatswain’s Mates were the most versatile members of the Coast Guard’s operational team. Masters of seamanship, BMs are capable of performing almost any task in connection with deck maintenance, small boat operations, navigation, and supervising all personnel assigned to a ship’s deck force.
“Let’s turn back away from the ICW, Chief, and set a course to intercept some of this large ship traffic I saw on the scope.”
Hoffman took up the helmsman’s chair in the middle of the wheelhouse and throttled the ship’s twin diesels forward, while rotating the joystick for the rudders to port side to take the Cutter into deeper water. Jarvis took his spot in the captain’s chair to the left of Hoffman and started scanning his list of possible High Interest vessels forwarded down from Sector Mobile, hoping to get lucky.
The radio came to life with a call from Sector, ordering them to the scene of an accident at the Perdido Key Bridge.
“Finally, some action,” Jarvis smiled through a set of perfectly white teeth at Hoffman.
The Chief blinked hard a couple times and brought the cutter about.
— | — | —
Chapter 3
Mackenzie Tillman started her shift at the Orange Coast Bank in Gulf Shores an hour before the branch opened. She had to count down the previous night’s after-hours deposits before opening her window. She worked in what they referred to as a motor branch, which looked like a building not much larger than a tollbooth with a covered awning that held spots for up to three cars to drive through on each side and be serviced by the two tellers inside. Today she was flying solo as her normal partner had called in sick after getting a panicked call from her father on the west coast yesterday afternoon.
The main branch said they did not have a replacement and advised her to just open one side of the branch and handle it the best she could.
Mackenzie was sure that she was getting the raw end of the deal in having to work by herself, as she now not only had to work all of the deposits alone, but also had no relief for lunch. She really had to go back to school and get away from this crap. Two dollars over minimum wage did not justify working double duty with a smile on your face. The expression ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired’ echoed in her head.
Most of the customers were your ordinary check cashings, deposits, and withdrawals. Anything that could not be passed back and forth through the sliding drawer of the bank booth quickly and easily was sent to the larger branch downtown. Mackenzie was the express checkout lane of the banking world.
She raised the mini-blinds to open up and already had a line of several cars waiting anxiously.
Happy place, happy place, happy place, she told herself as she flipped on the
Open
sign, pushed the drawer forward and forced a smile.
“Welcome to Orange Coast Bank, how may I help you?”
— | — | —
Chapter 4