Harbor's Outlaw Code

CHAPTER 1

Josie

The air smells of salt and old fish, pretty much the smell of every working waterfront in the Pacific Northwest. I’m thirty yards away, lying flat on my belly in wet pine scrub, photographing a boat that does not belong here.

I’ve got my long lens on, flash off, a microfiber cloth draped over the body so as not to catch a stray beam of light that might come my way.

I’m on an elevated bluff and below me is the dock.

It’s a single-vessel slip, about sixty feet of weathered planking running out into the channel.

According to the property records, it’s been owned by the same fishing family for ninety years, but the owners are in Arizona for the off-season.

The dock has been unattended since they left, and BOB hypothesized that it had a high probability of seeing action.

He flagged it late yesterday afternoon and I double-checked the data.

The pattern was too clean to be coincidence and too small to be anything else.

Good ol’ BOB. He’s the artificial intelligence system created by brains smarter than me at Jameson Force Seattle and is my main partner within the company.

The B-O-B doesn’t stand for anything in particular.

It’s more of an easy, affectionate human name.

He runs predictive analysis across whatever data points I feed him, and he’s very good at noticing things that I might not.

As the company’s lead intelligence specialist, it was a tough pill to swallow that I simply couldn’t be the smartest, but now we’re good friends.

I implicitly trusted him when he told me this desolate fishing dock near Anacortes on Fidalgo Island might be a prime spot for human traffickers to off-load women smuggled in from Canada.

The FBI brought Jameson onto this case six weeks ago.

They’ve been working a maritime trafficking pipeline for the better part of a year.

The women—mostly Eastern European and Southeast Asian—are brought into Canada and then moved through Vancouver into the Salish Sea.

From there, it’s easy enough to avoid the maritime authorities and off-load them at any number of abandoned docks like this one, where they’ll be distributed into the American economy.

Why would the FBI hire a private security consulting firm?

Mainly because we have bigger and better toys, the least of which is BOB.

I put my eye back up to the camera and snap off a flurry of photos—three men in dark jackets with knit caps on their heads for warmth.

They’re illuminated by a single light attached to the top of a pole halfway out on the dock, but it’s not good enough for me to identify any distinguishing characteristics.

One of them smokes a cigarette, and once in a while, the smell wafts up my way.

Then I hear it… an engine. Out of the black night, a forty-foot boat with a black hull and no running lights appears.

The engine cuts and the boat drifts in slowly.

Whoever’s at the helm has done this before, but in my research of maritime smuggling, I learned that these are some of the most accomplished boat captains around.

The temperature dropped after sundown and my fingers are stiff from the cold. I want to roll and stretch my back, but I don’t dare move. Surveillance is a discipline of not moving, and I’m very good at it.

The boat reaches the dock and two men come down from the small wheelhouse while one of the men on the dock ties off the bow line. Someone says something, mumbled words I can’t make out, and another man laughs.

Then they start unloading.

Even though I suspected it, and even though I hoped beyond hope I’d find some sort of evidence tonight, I truly didn’t think I’d see the women.

The first one is hauled up from below, her wrists cuffed and a man’s hand at the back of her neck. Then another one behind her. Then another. Six total, and my stomach churns with nausea.

I’ve got my gun on me. I could take them by surprise and free the women, but I’m outmanned five to one.

I snap off a few pictures and slowly ease up to my knees. I need to make it back to my vehicle so I can follow them. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, and then I’ll call our FBI liaison and they’ll swarm.

The case will be solved and I’ll be a hero.

The professional part of my brain—the part my father trained from the time I was eight years old, the part the NSA refined and then Jameson sharpened—does what it’s supposed to do.

Frame. Focus. Document.

Don’t panic.

I quietly move from my knees to a squatted position, ready to low-walk my way out of here without being seen.

For a moment, it occurs to me that I might get in trouble with our intrepid leader, Malik Fournier, over this.

I was supposed to be here with one of the other agents, Reid Calder, but he got called in to support another mission and I was told to table this surveillance for later in the week.

I’m directly disobeying Malik’s orders, so even if I’m successful in rescuing these women, I’ll be in trouble.

I put that out of my mind because it’s irrelevant to worry about now. The bottom line, BOB said there was a likelihood of this going down tonight, so I had to come. The next data point that lets us reconstruct this opportunity might be six months out.

That’s six months of women being trafficked and I can’t stomach that.

The plan from here is uncomplicated. I’ll pull back through the trees the way I came in, get in my SUV, and tail the van when it leaves the access road.

I put the camera to my face and click off a few more snaps of the last of the women going into the van.

That’s when the arm comes around my throat from behind, fast and hard, hooking under my jaw, and then I’m being dragged backward into a chest that feels as big as a refrigerator.

A second hand pins my right wrist against my own collarbone before I can get the camera up to swing it as a weapon. That doesn’t stop me from thrashing though, my heartbeat slamming against my rib cage with fear.

“What are you doing here?” The man’s voice is low, clearly Russian.

“Photography,” I manage to squeak out, hoping to sound like a dimwitted woman. “Night work. Long exposure. That old dock on the channel was perfect in the moonlight. That’s all.”

“But you took pictures of more than just the dock, no?” he inquires with menace.

And then he’s dragging me again. Through the brush, along a switchback and down onto the dock, where the other men turn in surprise.

“Who’s that, Sergei?” one of them asks, also with a Russian accent.

“A woman I find hiding in the bushes with a camera,” he says, and then releases his hold on me. He then shoves me hard in the back and I stumble forward several feet before I right myself.

One of the other men approaches me. “Do you have identification?” he demands.

“In my truck.”

“Where is truck?” he asks, his accent heavier with deeper rolling R’s.

“Up the access road, about a quarter mile.”

He smiles, and it’s not friendly. “Who do you work for?”

“Nobody. I’m freelance.”

“What is your name?”

“Sarah Klein. I’m just a photographer, I swear,” I say, real panic lacing my words. “I’m entering a nighttime photography contest. I was just photographing the dock.”

The men exchange glances.

“I mean… yeah, I saw the boat come up,” I babble, hoping something good pops out. “And yeah… the women, so I just assumed… hey, party boat. Know what I mean? I didn’t take pictures of that, though.”

Lame, Josie.

So lame.

The man pulls a gun from inside his jacket and it’s clear he doesn’t believe me. He grabs my arm and presses the barrel of his pistol into my lower back.

“Mikhail… we should not leave her in the channel,” the man says to the others. “Current goes south. Body might come up off Whidbey by morning.”

“Weight her,” one of them suggests.

I’m struck by the fact that they’re not whispering or lowering their voices. They’re talking about killing me like they’re discussing tomorrow’s forecast.

I’ve been a Jameson agent for only three months.

Before that, I was an NSA analyst for six years.

Prior to that, I was a graduate student.

Before that, I was a kid taking apart computers in my father’s study and putting them back together while he timed me with a stopwatch.

None of those previous lives nor the training I received in the NSA or at Jameson have prepared me for this very real scenario of standing on a dock in the dead of night while three men decide whether to weigh down my body before they put it in the water.

What prepared me is who my father is, and the small fact that very early he taught me a rule about being outnumbered.

The rule is don’t be there to have those odds realized.

I take it all in and get my analytical mind spinning.

One man is six feet in front of me. Another eight feet to his left and looking at his phone screen.

The one who caught me on the bluff is ten feet to the right, his gun holstered.

The other men are at the van. The dock edge is four feet behind me and the water below is a twelve-foot drop into frigid, inky blackness.

The odds are not good, but they’re better than waiting for the bullet to my brain. I lash out with my leg, kicking one man to the anterior portion of his knee, causing it to buckle with an accompanying scream of pain.

I’m running before he hits the wooden boards of the deck.

Two long strides, Russian men swearing behind me, and I launch into the darkness, executing a clean dive into the water at full speed.

The cold debilitates me instantly, every single nerve ending in my body firing into a million points of pain. For the first few seconds under the surface, I literally cannot think what I should do.

Luckily, my training kicks in and I know I have to stay under as long as possible. I kick to swim deeper, ditching the camera looped around my neck. My first instinct is to move under the dock, but I dismiss it, kicking farther into the deep.

I hear vague pops of sound from above and while I can’t see anything, I know they’re shooting at me.

Please don’t hit me.

Please don’t hit me.

I kick my legs hard, sweeping my arms in wide pushing arcs to propel me farther.

My lungs are burning, I’m getting dizzy, but I keep myself under the water. I’m weighed down by my tactical pants. My boots are the heaviest.

And in fact, there comes the realization that they’re dragging me down, and I need to get to the surface before I black out.

It’s a Herculean effort, but I angle up and kick hard. I see nothing but black all around and have no clue how far down I am. I kick and kick and kick and then I’m sucking in cold air.

Even as I’m gasping, taking in the precious oxygen, I spin myself around toward the dock.

All the men stand at the end and peer into the darkness, and I realize with so much relief I almost start crying that they can’t see me.

I also realize… the current is pulling me farther away and my legs are like rubber trying to tread water.

I shed my jacket and work on my boots next. I keep going under every time I have to tug on the laces because I can’t kick to stay up. After several attempts, I get them both off and the relief to my numb muscles is immediate.

One of the men now has a flashlight, sweeping the water, but it can’t reach out this far. They’re shouting at each other.

“She has to come up.”

“She came up under the dock.”

“She did not come up under the dock. I was watching.”

“Get the boat.”

“Get the boat, get the boat—”

“We don’t have time. We need to go.”

Yes, please just fucking go.

I’m alone. I’m freezing. I cannot feel my fingers. I’m being pulled into open water in the dark.

I think about my father.

Not in any specific way. Just a flicker. The way he sits at the kitchen table with his coffee in the mornings now, alone, and I think I’m sorry I’m about to do this to you.

And then I hear it.

An engine, but it’s not coming from the boat at the dock.

It’s behind me… out in the channel. It sounds small and there are no lights.

I turn in circles in the water, small waves lapping at my chin. I can’t see anything.

It could be a fisherman.

It could be the Coast Guard.

It could be more Russians called in to look for me, and because I’m an analyst, I have to admit it’s the most likely answer.

And then the engine cuts and it’s nothing but silence except for the slap of waves against my face and my own ragged breathing.

I can’t see anything in the dark out there. I don’t know if the boat is twenty feet from me or eighty. I don’t know if whoever is on it is reaching for a radio or a rifle or nothing at all.

Please be a fisherman.

Please, please be a fisherman.