Area would, in a few hours, be shrouded in fog. A light mist had come up, thickening as they got farther and farther from Tampa Bay proper and moved northwest along the coast, the Boston Whaler skimming now over the Gulf of Mexico under controlled speed.
They moved along more slowly as they passed areas where yachts and sailing vessels were moored. In the distance, Stallings spotted a boat with teakwood markings all along her sides, and from the look of her, if she wasn’t an Alden, she was damned close enough to stand in for one.
They had the right to routinely pull alongside any boat to make a spot check for licenses and booze containers; if they found captain and crew smashed, they had the right to arrest people and tow their boats into shore. If this proved another false alarm-as had so many since they’d been put on the alert for the Crawler-they’d simply feign a routine call on the boat.
The fast little Whaler was high up on plane now, her blue-to-red strobe light flashing, siren wailing as they approached the sleek, beautiful ship whose markings were obscured-perhaps deliberately, Stallings thought aloud, calling out his misgivings to Manley and asking, “Whataya think, Rob?”
Manley replied by jotting down what he could of her numbers, and he attempted to locate a name, but because of the angle of their approach and the seemingly mystical, evolving fog that’d rolled in to engulf them, this was impossible. “You may wanna send in the numbers we have as a precaution,” suggested Manley, handing the figures to Stallings, who had the radio at his fingertips.
County cops in Florida who filled in during peak seasons and watercops in other states might have little or no training, or even boat experience, before they were given the keys and told to cast off, but that wasn’t the case with the Florida Marine Patrol. Admittedly, they were spread thin- their duties covering eight thousand miles of coastline. Still, Stallings and Manley had put in their training time in the most rigorous marine law enforcement program in the country. They’d done an additional stint together at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center outside Brunswick, Georgia, in a three-week advanced marine law program, and a weeklong course in protocol on seizures and boarding on the high seas.
Stallings momentarily thought of the financial crunch which had recently halved the Florida Coast Guard’s budget, handcuffing those guys. FMP was up for cuts, too. He and Manley had studied under the Coast Guard for a time, but the Guard’s training program had since dried up due to those same budget constraints. Now the entire course consisted of classroom theory only-no practical experience on the water! Kind of nuts, Stallings felt. Then, taking advantage of the sudden scarcity of watercop training facilities, the Florida Marine Patrol repackaged its academy training into a one-week intensive course offered to state and local jurisdictions. So far, some sixty Florida police departments and departments from eleven other states had availed themselves of the FMP training. Now Stallings was considering an offer to become a training officer himself and lead a more stable life as a result.
His wife and children were all for the change, but he knew he’d miss the excitement out here on the water with Manley. They’d been through hell and high water many times together, from making drug busts on the water to fighting with drunken baseball players on holiday to wrestling with alligators wandering into people’s backyards. One damned fool had even captured a gator and dragged it aboard his boat, then called them in when the animal refused to die from the clubbing it was given. Damned fools. They didn’t like the fines or the time doled out by the judges, but somehow water recreation bred stupidity.
Stallings knew that a standard national training program in maritime law enforcement was absolutely necessary and remained a long time in coming, and he’d have liked very much to be a part of formulating the standard. Certainly, he had seen enough in his nine years out here. For a place like Tampa Bay, or Miami, guys could train for months every year and it still wouldn’t be enough, he thought.
Looking to Washington for money was futile… Funds would only come from a constituency committed to and in need of better-trained marine cops, and unfortunately, the boating public made it quite clear that they didn’t have any urgent desire for watercops, trained or otherwise.
Manley had the bullhorn now, and as they came alongside the suspect ship-and she was a beauty-Manley announced who they were and told the parties aboard the three-masted, schooner-class sailing vessel that they should prepare to be boarded.
There was no immediate response from the ship, and no one could be seen at the helm or on deck. In his hand, Manley, like Stallings, held a gun. This was no routine check. This looked suspicious as hell; this could be the Night Crawler, or it could be nothing. Either way, there was nothing routine about boarding another man’s boat, another man’s property line in effect. Unlike a road cop, Manley couldn’t ask the suspect to get out of the vehicle and kneel on stone-hard pavement so as to gain control of the situation; rather, the FMP officer had to follow an even stricter code of conduct for an effective, safe arrest.
Stallings and Manley stared at what they had. It appeared an empty, anchored vessel. Unless they found probable cause, they could not board the ship.
The wind was picking up, buffeting them about. Stallings had to work to keep the patrol boat steady and pointed in the right direction. Manley showered the other boat with light from the Megalite 300 spotlight attached to their stern while Stallings called in the few numbers they had on the boat, saying into the radio, “Alpha-poppa- thirty, this is Stallings, Delta-four, 7-11, come in.”
This was met with the friendly banter of the night dispatch officer, who replied, “Gotcha, Ken. What’s up?”
“ We got a suspicious-looking boat out on the water with obscured markings. We think the numbers are Oreo-Two- Charlie, Niner-Eight-Niner, something, something, Niner, but can’t make out. Going in for a closer look.”
“ What’s your position, Delta-four?”
Stallings offered up their position, even though they were somewhat far afield of their assigned area. As he did so, he also worked the Boston Whaler in an effort to counteract the oncoming wind and the swollen waves, which had become hungry mouths feeding on the bow and spilling over the gunwale. Now they were idling just off the side of the suspect boat, in textbook fashion.
Manley instructed through the horn, “Marine Patrol! Anyone aboard the schooner, come above deck, show yourselves, please, with hands raised behind the neck.”
If anyone showed, Manley would continue to instruct them in the proper and safe steps to take next, telling them to tug at their collars to raise their shirttails and to do a full 360-degree spin to show they had no concealed weapons. Only after protracted contact with the suspect through the bullhorn would Stallings pull in tight against the other boat, and only then would he and Manley board the other vehicle.
Handcuffing suspects on a bobbing boat posed other problems, but before one removed a suspect from a boat and placed him on an FMP boat, he had to be cuffed, hands behind the back.
Manley continued to hail the dimly lit cabin across from them, still getting no response; then he suddenly claimed to have seen a shadow against a window. But the windows were tinted, so Stallings wondered how his partner could see a thing. Stallings had seen nothing, but he trusted Rob’s eyes and instincts as if they were his own, so he gave a blast on the foghorn, the sea tossing them in an increasingly unfriendly manner toward the other boat now, the two boats kissing, buttressing one another at this point, each protected only by the big foam bumper guards Manley had quickly tossed over the side.
“ Everything calm there, Delta-four?” asked the voice over the radio.
Manley shouted over his shoulder, “Back us off a little ways, Ken.”
“ She’s not holding out here, partner,” Stallings told Manley, and then said to dispatch, ‘ ‘No problem. It appears no one’s aboard.” But he wondered even as he reported this to dispatch if it weren’t in error.
So far as Manley was concerned, whoever was on the sleek schooner was either ignoring them or in a drunken stupor. The suspect boat was anchored well in waters off Madeira Beach, where lights from shoreline restaurants twinkled back at them only to fade amid the catlike, encroaching fog. The ship sat out alone, by itself, apart from the hundreds of others anchored here, all as if by design, Stallings thought, a loner…
“ Let’s go easy, Rob,” he cautioned, feeling Manley’s impatience to board the other boat. Stallings could see the black man’s skin itching to move. “We got no probable cause, and we can’t go nosing around on board without something,” Ken reminded his friend of the restraining law.
They were out some distance from most of the anchored ships, most people preferring to sink anchor in a bit shallower depth. This time of year the locals knew that these waters-even the more protected bays-could never be completely trusted. This guy looked like a newcomer to the area. He had all the markings of a visitor save the one the law required: His port of origin was clearly missing-having been painted over perhaps? Or was it below the
