Chapter 27 - The Salish Blackout
The marina at Deadman’s Cove looked abandoned, a graveyard of rusted trawlers, rotting wooden docks, and decaying crab traps. The smell of low tide, diesel fumes, and dead kelp hung heavy in the air. Rain had begun to fall—a steady, freezing coastal drizzle that blurred the horizon.
"My extraction contact kept an ocean-going skiff at pier four," Claire said, wiping condensation from the truck's windshield. "A forty-foot aluminum hull with twin outboards. If we can reach the open water of the Strait of Georgia, we can cross into Canadian territorial waters before Arthur can scramble maritime assets."
"And if Arthur already anticipated this?" I asked, looking at the silent, eerie docks. There were no lights on in the harbor master’s shack. No gulls were crying. The silence was wrong.
"Then we fight our way out," she replied coldly, chambering a round into her rifle.
We left the truck hidden behind an overturned shipping container. I carried Emily under the canvas tarp, keeping her out of the freezing rain. We moved along the wooden planks of the pier, our boots making wet, sucking noises against the mossy wood.
Claire stopped outside the harbor master's office. The door hung slightly ajar, swinging lazily in the sea breeze. With the muzzle of her weapon, she pushed it open.
Inside, slumped over a desk covered in maritime charts, was the harbor master. A single bullet hole sat squarely in the center of his forehead. The blood pooled on the paper was still bright crimson.
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"Ambush!" Claire screamed, spinning around to shove me and Emily behind an iron fuel storage tank just as the entire harbor erupted into gunfire.
High-velocity rounds tore through the wooden walls of the shack, splinters exploding everywhere. Two black tactical zodiac boats emerged from beneath the fog bank out in the cove, their engines revving to an ear-splitting scream as armed men in black wet-weather gear opened fire on our position.
