The Breach Read online

  The boat edged against the floating dock tethered to the flooded station house, and with the unspoken practiced ease of dancers who’d performed the same routine together many times, Tanner and Randy tied off the center console and shifted their gear to a twenty-two-foot SAFE boat with blue inflated pontoons and an aluminum cabin. The craft had twin two-hundred horsepower Honda four-stroke ultra-cooled outboards that ran so quiet you could whisper to your girl on a cell phone as they pulled 5000 RPMs.

  The dance continued, and Tanner punched the coordinates aerial division had given him into the GPS as Randy piloted the boat out into the bay. They waved to Kip in the tower, who gave them the single finger salute. The wind was light, and the steady chop cutting northeast was minimal, small rollers that were no more than seagull farts. Randy brought the Hondas up to speed, but Tanner barely heard them. The beater he used to cruise around the bay had an old Johnson two-stroke that screamed bloody murder unless it was in its sweet spot of 2200 RPM exactly.

  “Where to ca…boss?” Randy said.

  “You can still call me captain of this vessel. That is unless you want the responsibility?”

  “No, I’ll take a pass on that if it’s OK with you.”

  Some people lead, and some followed. “Glad that bullshit is out of the way. Everything OK at home?” Tanner asked.

  “Got some water in the basement, and I might need to rip the sheetrock in the sunroom. Told you we built that bastard too low.” Randy looked out at the water. “Where to first? Looks like both pleasure crafts were in inland flood areas. The clammer was over in the flats outside the breach.”

  “Head over to the breach,” Tanner said.

  Randy jerked the wheel, and the boat leaned to starboard as he avoided a patch of seaweed. Tanner saw chunks of wood and other debris floating in the tangled mass of green and brown as they passed it. A cross wind was throwing sea spray, and Tanner tasted salt on his lips and his shades dulled as a sheen of water covered the lenses. The sun was rounding ten o’clock, the green water awash with dappled sun rays. Randy pulled back on the controls, and the tone of the motors lessened.

  “You gonna tell me what’s got you spooked?” Randy asked.

  “What shit are you rambling about?”

  “I know you. What’s bothering you? You lie to the captain about something just now?”

  “It’s what I didn’t lie about,” Tanner said. “When the hell did you become a detective?”

  “Just know you. You usually walk around like you live on a cloud and the rest of the world grinds below you to make your life good.”

  “You saying I act like a god?”

  Randy said nothing.

  The hole in Fire Island National Seashore was a quarter-mile wide, and had become a labyrinth of sandbars, tidal pools, wave breaks, and fast-flowing channels that changed every minute with the pull of the tide and shifting weather. Breaches had opened and closed on Fire Island before, and the current one was an expansion of a prior breach. Each time one opened, the debate began about whether the Army Core of Engineers should be asked to close it, with solid evidence on both sides saying it would help or hurt marine biology and water quality. On the horizon, white waves broke across sandbars as the turbulent Atlantic Ocean pushed its way into the bay.

  More birds flew south overhead, and the sonar showed a mass migration of fish and crabs heading out of the bay through the breach. Tanner thought of the crabs from the night before, how they’d fled the bay as if their lives depended on it.

  “I think some strange shit happened last night,” he said.

  “You think?” Randy said.

  “I was a bit under the weather.”

  “Sure. A cold, and you took some cough medicine.” Randy barely contained a smile.

  “Cough medicine. Yeah, that, so I may have a distorted memory of reality.”

  “How much cough medicine did we have?”

  Tanner looked at the deck. “I felt pretty shitty.”

  Randy chuckled. “And? What did Alice see down the rabbit hole?”

  Tanner spilled it all; the waves, the rolling sea coming at him, chasing him inland, and the crabs. He left out the part about falling like a child and hitting his head.

  “Shit. Good thing you didn’t tell the captain that. He might have pulled you and insisted on a psych evaluation. No way you pass that shit.”

  “Thanks,” Tanner said.

  “What’s that?” Randy said, pointing.

  Before them, off the port side, a gas slick glittered in the sunlight and in the middle of it a barking dog clung to a seat cushion. Randy spun the wheel, and the boat arced left across the water. Waves crashed three hundred yards to the south, and to the north a sandbar towered above the waterline.

  The dog yapped and whined as Randy shut down the motors and glided through the debris field. There wasn’t much left. Some pieces of wood covered in fiberglass, a cooler, pieces of lifejackets, and seat cushions. Sonar picked up a motor, but Tanner couldn’t see it beneath the shifting sands. The dog growled and bared its teeth as the boat eased up beside him. It looked to be a mutt, a terrier mixed with a black Lab. He was small, with curly hair and a long snout, and Tanner plucked him off the seat cushion with a crab net and dumped him on the deck.

  The animal got up, shook himself off, and wagged his tail and barked, as if to say “where’s the food?” Tanner lowered his head and put out the back of his hand as he approached the animal, and as he bent down to pet the dog, the furball sprang forward and licked his face.

  “You sure are a lucky shit, boy,” Randy said.

  “Lucky-shit,” Tanner said. “I like that. How you doing, Lucky-shit?”

  Lucky-shit barked and wagged his tail.

  “Maybe LS. Cause of the kids and all,” Randy said.

  “I don’t have kids.”

  “Yeah, but who are we kidding? This animal will eventually end up living with me.”

  “LS it is then,” Tanner said.

  Randy started the motors and piloted the boat across the debris field in a widening grid pattern. It was clear a clamming garvey made of fiberglass-covered wood had been destroyed in the breach, but the small pieces and lack of rough seas led Tanner to believe the breach hadn’t destroyed the boat. If the craft had foundered in the breach, it would have rolled and broken apart. Larger pieces would be visible and there would be more floating debris. It was almost as if the boat had been put in a giant blender.

  “Oy,” yelled Randy.

  LS ran to the front of the boat, put his front paws on the gunnel, and barked.

  “I see it,” Tanner said.

  A boot floated on the surface at the edge of the debris field, and Tanner snagged it from the sea and dumped it on the deck as he had LS. The dog shot toward it and sniffed the open end of the large white rubber boot.

  LS backed away when he got a whiff, his tail between his legs.

  There was a foot in the boot.

  4

  Tanner and Randy sped across the bay in silence. LS lay sleeping on the deck behind the pilot bench, exhausted from being in the water for hours. The foot was on ice and carefully wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. The two mariners hadn’t spoken about it. What was there to say? There weren’t many hazards in the ocean that could cut your foot off clean right to the edge of a boot. It was surgical, as if a giant blade had hacked the foot from its leg with one clean slice. A freak accident was an explanation, as was a shark, but he didn’t think a shark had done it. Sharks tear and rip their prey by thrashing their head back and forth, leaving a frayed mess.

  Another line of geese passed overhead, moving south, but they made no noise. The splash of the bay as the SAFE boat knifed through the water and the gentle rumble of the boat’s motors were the only sounds. The sun had marched past noon, and the sea was choppy with boat wake. Patches of seaweed rolled over the bay like brown polka dots on emerald fabric, and a large patch caught Tanner’s eye. He directed Randy toward it as he peered through binoculars.
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  Randy said, “Where do you think the rest of the body is? It should’ve been floating, yeah?”

  Tanner said nothing.

  “Yup,” Randy said.

  They came upon what they’d thought was a large, thick seaweed patch only to discover it wasn’t seaweed at all.

  “What do you make of that?” Randy said.

  “Looks like shrimp turds,” Tanner said.

  “Smells like it, too. Must be a mighty big shrimp.”

  Tanner knifed him with his eyes, and Randy’s smile fled away from his face. “You want me to take a sample?”

  “Yeah. A big one.”

  LS lifted his head, sniffed the air, then put his head back down and closed his eyes.

  Randy broke out the plastic gloves and a baggie. “Seriously though, what do you think this stuff is?” He leaned over the gunnel and scooped some of the light brown sludge into the baggie.

  “Who knows? The hurricane dredged up all kinds of crap. Maybe it’s a badly decomposed whale corpse.”

  “It don’t smell like no fish.”

  Tanner had no response.

  Sample taken and location marked, Randy slipped off his gloves and brought the Hondas back up to speed. The next location they’d been given was at the mouth of Brown’s River. Rock jetties that marked the entrance to the canal were underwater, and the beach was nowhere to be seen. The houses, restaurants, and marinas along the canal were flooded and abandoned, the dock bulkheads barely visible in the brackish water. Everything imaginable floated in the flotsam and jetsam, and it was impossible to tell if a boat had been wrecked at the location. There were no boat parts floating on the surface and the sonar screen showed a dark line on the bottom and a lot of noise above. There were several sunken boats, but most appeared to be tied within slips.

  They found no sign of the lost boater, so they took pictures and moved on. Tanner wondered what the hell the whirlybird had seen that made this area stand out from the normal destruction. Maybe he should have looked at the aerial pictures.

  They headed back out onto the bay, this time cutting west under the bridge toward Babylon. The Ocean Beach Parkway was flooded, and the bridge to Democratic Point was closed to commercial and civilian traffic. The wind picked up, and a dark line of clouds moved in on the horizon to the west. The last thing they needed was more rain, but it looked as though that was exactly what they’d be getting come nightfall.

  Tanner spotted the third debris field easily. A large chunk of a boat’s bow bobbed in the waves, and a transom with an outboard still attached stuck out of the water. Tiny white-capped waves broke over the wreckage, which slowly drifted toward shore. The gas and oil slick had mostly dissipated, but the large boat chunks had dark oil rings around them at surface level. There was no body, or any signs of one.

  Tanner and Randy looked at one another, but didn’t speak. Tanner knew Randy was thinking the same thing as he was. What the hell had broken the boat up into such fine pieces, same as the first one? If it had capsized after hitting a piece of garbage, the boat would still be mostly intact. If there had been an explosion, the debris would show burn marks.

  “What the…?” said Randy.

  Tanner followed his gaze until he saw the large pincer claw floating in the water next to half a surfboard. Tanner nodded, and Randy eased the SAFE boat through the debris field toward the claw. For a third time, Tanner used the crab net to scoop up his prey.

  The claw was bigger than any he’d ever seen, measuring over a foot. It was thin, with tiny teeth, and it reminded him of the secondary pincer claws of a lobster, the ones at the end of the legs you sucked the meat out of.

  “I’m getting a real bad feeling,” Randy said.

  “Easy, Han.” Tanner walked around the claw, examining it, afraid to touch it. He grabbed a gaff and poked it, but it didn’t attack him.

  LS walked across the deck and sniffed the claw, then looked up at Tanner with eyes and a wagging tail that said, “What are you poodles afraid of?” Then he barked and hopped.

  “Easy, Lucky-shit,” Tanner said.

  Tanner heard the sound first, the same low-pitched wail as the night before. When Randy heard it, he said, “Oh, shit, you weren’t screwing with me.”

  “Turn up the gain on the sonar,” Tanner said. Randy bolted to the pilothouse with Tanner on his heels.

  To port, a wave crested above the whitecaps, a snowball of water that grew as it rolled toward the boat. The sonar screen darkened as if the seafloor rose from the depths, and the bay surged like a giant bubble was fighting to the surface, white-green water and seaweed rolling their way. The boat shook and listed back and forth, throwing sunglasses and coffee cups off the control dash. A stench of rotting flesh punched Tanner in the gut, and he almost threw up. The screeching cry got louder and went higher in pitch. Tanner winced and put his hands over his ears.

  “Screw this,” he said. Tanner ran from the pilothouse, drew down on the wave, and fired as fast as he could pull the trigger, emptying his Glock 19 into the oncoming water.

  The wave crested on the starboard side and dissipated into a swirl of whitewater and seaweed. The shrill wail faded, and a small two-foot chop slapped against the boat.

  Randy stood next to him. “Sonar’s clear. What the hell?”

  “What the hell, indeed,” Tanner said.

  ***

  Tanner really didn’t want to make this particular call. The sun started its descent to the horizon and rain clouds thickened and moved in.

  As he waited for the captain to come on the line, Tanner pulled his flask from a pocket and looked over his shoulder. He didn’t see Randy, so he took a fast pull and put the flask away.

  “How’d you make out?” Captain Quinn asked.

  “We’ve got a situation out here.” Tanner held his marine phone to his ear. “One confirmed dead via an appendage, two vessels confirmed destroyed by an unknown force, several people missing and feared dead.”

  “You’re joking,” the captain said.

  “There’s something in the bay. Something big. Some kind of predator.”

  “A shark?”

  “No,” Tanner said. “Not like a shark at all. Much bigger. A bottom crawler. That’s why we haven’t seen it.”

  “What are we talking about here?”

  “I don’t know. Something I can’t explain.”

  Captain Quinn sighed loudly. “I don’t need this right now. Things down here are beyond out of control.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t give you the answer you wanted,” Tanner said.

  “What do you recommend?”

  It was Tanner’s turn to sigh. “We need to close the bay and beaches to commercial and civilian traffic and enforce it with the help of fire departments and regular PD foot patrols. The firemen can patrol inland flood areas; most of them have nicer boats than we do thanks to Homeland Security money. Me and my crew will search this thing out and find out what we’re dealing with.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s Labor Day weekend for shit’s sake! All first responders are stretched to the breaking point. The people need a couple of days of R&R to get their minds off how screwed they are, and you want me to close the bay and the beaches? For Labor Day weekend? And take police and firemen off recovery efforts to look for…what? A sea monster?”

  “Unless you want blood on your hands, yes.”

  “What did you see?” Captain Quinn said.

  Tanner broke the connection without answering.

  The sun was falling fast and soon darkness would make the search more difficult. It was time to head in and grab some food and rest. Tanner didn’t know it at the time, but it would be his last night of peace for a long while.

  5

  Overnight, there was a sighting, but thankfully the old man called the police and not the press. Despite one confirmed dead, with a strong possibility of others, Tanner didn’t know what to tell the public, and with safety precautions taken, he’d decided to tell them nothing. Closing the bay and beaches
using storm flooding and debris in the water as pretenses was easy. It made sense, and everyone’s attention was elsewhere. Despite this, Tanner knew it was only a matter of time before a reporter came sniffing around a story about a sea monster in the bay. Locals talked, and for a beer, they talked a lot.

  Tanner hadn’t slept a wink, but it wasn’t for want of trying. He’d lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, only to fall asleep minutes before his alarm went off. LS had no trouble sleeping like a stone and the dog barely lifted his head when Tanner left to head to work. Lucky-shit’s first day on the job as a police dog would have to wait. The poor thing was still exhausted.

  The prior night’s rain held off, and the floodwaters had receded a little more, inching back into the sea as slow as a relative that’s overstayed their welcome. Tanner piloted Big Boy, and Randy kept pace in a twenty-two-foot SAFE boat. Tanner had Jane Ricky as support, and Randy had Freddy Gipp. Both were solid cops, exceptional watermen, and military vets. After the events of the prior day, all four officers were strapped with Glock 19s, and there was a rifle and shotgun stowed on each craft with extra ammo. Tanner had also stowed extra gaffs and three spear guns.

  The boats cut across the windblown chop, heading east to meet with Kris Dopson, an old fisherman who claimed to have seen a giant beast in the water he called a sea scorpion. Tanner had to hear this one for himself. As they raced east, it was easy to see the mobilization of local forces had begun. The Coast Guard, along with police and fire department rescue boats, patrolled the bay and flood areas, but so far whatever lurked in the bay hadn’t shown itself.

  A burst of static came through the radio, and Tanner adjusted the gain.

  “You there, Tanner? You copy?”

  “Command, yes, I copy.”

  “We’ve got another report of someone seeing this thing. Down by the mouth of Carmans River.” Kipper’s static-filled voice came through the speaker in broken fragments.

  “We’re heading out that way,” Randy said.