TheResolutecame alongside the disabled smuggler's vessel with practiced precision, fenders absorbing the impact as the two hulls touched.Coast Guard personnel were already preparing boarding equipment, and Isla could see theGriffon's team doing the same from the opposite side.Whatever secrets theArctic Windheld, they were about to be exposed to the cold light of investigation.
"Ready?"James asked, holstering his weapon and reaching for the boarding ladder.
Isla took one last look at the gray expanse of Lake Superior, thinking about the four dead men from theNorthern Dawn, about the weapons that had been stolen, about the violence that seemed to permeate this corner of the world she'd been exiled to.
"Ready," she said, and followed him over the rail.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The deck of theArctic Windwas chaos contained—Coast Guard personnel securing the vessel, Canadian officers coordinating with their American counterparts, and five handcuffed men sitting against the wheelhouse bulkhead with the particular stillness of people who had accepted that resistance was no longer an option.The smoke from the engine compartment had been extinguished, leaving behind the acrid smell of burned oil and the mechanical stench of catastrophic failure.
Isla picked her way across the deck, cataloging details with the automatic precision of someone who'd spent years reading crime scenes.Shell casings glittered in the weak sunlight—dozens of them, scattered across the stern where Callahan's crew had made their desperate stand.The weapons they'd tossed overboard were gone, but the evidence of their use remained, brass testimony to how close this encounter had come to ending in bloodshed.
Derek Callahan sat apart from his crew, his weathered face unreadable as he watched the law enforcement officers swarm his vessel.He was older than his file photo suggested—mid-fifties, maybe, with the kind of deep-set wrinkles that came from decades of squinting against sun and wind and spray.His gray hair was plastered to his skull from the chase, and his clothes were soaked with a combination of sweat and lake water, but his eyes held none of the defeat that marked his men.
"Derek Callahan," Isla said, crouching to meet his gaze at eye level."I'm Special Agent Isla Rivers, FBI.This is Special Agent James Sullivan.We have some questions about theNorthern Dawn."
Something flickered in Callahan's eyes at the mention of the ship—not guilt, exactly, but recognition.Fear, maybe.The same fear that had driven his crew to open fire on Coast Guard vessels rather than submit to boarding.
"I want a lawyer," he said, his voice rougher than she'd expected, scraped raw by years of cigarettes and cold air.
"That's your right," James replied, his tone carefully neutral."But right now, we're not asking about the weapons we found on your boat, or the shots your people fired at federal officers.We're asking about four dead men whose bodies we pulled out of Lake Superior last night.Men who worked for you, if our intelligence is correct."
Callahan's jaw tightened, the muscles bunching beneath skin weathered to leather by Superior's harsh climate."I had nothing to do with that."
"Then help us understand what happened," Isla pressed."Because right now, you're looking at weapons trafficking, assault on federal officers, and potential murder charges.That's the kind of combination that puts a man away for the rest of his life.Unless there's something you can tell us that changes the picture."
The silence stretched between them, filled only by the sounds of the ongoing search—boots on deck plates, compartment doors being opened, the professional murmur of officers documenting what they found.Somewhere below decks, someone was photographing evidence, each camera flash a small lightning strike in the vessel's dim interior.
"You want to know why we fired?"Callahan said finally, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper."We fired because we thought you werethem.We thought you were coming to do to us what they did to theDawn's crew."
Isla felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck."Who's 'them'?"
Callahan laughed, but there was no humor in it—just the bitter sound of a man who'd seen something that changed his understanding of the world."If I knew that, Agent Rivers, I'd have told you before you ever got close enough to board.I'd have called the goddamn FBI myself and begged for protection."
James exchanged a glance with Isla, both of them recognizing that they'd stumbled onto something unexpected.This wasn't the defiant silence of a career criminal protecting his operation.This was fear—genuine, bone-deep terror of something that had shaken a man who'd spent his life operating outside the law.
"Tell us what you know," Isla said, her voice softening slightly."Start from the beginning."
Callahan looked out over the gray expanse of Superior, his eyes tracking something that existed only in memory."TheNorthern Dawnwasn't the first," he said quietly."She was just the first one you found before we could...before we could clean it up."
"Explain."
"Three months ago, we had a boat called theMargaret Rose.Smaller operation, crew of three, running a shipment down from Thunder Bay.She was supposed to make a delivery in Ashland—routine stuff, the kind of run we'd done a hundred times."He paused, his throat working as he swallowed something that might have been grief or might have been fear."She never arrived.We found her two days later, drifting about fifteen miles offshore.Crew was gone.All of them.Blood everywhere, same as what you probably found on theDawn."
"Why didn't you report it?"James asked.
Callahan's look was withering."Report it to who?The Coast Guard?The FBI?'Hello, officers, someone murdered my weapons smuggling crew and stole my illegal cargo.'That would have gone well."
"What about the cargo?"Isla pressed."Was it taken?"
"Some of it.Maybe half.Same pattern as theDawn—took what they could carry, left the rest."Callahan shook his head slowly."We thought it was a rival operation at first.Someone is trying to muscle in on our territory.Send a message.But no one claimed it.No one made demands.No one tried to negotiate.Just...silence.Like it never happened."
Isla's mind was racing, fitting this new information into the pattern she'd been building for months.TheNorthern Dawnmassacre had seemed like an isolated incident—brutal and unusual, but potentially explainable by the dangerous world of weapons trafficking.But if Callahan was telling the truth, they were looking at something far more disturbing.Someone was systematically targeting smuggling operations on Lake Superior, killing crews with intimate, personal violence, and taking weapons that could be worth millions on the black market.
"Were there others?"she asked."Before theMargaret Rose?"
Callahan hesitated, and Isla could see him weighing the risks of further disclosure against whatever deal he might be hoping to negotiate.Finally, he nodded."Rumors.Stories from other operations, people we do business with.A boat out of Marquette that disappeared last fall—everyone assumed she went down in a storm, but the weather wasn't that bad.Another one near Sault Ste.Marie, supposedly lost to mechanical failure, except she was only two years old and maintained like a baby."
