4.
 As Coast Guard and harbor pilot boarded, Lima Voyager's captain and first officer stood on the bridge with their hands on the railing. With hooded, inscrutable eyes, like zombies, they watched as the Americans fanned out and checked the usual spots in such a ship. The inspection took an hour and resulted in a broadband burst of routine web form reports. Finding nothing obviously amiss, the inspectors and their dog rejoined the cutter. Several would later remark on the chill feelings they'd gotten on board. Nobody could put their finger on what might be amiss, but they all had a bad feeling—starting with the odd, unpleasant smell of earth with something dead in it. And yet—the small cargo of machine parts, lumber, wine, and gourmet mushrooms seemed properly tagged and invoiced, and neatly stacked in the holds in wooden crates secured with chains. The Coast Guard vessel roared off north toward Torrey Pines State Beach to join a surf rescue, and Lima Voyager chugged at one quarter speed through the channel entrance into San Diego Harbor.
To hear the dog handler tell it weeks later, the dog had not picked up any drug or blood scents—but it had begun acting skittish. The dog had sidled against its handler's dark blue uniform leg as if spooked, even frightened. This was a courageous dog, which on previous occasions had attacked on command, even under gunfire, to bring down violent suspects. The same big-hearted dog had refused to go near any of the dark-eyed crew or officers of Lima Voyager—and, to hear talk in a dockside tavern around 32nd Street—oddly, not a single crew member or officer had so much as offered to pet the animal. They had stared at the German shepherd, which had its hackles up and a low growl never leaving its throat, with an unfathomable discomfort—as if it were a species of animal with whom their kind had never before bonded.
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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