Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

My attention intensified as I then read, “Also, I enclose several photographs that may be of interest. I’m sorry the series of images is not more complete, but these are the best data available. I wish your lost friend only good things, though I fear the worst. There is no doubt in my mind how you will react, and so I wish you safe travels as well. Ours is a dangerous world. It would be good to have you back working with us again. We need you. Shalom!”

He wished me “safe travels”? What the hell did that mean?

There was a final, short paragraph and no signature: “The container is vacuum-sealed. The proof sheet enclosed has been treated via a process with which you are familiar, and the images will vanish within one hour or less after the seal is broken. They are for your eyes only, and, of course, you must not divulge to anyone that these images exist. Viewing the images requires medium-power magnification capabilities.”

I glanced into the box and saw what appeared to be a heavy, ignition-walled Pyrex test tube that was capped with a black stopper. I held the tube up to the bulb of the goose-necked lamp and saw three, maybe four, tiny strips of paper therein. Each strip was a series of miniature photographs, and each image was no bigger than the head of a nail.

I walked to the middle of the room and pulled the wooden swivel chair into position, then removed the cover from my Wolfe zoom stereomicroscope. Finally, I hunted around for a notebook and pencil before checking my watch, removing my glasses, then sitting down at the microscope.

The Pyrex tube made a suctioning sound when I unscrewed the cap. I used dissecting forceps to mount a strip on the viewing stage-and noticed that my fingers demonstrated a slight tremor. I turned the scope’s revolving nosepiece until I found the most satisfactory objective, and first of several photographs came into sharp focus.

I looked at four different images before I whispered: Oh… my

… God.

What Bernie Yeager had sent me were twelve photographs in three individual strips. Two of the strips contained four photos taken minutes apart. After some confusion, I realized that the third strip contained only one photo, but in various degrees of enlargement. The photo had been reproduced from the second contact sheet.

They were undoubtedly satellite images, although the source numbers and altitude information normally imprinted at the top of each image had been blacked out, as were the GPS coordinates. The date and time line at the bottom, though, had been left.

Each photo was dated November 5, and the time span was 6:15 to

Amelia hadn’t been imagining things. There was a boat, and it was just as she had described it: a steel-hulled shrimper, maybe sixty feet long, booms folded high, rust streaks fouling the vessel’s name, which was painted on its stern. One of the images was an enlargement of the name: Nan-Shan

Port of Cortez Florida

The most striking thing about the vessel, though, was that it carried a human cargo. The deck and the wheelhouse were jammed with bodies. The resolution was so fine and sharp that I could distinguish individual faces. There had to be a hundred people aboard. It reminded me of various refugee boats I’ve seen around the world: Vietnam, Cambodia, Mariel Harbor, Cuba. When people are sufficiently desperate, they will risk any means to escape to what they hope is a more tolerable existence. It makes them easy prey for flesh traders and profiteers.

The Nan-Shan was in the flesh trade. U.S. citizens do not ride willingly atop the wheelhouse of a trawl boat in twenty-knot winds. These were illegal immigrants, of that there was no doubt.

I remembered Amelia commenting on the stench that blew from off that vessel. Now I understood. I understood because I know that stench. I’ve suffered it in many of the world’s dark places. It is the stink of fear and of sickness. It is the stink of animal despair.

The photo keyed a vague memory awareness. It took me a few moments to isolate the reason. Finally, I remembered a newspaper story I’d read several days after Janet disappeared. The story said that immigration police had arrested a couple dozen illegal aliens of various nationalities who’d been jettisoned off the uninhabited Ten Thousand Islands and left to wade ashore.

Thirty of them? Forty? I couldn’t recall the figure. They’d been carried by flesh merchants who’d smuggled them into U.S. waters from Colombia. The people they’d arrested were in bad shape: dehydrated and starving. Several had died.

Suddenly, Bernie’s words- Safe travels. Ours is a dangerous world -assumed meaning.

He had already assembled information that I, presumably, would gather, which was not surprising. And I thought to myself: not South America. Not again.

The obligation to return there, though, was now an uncomfortable prospect. Between 6:23 and 6:31 A.M. on November 5, my friend Janet Mueller was still alive. In a series of four photographs, I could see a shrimp boat closing on three small dots, people adrift.

In the first shot, the three of them were alone in an expanse of gray. The second shot was from the same aspect, but the shrimp boat had intruded into the upper corner of the frame, its bow pointed in the direction of the swimmers.

They’d been spotted, apparently, and the boat was returning to pick them up.

In the fourth frame, the boat sat abeam the three dots.

It was this photo that had been reproduced on the third contact strip in various degrees of enlargement. The resolution was not as good as in the other photographs, so each photo was grainy and indistinct.

The first image was a tight close-up of the three swimmers. I could distinguish Janet’s pale, farm-girl face. Grace Walker and Michael Sanford were close beside her in a tight cluster, faces turned upward, their BCDs still inflated.

There was now no doubt that they were all still alive at the end of that first long night adrift.

Janet’s expression was heartbreaking. She had both hands out of the water, waving, her mouth open wide-perhaps shouting something to the boat but maybe grinning, too.

The next three shots included the vessel.

Aboard the shrimper, among the mass of people, standing at the door of the wheelhouse, was a man wearing a baggy dark cap. Or maybe he had long hair. I played around with the magnification and still couldn’t be certain.

Hair. Long hair. That’s what it seemed to be.

The man was holding something in his hands. He appeared to be reaching out with it to the three swimmers. It was an elongated shape, dark-a boarding hook, perhaps, but thicker. But that didn’t seem right, either, because of the way he held it.

I stopped, turned away from the binocular tubes, rubbed my eyes, then looked again.

Could it be a rifle?

That made no sense. Why would he have a rifle?

My brain scanned for possible explanations. Okay, so put yourself in the place of longhair. He owns the boat. He’s smuggling in refugees. Once they’ve made contact, the three swimmers become witnesses. So he shoots three defenseless and desperate people?

I have witnessed terrible acts of inhumanity in my life, have even participated in a few, but nothing ever as callous as that.

It couldn’t be a rifle.

Or could it?

No… almost had to be some kind of pole or boarding hook. What almost certainly happened was, the boat stopped, the crew fished Janet and the others out of the water, then continued on to the remote backwaters of the Ten Thousand Islands where their human cargo was offloaded.

Then what?

Obviously, the three were not released there. Not alive, anyway-we’d have heard from them. If the vessel had returned to its home port of Cortez, same thing. They’d all be home by now.