Page 6 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

“A truck comes. You open the gate, they load, you never saw anything. Same as the paintings.”

“Why one guard?” It’s out of my mouth before I decide to ask it. Crews double up on anything worth this kind of money.

“Because one is what they asked for.” Sully looks at me, then away. “They want discreet and quiet. That’s it.”

I let it go. Not my question. Nothing on this boat is my question.

He pays me the front half in the galley on the way through, counting it out of a bank envelope under the propane light. I don’t count it after him. In six years he’s never been light. We walk the deck line in the rain while Sully talks.

“Crew’s gone,” Sully says. “Brought the payload in last night. You won’t see them again. From tonight it’s you and nobody. Nobody aboard, nobody on the dock, nobody close. Anyone who isn’t me tries to come up that gangway, you discourage them.”

“Discourage.”

“You’re a big discouraging guy, Kessler. That’s the whole job.” He grins around the cigarette.

He’s not wrong. I’m six foot four and I look like trouble even when I’m asleep. It’s been my living since I was seventeen.

I grunt. I can look discouraging. And not bad money for just waiting around looking mean, just in case it’s needed.

The money for this job is going into my lockbox with the rest of what I’ve saved.

There’s land in the Upper Peninsula, cheap the farther you get from the road. Trees, snow, no neighbors. Two more years of jobs like this one and I’m gone, and the entire human race can get along without me.

“Cargo’s below,” Sully says.

He takes me down through the deckhouse, along a passage that smells of bilge and old paint, to a ladder and the hold. His flashlight swings ahead of us.

They’ve welded a shipping container into the hold.

That’s the second thing that doesn’t match. It didn’t come with the boat — the welds are bright, done inside the last week, and the box has been fitted out.

A vent cut high on one side. A marine battery wired through the wall to something inside. And on the door, a new steel hasp with two padlocks and a drop bolt, all of it still shiny. Locked and bolted from the outside.

Stacked against the bulkhead beside it are stacks of bottled water, cartons of canned food and granola bars, wet wipes, heavy-duty garbage bags. Two blankets folded in plastic wrap, and a camp lantern with a box of batteries.

I stand there and look at the stack, and I understand the job I actually took.

Machine parts don’t drink water. Paintings don’t need a vent.

“Sully.”

“Don’t.” He isn’t grinning anymore. “Don’t ask me. You know the rules.”

“I don’t do people. Freight. That’s the deal — it’s always been the deal. People are heat. That’s serious time.”

“And that’s why it pays thirty for two weeks of sitting down.” He drops the cigarette and steps on it. “It eats twice a day. Water, whatever it needs off the stack. There’s a bucket in there already, bags and wipes for the rest. You keep it alive, you keep it in the box, and in two weeks it ships out and you never think about it again.”

“It,” I say.

“That’s the word I was given.” He won’t look at the container. In six years I have never seen him in a hurry to get off a job site. He’s in a hurry now.

“Sully. I don’t do people. You know it.”

“The people paying for this, Kessler — you don’t say no to them after you’ve said yes. That goes for me too.”

“For fuck’s sake, Sully.”

“You and me both are in deep shit if we say no now.”