Chapter 74 - The Dock at Pigeon Point
Grand Portage was an inferno of sleet, sodium vapor lights, and muzzle flashes.
When our convoy barreled past the abandoned timber weigh-stations onto the pier, the scene was already in chaos. Arthur’s forward team—a private maritime security contractor operating under a Panamanian flag—had ambushed the small Department of Natural Resources outpost and the tribal police detachment stationed at the dock.
Shell casings littered the crushed-gravel parking lot, glowing faintly against the snow. A DNR patrol truck sat crumpled against a light pole, its siren wailing into the empty night air.
"Stay down!" Miller shouted as our Suburban screeched to a halt behind an overturned snowplow.
The crack of high-caliber rifle fire slammed against our armored doors, spider-webbing the thick passenger glass. Through the cracked window, I saw three men in white winter camouflage taking up positions behind the wooden pilings of the commercial marina. Out in the deep water, an eighty-foot twin-engine steel trawler—the *Borealis*, a known Vance deep-water survey vessel—was idling, its diesel exhausts chugging thick black soot into the blizzard.
"They're trying to prevent the cutter from docking!" Thomas yelled, leaning across Ruby’s crib to shield her. "They're covering the trawler's departure!"
Agent Lin kicked her door open, firing her service rifle in three controlled bursts. "Suppressing fire! Move the principal into the concrete warehouse!"
Marilyn and I didn't wait. Clasping Ruby against my chest inside my sheepskin coat, I sprinted behind two marshals through the hail of fire toward the corrugated steel fishing depot at the end of the pier. The wind off the lake hit us like a physical wall, freezing the breath in my nostrils and lashing my cheeks with needles of ice.
Behind us, Thomas and Miller engaged the snipers, the sharp *crack-crack-crack* of their weapons echoing off the rocky bluffs of Pigeon Point. A round ricocheted off the steel doorframe inches from Marilyn’s shoulder, showering her hair with sparks.
We tumbled inside the warehouse. The heavy iron door slammed shut behind us, and Miller slammed the interior drop-bar into place.
Inside, the warehouse was cavernous, smelling of salted herring, motor oil, and frozen wood. In the center of the concrete floor sat a decommissioned naval launch—a surplus Navy SEAL combat craft that the federal task force had requisitioned from the Duluth reserve base.
Standing beside the craft was a man in an oilskin coat, calmly racking the slide of an assault shotgun.
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It was Captain Halloway, the old lighthouse tender from Copper Harbor who had given Donald his final warning weeks ago.
"You took your sweet time, Amanda," Halloway said, spitting a mouthful of tobacco onto the floor. "Arthur’s trawler just dropped lines. If we don't catch them before they hit the international trench off Isle Royale, they’ll breach the underwater lock before daylight."
