Chapter 34: Wee Small Hour Excitement

Our blissful dreamings eventually became dreamy dozings, and I woke in the early hours for a pee, with Pauline snoring somewhat inelegantly beside me. The wind had dropped away to practically nothing, but the Northeasterly swell persisted and was bending round the headland to come directly onshore. The moon was low over the hills in the West, and the view over the bay was quite beautiful. I stood on my deck in my dressing gown, enjoying it.

It is really hard to see a boat moving slowly at night. Particularly when it is not showing any navigation lights (or any other lights for that matter). But the boat coming in through the heads was moving fast, and the water its bow flung up as it overtook each swell appeared as a regular flash of white in the moonlight. No lights, 3am, Hmmm.

I hurried inside for the binoculars my father claimed to have ‘liberated’ from a US destroyer during WWII. They had objective lenses the diameter of teacups, and their light gathering power in semi darkness was phenomenal. The boat coming through the heads was almost certainly the one we had seen earlier. I poked my head back in the bedroom and called Pauline.

By the time she emerged with her phone, it had stopped just up harbour from the rip. I handed her the binoculars, and told her where to look.

“It’s too small.”

“Nah – that’s a twenty five footer – it’s just too dark to see properly.”

“Balls – that’s a small boat!” She kept the binoculars up to her eyes. “And they’re coming this way.” To my naked eye, the boat certainly seemed to be heading straight for us, with twin flashes as its bow parted the swells. It did also seem to have shrunk! Then there were two boats! The big one got under way once more and as it gained speed the white of its bow wave showed clearly again. Pauline was very excited.

“You’re right. That’s the Bluefin. And it launched a small one that’s coming in here! No lights on either one!” Before I could answer, I caught a very faint and brief glow from the side of my eye. Everyone’s night sight is most acute on the edges of their visual field, and whatever it was came from down on the beach reserve in the general direction of the big Pohutukawa that had accounted for the ‘boy racers’ a few weeks previously.

“Let’s have those – there’s something on the beach.” Pauline handed them over, and I focussed the big binoculars on the beach. There was a vehicle parked on the beach reserve, partly hidden by the tree. One of the occupants had just lit up.

“Can you see something there?”

“There’s a pickup truck down behind the tree.” I swung the binoculars back. The bigger boat was proceeding up harbour, and the small one was still heading straight for us.

Pauline got on her phone. The number rang for a long time before going to voicemail. I listened carefully to her message.

“This is Pauline Goldman. I rang you yesterday to tell you that the Bluefin you were interested in was leaving harbour. It has just come back without lights and is heading up harbour at the moment. It stopped and launched a smaller boat which is heading for the beach where I first met you. There is a vehicle parked on the beach reserve with some people in it.”

Pauline was already dressed, and it took less than a minute for me to pull on sweats and a hoodie, slip on my crocs, and grab a torch and my phone. We hurried down my drive, but slowed when we reached the road, then walked away from the Pohutukawa for forty or fifty metres before crossing over to the beach. We sat down in the dark on the marram grass above the jetsam at the high tide mark. I thought briefly about NZ’s only poisonous spider. My grandfather had been bitten and nearly died more than a hundred and thirty years before, but even though vegetation on the shore is a prime Katipo habitat, I had never heard of anyone finding one in the bay, and I quickly put the thought away and concentrated on what was happening in front of me.

As the small boat got closer to the rocks at the Eastern end of the bay, I could see that there was only one occupant, and he (or she) shone a torch towards the beach. It wasn’t pointing at us. Yet!

“Cover your face and stay very still!” I kept my voice low, but Pauline got the message, and when the beam tracking along the foreshore eventually reached our position, it passed over us and kept going. Within a few seconds I saw an answering light from the vehicle, and the small boat altered course towards the tree. As it got closer to the beach, we could see that it was an inflatable dinghy with a small outboard, and by the time it grounded on the sand below the tree, two guys had got out of the pickup and were waiting at the water’s edge.

The dinghy was carrying quite a load. Five jumbo dive bags containing God knows what, but they were heavy enough to need two people to hoist each one onto the tailgate of the pickup. We watched as the men removed the motor and stowed it in the truck, and started to deflate the dinghy.

Then Pauline’s phone rang. Shit! We had been here before! She answered after the first ring, but the ‘persons of interest’ were only fifty or sixty meters away and obviously heard it. They responded immediately with muttered curses, and two torch beams began systematically sweeping their surroundings. Pauline turned away from the action and tried to whisper. Whoever was on the other end of her phone was quite emphatic with a warning that the men were dangerous and should not be approached. Too late! Their searching torch beams were approaching us. Fighting was out of the question. So was running. That left distraction.

“Drop your trousers - quick!” Pauline pocketed her phone and hurriedly started to disrobe. I pushed my own sweatpants down to my knees, and had moved half on top of her before we were dimly illuminated by one of the torch beams. I imagine my big pale bum was a beacon, but we were kissing by the time the second torch lit us up fully, and Pauline followed my lead to act embarrassed and guilty. We scrambled to readjust our clothing and present ourselves as a couple ‘in flagrante delicto’, separating as we got to our feet and turning our backs to the lights. We climbed up the low bank on to the road and hurried across it, separating to take different driveways up the hill, but I stayed very tense until I heard one of the men behind us laugh.

“A bit on the side I reckon. Otherwise, they’d be home in bed.” We each kept going until the torch beams left us and the men returned to the vehicle. I stopped and watched as they finished loading the deflated dinghy, and as they all got into the truck and headed for town, I risked shining my torch at the rear end. They were too far away to read the numberplate, but I could see the truck was a Ford Ranger, black or dark blue, and pretty new. Pauline rejoined me as it drove off.

“Shit – that was close!”

“Your phone has a history of ringing at inconvenient moments.”

“Sure does.” She pulled it out and dialled. Her call was answered quickly, but I could only hear her end of the conversation.

“Pauline again. The dingy was carrying five large and heavy bags. Three men are heading towards town with them in a black or dark blue Ford Ranger pickup.” There was a long pause. “Okay, I would appreciate it if you would update me when you can.” Another pause. “Goodnight.” She terminated the call and turned to me.

“Ryan was right. The guy who gave me the card is a cop. This is a drug smuggling operation. They have the Armed Offenders Squad standing by, and he will update me when the ‘operation is concluded’. He thought they would be able to stop them between here and town.” She paused. “Let’s go back to bed.”

We did. With some more port. We snuggled for a while and both turned on. One of the advantages of cumming without ejaculation, is that I am no longer ‘one and done’ and I was soon just as hard as I had been earlier. Pauline mounted and rode me as I dealt to her nipples, and we both came fairly quickly. This time I ejaculated, and we soon drifted stickily off to sleep.

Sunday morning followed a familiar pattern. Pauline had gone fishing in the dinghy by the time I first awoke, and had returned and processed a couple of nice snapper and a kahawai by the time I woke again and was showered and finishing my second coffee. She busied herself with the mushrooms in the small dehydrator and the oven, preparing a stash of weighed doses with the brittle dry mushies and refilling the dehydrator with partially dried ones.

We said our goodbyes and Pauline drove away with most of the fish, and the big dehydrator and its load. I stashed the weighed doses well down in my raw and slightly smelly compost bin in a sealed container, and thought about mowing the lawns, but had got no farther than checking the mower’s gas tank before Pauline rang me from her car, suggesting I spend Tuesday night at her place to talk more about how to minimize the risks of deep diving. I have to say I didn’t take much persuading. Lawns occupied the rest of the morning.

Stan rang after lunch, still keen to have his first fishing lesson. The bay was pretty flat, and there was no bad weather forecast, but I knew the sea breeze would strengthen as the afternoon progressed and the land got progressively hotter than the sea. We agreed to go out in the dinghy in the late afternoon and fish until dark. Sarah was ‘doing dinner’ so I thawed some bait and berley and took Pauline’s fish over to her.