TAKING TO TASK

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Dolly Mae"

"Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch!" Joe held his hand over his taped ribs as he shifted uneasily in the backseat of the car and tried to quell the pain. Joe ignored the sympathetic looks from the front seat as he shifted, slowly, and found a much more comfortable position. Leaning his head back he closed his eyes and wondered if maybe he wasn't being too stubborn for his own good. Maybe.

"Maybe we should take you to the hotel," Frank suggested, not for the first time since the doctor released Joe earlier that day. "You aren't going to do yourself any good if you puncture a lung by doing too much."

"I'm helping," Joe insisted. He had taken some ibuprofen earlier that day, not wanting a stronger painkiller that would make him all loopy. Joe preferred having all his wits about him when fighting bad guys and things with Ras-Alman were very personal now. He would see this one to the end, one way or another. "Not going back to the hotel unless you guys are. What did you say we were doing?"

Nancy exchanged a smile with Frank and ignored Joe's white-hot glower from the back seat. Joe nudged the front seat with a hand, careful not to jar his ribs.

"Steamship," Frank reminded Joe. Joe vaguely remembered something about a steamer ship or a riverboat or something like that. The Dolly whatsit? "Ras-Alman owns one, called the Dolly Mae. There's a package – read shipment – arriving from New Orleans, docking near the Arch. We're going to see about getting on board, one way or another."

"Yeah, if the F.B.I. isn't already there poking their noses around," Nancy muttered. Obviously, learning about Ned still rankled. Joe remembered that from this morning when they interviewed him about his injuries. Ned, an F.B.I. agent. Who would have figured that one?

"Interesting bit there," Joe said. "Since when is Ned Nickerson F.B.I.?"

"Since before I knew him," Nancy said. "Shows how great a detective I am, doesn't it?"

"Or how good he is at undercover work," Joe grimaced again. His ribs were going to be the death of him yet and this car – did Frank have to hit every single pothole in the road?

"Mmm," Nancy noncommittally stated. She looked back at Joe for a moment and saw the pained expression on his face and shook her head. "MUST you be so stubborn, Joe?"

"Must," Joe agreed with a grin. "Part of… my charm. Joe Hardy, brain, brawns and stubborn veracity."

"Brain?" Frank asked curiously. "Because I'm pretty sure I'm not the one riding around out here with broken ribs and more bruises and cuts than I can count. And I'm not the one who only took an over the counter painkiller too. Nope, I don't think we can credit you for brains today, little brother. You gave those up somewhere along the line."

Joe rolled his eyes eloquently. "I'll have you know that the girls love me for my brainpower, my ability to put two and two together to get four. I'm a natural talent, unlike some people I can mention who have to WORK at it."

Frank snorted and Joe resisted the urge to laugh. Laughing was so not a good idea right now. In fact, in the way of ideas, laughing was very low on the list at the moment.

"Okay, okay, you're smart," Frank agreed. "And you have natural intelligence. We always knew that. That leads us back to stubborn…"

"You're just as bad as he is," Nancy reminded her boyfriend tartly. "The both of you together are worse than any thousand other stubborn people. Running around with gunshot wounds, knife wounds, broken limbs, broken ribs… never knowing when it's time to slow down and let your body heal. Don't even think you're not as bad as he is, Hardy."

Frank grinned. "And you're saying you're NOT, Drew?"

Nancy shrugged but Joe saw her blush.

"How far is it to this place?" Joe asked. "And must you hit every hole in the road, Frank? Aren't there better roads between here and there?"

Frank looked in the rearview mirror and winked at Joe. Joe nudged the back of his seat with a foot and winced in pain when it pulled on his ribs.

"Remind me to kill you later okay?" Joe asked his brother. "Because you need it. Badly. That or just a solid butt-kicking would work."

Frank snorted and laughed. "You wish. Even at your best, little brother, you wouldn't be able to kick my butt."

"Your memory is obviously still altered," Joe grinned. "Because you were never able to take me."

Nancy shook her head, laughing at both of them.

The banter had its desired effect. By the time they arrived on Leonor K. Sullivan Blvd. they were relaxed and ready to take a look around. Frank parked in one of the many parking lots located in the area and they walked, slowly so that Joe could keep up, down toward the riverside area. There were already several riverboats, some of them permanent fixtures, on the water, along with other smaller boats.

It took them about ten minutes to find out where the Dolly Mae moored, at a location called "Steamer Dreams" that allowed a person to take a dinner cruise on the steamer and which took a trip down to New Orleans once a month.

The smell down here was pretty intense, not something any of them enjoyed. They stood for a moment watching the boat; it was fairly empty at the moment with only crewmen bustling about, washing the hull, moping decks and wiping down all of the windows so that the ship sparkled.

"Do you think they took the shipment off already?" Frank asked softly as he watched the crewmen working.

"It just docked forty or so minutes ago," Nancy said. "I don't think they could have gotten it off already, not before the passengers disembarked. They may wait until the crew is gone before they unload it."

"Someone should get closer," Joe said. "See if you can get a look around."

"And if any of Ras-Alman's henchmen are on board, they'll recognize us immediately and we could be in major trouble," Frank shook his head. "The idea here is to not get killed, remember?"

Joe sighed. "So what do we do? Just stand here?"

"Look over there," Nancy pointed to the other side of where the ship was docked. They could see Ned and his partner there, along with several other agents. "Looks like they've either got a search warrant or they're waiting too. Great, they may never unload that cargo…"

So far, the F.B.I. had not moved in on the boat yet, but it was just a matter of time before they did. Joe continued to scan the ship, looking for anything that would give them a clue as to where they wanted to go. He moved cautiously forward, ignoring hisses from Frank and Nancy, until he was right beside the docked ship and able to touch the hull. He looked through a couple of portholes he saw but nothing was immediately visible through them; obviously the porthole provided the only lights in the rooms inside. It was shadowy.

He stepped back for a moment and walked down the path away from the ship and turned around again, his eyes going wide with shock when he did.

"Frank, Nancy," he hissed suddenly. "Come here!"

Frank and Nancy ran to Joe's side and stopped, peering around the back of the boat to what Joe had seen on the other side.

There, two men wearing black scuba gear were offloading two large crates into the back of a sleek, fast-looking powerboat.