Adán held up his thumb. She was right.
He kept on breathing in hard little bellows.
Parris eased the dinghy up close to the swimmers. They gripped the sides, making it rock. They would be tired by now, but no one bitched.
“Two in the boat at a time, fifteen minutes rest, spell each other off,” she told them.
“He’s going down there?” someone murmured, as the first two coordinated their heaves up into the boat so it didn’t capsize.
Adán moved past her to the stern and dropped over the side. He entered the water like an otter, with barely a splash. “I need a flashlight,” he said, moving around the side of the boat.
“Here,” Ramirez said, holding out his. “There’s a white float, about fifteen feet down. I tugged on the rope holding it. It’s anchored good.”
“That will help,” Adán said. “I can pull myself down on it and save oxygen, as I don’t have flippers. Right beneath here?”
“We may have drifted. I kept a watch on the cliffs on either end, so not much.”
Adán turned himself around to look at Parris. “I can only do this once. It’ll take about eight minutes.”
Parris gasped. Eight minutes!
“Damn…” a swimmer muttered, sounding awed.
“So don’t panic straight away,” Adán added.
“When should we panic?” Locke asked.
Adán said, “If I pop up and float with my face in the water, you can figure something went wrong.”
Chuckles sounded. Parris gripped the oar, her fingernails digging in. Her throat was so tight she didn’t think she would ever laugh again.
“Seriously,” Locke said.
Adán considered. “My personal best is twelve minutes and thirteen seconds. I’m not fully conditioned right now and these are adverse conditions. Let’s say…ten minutes. Okay, leave me alone for a moment.”
Everyone shut up as Adán breathed. His breath grew slower, then even slower and deeper. Parris’ heartbeat grew faster, instead. She wanted to shriek at him to stop, to not take such an insane risk. Locke had nailed it, though—they had to find out what was down there.
Adán sucked in a breath that seemed to go on forever. He rolled over in the water, his feet kicked once. The water closed over the top of him.
Panic seared her throat and roiled in her stomach. Parris made herself stay put and breathe.
Everyone hung over the boat, watching Adán’s flashlight cast about in the water as it sunk deeper. Then the direction steadied. He’d found the float.
The cone of light grew smaller, until it was a pin-prick. Then nothing.
“Fuck me,” Ramirez breathed, awed.
Parris’ heart thudded in her temples and her ears, marking the passing seconds.
“Two minutes,” Locke said, staring at his watch.
“What’s he going to do if he finds the cobalt?” Odesky asked. “He won’t have the strength to haul it up.”
“And we’re unequipped to handle it,” Parris replied. “We will have a precise location to give to the teams who can. That was the sum of our mission. Shut up for a bit, huh?”
“Sure, Captain,” Odesky said easily.
“Three minutes,” Locke said.
Parris closed her eyes. She started to shake. Is this what Locke’s wife went through while he was on tour? Is this what Stuart had gone through? No wonder Stuart had given up on her. No one could withstand this tension, not for long. She was almost ill with it.
“Four,” Locke breathed.
Her eyes ached. Not here, don’t cry here, she pleaded silently. She blinked. The trembling spread. She gripped the oars, fighting it off.
“Is it the boat making that little shimmer, or something in the water?” someone asked.
“Shut up, idiot,” came the reply.
“Oh…”
Silence.
“Five.”
“Jesus Christ…!”
“Shut up, shut up!” Ramirez hissed.
“Watch for a returning light,” Locke told them. “Yell when you spot it.”
Silence, except for the slap of tiny wavelets against the hull.
Locke glanced at his watch. He didn’t read off the time.
Parris closed her eyes again, her back bowing. It was impossible for someone to hold their breath for that long. Only, Adán had been certain he could. Had she sent him into danger? Had she killed him?
She shut down her mind with force, shunting away the fear and starving her imagination. Every time coherent thoughts tried to form, she reached for the black nothingness to replace them. She slowed her breathing and reached for calm and hung there.
Time passed.
“Shit! Is that a light, down there?”
Parris thrust the jolt of hope away, too. She waited, suspended.
“Definitely light,” someone murmured. “He’s coming back.”
“Why isn’t he coming up faster? I’d be clawing for air by now.”
“He has to stay behind his bubbles, or he risks getting the bends.”
“Man, could you do that? Your lungs burning, desperate for air? Could you make yourself slow down like that?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. I don’t plan on ever being down that deep without a tank.”
Parris heard every comment. She held herself still, even as her heart picked up speed.
“And…heeeere he is,” Ramirez breathed.
Parris let herself look.
Adán broke the surface, his face turned up, exhaling heavily. He drew in a deep, deep breath. He gasped in more air, floating on his back. His chest rose and fell.
A dozen hands reached for him and drew him to the boat.
Parris sagged, her strength running from her. She rested her head on her hand on the raised oar handle, shuddering.
Locke squeezed her shoulder. He bellowed. “Lift him into the boat. Then back around to the stern and we’ll tow you back to shore. Move it! We’ve been out here too long, waving lights and drawing attention.”
The boat rocked as the swimmers lifted Adán up and dumped him over the side.
“Ouch,” he gasped.
Odesky drew himself up and fell into the dinghy, too. “Wanna check him over, sir,” he told Parris.
Locke rested his hand briefly on Parris’ shoulder. “I’ll spell you at the oars, Captain.”
She nodded and made herself straighten and move over to the bow seat while Locke took her place.
Adán hauled himself up onto the narrow seat beside her. He sat with his head down, still breathing hard. Water ran from him in steady rivulets, adding to the brine at the bottom of the boat.
Odesky crouched between the front and back benches, digging in the backpack for his medical gear.
Locke turned the dinghy about and rowed for shore. He was hauling the men, so progress was slow.
“Whenever you’re ready to report,” Parris told Adán. “Take your time.”
“That was not a fun dive,” Adán said.
“No shit,” Locke replied.
Parris shuddered.
Adán reached for his shirt and with slow movements, put it back on.
Odesky grabbed his wrist and held it, his own wrist up to display his watch face. “Slower than I would have guessed it should be.” He sounded impressed. He lifted Adán’s chin and looked in his eyes. Then he pulled the lower lids down to look at the capillaries inside. “No ruptures.”
Adán reached for his jacket and with the same slow, drained movements, put it on. Parris squashed the impulse to help him.
“The cobalt core,” he said. “Was it in a square metal container? About this big?” He lifted his hands and spread them about a foot apart. “Heavy industrial steel, painted red, with the three-sided yellow radiation warnings all over it.”
Parris had seen the manufacturer’s brochure and specs for the medical sterilizer in California. “That’s it,” she said heavily.
Adán shook his head. “The core isn’t there anymore. It was. The containe
r is there, all busted open, but it’s empty. I had a look around the area. Only, the thickness of the steel on that thing…it wasn’t a curious whale that nosed it open.”
“If they’re taking it somewhere else, why haul fifty pounds of lead casing around with it?” Odesky said, running his specialized scanner up and down Adán’s body. “They’d have been lethally exposed either way.” He sat back and stuffed the scanner back in his backpack. “He’s registering,” he told Parris, “only I’d show more on the dial after a dental x-ray than he is.”
“Then I won’t glow in the dark?” Adán asked.
“Sorry,” Odesky told him.
“Damn,” Adán muttered. “There’s my fifteen minutes of fame gone.”
Locke snorted his laughter, his hands slipping on the oars.
Parris couldn’t laugh. She stared at the black cliffs and the beach ahead, sliding back into the ready state that her work required of her with something close to relief. This reach for mental clarity was familiar. It was safe.
Where was the cobalt? What had the Insurrectos done with it?
Chapter Twenty-Three
With the fractured sleep everyone in the house was putting up with now, it wasn’t a huge surprise to Téra to see a strip of light emerging from behind the nearly closed door to Minnie and Rubén’s office.
She pushed the door open, expecting to see Chloe bent over satellite images as she had been for hours, now.
Chloe sat up as the door opened and flipped her rippling hair back over her shoulder. Her smile was incandescent.
“What’s happened?” Téra breathed.
Chloe spun the set of photos laying on the table in front of her around, then pushed them toward Téra.
Téra looked.
They were almost completely black. There were streaks and blots on them that might have been something whizzing past the lens at high speed, or just a wonky photo.
“Someone dropped a cigarette?” Téra guessed.
Chloe rolled her eyes. “This is the satellite that passed over Vistaria six hours ago, more or less. It’s the view of Pascuallita from five hundred kilometers up.”
“So, not a cigarette, then.” Téra turned her head. “Six hours ago makes it eight pm. That explains the dark. I don’t get the rest of it.”
“This is in the hills behind Pascuallita,” Chloe explained with a patient tone. “Up by the snow level, where there aren’t any trees left. Those are camp fires, Téra. They’re big camp fires. Big enough to be seen from space…almost as if someone wants us to see them.”
Téra’s heart gave a little jump. “You think Cristián did this? There are thousands of homeless people on Vistaria now. It could be anyone.”
Chloe shook her head and reached for other photos. She put two of them in front of Téra. “Cristián and I used to talk all the time. The only inviolate, unbreakable schedule was eight o’clock, every night. Even if it was to say ‘Hi, I’m busy, see you tomorrow.’ Neither of us broke that schedule until two days ago. Now this.” She tapped the two new photos. They were both black. “This one was two minutes before eight.” She tapped the other one. “This one was two minutes after eight.”
She tapped the middle one with its streaks. “This was thirty seconds after eight pm.”
“You’re saying someone set up huge fucking fires that stayed lit for…what? Sixty seconds? Then put them out again?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Chloe said. “Look at them, Téra. Look at how they’re arranged. Does it remind you of anything? Step back and see them from a distance.”
Téra sighed and stepped back. “Streaks and dots,” she declared. “Wait…dots.” She looked up at Chloe, her heart lifted. “Dots and dashes. Morse code.”
Chloe’s smile was radiant.
“What does it say?” Téra asked, breathless.
“C. P. S.”
“Cristián Peña y Sanabria,” Téra whispered.
Chloe whirled away from the table but not before Téra saw the sparkle of tears on her cheeks. She kept her back to Téra, pretending to stare out the window.
“He’s alive,” Téra said, happiness touching her.
“And well enough to send me a message,” Chloe said, her voice strained. Her grip on the curtain she was holding to one side made her knuckles white.
Téra picked up the photo with the streaks on it. “Can I take this? I’d like to show Minnie and when there’s a chance, we should tell Duardo.” Only, Duardo had his hands full, by now.
No one would say it aloud although everyone in the house knew that earlier tonight the Loyalist Army had launched their assault across the straights, to gain a beachhead on the mainland of Vistaria.
It was why everyone was sleepless.
“Knock yourself out,” Chloe said, her tone distant.
Téra dashed to find Minnie, happy to be the bearer of good news for a change.
* * * * *
“Going somewhere, Nicolás Escobedo?”
The question came out of the dark night, startling Nick. He gripped the hawser that ran around the edge of the white, clean deck and looked up at the dock. “Chloe?” he asked the silhouette standing there. The hair and general shape was hers. “What the hell are you doing, sneaking around in the dark at two in the morning?” He wound up a sheet and dropped it over its cleat. Adán would be pissed if he messed up his boat.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Chloe said.
“You’ve never heard of night sailing?”
“No, I haven’t,” she said. “People who take off in a boat in the small hours of the morning don’t do it for pleasure.”
Nick weighed up his options. How could he get her to go back to the house? “I saw the satellite photos you printed out, today,” he said, making it sound casual. “Is it true you can focus on a single person, if you pull the camera in tight enough?”
“If I had control of the camera, sure. When you hack your way into the feed, though, you get to sit and watch and shut up about what it’s pointing at.” She said it as indifferently as he had. She shook her head. “It won’t work, Nick.”
“Hacking a satellite? Seems to have, so far.”
“Trying to distract me and make me want to go back into the house and study more feeds. Trying to make me feel useful and wanted. That’s what won’t work.”
Nick resisted tightening his shoulders or holding his breath. Either of them would make him appear tense and defensive. “Are you out here to meet someone?” he asked. “It’s a good night for it.”
She laughed. “And now he shifts the subject to sex. Wow. You’re good, Nick, but you’re being way too obvious.”
Nick sat on the striped cushion behind the wheel and blew out his breath. “I’m tired,” he admitted and pushed his hand through his hair. “What do you want, Chloe?”
“Is that an attempt to evoke my pity for you? Are you hoping I’ll leave you alone to sulk, so you can get on with your nefarious plans undisturbed?”
Nick gripped the wheel. “Well, it was worth a try,” he admitted. “And I am tired,” he added.
Chloe bent and put her hand to the edge of the jetty, then sat with her feet dangling over the edge. Her sneakers swung a bare inch above the deck of the boat. Her movement let him spot the backpack on her shoulders.
His gut tightened.
Chloe looked over her shoulder at the backpack. “That? Oh yeah.” She shrugged out of the pack and dropped it onto the deck of the boat.
Nick shook his head. “No.”
“Yes.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I was standing at the window twenty minutes ago. I watched you carry a rifle bag into the cabin, along with other boxes and bags that didn’t look like luggage. From the length of the rifle bag, I’m guessing it’s a sniper rifle. El Leopardo Rojo is heading to Vistaria, to do what he does best. And you’re taking me with you.”
He crossed his arms. “You’re right. I’m going to Vistaria. Only, I’m trained in more ways than you can possibly
imagine. While you’re….”
“I’m not stupid. I know what’s over there. I’ve been staring at the damn photos for three days. I know how to be sneaky.”
“Vistaria is not an Internet cafe. People are dying. No one is a civilian, not according to the Insurrectos. There’s fodder and there are soldiers. Your Spanish sucks and you don’t look like a local. If they see you, they’ll shoot you. They won’t stop to ask questions. You won’t get a phone call.”
She swung her feet, considering him. “You’re going to get Calli, aren’t you?”
Nick waited for the spike of tension to pass before he answered. “I’m going to kill Serrano,” he said. “Which means I’m heading for the heart of the lion’s den. You really don’t want to come with me.”
“You’re going to kill Serrano so you can get Calli back. Yes or no?”
“Yes,” he said heavily.
“Nick, you don’t look any more local than I do. You think every Insurrecto hasn’t got standing orders to shoot red-headed men without question?”
“’At night, all cats are gray’,” he quoted. “Which is why I need you to pick up your pack and move. If I don’t start now, it’ll be dawn before I get there.”
She moved. Nick sighed as she stretched her legs, planted her feet on the deck and straightened. She put her hands on her hips. “I’m not stopping you. So don’t stop me. You’re going for Calli. I’m going for Cristián. You’re right about the Insurrectos. We’re all soldiers now. So let’s get going.”
Nick studied her, weighing options. Probabilities.
Then he mentally shrugged. She was a grown woman. Who was he to talk her out of it?
He prodded the start button for the little motor and glanced at her. “At least make yourself useful. Cast off.”
* * * * *
They returned the dinghy to where they had found it and covered it over with the seaweed and netting. As they worked to return everything to the way it was, including removing drag marks from the sand, Parris shouldered her pack and thought about next moves.
Adán came and stood in front of her. She looked up at him, startled. He had never openly approached her in this way, not in the three days since they had found him.
He rubbed at the back of his neck. “You have something of mine I’d like back.”
Casualties of War Page 24