Pacific Fire

by Greg Van Eekhout

  * * *

  Cramped in the basket of the crow’s nest, they hunkered down and observed activity on the barge’s seaward side deck. A small crowd gathered there: the silver host, a uniformed LAPD officer, some assorted muscle, Carson’s bodyguards, and Carson himself.

  A white V appeared in the water, with a stovepipe at its point. As it neared the barge, the stovepipe rose higher atop a nub of a conning tower, a low wedge of black metal with a pair of grimy, pancake-sized portholes. Sam could hear a chugging engine now, and the dirty smell of diesel fumes coated his nostrils. The group on the barge grew more tense as the sub approached, except for Carson. He seemed as happy as a puppy.

  The craft fully surfaced. It was an unlikely conveyance, with external fixtures and pipes that might have been salvaged from a toilet, and sloppy welds and hammer marks where its steel skin had been pounded to curve around the structure. Corrugations suggested the ribs of the sea creature beneath.

  The sub bumped up against truck tires lining the dock.

  “I am not getting in that thing,” Em whispered.

  Which was the only sensible reaction to the sight of the junkyard submarine. It didn’t look sturdy enough to endure a swimming pool, much less the Pacific Ocean. But Sam couldn’t help but grin. It was a submarine. They were going to steal a submarine.

  With the squeal of unoiled metal, a hatch lifted and a man emerged. He was not the fearsome, scarred, tattooed visage Sam expected of a magic trafficker. His round face was fringed with a white beard. He gave the group gathering on the dock a jolly smile and spread his arms in greeting.

  “Hola! Hola!”

  Hampered by a large duffel bag strapped across his chest, he climbed out of the hatch. A pearl-handled, gold-plated revolver weighed down each hip. He gripped external pipe fixtures to steady himself and clambered out on top of the sub. One of the muscle guys on the dock tossed him a rope, and between the two of them, they tied the sub off.

  With help, he hopped to the barge, all smiles and embraces. Carson got the biggest hug. To the cop, he passed a small parcel wrapped in brown paper—a bribe, Sam assumed. He did it with as much cheer as General Griffintooth tossing presents to children on the Hierarch’s birthday.

  So this was the deadly El Tiburón, the Shark, head of the Baja cartel. He exuded more happy walrus than shark, but Sam remembered something Daniel had told him about heists: whenever something looks too easy, it’s a signal that things are about to go to shit.

  Three more men climbed from the hatch, and they did not look jolly. Their backs and arms and shoulders were covered with pebbly growths, like glyptodon armor. Thick, bludgeonlike tails with eight-inch spikes on the ends grew from their lower backs. The armor and spikes were cracked and grayed, not fresh growth. That meant these guys were fed enough magic that they never lost their osteomantic attributes.

  The head count on the barge was now up to a dozen, including lots of osteomantically enhanced muscle. How many guys does it take to equal a job gone to shit? Sam wondered.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late to change plans and steal a boat. But the submarine was just too perfect to abandon. Sam wanted it.

  Gifts and bribes and hugs and pleasantries finished, most of the party proceeded into the club.

  “There’s your diesel,” one of the club muscle said, pointing at a fuel barrel shoved up against the wall. “You don’t need our help, right?”

  “We got this,” said a glyptoid, his voice incongruously high and squeaky.

  The muscle followed the rest into the club, but the glyptoids remained behind.

  “We’re going to have to strong arm this,” Em whispered. “And I’m using ‘strong arm’ as a euphemism for suicide.”

  Sam rummaged in his kit and picked out a vial of hypnalis. “Meet Plan B.”

  “That’s just a mild sedative,” Em said.

  True. But Sam felt ready to try something.

  He dialed the flame of his torch and held it beneath the hypnalis. It needed to be heated to just above 920 degrees. Daniel kept cooking temperatures and times in his head, but it didn’t really matter. That was all recipe. Deep osteomancy relied on smell.

  Sam didn’t pay attention to anything but the contents of the vial. Not the salt air, or the persistent bobbing of the barge, or the distant geysers of whale spouts. Just the little bottle of magic. The sense of falling into cool clouds threaded its way to his nose. He spat in the vial and killed the flame.

  “I need something to soak this up. Little bits of cloth or something.”

  Em got out her pocketknife. “Untuck your shirt.”

  From his shirttails, she cut a few postage stamp–sized squares of cloth. Sam wadded them up and soaked them in the vial.

  “How’s your throwing arm?”

  “I throw like a girl,” Em said. “By which I mean with strength and accuracy. But those little spit wads aren’t going far no matter what. They’re too light.”

  “Easily fixed.”

  He sprinkled a few grains of prepped Colombian mammoth on the wads to give them more heft.

  Two of the glyptoids carried the fuel barrel over to a hatch near the sub’s stern. With a wrench, one of them unscrewed the gas cap and affixed a nozzle to the barrel.

  Em slid on a pair of gloves from Cassandra and weighed the wads in her palm. “You know, you might actually be a real osteomancer after all.”

  There were three glyptoids, and Sam had supplied her with only four magic-saturated bits of his shirt. She’d have to hit them in the face, the only unarmored targets they presented.

  When the glyptoid pulled the barrel away from the fuel hatch, Em stood and started hurling the wads. She nailed the nearest glyptoid above his left eye. The second one caught a wad in the cheek. The third one ducked, and the wad intended for him went over his head and hit the deck. The glyptoid stared up at the crow’s nest. His pebbly little eyes narrowed. He saw them.

  This was the moment things went to shit.

  Em fired off the last wad. To Sam’s utter disbelief, it landed inside the glyptoid’s mouth. The glyptoid paddled his arms backward and made a sound like dry heaves as he fell. He lay still on the deck, as did the other two.

  Scrambling down from the crow’s nest, Em went to shut the fuel hatch, while Sam untied the mooring line. He leaped onto the back of the sub and crawled to the main hatch. As he climbed down the steel-runged ladder into the dark, he finally understood what Daniel meant when he talked about being simultaneously terrified and elated.

  He squeezed into the cockpit, ducking his head under exposed wood and sloppily trimmed fiberglass. The air stank of diesel fumes, machine oil, human sweat, and glyptoid urine. The pilot’s seat was an office desk chair with the back removed, situated behind a steering wheel salvaged off a car and a two-lever control system off a ski boat. Various electronics were arrayed around the dashboard with a nest of cables so unruly it made Sam itch. A pair of valve wheels crowded his knees.

  Em came down after him, sealing the hatch. “Move over,” she said. “I’m driving.”

  “No way. You’re in charge of air and … other submarine stuff.”

  Em didn’t like it, and Sam couldn’t blame her. Who wouldn’t want to pilot a sub? But with a standard steering wheel and boat throttle, driving would be the easiest part. She squeezed into the stuffy tube behind him, crammed with suitcase batteries and thin mattress pads for the crew. A compartment the size of a laundry closet contained the diesel engine.

  With the turn of an ignition key, the engine chugged to life. Sam eased the throttle lever forward and whooped when the sub moved through the water. Once clear of the barge, he turned portside and pushed the throttle up. Within seconds of taking the sub, they were out to sea.

  “Em, we just stole a submarine, and I’m not even kidding.”

  He spun around in his seat to face her and found her grinning.

  “Okay, how do we submerge?” he asked.

  Em stared blankly at him. “How should I know?”

>   “I thought you said you knew how to work a sub.”

  “When did I say that?”

  “You implied it.”

  “With my silence on the subject?” She leaned over his shoulder. “The controls look pretty straightforward. I think we can do this.”

  “Good,” Sam said. “So. Submerging?”

  “Well, that part, I’m still not sure about.”

  “Submerging is kind of the most important part, Em. That’s why they call it a submarine.”

  “It’s one of those two wheels by your knees. One fills the ballast tanks to dive, the other empties them to surface.”

  Neither of the wheels was labeled.

  In a TV monitor mounted over the dash with bungee cables, a trio of chase boats glowed in night-vision green. Sam could make out people standing, aiming rifles over sloped windshields. Meanwhile, the sub pushed along, full throttle, at seven knots.

  “How do I put down the periscope?”

  Em glanced back at the pipe above her head. “I don’t think it goes down.”

  “I am starting to hate this sub.”

  “So steal the Nautilus next time. Oh, there, it’s that toggle.” Em clicked a light switch, and the periscope descended. “Now move your knee so I can fill the ballast.”

  Bursts of lime-green light flared in the TV monitor. Bullets struck the conning tower.

  “If those breach the hull—” Sam said.

  “I know how holes work.” She squatted down and reached between Sam’s legs for the wheel on the left. Only the fact that they were being shot at helped distract Sam from the location of her hand.

  Em gripped the wheel and, with a grunt, began turning it. There was a gurgle, and then the sound of rushing water—hopefully the sound of the ballast tanks filling and not the submarine flooding. Water rose up the portholes with a cascade of bubbles, and the sub sank below the surface.

  “Think we should turn around?” Sam said. “Back toward them?”

  “Like a Crazy Ivan? Operative word being ‘crazy’?”

  “Just to throw them off our trail.”

  Em shook her head. “Right now they probably think we’re headed to the mainland. Or maybe south, back to Mexico. Not out to open sea. And even if I’m wrong, it’s a big, dark ocean.”

  Creaks and groans sounded all around, like a haunted house. Sam expected the skin and the rib cage to cave in and let in an avalanche of cold Pacific seawater. But the sub was holding together under ten feet of pressure. At least for now.

  As far as Sam knew, Daniel had never stolen a submarine off a Mexican osteomancy cartel. He hoped he’d get the chance to tell him about it someday.

  FIFTEEN

  Avalon was a dead town. Bathing suits hung in mildewed tatters from racks inside the shops. Rental bicycles rusted in place. Signs in the filthy windows still said OPEN. Sam could just make out the cake-shaped old casino in the fog, looming over the ruins like the fading spirit of an extinct beast. Tourism in Catalina’s main settlement hadn’t been hopping since the Hierarch turned the island into a fortress.

  Sam and Em crept down the sidewalk in their sint holo–impregnated suits, hoping to be no more conspicuous than the stray cats prowling the beachfront street. Sam imagined they were stirring the ghosts of sailors on leave from Los Angeles.

  They found the wreck of a Spanish-style building with peeling stucco skin. Warped, chipped boards covered the windows, and over the door, Sam could still make out the scar of an old sign: PELÍCANO. Just like Max said.

  One of the boards over the windows rested on the sill and wasn’t nailed in place. Em slid the board aside, and they both slipped into the restaurant. Filmy glasses were racked over the bar. Salt and pepper shakers and ketchup bottles gathered dust on the tables. The floor was a mess of splintered wood and plaster, seagull guano, and rat droppings. Over by some booths, a mural provided a simple map of the island, two diamond-shaped landforms connected by a thin isthmus. The insertion point to the facility was supposed to be a small, hidden cove at the isthmus near the fishing settlement of Two Harbors, where a sea cave opened to the tunnel complex.

  Behind the front counter was a stack of menus. The plastic laminate was yellowed and brittle, but the menus were mostly intact. Em withdrew the seventh menu from the top and opened it to the appetizers. Inside were three blank slips of paper. They’d found the operative’s dead-drop.

  Sam unscrewed the cap on a pot of sphinx oil from his kit. Odors of hot sand and abrasive wind wafted up at him, whispering secrets and riddles in his sinuses. He rubbed an oil-dampened sponge over the papers, and the oil reacted with the ink on the paper. Though the writing remained invisible, the whispers grew louder and more distinct.

  Sam repeated the whispers to Em.

  “Insertion point viable. Conditions may change if delay persists.”

  The operative had expected Daniel a day ago.

  The next message read, “Insertion point compromised. Await instructions.”

  Things got even more discouraging with the last message: “My presence on island possibly discovered. Will make final attempt to determine new insertion point and relay to you.”

  Sam tucked the papers back in the menu and returned the menus as he found them.

  “What do we do now? Wait here?”

  “For how long?” Em said. “We don’t even know if the guy’s still alive.”

  “He is.”

  The hoarse whisper came from the kitchen. A woman aimed a gun at them made of some clear substance, like water suspended in stasis, not quite exactly like ice. She was decked out in camouflage, her face smeared with partially sweated-off black paint. Scratches on her cheeks and forehead made her look a little wild.

  “What day is it?” she demanded.

  Em responded with the code phrase supplied by Max: “It’s the day to get things done.”

  The woman didn’t lower her weapon. “You’re not who I was expecting.”

  “He was injured and couldn’t make it,” Em said. “We’re his replacements.”

  “Who injured him?”

  “Otis Roth’s people,” Sam said.

  “You’re lying. You caught Blackland and tortured him for the pass phrase.”

  “How do we know you didn’t?” Em countered.

  The woman changed her grip, and the gun seemed to solidify. It’d be hilarious to be killed by a water pistol, Sam thought. But she lowered her weapon.

  “You’re Sam and Em. The home office told me you might make it.”

  “What do we call you?” Sam asked. “Agent H2O?”

  “You can call me the unlucky bastard who had to wait for you to lollygag your way here.”

  Sam shook his head. “She’s not a real spy.”

  Em tensed. “What makes you say that?”

  “She said ‘lollygag.’ Real spies don’t say ‘lollygag.’”

  “Actually,” Em said, lecturing, “I met a spy in Lompoc, and she said ‘lollygag’ all the time. And she was a really good spy.”

  “Are you two done?” The spy looked ready to shoot them right now.

  “Sorry,” Sam said. “About the lollygagging.”

  “I found you a new insertion point. Not as easy to get to as the original, but that’s what you get for being late.”

  “For lollygagging, you mean.”

  Sam wasn’t sure why he wanted to give her such a hard time. Maybe messing with people who were poised to harm you was a trait he inherited from Daniel.

  She described a route to the island’s interior, up to the thirteen-hundred-foot summit of Mount Torquemada. Adjacent to an old antiaircraft gun emplacement, they’d find a ventilation shaft leading into the facility.

  “Nice of them to leave that there for us,” Sam said.

  “Nothing nice about it,” the woman shot back, her eyes bulging a little. Sam was getting the sense that her time on the island hadn’t been easy. “Sister Tooth is still using it as a gun emplacement, manned by a team of three. They check in downstairs by
radio once an hour. You’ll have to figure out how to handle that. Where’d your plane land, anyway?”

  “No plane,” Em said. “Crypto-sub. Anchored it in a cove. We’re hoping it’ll still be there when we’re done.”

  “Submarine. That’s nice.” Her estimation of them seemed to rise a little. “Much cushier than swimming from LA.”

  “You swam here?”

  She spread her fingers and showed them the webbing in between. “And I’ve got eight hours until the magic wears off. Which means I should have been gone a long time ago.”

  “Will you be able to make it back?” Sam suddenly felt responsible for her, as he did for Sofía Bautista, and Em, and the leech captives, and even, in a way that felt new and burdensome, for Daniel. He shouldn’t have made fun of her.

  The woman responded with a smile that made Sam think his question didn’t have a happy answer.

  “Good luck,” she said, departing through the kitchen.

  “You, too,” he said, though she was no longer there to hear him.

  * * *

  By now, the sun was rising, so they decided it was better to wait for dark, even though it meant holing up and spending an entire day in the decrepit restaurant. They dined on their ration of cereal bars and water and listened for sounds of approach. Rodents rustled in the ruins and pigeons cooed in the rafters. With little else to keep him occupied, Sam brooded.

  He wanted to ask Em about growing up with her sisters, about what it was like to have a family, to share a common purpose. He wanted to ask what it was like to be away from them. He wanted to tell her how, in this damp and foul place, he felt as if he were where he was supposed to be. Part of it was because he had sort of fallen in love with her. Just as he had fallen in love with Valerie at the Salton Sea. As he had fallen for any number of girls with whom he’d had momentary contact, because his heart was the vacuum which nature abhorred. And, possibly disconnected from these ridiculous feelings, he loved her because she was the first real friend he’d ever had.

  Once or twice, he caught her looking at him, and he wondered if there were things she wanted to say but couldn’t, because she didn’t want to risk being heard by a patrol party, or because she feared how stupid she’d sound if she spoke her words aloud. And so they sat in silence, and Sam hoped that when this was all done they’d both be alive and maybe they could sit at a table with good food in a house with furniture and have a conversation without worrying about leeches and guns.