by Weston Ochse
So Los Tiburones had created their own currency. They called them chits. The value of a single chit fluctuated greatly, but converting them was a standardized process. When a chit was cashed, the person who issued it was required to produce a good or service for the benefit of the holder. There was an acknowledgement that a chit could not be cashed if doing so would harm either party—it was too close to blackmail or extortion—but enough chits could indenture the purchaser for a long time. They could be traded from one person to another, but they remained tied to the person who’d issued them. So a chit from Sanchez Kelly, thanks to his notoriety and social status, was more valuable than a chit from someone working aboard a refinery ship and squeezing diesel fuel from oil.
To Los Tiburones, chits were everything. And Lopez-Larou had the almost impossible job of selling them an idea that had no worth.
So how was she going to sell it?
One possibility had been to count on the social consciousness of the two kingpins, but that was quickly determined to be a lost cause. Neither Sanchez Kelly nor Paco Braun had any social consciousness; there were as likely as not to sell their mothers for a few extra chits.
Another option had been to use their past respect for her father, but that, too, was dismissed. Their respect had been predicated on an understanding of her father’s capacity for violence and revenge. Now that La Jolla was dead, the little respect remained was what allowed Lopez-Larou to survive as the proverbial thorn in their sides.
She’d finally settled on laying out the truth. She wasn’t smart enough to determine what new form of currency could be used. Perhaps the chit system would survive, even if the value fell. But it was just as likely that something else would surface to replace it. She knew that one could never underestimate the need for people to medicate their lives through drugs, or doubt that desperation would kindle a mechanism for trade.
It was a given that there would be a great upheaval once the plan went into effect. Knowing in advance might enable the drug lords to prepare something. Regardless, their support was needed.
Kavika spent the evening with his mother and sister in their new cargo container. The fresh air and sun had done much to change his mother’s demeanor. Color had returned to her skin, her hair shone, and her sad eyes, as she beheld her daughter trembling in the clutches of Minimata Disease, held a new purpose.
Kavika combed his sister’s hair and sang to her like he’d done before the disease had attacked her. When he finished, his mother did the same to him. He was too old for such attention, but allowed it anyway, pretending for a few stolen moments that everything was as it used to be.
Near midnight, Kaja came and asked him to follow. Kavika went to ask what it was about, but the Pali Boy leader’s stony face promised no response. When they reached the center of the ship, they climbed to the top of the containers. Nine stories up, they could see the lights from all the ships, twinkles of life in an otherwise dark and restless sea. But his attention was fixed on what was at hand. All the Pali Boys were arrayed before them. Never before had Kavika seen them all in one place. There were more than a hundred of them, and to Kavika’s utter shock, all of their eyes were on him. For a moment he wanted to bolt and run; the memory of his beat-down from the sky was still fresh. But then he saw everyone’s smiles. They seemed happy that he was among them.
“What is this?” he asked.
“A ceremony,” Kaja said, motioning for him to come to the center. Lights ringed a man-sized space. An ancient man with ruined legs sat and smiled toothlessly, the tools of a tattooist around him.
“What kind of ceremony? Kaja, what’s going on?”
“I’ve told you that you are now a full-time Pali Boy.”
“Even though I haven’t made the leap?”
Kaja gave Kavika a sly smile. “Given the chance now, I know you’d have no qualms about making the leap. You’ve done more than that. You’ve established your bravery in ways that no one else can compete with.”
Kavika lowered his gaze. He felt pride, but he also felt embarrassment, especially now that all the eyes of the Pali Boys were upon him.
“We also want to honor you,” Kaja said, his voice carrying the authority of a leader and loud enough to be heard by all. “We have not always treated you as a brother. There were times when we felt you were living off the notoriety of your father rather than carving your own path through the waves. But that was then and this is now.”
“That was then and this is now,” said the others in unison.
“You once were beaten from the sky, but that was then and this is now.”
The others chorused the phrase.
“You were once just a kid, but that was then and this is now.”
“That was then and this is now.”
“You are a Pali Boy and a member of a sacred brotherhood.”
“Sacred brotherhood.”
“Where you go, we will follow.”
“We will follow.”
“Where we go, you will follow.”
“You will follow.”
“We are family.”
“We are family.”
Everyone stared at Kavika as he stood amidst them. His hands were at his sides. His face was red. He tried to meet their gazes, but he found it hard.
“What do you think?” Kaja asked him quietly.
“I don’t—I mean, thank you.”
Kaja reached out and clasped Kavika’s arm.
When they’d finished, Kavika glanced around and asked, “So is this all there is to it?”
Kaja laughed. “He wants to know if this is all there is.”
The others laughed with him; some of them nudged each other conspiratorially.
“No, this is not all of it,” Kaja told him. “We have a tattoo to provide you. Being a Pali Boy is blood deep, but there are times when seeing is believing.”
Kaja guided Kavika to the tattooist. Kavika watched as he cleaned his right shoulder with alcohol, and felt the first needle pricks of the shark bone that was used to create the tattoo. It was simple, but it meant so much: a hand curled into a shaka, the back of a fist with the thumb and pinky finger extended. It was an image of belonging, of instant camaraderie.
When it was all done and his skin was buzzing with the pain, he was asked to stand. The Pali Boys approached him one by one, welcoming with a shaka and embracing him, now brothers forever.
Kaja came after Kavika had met and brothered every Pali Boy and embraced Kavika in the same way. Then he held Kaja at arm’s length. “I’m glad that we’ve done this. It makes me happy and honors your father. He would be proud of you, Kavika.”
Kavika felt that pride suffuse him, and a sense of belonging that he’d never known before. But seeing Kaja brought to him another idea, one that would bring him even closer to his father.
“What about that?” Kavika asked, pointing at the dark tattoo line bisecting Kaja’s chest from neck to crotch.
“This? This comes from diving the line. Only myself, your father and a few others have done it.”
Kavika leaned close to Kaja and whispered “169.”
Kaja’s face went rigid.
Kavika had thought for so long that he’d dreamed those numbers. He hadn’t known what they’d meant until he’d had the chance to relive, over and over, the events that had separated him from the monkey. So much of it had been clothed in his nightmares; where reality ended and began had become an equation that needed to be solved. The numbers had always meant something, and it wasn’t until he saw the representation of the anchor cable on Kaja’s chest that he’d realized exactly what it was.
“I dove the line,” Kavika said. “I dove the line and survived.”
Kaja looked uncertain for a moment, glancing at the other Pali Boys. Only those closest had heard the exchange, but they were passing it back to the others. Soon the low rumbling of conversation surrounded them.
Kaja held up his hands.
“Kavika says that he dove the line,” he said
so everyone could hear.
“Does he have the number?” a Pali Boy asked.
“Yeah, does he have the number?”
“He does,” Kaja affirmed.
The cry went up. Pali Boys cheered.
“I didn’t know how much you’d remembered of the separation,” Kaja said to Kavika.
“I didn’t know how much I remembered either. So does this count?”
“You dove the line, didn’t you?”
Kavika nodded.
“Then it counts.”
This time they had Kavika lie down. The tattoo took hours, and was more painful than the shaka. But eventually a line as wide as a man’s thumb began to appear from Kavika’s neck all the way to his manhood. He burned with pain, but concentrated on the end state.
When the tattooist was done, Kavika got to his feet, a little wobbly. But when he saw the dark line cutting him in half, it was like he was a different person. He was a Pali Boy. He’d dived the line, one of only a few who’d done it.
But his happiness was short-lived.
The gathering was disturbed by a lean figure climbing atop the containers: Sanchez Kelly.
“They’ve killed Paco Braun,” he announced breathlessly. “They’ve killed Paco and they’ve taken Lopez-Larou.”
Kavika felt a sense of déjà vu. The last time a friend had been taken, he’d found only her head. This time had to be different.
It just had to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SANCHEZ KELLY LAID it out for them. After Lopez-Larou had come to them with the plan, there’d been much discussion. The drug lords weren’t as heartless as one would expect, but they weren’t exactly happy about losing their wealth either. Still, they’d been considering a change in their modus operandi anyway, something more concrete than the trade in favors. Their idea had been to deal in blood, and sell it to the Corpers for technology, something that was sorely lacking outside the Freedom Ship. In turn, the Corpers would receive a legitimate supply of blood, doing away with the festering resentment caused by the blood rapes.
So Braun and Lopez-Larou had gone to the Freedom Ship with the intention of selling this idea to the Corpers. If they could manage to do it before Kavika’s plan went into effect, they’d have a firm commitment from which the Corpers would be hard-pressed to renegotiate.
That is, until the Rediscovered Dawn stuck its nose into the negotiations.
Kelly held out a small video playback device. He pressed a button and they watched as a Japanese man listened, nodding now and again.
“We retrieved it from Braun’s body. They just threw him into the lagoon.”
“Didn’t they know he was recording?” Kaja asked.
“Oh, they knew. You’ll see later. The sound went to crap with the water. No way to fix it in time. But it doesn’t really matter what they said. You’ll get the gist of it.”
The camera’s point of view looked down slightly on the Japanese man. The conversation went on for several minutes. Occasionally, the camera would turn to Lopez-Larou, on Braun’s right. There was an occasional hiss of sound, but nothing recognizable.
Two more Japanese entered the room and began to talk animatedly. The conversation, which had previously been fairly calm, grew more frenetic as the camera turned back and forth to take in everyone present. Lopez-Larou looked worried, and a little frightened.
Then things changed dramatically. All the Japanese turned towards the door as it slammed open and three men strode in. They wore some sort of armor and carried pistols and machine guns of a sort that Kavika had never seen before. They all had blond hair and blue eyes. One of the Japanese men tried to say something, but was silenced by a backhand from one of the new arrivals.
The camera moved frantically for half a minute. No one could make anything out. When the picture finally stabilized, the camera lay on its side at floor level. Lopez-Larou could be seen struggling as she was taken out the door. Then six Boxers filed into the room, grabbed Braun and carried him through the halls to a viewing platform, atop which stood several more armored men. The image jerked as the camera was picked up and carried out behind him. One of the armored men sawed off Braun’s head, brought the camera in close to look at him, said something and then threw the head and the camera into the lagoon. The picture tumbled for a moment, then flickered and went black.
Everyone stared at the screen. No one moved.
Kavika was the first to speak. “Son of a bitch,” he said, drawing out the words slowly.
No one said anything else for a moment.
“This changes everything,” a Pali Boy said.
Kaja shook his head. “No, it changes nothing.”
“We can’t still go in and take them down,” another Pali Boy objected.
“Kavika? What do you think?” Kaja singled out the fresh minted Pali Boy.
“It really doesn’t change much, other than we’re going to have to save Lopez-Larou, now.” Seeing the looks of some of his fellow Pali Boys, he added, “And she does matter. To me. And if she matters to me, then she should matter to you.”
“She matters to all of us,” Kaja said. “This is more than a matter of Pali Boys against the world. This is all of us against the damned Neo-Clergy. And if the Japs are with them, or whoever else, then it’s us against them, too.” He turned to the Pali Boys. “So where are we with the plan?”
“The slaver ship is clear,” someone said.
“How about the Water Dogs? Have they done what they needed to do?”
“We don’t know,” someone finally said.
“Then find out. Kavika is right. We’ll stick with the same plan, but we’ll move up the timeline.” He turned to Sanchez Kelly. “What’s your part in all of this?”
“I was going to let the others do everything and kick back until it was time to take credit,” Kelly replied. “But I think now I’d rather see what happens from the front. As much as I had problems with old Fatty Braun, we were friends. If anyone was going to kill him, I was hoping that it would be me. In fact, I’m pretty pissed off that it wasn’t.”
Kaja shook his head. “You are one strange customer. So what are you going to do?”
“Whatever Lopez-Larou was going to do, I’ll do.”
Kavika glanced at Kaja, then back to Kelly. “She was supposed to have already done it.”
“What?”
“Spike the drinking supply of the Freedom Ship with MDMA.”
“Ecstasy? She was going to spike the Corpers’ water with love dust?” Kelly laughed. “I’d like to see that. Problem was, she didn’t have near enough to make that work.”
“She knew that,” Kavika said. “She was going to steal yours and Braun’s stashes.”
Kelly stopped laughing. “I got hold of a bad batch. All I had in stock was dried psilocybin mushrooms.”
“Psilo-what?”
“What’s that do?” someone asked.
“About the same as LSD. If she managed to get my stash and add it to the MDMA, then it’s hippy flipping we go.”
“How do we know if she did her part?” Kaja asked.
“I can go back and see if she managed to liberate my drugs, but that wouldn’t prove she made it. Isn’t there anything else I can do?”
“Do you have any weapons?” Kavika asked.
“Does the pope have a pointy hat? Hell, yeah, I have weapons.” Kelly pulled one pistol out of the small of his back and another from beneath his left arm. “I have a small armory back on the ship.”
“Then it wouldn’t hurt to go back, get the weapons, and arm as many of Los Tiburones as possible,” Kaja said. “We’re about to pick a fight with Neo-Clergy. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Kelly looked around at the sweating faces of the Pali Boys, then put his weapons away. “I’ll do what I can.” Then he left.
After Kelly had begun climbing down, Kaja turned to Mano. “Go tell Ivanov that the time-table has been moved up. Tell him we attack in an hour.”
Mano
took off, but instead of climbing down, he leaped out, hands outstretched for a bird net. He caught it, flipped himself on top of it, and was soon swinging away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE REAL PEOPLE.
Kavika should have realized, just by the name, that they already believed they were better than everyone else. It was right out in the open and no one even realized it. Or maybe everyone did, and they just didn’t care.
And now here they were, standing at the edge of Real People territory. There’d been much talk about the initial strategy. The Water Dogs had wanted to make it a complete surprise attack. They’d argued against giving any advanced notice, claiming that Leilani’s death gave them the right to dictate strategy.
But both Ivanov and Kaja had dissuaded them, after almost coming to blows. They reminded the Water Dogs that after the dust cleared, everyone who survived would have to live together once more. If the Water Dogs were known to sink vessels without fair warning, no one in their right mind would ever trust them again. They could never be sure if some imagined slight or minor fishing infraction might lead to the Water Dogs drilling holes in the bottom of their boat. They eventually saw reason.
Kaja was also concerned about losing Pali Boys. He had no doubts that when the proverbial seagull shit hit the fan that some of his boys would die in the ensuing battle, and he wanted to mitigate that as much as possible. Delivering the news that the Real People’s chances of success were virtually nil was one of his strategies.
So here they were: Kaja, Kavika, and a dozen Pali Boys. All they were waiting on was Ivanov, who was bringing several of his own men. Together they’d confront the Real People with a unified front.
When Kavika had first met Abe Lincoln, it had been in a neutral location. This was Kavika’s first time aboard the Real People’s ships. They were comprised mostly of a fleet of fishing vessels, ending at a pair of oil tankers that now stood on their ends. They were rumored to have been placed there on purpose, welded onto the frames of nearby ships and reinforced with steel girders. The Water Dogs had informed them that the decks below the water line were free from water. The ships had also been rebuilt from the inside, constructed like the skyscrapers of old, with the floors running vertically; the Water Dogs didn’t know which one held the Real People hierarchy, but there was more movement in the one on the left.