by Dan Vining
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“What do we do now, Chief?” Tucker said. “The federales with their stinkin’ badges are gone. It’s back to just us.”
“Did you say justice?” Nate said.
The sun was almost gone. The second Zodiac, headed for shore with the second load, was just pushing through the back of the wave, making it look easy. The third and fourth boats were out in the rollers, on their way to the sub, where the rest of the human cargo stood on deck in a line, like passengers waiting for the train.
Rockett said to Nate, “There’s something in the back of that second truck.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Nate and Rockett were still high above the picnic area. The drivers below weren’t loafing anymore. The first Zodiac was just arriving, driving right up onto a sandy bank under the trees. The Okies jumped out. Whether it was a joke or not, one of the men among them knelt and kissed the ground. One of the truck drivers grabbed the bowline, pulled the boat up higher, and wrapped the line around a tree. The boss man was dropping the tailgate on the second truck, and the other driver was standing beside him. The Okies started toward the back of the nearest truck to climb aboard—just trying to be helpful—but the boss man shooed them away to wait beside the picnic table. He gestured for the two men from the Zodiac to come forward. They disappeared under the covering of the half roof of the truck and pulled out a loaded pallet.
The gray-green picture on Nate’s screen showed a stack of packages the size and shape of loaves of bread. A tall stack.
“Is that cocaine?” Rockett said.
“Or heroin,” Nate said. “I was hoping it’d be pot, so I could not give a shit.”
Nate and Rockett watched as the two drivers and two boatmen formed a human chain to load the drugs onto the now empty first Zodiac. The boss man supervised, the drugs clearly more important than the people. The second of the Zodiacs arrived, pulled onto the bank next to the first. They’d put a white-haired man in the second boat but he wasn’t among the first ones off, instead waiting for others to go before him.
“Did they make it?” Tucker said. “What’s happening up Shit Creek?”
“First and second boats off-loaded, all good,” Nate said. “Where are the other boats?”
“They just started upriver toward you with the rest of the people,” Tucker said. “Have we got a plan here? I’m feeling like a spectator.”
“Are they loading them in the trucks?” Cho said.
“Whoa! Things just changed,” Tucker said, excited. “Heavy firepower.” He threw his track & target image over to Nate. The skinny man and the beefy Mexican were coming up out of the conn with machine guns.
“They’re loading a boat up here with heroin or maybe coke,” Nate said.
“Make money coming and going,” Cho said. “That’s Zap Wallace.”
Nate left the picnic grounds in the hills, dove toward the beach, then cranked left and flew along the surf line. There was no need to stay invisible anymore. If the crew on the sub saw them and panicked—now that the Okies were on dry land—so much the better. Let them panic. Panic had its uses as long as it was the criminals panicking.
Nate dropped and slowed, flying over the wave, the shore-break.
“What are you doing, Nate, reliving your youth?” Tucker said.
“Drop down on the sub, right on top of them,” Nate said. “Get big on them. Let’s let them get a good look at us.”
“That’s the plan?” Tucker said. “Scare them?”
“I thought you said Carlisle was coming in with a hydrofoil,” Cho said. “Where is it?”
Carlisle’s voice came on the radio. “We’re ten minutes away. Keep your pants on.”
“Stand off with the boat,” Nate said. “But you come on in, Carlisle. We could use another Crow.”
In the last minutes the sky had gotten lighter somehow, a last exhaled breath of daylight. Nate looked out at the horizon. The sun was touching the water. He dropped down even closer to the top of the tube of the wave and turned left, running the length of it. It was a quarter-mile long. Flying slowly along it like this, it seemed even longer, impossibly long, a wave in a dream, a wave that never breaks. It was what the place was known for. The other thing was the Keyhole—or just the ’Hole. The reef was relatively close to the beach, no more that twenty-five yards out. You’d get in position, watching and waiting, and then you’d see the build and start digging. If you’d timed it right—or if it had timed you right—you’d feel it lift, rise under you with such force they joked about being thrown into the sky. If there were other surfers and they saw you dig in and catch it—if they thought you’d earned it—they’d back off, let you have it to yourself, for safety’s sake if nothing else. Because three-quarters of the way along the glass tunnel—with no warning, other than legend—the bottom dropped out of the wave. It was like being thrown off a roof. Free fall. If you had anticipated it and gone high, you’d power on across. Otherwise, you met the Keyhole. Nate never thought to call it anything other than that because that’s what he’d seen through the jade water, coming up at him. A keyhole. A shape cut into the reef the length and width of a coffin, four feet deep, sand on the bottom. The reef around it would surely kill you—crush you, shred you—but the Keyhole was worse, the Pacific holding you down until your lungs burst, or the wave broke.
Nate didn’t remember what he’d thought then—on his back in the Keyhole, the one time he rode Conqueroo—but now, skimming alongside the wave, looking ahead to where it fell apart, he flashed on the other times he’d almost died, for real. Would those scenes have happened—or happened to someone else, some other cop or cop’s boy—if he’d been held down a minute longer? A minute. Can a single minute make all the difference?
If the key goes in the lock.
Nate came to the end of the wave, kicked out, flew out over the sub, and came in low, as if daring them to shoot at him. The tattooed man and the Latino man raised their full-auto rifles, but the one in the beige suit shook his head no.
Now Tucker and Carlisle came on scene in their Crows, a real show-of-force moment, even if the cops—a hundred miles into a country not their own—didn’t have much to back it up. The timing was perfect. The first boat loaded with drugs was approaching the sub. The throttleman in the Zodiac idled, unsure for now what to do. He grabbed up a walkie.
“I’m opening the hatch,” Nate said to Rockett. The hatch scissored up. “Do that thing you did with the shotgun on the roof in the TMZ. Only don’t shoot.”
Rockett climbed out of his seat and stepped down onto the right-hand skid, holding onto the fuselage with his left hand and single-handing the shotgun with his right.
Carlisle saw what Nate was doing. “I want to do that,” she said.
“Go ahead,” Nate said.
Then Carlisle’s gunner was hanging out the hatch too. Her gunner may have been a woman. Tucker just had Cho in the second seat.
The three helos circled the sub. The Zodiac’s throttleman looked to the sub for guidance. It took another rotation of the jacked-up Crows before the shoulders of the Black in the beige suit slumped in resignation. He waved off the Zodiac, then said something to the skinny man and the other crew member, and the two crawled back down into the sub. The boss man looked up at Nate in the Crow and flipped him off, just for the sake of pride and professional discourtesy. Then he climbed into the conn and pulled down the hatch behind him. The submarine submerged a second later.
The boat of drugs pivoted and powered back toward the mouth of the river.
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The three Crows crossed the highway into the hills, Nate bringing up the rear. The sun was gone, as if the submarine had taken it down with it. All three pilots snapped on their night-vision gear. There was a commotion at the campground. The drug-run Zodiac had come back fast with the bad news and now a clumsier version of the human chain was off-loading its car
go into the back of one of the trucks.
“Let’s see if these guys spook as easy,” Tucker said. “Lights on or off?”
“Off,” Nate said. “For now.”
“Where do you want us?” Carlisle said. “Blocking them down on the highway or up here?” All three birds were staying high for now.
“If they get on the highway, they’re gone,” Cho said.
Rockett had stayed out on the skid with the shotgun. “Get back in,” Nate said. Rockett climbed up into the second seat. The hatch came down. Nate was directly above the campground. Tucker and Carlisle were circling, standing off. The night-vision light-booster made everything below gray and green, made the Okies look even skinnier. They were like ghosts floating around under the trees.
All sixty seconds of a minute crept past. The hills beneath them had gone from brown to black in a heartbeat. There was no moon but a lot of stars, as if someone had flipped a switch. Up and down the coast road, no traffic, not a single pair of headlights.
“I’m going back down to the highway,” Carlisle said. “Where do you want the boat?”
“Stand by,” Nate said.
“Me or the boat?” Carlisle said.
“Both.”
Nate looked down at the scene. He’d changed his position to where he was above the dirt road coming down from the staging area in the woods. He dropped down another two hundred feet, until he was not much higher than the hills around him.
“They’re starting to load them,” Rockett said.
“Tucker. Do what I do.”
Nate counted to a hundred…and turned on his NightSun.
The ghosts became real. The Okies were all looking up, doused white as phosphorus, as if this were some kind of mass religious experience. Before they all threw up their hands, covering their eyes from the brilliance, Nate recognized two or three of them from the roof in the TMZ. Some were already in the back of the stake truck. They looked up through the slats in the braces and one hung off back of the truck, all looking up.
The drivers and the boss man scrambled to get in the front seats in the trucks.
Tucker said, “They’re not giving up. At least not yet.”
Nate waited another long minute and said, “Let them go.”
“What are you doing?” Cho said.
“Nothing,” Tucker said. “Let them go.”
“We came a long way,” Cho said.
“So did they,” Nate said. “Lift. Keep your light on. Show them the way down the hill.”
Tucker rose and flew down the hill, lighting up the dirt road, the escape path.
The trucks came to the coast road and turned north without stopping, a storm of dust coming down the hill after them. The drivers kept looking in their mirrors, waiting for the trap to be tripped.
Nate killed his floodlight.
“Where are they taking them?” Tucker said.
“There’s a turnoff, Mexico Three, a couple of miles up,” Nate said. “A work road. It turns north toward the big new ag operations.”
Carlisle had been listening in. “I’m going home,” she said. “Thanks for asking me out, Nate.”
“Thanks for coming,” Nate said.
“I need a beer,” Tucker said. “I’ll buy.”
“Rockett has to take a leak,” Nate said. “Go on without us. We’ll catch up.”
As the other two Crows blew northward, Nate landed on the beach. The hatches lifted. The rotors stopped spinning. Nate climbed out. He unkinked his legs. He patted the fuselage, the way a rider might pat his horse after a long ride. He’d been in the air behind the controls twenty-two out of the last twenty-four hours.
Major quiet. The kind that almost makes a man want to shout to break it, before it breaks him—that kind of silence. Nate walked away from the helo and took a piss on a bleached-white driftwood log that looked—at least tonight—like a dinosaur bone. With the Crow’s engines and radios off, there was nothing to remind the ear of the twenty-first century. Nate thought of those blue eyes again, looking up at him from the bed of the truck. White people, he thought—his people, he thought—when some buried tribal thing in him stirred. So he’d let them go. Let my people go. They were let go, left to go on to…something different. Whether it was better or not, it was left to them to find out. Nate buttoned up his flight suit and turned and looked out to sea. His eyes had adjusted to the moonless night. Now he could make out the white tops of the waves.
He looked up at the spread of stars. Ursa Major was on its back on the horizon. He tried to remember its name in Spanish. Ursa was bear. It would be Oso-something, he guessed. The Year of Not Giving a Shit was a long time ago. Osa Mayor! He looked back at the Crow. Rockett leaned against the tail section, rubbing his leg, drinking from a bottle of water. He lifted it in salute.
Chapter Forty-Three
There was that Shinola moon again, tonight just a comma at the end of the only slightly silvery path across the dark blue Pacific. The windows were open, the steady breeze stirring the chrome palms. Perfect. Everything come back ’round again. It was early yet. The club was all but empty. A man played the glass piano, that was it. Ava was alone at a table for three, the same table in the shadows where the black-haired Cali had sat and cried that first night, the first time Ava had seen her in the flesh. She was here tonight, Cali; she’d just gone to the powder room.
She came back. She stood over the table a moment, then smiled at Ava, sat down.
“Your lemonade didn’t come yet,” Ava said. “My lemon drop cocktail came and somehow it evaporated, so another is on its way.”
Cali smiled again. It seemed sincere, if limited. Tonight her hair was a color that was likely her natural color—taffy—which was near-blonde but not so obvious. Not so pushy, not so…Cali. She wasn’t wearing much makeup tonight, just a little color for the lips. She’d already lost her tan. She was wearing a loose, filmy dress. It appeared expensive but it didn’t look new. Maybe Vivid had given it to her, a hand-me-down, or maybe Cali had brought it with her to California, the best dress she owned. She wore white shoes more practical than stylish.
She looked beautiful. “Did you really go to New York when you were seventeen to try to be a model?” Ava said.
Cali gave her a look. “No,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
Ava realized the poor thing didn’t remember what she’d said at Lynch’s train station house up at San Simeon, when she’s been under the influence. She was about to tell her all about it—it was a funny bit—but then thought better of it. “Never mind.”
“I won a pageant, Rotary Club,” Cali said, with some combination of embarrassment and pride. “Somebody told me then that I should try modeling. I never looked into it. I wasn’t pretty enough.”
“Being a model isn’t about being pretty,” Ava said. “It’s about looking younger than you are and older than you are at the same time, for as long as you can pull it off.”
“Did I tell you I went to New York?” Cali said.
“I must be thinking of someone else,” Ava said. Cali knew Ava was concealing something from her. And Ava knew she knew.
Cali had cut her hair, too, or had a friend do it. Whether it was the new length or something else, Cali didn’t brush it off her face anymore, not once since she’d walked in the door and sat down. Had that little Veronica Lake twitch been a feature of Be.Here.Now? Or a bug in the program? It didn’t really matter anymore. It was gone.
“Like you said, never mind,” Cali said.
“That would be a good name for a program, NeverMind,” Ava said. “But don’t tell DL.”
“No, I won’t,” Cali said, rather dully. “I’m sure I’ll never see him again.”
“Were you using the Lynch thingie right from the start? Be.Here.Now.” Cali nodded. “You know, you’re smart,” Ava said. “You. You’re smarter like this than y
ou were like…that.”
“You mean like Cali.”
“Like Cali,” Ava said.
Of course, Cali had a real name and now Ava knew what it was, but she wasn’t about to use it. She’d seen the slight tremble in Cali’s lip from the start when she’d walked in the door of The Shinola. There was no guarantee that this was going to work.
“All you have to do is talk to him,” Ava said.
Silky Valentine himself brought Cali’s lemonade. He placed it on the table. “It’s on the house,” he said. He was acting oddly. “Handmade,” he said. “From…lemons.” He clicked his trademark click twice, but slower than normal, more seriously, not ready to walk away.
“What?” Ava said. “What’s wrong, Silk?”
He looked at Cali and then at Ava. “I don’t want any trouble,” Silky said.
“Then keep those lemonades coming, pardner,” Ava said.
He walked off, shaking his head.
“That was strange,” Cali said. She really was coming to her senses.
Ava had tracked her down to Vivid’s place in the hills, on Lookout Mountain. She had prepared for a full assault, a by-the-book strong-arm snatch-and-run. She’d put on her stealthiest catsuit, got her running shoes out of the closet, even called in backup, Chrisssy, who’d been positioned at the end of the cul-de-sac in case the subject climbed out the bathroom window. Ava and Chrisssy had gone over The Plan twice, studied the aerial of the house, synchronized their watches, had a here-we-go hug, and then they were ready.
Ava had been tying her sneakers when she’d said to Chrisssy, “I’m going to call her.”
“OK…” Chrisssy had said.
Ava had called Cali. Cali had listened to a sensible sentence or two, said yes.
“Did Vivid drop you off here?” Ava said now.
Cali nodded. “She might come by later. To see me off.”