by Mel Odom
Finally, her breakfast gone, Flicker put the box aside and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “The smartest thing we could do is lose the girl, the professor, and the artifact somewhere in the ocean between here and Amazonia.”
Hawke didn’t bother replying.
“But I know you’re not going to do that.” Flicker wrapped her arms around her bent knees while the mechanical arms continued working on the ATV behind her.
“No.”
“It’s not just the payday, is it?”
Hawke shrugged and nodded at the ATV. “Those look like some expensive repairs.”
“Those are expensive repairs.”
“I can’t pay for them with what I’ve got put away right now. We need a score.”
“A score, yeah. But we don’t have to have this one. Joaquin will allow me to owe him for a while.”
“Still have to pay the loan off.”
Flicker frowned and her aquamarine eyes narrowed. “It’s the girl, isn’t it?”
With Flicker looking at him like that, Hawke knew he had to give up that rough spot that was bothering him. “She’s an orphan.”
Flicker shrugged. “She’s had a hard life. So did a lot of other people. Like you and me. We grew up in the system, too.”
Hawke nodded. “That means we both know she has no one looking out for her.”
“She’s got her professor.”
“Does he look like the kind of guy who’ll stand up when the drek hits the fan?”
“Not our problem.”
“No, but if we get her to the Johnson, we get a pile of cred and she gets a way out of the mess she’s in.”
“You hope.” Flicker lifted a sarcastic eyebrow. “So, me and you? Against Aztechnology?”
“We’re lucky it’s just me and you. We’re easier to hide.”
“Gotta hide the girl, too.”
“Yeah. Think she’ll go along with this?”
“If she doesn’t, she’s on her own, and we find another way to pay for the repairs.”
“But that’s—that’s insane!”
Professor Fredericks stood in front of Hawke and gestured wildly for a moment. Then his mouth locked into track with his brain again. “You want us to aid you in our own kidnapping so we can be turned over to someone whose identity you don’t even know?”
Arms folded, face blank, back to the door inside the little room the two had been assigned, Hawke nodded. “Yeah.”
“You expect us to just . . . just agree to this?” The professor was on the edge of spluttering.
“The deal isn’t for you,” Hawke stated bluntly. The other man’s histrionics were getting on his nerves. “I’m willing to try to get you out of this mess for free. It would be a lot easier to just park a bullet between your eyes.”
Instantly he knew he’d gone too far, because Rachel’s face hardened at that. She folded her own arms, closing herself off.
“And that would be more kind than letting you fall into the hands of an Aztechnology black ops interrogation,” Hawke went on. “I’m offering you your only chance out of this.”
Fredericks paled a little at that. When he breathed out, he looked a little deflated. “All right. Just tell us what you need us to do.”
Hawke shifted his gaze to Rachel. “Does that go for you, too?”
Lips pressed together in a tight line of defiance, she nodded.
Even without his deception software, Hawke knew she was lying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Shortly before 1100 hours, the Scorpionfish docked without incident at an underwater base several kilometers off the Amazonian coast.
With the submersible at a dead stop, rocking slightly in the ocean currents, and the vibration of her idling engines sending a tiny quiver through her body, Rachel tried not to think dark thoughts. She wanted to live, to survive this . . . whatever it was that had happened to her, and get back to her life.
Things aboard the vessel had changed. Two guards stood at attention outside the door. They had requested, politely but firmly, that Rachel and Professor Fredericks remain in their room until someone came for them.
Freshly showered and dressed in the casual women’s clothing Flicker had arranged for her—probably from the few female sailors aboard—Rachel felt a little more confident and a lot cleaner. She almost felt rested, and couldn’t help thinking the artifact was probably part of the reason for that. Some of the bumps and bruises she’d acquired during her “rescue” were healing fast, a fact that had caught her attention.
She worked on her deck—still without a connection to the Matrix—while they waited, sorting through her notes about the excavation. Some were private, things she kept encrypted, even from Professor Fredericks. She wasn’t sure how to deal with the presence she kept sensing from the jewel, and she didn’t know exactly why she wanted to keep that secret from the professor. She just knew it had to be done—in the same way she’d known where to find the jewel.
Finally, the door opened, and Hawke stood there in clean street clothes; slacks and a shirt under a lightweight, loose-fitting jacket. Casual attire a tourist might wear, except he looked like anything but a tourist. Her glimpse of a matte-black pistol butt underneath one arm destroyed the already weak illusion. Wraparound sunglasses masked his eyes. Somehow they looked more normal than his eyes did, like this semi-masked version of himself was who he truly was.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Rachel shut down her deck, tucked it into her backpack, and joined him at the door.
Moving a little more slowly, a little more uncertainly, Professor Fredericks looked at Hawke. “You’re sure we’ll be safe?”
“Yeah.” The big man’s features remained bland. Light gleamed off his freshly-shaved head.
Rachel almost wanted to ask Hawke if he would lie just to get them moving, but didn’t. She already knew the answer was yes, and she only wanted the professor to know he couldn’t trust these people. From Professor Fredericks’ wariness, that was something he’d already grasped.
In the hallway, Hawke took the lead, easily stepping through circular doors between compartments. Also dressed in new clothes and with a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, Flicker brought up the rear. The vessel was better lit now, or maybe Rachel just hadn’t noticed how things had looked when she’d been brought aboard.
A few minutes later, they entered a small room with an airlock, presumably for divers to depart and enter. Captain Joaquin stood there with his hands clasped behind his back. He was neatly groomed, and wore a big smile.
Two guards stood beside him, on either side and just a step back.
“Ah, Flicker,” Joaquin said, looking at the dark elven woman. “It’s a pity we couldn’t spend more time together.”
She smiled at him. “Perhaps our paths will cross again soon.”
“I shall hold you to that.” The smuggler took her hand and pressed the back of it to his lips.
Rachel noticed the brief grimace that tweaked Hawke’s lips, then quickly vanished.
“Make sure you take care of my ATV.”
Joaquin nodded gallantly. “Of course. I’ll drop it off in San Diego on my return trip in a week or so. We have a mutual friend there who can store it until you’re able to get it.”
“That will be fine.”
“I trust you can get it home from there?”
“I can.”
“Then I wish you good luck in your endeavors.” Joaquin nodded to one of his men, who operated the airlock with a keypad. Hydraulic systems hissed, and the door opened to reveal an area big enough to fit a dozen people.
Looking all around, Hawke stepped inside the chamber. Rachel knew the big man didn’t like the enclosed space, and she couldn’t help thinking about how easy it would be to trap them in there and simply flood the room with ocean water. She swallowed hard as she joined him, followed by the professor and Flicker.
A bright film of perspiration covered Hawke’s forehead as he stood, quiet and st
ill, while the airlock closed.
“It’s okay,” Flicker said. “The airlock’s connected to a pressured delivery tube. Nothing’s going to happen.”
A moment later, the hatch behind them opened into what looked like a small elevator shaft. Flicker led them all inside. The airlock closed, then the platform they were standing on rose with a humming vibration.
“How far under are we?” Hawke asked.
Flicker shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does if decompression is a problem.”
“It’s not. Everything’s kept at surface pressure. We’ll be fine. Null sheen, omae.”
Before she knew it, Rachel was sipping her breath, certain her lungs were getting heavier. She’d never been more than forty meters down while scuba diving. Panic rose with each second they ascended.
“We have to start worrying once we hit the coast.” Flicker took some small drones half the length of Rachel’s forefinger from inside her jacket and held them in her hand for a moment. They took flight and hovered overhead noiselessly. “Amazonia’s friction with Aztlan heats up there, so if anybody’s looking for us in the area—and they could be—there could be fallout.”
Getting prepared for the dig in Guatemala had deepened Rachel’s knowledge of the two countries’ fight over Bogota. Hualpa, the feathered dragon who was Amazonia’s head of state, had declared the nation to be eco-friendly, and the industrialization and consumption of natural resources would be stopped. Aztlan and Aztechnology were unwilling to relinquish their hold on the area. As a result, guerrilla wars broke out constantly along the malleable border.
The platform slowed, then stopped, and the hatch irised open onto a new room that looked like an ill-lit basement. An old man stood on the other side with a smile. He wore khaki shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and a sombrero tied beneath his leathery chin.
“Hola, amigos, amigas! I am Julio. I will be your boat captain to the mainland today.” He waved a wrinkled hand toward a set of wooden stairs barely visible in the gloom. “Please, step this way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Seated in the stern of the old man’s fishing boat while waiting to get underway, Hawke hated the fact they were out in the open in the small harbor. He didn’t have control of the op at this point, and there was nowhere for them to run. Even the Ares Predators slung in shoulder leather and the expanding katars sheathed under his jacket didn’t give him any real degree of comfort.
Flicker finished speaking with the old man, arranging the cred transfer for the ride to the mainland, and joined Hawke on the thinly-padded seat. “You need to chill, omae. It’s just a boat ride. Zero threat.”
Hawke just shot her a doubtful look as she released her drones up into the air and down into the sea, then resumed his scan of the area. There were no boats in sight, nothing that could threaten them.
Unless they were hit with some kind of missile, or some other submersible rose from the depths. He told himself Aztechnology wanted Rachel Gordon and the jewel in one piece, then held onto that thought as best as he could.
The old man lived on a rocky atoll thirty-six kilometers from the mainland, putting him out in international waters. The island was something less than five kilometers in area, stretching mostly east to west, and housed Julio’s Marine Salvage, an expanse of fence-enclosed junk that took up most of the flat land in front of the shark’s fin outcropping of bare rock that stabbed into the blue sky.
Several wrecks lay across the salvage area, mostly decrepit hulks that looked like they’d fallen apart at sea and been towed to the island for stripping. Julio and his sons worked a metal reclamation operation on one end of the salvage yard, melting down scrap that couldn’t be sold as parts. Black smoke wafted steadily into the blue sky. The other side of the salvage area had a well-tended garden and flowerbeds.
The stink of the antique diesel engines gave Hawke a headache. Even the boat’s heavy fish aroma couldn’t blunt the hot, oily stench. Bundled nets to the sides and behind the boat banged against masts and support poles.
“I’m not picking up any noise around us.” Flicker sat with her deck open on her thighs. Blue holo screens showed images relayed by her airborne drones flying high above them. Four more patrolled the area underwater.
“What about Joaquin?” Hawke couldn’t let go of his suspicions about the tempo trafficker.
“Already gone. He’s got deliveries to make.”
“Do you know anything about our captain and his crew?”
“Julio’s a small-time fixer I’ve met once before. Some branch of family to Joaquin. He looks out for the old man, and the old man keeps gossip from the coast flowing to Joaquin, intel about traffic in international waters. Don’t let the decrepit salvage yard fool you. Julio is well connected. His crew are his sons, and it’s all family biz.”
Atop the tower, Julio waved his yachting cap. He’d traded the sombrero for it. “Hola, amigos, amigas! We go. Prepare yourselves.”
The thready engine noise suddenly leveled out as the twin diesels powered up with more thrust than Hawke expected. Within seconds they were cutting across the ocean, heading for one of the small, nameless towns dotting the western coastline of Amazonia, near the Aztlan border.
Despite all the open space around them, Hawke was grimly aware they would be even more vulnerable in the town than they were on the ocean, but at least an urban area was more familiar than the endless azure water.
As they neared the small harbor twenty-three minutes later, Hawke studied the low limestone seawall that kept back the ocean during storm season, and knew it would never be enough during a full-blown hurricane. Small stone houses with red clay tiles that didn’t always match dotted the broken coastline and marched up into the sharply rising hills beyond the harbor. Broken tree stumps and the ruins of collapsed buildings lay farther south, showing past tropical violence, and the fact that the general population had diminished.
Hawke’s PAN tagged the Matrix, logged in under a fake ID, and identified the town as Playa del Iguana Verde. The coordinates were off, however, so maybe this was only part of the town, and it had been truncated in some way. More probably lay on the other side of the hills, at the end of the dusty roads zigzagging up into the thick forests.
A fistful of pleasure craft dotted the small natural harbor, most advertising for tourists in a half-dozen languages. Docks built of quarried limestone blocks extended into the ocean, but some were completely underwater, showing only strips of slight, gleaming white. At least two of the docks were broken apart, with wide gaps between the pieces. Some of the locals still tied up small fishing boats to mooring areas, and along the empty spaces between them fishermen sat in folding chairs whose legs were wet only up to the first few centimeters.
Julio pulled the fishing boat in to one of the intact docks. Old rubber tires on the hull thumped gently against the limestone as his two sons vaulted from the vessel with lines they quickly made fast to the iron mooring cleats.
“See, amigos and amigas? You are delivered safe and sound.” Julio grinned brightly from the open pilot cabin. “Go, and may luck be with you.”
Hawke stepped onto the boat’s coaming and dropped to the wet limestone. Curious glances and idle speculation from crews aboard nearby boats drifted his way, but he ignored them. Anyone from Aztechnology would be much more stealthy.
Rachel and the professor followed and joined him on the dock.
“Just remember,” Hawke told them, “right now you’re safer with us than without us. None of us wants any kind of law enforcement looking at us too closely. Amazonia’s extradition treaty with Aztlan might be sketchy, but the UCAS authorities might not be so generous. Either way, everyone will be interested in the artifact you have.”
Hostility shone in Rachel’s copper-colored eyes, and Hawke realized he’d never seen that color before. “Wouldn’t it make more sense just to threaten to kill us if we try to escape?”
He didn’t reply, didn’t try to explain that he didn�
��t work that way. If things hadn’t gotten so slotted at the dig site, they could have met under different circumstances, and maybe had a different relationship. Now he didn’t need her understanding. He just needed to regain control of the situation.
He nodded the pair forward as Flicker joined them on the dock. “Move.”
Rachel’s hesitation showed that she had more to say, or maybe she was considering calling to the onlookers for help, but the professor took her by the wrist and spoke in a low voice that Hawke’s enhanced hearing picked up.
“We don’t have a choice. Just do as he says for now.”
For now? Hawke didn’t know what the professor had up his sleeve—or thought he had up his sleeve—but it wasn’t going to happen. He followed Fredericks and Rachel as they headed off the dock.
They walked through a cargo area where stevedores and ’bots moved freight, shifting crates, barrels, and sacks between lighters and small warehouses. Once they were past that and the row of bars, restaurants, and supply stores that catered to whatever crew was in port, they walked up a wide set of cracked stone steps into the town proper.
The main area of Playa del Iguana Verde surrounded a low, wide fountain, where an artesian well blasted a line of sparkling water straight up like a whale’s spout. In the center of the fountain, a large stone iguana stood with its massive head raised. The creature didn’t look friendly, and Hawke wondered why it had been chosen and what story might lie behind it. Faded and worn hotels, shops, and cantinas advertised goods and services in LED lights, and in voice-overs between canned carnivale music blaring from PA systems.
“So, where do we find this fixer you know?” Hawke asked Flicker. In the southern hemisphere, she had all the connections. That was one of the reasons Hawke had called her when he’d learned Rachel Gordon was in Aztlan.
She pointed her chin ahead of them. “Ferreira has an electronics market a few blocks ahead.”
The fixer was supposed to have a vehicle and supplies they could use to get to Distrito Caracas. The city lay beyond the Muralha Verde, the “Green Wall,” and though the sprawl was technically within Amazonian borders, Distrito Caracas operated as a free city-state for all intents and purposes. Once there, Flicker knew someone else that could get them back to Pueblo Corporate Council lands so Hawke could make his meet with Mr. Johnson.