Underwater Restorations

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

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  Sunken City Capers Novel Coming October 2016!

  Author’s Note

  Also by Jeffrey A. Ballard

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  NEWSLETTER GOODIES

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  THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART, thirty feet above the ocean, falling at a hundred and ninety miles an hour. Close enough to see our reflections hurtling to meet us. It's the second just before the agitator lasers ahead to break the surface tension that's the sweetest. When all the adrenaline of a ten-thousand-foot free-fall culminates in a terrifying second of, "Oh, shit."

  A hundred things could go wrong. The agitator may not move enough water out of the way. The air pocket could collapse before entry. The subroutine that mixes water and air for the controlled deceleration may miscalculate and flatten me into a shark pancake. Almost a hundred different ways to die in under a tenth of a second. I love it.

  Then it passes and we're down fifty feet underwater and descending. Only when the static of the comm comes online through my earpiece, trying to make a connection, do I remember to breathe. The rush of the entry fades into focus on the job at hand.

  Another fifty feet later, we stand on an exit ramp from I-95 and the rookie, Winn, brings up the holo-map with incomplete sonar data overlaid. Hurricane Gretchen passed through last night and did us the favor of muddying up the waters, an expected development—the Feds are just as blind.

  "Lovers, you're all clear." I can hear the smirk in Puo's voice, ten thousand feet above in the Seagull and driving north in the South Florida Memorial Airway.

  "We descended four miles too far to the east." Winn points at the blinking dot on the holo-map. "I think we'll need to jetflow. Listen, about last night—"

  The flow jets will make too much noise; the squiddies are tuned to it. Its only purpose is to outrun the damn things. "No, we'll have to jump, skip, and hop to the site. It's quieter and doesn't disturb the water as much. Adjust your buoyancy in rhythm to your jumps and try to keep up." I initiate my jump subroutine and leap.

  Puo. That nosy punk's always got to stir the pot. I land forty feet away at an intersection and wait. Let Winn struggle; I'll send over the subroutine after he falls several times. It's just a fling. My father always said we Schmidts think with our cocks. Well, in my case, insert the female equivalent.

  Winn is still just standing there. "Rookie, what's taking you so long? Let's move."

  "I'm writing a subroutine to automatically manage the buoyancy adjustments. I can transmit it to you when I'm done."

  "That's very kind of you, Rookie," Puo breaks in. "Don't you think that's nice, Isa?"

  "Puo—" He is so going to pay for this. "—focus on our pickup. Rookie, nice thought, here you go. I don't have time to wait for you to flounder through it." I transmit the subroutine.

  Soon enough he's leaping as well. I keep one leap ahead of him as we make our way to the destination. What's left of the urban sprawl of South Florida passes by in blue-green shadows. Most of the buildings are intact, some are collapsed, but all of them are still. They seem to defy the churning of the water from the hurricane that passed through.

  With less than a mile to go, alarms start going off: squiddies—the autonomous eyes and ears of the Federal Government below the waves.

  I cancel the subroutine and look for a place to hide. There's a Chick-fil-A thirty feet away. I glide through a broken window and hug up against the ceiling in the play area. Hopefully, Winn's done something similar.

  What are the squiddies doing this far west and north? There's nothing out here they should care about. The juiciest loot is in Miami and along the old coast. South Florida isn't even in the top ten of the most federally protected underwater sites.

  I move smoothly between the top of the slide and the roof, trying not to stir any silt. The more obstacles between me and the squiddies, the better the chance their sonar can't find me, particularly after a hurricane.

  A tense half hour later Puo says over the comm, "It's gone. It's two miles south and continuing to move in that direction."

  "It was supposed to be clear," I say.

  "They changed the modulation on the carrier frequency." His voice is agitated. "I got it now. There's definitely a swarm of them farther north than normal, but they're hanging out by the old coast. The President must be looking for some electoral year victories or somethun'."

  Catching grave robbers of the sunken state is definitely a low-risk, high-profile political victory. Too bad we don't have enough credibility to tell the masses the Feds do the same thing. The real reason they police it outside of public opinion is to protect their claim.

  "Rookie, check in."

  "I'm here, one block over in a half-collapsed gas station. I wasn't sure whether to break comm—"

  "Hurry up and meet me at the site."

  ***

  A school of mackerel hover around an old land car, an Audi, and duck inside as I approach. Too bad Audi couldn't use that in their marketing campaign, "Over a hundred air miles to the gallon now, an artificial reef and home to thousands for Mother Earth later." It'd get the dry-earth-humpers off their backs.

  The mansion looks like every other one on the block. Spanish-tile roof, arched entries, horseshoe driveway and covered in algae and buds of coral.

  After eighty-six years the wood backing the eight-foot wrought-iron door is rotted and feeble. It's no match for my Kung Fu fist.

  The entryway's actually kind of tasteful, notable only in the absence of the ostentatiousness of the rich trying to live like the wealthy. No statue or fountain, no pointless two-curved stairway or cheesy hand-carved table with an oversized vase. The marble floors open to a main living area that looks out on the back through a wall of broken windows.

  Not long after, Winn shows up and I lead him wordlessly upstairs and down a hallway. I carefully step over the skeleton of a canine and direct Winn to do the same. I don't know why the pets bother me so much; I barely even notice human remains anymore.

  The stupid owners either left him behind or didn't listen to the warnings when the mega-quake hit in the middle of the Atlantic. It all happened sixty years before I was born, but the event has been so dissected, practically everyone is an expert on it. Long story short: huge earthquake, tsunami warnings, complete ignorance of the brand new volcanic mountain range birthed in a matter of days and continuing to grow even now. The ocean doesn't mind; it makes room where it can—goodbye thousands of miles of coastland, goodbye hundreds of major cities, goodbye entire states.

  I stop in front of the last door and initiate a scan. Nothing. Still, I send Winn in first—it is a tryout after all.

  "The room's secure," he says. "The sculpture's here and looks to be in decent condition."

  Jug Self-portrait by Paul Gauguin, a three-quarter foot stoneware mug from the late nineteenth century. Gauguin's more known for his paintings, but there's a market for his sculptures as well.

  "Puo, we're ready for pickup in ten minutes."

  "Roger. There's a McDonald's Airstation a few miles ahead I'll stop at and tu
rn around. Want anything?"

  "Yeah, a large fry. Rookie, want anything?"

  "Uh...no, thank you."

  It's good to keep Puo on his toes. Now he'll wonder if he should get the fries and risk getting yelled at for the waste of time, or risk getting yelled at for not getting them. Either way, I get to yell at Puo.

  "All right, Rookie, let's see what you got." The mug's encrusted and stuck to its resting place in eighty plus years of ocean crud—a result of the Atlantic homogenizing its new territory. When we go through official channels, the sculpture gets graded and then it's all about how damaged it is. It's critical to get it back to the shop with as little disturbance as possible. The less crud on it when we get it back to the shop, the better the equipment can restore it. A deft hand is required. A surgeon's hand preferably, hence the rookie, Winn. Sculptures don't sue for malpractice.

  Winn lives up to the hype. His movements are smooth and deliberate. He gets the mug out in about half the time it would've taken me, and carefully wraps it up for transport. Impressive.

  "Not bad, Rookie. Follow me to the extraction point." We get there a few minutes later—it's only fifty feet from the mansion. "Puo, we're in position."

  "I'm five minutes out. Transmitting sync for pickup now."

  "Why—"

  "I got your damn fries! I'll be there in four minutes and thirty-seven seconds."

  Suddenly, I have to pass four minutes and thirty-six seconds alone with Winn. I'm not going to tell him what a good job he's doing. I already got Puo; I don't need another inflated head on this crew.

  I pretend to fiddle with my equipment. That doesn't work for long, though. The silence is stretched, turning into a large pointing arrow at the lack of conversation. I need to say something soon.

  Winn beats me to it, "About last night—"

  I don't want to have this conversation with Puo listening. "Are the goods secure?" Talk about work, that's easy.

  "Yes."

  "You got the pickup routine activated?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay, check your power and gravity levels. It's like nothing you've ever experienced."

  "How different is it from the descent?"

  "It's not, except it's falling in the opposite direction. Kind of like going in an anechoic chamber: it's only when normal is missing that you experience how weird it is."

  The reverse-gravity suits aren't supposed to exist. There are only a handful, and as far as I know, they're still a top-secret project for the special forces. When the opportunity presented itself to look at the plans for one from a desperate engineer with a gambling problem, I didn't hesitate. I had to go to Paranoid Pete and put out a second loan on the Seagull and empty the bank account to boot, but it was worth it. The engineer left out some key components to try to convince himself he wasn't doing anything wrong—smart people always think criminals are idiots. But they weren't that hard for Puo to fill in.

  "Okay, let's get to the surface for the pickup. When Puo's in position, the subroutine will automatically kick in, and whoosh, we'll free-fall toward the sky and onto the Seagull."

  Winn doesn't say anything. His face is probably green. I'd tell him not to vomit, but there's no better teacher than experience and having to clean it up afterward.

  It's still overcast when we reach the surface. The subroutine lights up a counter in the lower left of my helmet. Ten seconds to go. I take several deep breaths to prepare myself for the sudden reverse. Three seconds. "Remember to flip, so your feet are pointed toward the sky." One second.

  You feel it first in the stomach, a feeling that something has gone terribly wrong. You're already two hundred feet in the air and climbing before the brain catches up and brings order to your system, reminds the body, this is what's supposed to happen.

  I've done this enough times that my brain kicks in around a hundred feet. But something's different this time and it takes me another hundred feet to recognize it. It's Winn.

  He's laughing.

  ***

  "Rookie's gonna fit right in, huh?" Puo asks.

  We sit in the driver's cabin of the Seagull, a ubiquitous air delivery vehicle we've modified for our purposes. We had tossed the back seats out to extend and close off the staging area and put in a trap door for the free-fall entries and exits. The door between the two areas is enough to stop the wind from buffeting whoever is driving when the trap door opens, but not enough to stop the smell of salt from pervading the cabin.

  Winn's in the back changing out of the gravity suit. Getting out of those things is tricky, like trying to take off a wet t-shirt three times too small. "Yeah, he did all right."

  "All right? The kid nailed it, wrote a jump routine on the spot, got the goods out in record—"

  "What's your point, Puo?"

  "Nuthin', just sayin' kid did a good job. We've needed someone else for ages. I was impressed that he handled himself so well, even the pickup, I mean—"

  "Aww...how sweet, Puo and his man crush. But I got to say, I don't think Winn plays that way. Too bad, though, you two would make a sweet couple."

  "After a night with you, you never know, he might play for the other team now. You never did say how he was." Puo looks at me for details he isn't going to get. "What's with you? Usually you're telling me how big the guy's—"

  "Puo, pay attention to not being followed and your upcoming visit with Charlie." The satisfaction of Puo's face going lax is immeasurable—he knows he shouldn't have stirred the pot. I'd bet a small fortune his testicles just defied gravity all on their own.

  ***

  Winn and I are in a hidden room we call the Island in the center of a six-thousand-square-foot loft in the middle of Atlanta. We're cleaning out and soaking the gravity suits, while Puo is off meeting with Charlie, our longtime fence and surrogate crew member. She gives us fair rates, mostly I think because we're both women. Puo's scared of her. He made the mistake of hitting on her once in jest and didn't know what to do when she returned interest. She's bigger than he is.

  The loft is owned by our topside venture, Underwater Restorations. To the law-loving public, we restore and sell damaged art. It barely turns a profit, but the other side of our business does rather well. We even employ Ashley, a young, over-eager, master of fine arts to run the gallery in Charlotte. She's perfect for it, way too happy to have her own gallery to ask questions.

  The loft is on the top floor of an old manufacturing building on West Mariette Street. There are no windows and no advertising that we're here. All the restoration equipment and legitimate machinery is laid out around the center, with a small specialty elevator in the corner used for the delivery of pallets of restoration chemicals. Everything is designed to conceal the Island in the center. It even has a secret entrance. There's a six-foot replica of the sculpture David outside—guess what you have to pull to get in. I make Puo do it whenever we're together.

  Winn is cleaning all the connectors with a toothbrush. It's laborious like digging a hole is: it's never exactly clear when you're done. Winn is growing restless. I can hear him shifting in his seat behind me. "Listen, Isa, about last night."

  "What about it?" I continue to face away from him.

  "I'm—I'm not looking for anything serious right now. With the malpractice suit and the insurance company screwing me over—"

  "And you think I'm looking for something serious?"

  "No, I mean, I don't know. I wasn't sure."

  "'Cause I'm not." I turn around. "I thought that would've been clear when I said I had a date tonight." A pretentious gallery owner hit on me a few days ago when I was researching the competition. His chin almost faded into his neck, but the more people you know and can keep your finger on in the art community, the better.

  Art snobs and criminals: those are the two types of people I'm surrounded by. Then there's Winn. I found him leaving Paranoid Pete's, the second most dangerous person I know. A loan shark named for his paranoia of not getting paid back and taking premature, often violent, step
s to make sure people pay. Only the Boss—the guy that runs and polices all the crime in Atlanta—is more brutal.

  Pete has terrible rates, unreasonable time-lines, and preys on the desperate. And he was the only one willing to agree to a second loan on the Seagull.

  At first, I was just interested in Winn's shoulder-width-to-waist ratio and why such a Laci—a law-abiding-citizen—was even at Pete's. After I learned his story and he checked out, I worked out a deal with Pete to have him join my crew.

  "Look," I say, "this is an easy gig. We don't hurt anyone, actually save art that would be lost to the world, and get to free-fall—in both directions." He smiles at that. The crazy man really does like the reverse-gravity free-fall.

  He nods in response. A man with a moral dilemma—strange.

  Puo and I are legacies, born directly into a crew and without a citizen chip, off the official grid—ready made for crime. We accepted our lot as criminals before puberty. The only choice we had was deciding what type of criminals to be.

  The monitor on the side of the room lights up and shows Puo coming back through the elevator from his meeting with Charlie. Puo's impending arrival is enough to shut down the conversation.

  He comes through the door into the Island and only has eyes for Winn.

  "How was—?" I start to ask.

  "The meeting went swimmingly."

  "Really?" Uh-oh, double-talk. Whenever the ocean or water is referenced out of context, it's code.

  "You couldn't have asked for better day at the beach. Sun shinin', fresh worms—"

  "Excellent." We've been in business long enough to have been through this before. But it's never pleasant. "Now that that's taken care of, this place is a sty. Clean it up, please. The rookie and I are going out for a drink."

  "Is that a fat joke?"

  "Yup, sweep it up, fattie." Whoops, Puo can be rather sensitive. I'll have to apologize later. The possibility that Winn's a mole has me rattled. "Rookie, escort me to the nearest bar."

  "Uh ... I could stay here and help."

  "Now, Winn."

  ***

  Twenty-four hours later, Winn and I arrive back at the storage loft to find Puo waiting. He quirks an eyebrow at me when he notices Winn wearing the same clothes as yesterday, but says nothing. He doesn't even mention my missed date either. I don't know whether to be grateful or worried.