The Elgin Deceptions (Sunken City Capers Book 2)

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  Chang’an is financing this operation. They certainly have deep enough pockets to, but they’re not someone you want to get on the bad side of. Let me put it this way: if the Bosses back home got in a war with the Chang’ans, it’d be all kinds of ugly, but the Chang’ans would eventually roll over the Bosses with just pure manpower and resources.

  “And who do you think they’re going to come after,” Puo says, “to recoup their investment if we’re not successful?”

  That would be very, very bad, to owe both the Chang’ans and the Citizen Maker. This job just became the worst kind of double or nothing. If we’re successful, our cut will be enough to pay off the Citizen Maker once and for all with a little cash to spare. If we’re not, our debt will more than double to two different and dangerous entities.

  “I know,” I say lightly. Best not to dwell on it.

  Puo eyes me over the narrow, light-gray glass countertop that extends out from the metal sink, separating the dining area from the kitchen.

  “We need to drill that hole,” I say. It’s the key to our entry and exit.

  “I agree,” Puo says. He takes his gnocchi in a red puttanesca sauce, pops off the plastic top from the metal container and pours it carefully onto a plate.

  A strong whiff of cooked tomato and savory garlic make my stomach rumble.

  Puo continues, “All I’m saying is be careful.”

  Duh. I pop off the clear plastic top from my chicken fettuccine Alfredo. A billow of steam rushes up, bringing with it the smell of melted Parmesan in a creamy butter sauce. Yum. I pilfer a black plastic fork and twirl some pasta around it and take a bite.

  Hot! I suck an inward cooling breath. The sauce is rich and creamy; the pasta is handmade and perfectly al dente.

  “Oh, for the love of Neptune,” Puo says. “What are you an animal? Gimme.” Puo holds his hand out for my container so he can properly arrange it on a plate.

  I scoop the metal container closer to my body with one hand while brandishing my plastic fork with the other hand at him and hiss.

  “It’s—” Puo says.

  “Oww!” The metal container burns my hand! I drop my food on the counter with a heavy plop. The white, precious Alfredo sauce spills over the side.

  “You are an animal,” Puo says. While I’m shaking my hand and going to rinse it under cold water, he slides my food over and starts to get a plate ready. He switches topics, “We still don’t know entirely what we’re dealing with.”

  “What don’t we know?” Liáng asks, walking into the kitchen.

  “They approve the materials?” I ask.

  Puo opens a third container and says at the same time, “We got you rigatoni with Italian sausage, hope that’s all right.” He starts to arrange it on a plate. “I have gnocchi if you’re vegetarian.”

  “Yes, they approved the materials,” Liáng says to me. “The materials should be here the day after next. The rigatoni is fine, thank you. What don’t we know?” He directs this last question back at me.

  Puo starts ferrying the plates and metal silverware (apparently only animals use plastic silverware) over to the white circular table. “We are not entirely sure of all the museum’s defenses,” Puo says.

  I walk over and sit down, pulling my left leg up on the chair, and lean my shin against the table. “We know most of them, but not all.”

  “What do you know?” Liáng asks as he sits down. He sits with his back straight, elbows off the table, and begins to eat with the utensils in the Continental style. “Would you please pass the pepper?”

  What’s with Mister Manners all of sudden? And the fancy-schmancy eating style? Did we just slip into some Lord’s eighteenth century castle dining hall? Who is this tattooed-covered guy with perfect table manners that was trying to shirk work only an hour ago in the basement?

  Puo hands him the store-bought peppershaker. “Squiddies for one.”

  Liáng raises his eyebrow at us, unfamiliar with our vernacular.

  My heart rate spikes suddenly at Liáng’s simple reaction—Winn used to complain about my and Puo’s use of private vernacular. It still happens—little, innocuous things will bring the memories back against my will, make Winn’s leaving fresh all over again.

  I take a deep breath to give myself time to recover.

  “Most governments call them underwater sentinels,” I explain. “But they look like overgrown, mechanical squid—”

  “No they don’t,” Puo says. “They look like giant octopi—”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, “Squiddie sounds better than octopi-ie.”

  Liáng is bouncing his gaze between Puo and I, his face confused.

  “Mmm,” Puo says. “I do like pie though.”

  “Are there any pie shops around here?” I ask. I like pie too.

  “What,” Liáng asks with a hint of exasperation, “are you talking about?”

  I snort laughter, a piece of fettuccine flying out of my mouth and landing in front of Mister Manners Liáng, who looks at it in disgust.

  Puo covers his own mouth as he tries to prevent spurting out his own food while laughing.

  Liáng just stares at us in undisguised disgust.

  I reach over all shifty-eyed and snatch up the errant piece of fettuccine like I was palming someone’s wallet.

  “So,” Liáng says, eying me, “Sentinels. What else?”

  I can’t get a handle on this guy. But if he wants to be all prim and proper at the moment, I can run with that.

  “Aerial surveillance,” I say. “Both visual and radar.” So coming in from above is out. There’s no way we’re going to let Liáng in on the anti-gravity suits anyway, but there’s more than one way to enter a site from the air.

  I raise the errant piece of fettuccine to lower it onto my outstretched Alfredo-coated tongue.

  Liáng’s face falls further into disgust.

  “And the always fun,” Puo adds smiling, adjusting his speech to show his food in his mouth while he talks, “mini- and regular-sized HiDARs, squatters, and very likely air-gap sensors.”

  “You’re like teenagers,” Liáng quips, distaste pulling down the corner of his mouth. He shakes his head and asks, “And you have a plan for these defenses?”

  Liáng has been asking about the plan since he first showed up, but we hustled him down to the basement to shut him up and tried to put him to work.

  “Some,” I answer evasively.

  “Some?” Liáng asks, clearly put off at the answer and wanting clarification.

  “There’s no point,” I say, “in forming detailed plans without first understanding the whole picture.” It’s just wasted mental energy to start planning before all the facts are in.

  Liáng exhales through his nose. “And the drilling in the basement?”

  “That doesn’t count,” I say. “That’s getting a head start—”

  “We know,” Puo says, “that’s the way we need to get in and out. We know the defense grid around the British Museum. And we have some educated guesses about what’s in the museum, but we don’t know exactly.”

  “Why don’t you know that?” Liáng asks.

  “Because no one has ever made it that far,” I say.

  “And,” Puo adds, “that information is classified.”

  “Is that something you can help with?” I ask.

  Liáng shakes his head no. “We’ve tried before and have been unable to gain access.”

  So then why freaking ask us like we should know? First the guy is lazy and surly in the basement, then he’s mister perfect manners, and now he’s an ass.

  “So that’s where we are,” I say a bit huffy. “We’re confident we can get to the museum. We’re just not sure what’s in it.” Or if we can get out of it.

  Liáng takes another prim bite of his rigatoni, spearing a carved slice of Italian sausage in the process.

  “If you can’t get us the information,” I say, “that leaves us with either running a game on the Muppies—the Ministry of Undersea Prot
ection,” I explain for Liáng’s benefit, “—or running a desensitizing campaign, or fielding an unmanned intrusion into the museum.”

  Puo holds up his hand and ticks off his fingers as he says, “Risky, stupid risky, and impossible.”

  Liáng asks, “What’s a desensitizing campaign?”

  “Basically,” Puo says, “you throw annoying pebbles at the defense grid to see how it responds. The problem is—”

  “The authorities,” I say, “know what you’re doing. But not always.” Puo and I did something like this with rats on one of our early jobs together.

  “I don’t think we can direct fish to go where we want,” Puo says, clearly thinking of the same memory about the rats. “As for the intrusion, that’s the whole problem to start with. Whatever we send in there isn’t likely to come back with the data we need.”

  “Can you make the device look like a fish?” Liáng asks.

  Damn. That is a good idea. But it sparks a better one.

  Puo says, “No. There’s not enough room to hold the sensor package and getting it to move like a fish isn’t trivial.”

  “What about a squiddie?” I ask.

  “What about a squiddie?” Puo asks in return.

  “That’d be big enough, wouldn’t it?” I ask.

  Puo stares at me like I’ve sprouted another set of teeth in the middle of my forehead. “I can’t build a squiddie. They have all their own encoding schemes—”

  I give him a knowing look. We exploit those encoding schemes all the time. It’s how we talk to each other underwater and how we know where the squiddies are.

  Puo continues answering my thoughts. “—It’s a little more complicated than that. I can’t just manufacture one from scratch.”

  “So,” Liáng says, “you’re thieves. Steal one.”

  “Party foul!” I spit out at him. Prim turd! That was my idea. I open my mouth of food at him.

  “What?” Liáng asks, visibly perplexed and disgusted at my outburst.

  Puo is trying poorly to keep his laughter in. “You stole her idea.”

  “Oh. Sorry?” Liáng says in a tone that’s anything but sorry.

  Puo alternates between laughing and talking, “Isa, you’re not going to be able to sandbag for the dramatic reveal anymore. Liáng, I think you and I are going to get along just fine.”

  Harrumph!

  Puo watches us for a few more seconds, his face starting to fall from mirth to disbelief. “Wait. You’re not serious? That’s a terrible idea.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AFTER PUO REALIZED I was serious and Liáng was on board, Puo then started explaining how stupid this idea was: squiddies are not dainty things; it has to be a London-based squiddie, which means the authorities are going to notice if it goes offline; and one does not just swim up to one of these gangly beasts and tickle its belly to subdue it.

  And when Puo starts explaining how stupid my ideas are, then I know I’m really onto something—he even left his theory about Winn affecting me out of it this time, further convincing me I’m on the right track. I’m not sure Puo’s ever been entirely on board with one of my utterly brilliant ideas.

  Liáng and I are on Wembley Island, an abandoned dime of an island a quarter-mile west of Wembley Stadium the very next night. We’re in dry scuba suits cloistered behind a brick fence on a one-way street lined with two-story row houses that dips down into the Sea of London.

  The skylanes to the north are just visible in white and red lights streaking by. Delivery drones in small green and blue lights copter by overhead fairly regularly. Hovercars aren’t allowed to drive over the Sea of London by English Law, but delivery drones? No, no. That’s just fine. I need my package, damn it. I can’t decide if that loophole is a product of selfish desire or successful lobbying—probably both.

  It’s clear but windy tonight, with the silver orb of the moon high overhead. And cold. A typical English October night. I hate the cold. I’m huddling against the brick wall in my suit sans helmet, dreading getting in the water. The internal heater in the dry scuba suit will warm me up quick enough, but the first minute is miserable.

  “Puo—” I say.

  Puo is flying around above in a hovercar the Chang’ans provided. He’s sticking to the lower skylanes running over the northern shore of the Sea of London three miles north of us.

  “—the next job we take,” I continue, “is going to be someplace tropical.”

  “Roger, that,” Puo says, “Miami, Nassau, Havana?”

  Miami’s too close to our old stomping grounds in the sunken state of Florida. And I’m not aware of any good loot in Nassau. “Havana might be fun,” I say. It’s a partially submerged city like the Seattle Isles.

  I was really thinking Bangkok, but that’s close to the Chang’ans territory and with Liáng listening in, it’s best not to tip them off—which I’m sure is why Puo only mentioned things in the Caribbean.

  Liáng breaks in to chide, “Perhaps we should focus on this job, before planning the next.”

  “Buzzkill,” I say. I keep my teeth from chattering. The wind is cold on my face, but my body is actually quite warm from the internal heater in the suit. “How we doing on the squiddies, Puo?”

  “They’re scattered around the area. The closest is on the other side of the stadium.”

  “Is that close enough for it to hear our bait?” I ask.

  “Only one way to find out,” Puo says.

  We’ve been sitting here for the better part of two hours waiting for a squiddie to get close enough to make sure it’ll follow our bait. The time hasn’t been the most pleasant. It’s cold, and though Liáng is willing to chat some, it’s not much. And certainly not about where he’s from or anything like that—neither am I, for that matter. So that’s two hours of awkward small talk with Liáng alternating between arrogant and pleasant responses. I was about ready to flick him in the throat and tell him to be nice.

  But for the record, he likes Chinese comic books. At first he wouldn’t stop talking about his favorite, Huángdì de wàikē yīshēng—it’s about a surgeon to the Emperor, or something like that. Liáng was less willing to elaborate after I clarified that he was in fact an adult that read comic books.

  “Let’s go,” I say. I’ve been patient enough tonight.

  Liáng and I stick our heads up over the brick fence to make sure it’s clear.

  The frigid water twenty feet away has some heavy chop to it tonight. Waves are regularly crashing against the street, traveling up the paved lane a ways before reversing direction.

  We latch our helmets on (turning on nightvision), and grab our flippers. Liáng hefts our equipment bag and I carry the two stunners attached to two four-foot aluminum poles. Staying out of the street, we leapfrog over the brick fence into the next yard that’s halfway under water, sloping downward.

  The water in the lower yard has only small ripples on the surface from the wind, buffered from the greater sea by the fence.

  The cold wraps around my feet and calves as we wade in. I hate this part. We leapfrog again, and in the next yard, we’re up to our waist. This is where it’s the worst. Wading up to your waist is tolerable, but something about plunging your vital organs under is what makes your heart thud.

  I land in the next yard and sink down to my bellybutton. At this stage, there’s no point in delaying the inevitable. I drop down under the water and work to control my breathing after that first icy stab of a breath.

  Liáng follows my lead, and we both put on our flippers over the dry scuba suit boots. By the time we’re swimming toward the next brick fence line, the cold is already starting to fade as the internal heater does its job.

  The water just barely comes up over the next brick fence. We set the equipment bag and stunners on top of it and gently roll over the edge. On the other side, we finally submerge for good.

  It can be difficult to modulate the buoyancy in the dry scuba suits as air is trapped in the suit, but it gets easier the deeper you get. W
e’re down about eight to ten feet in the bricked-off row-house yard.

  “We’re under,” I tell Puo. I use the retina displays to turn on my heads-up displays. Digital readouts spread out on the blue-pixelated surfaces around me. The bright moon is providing just enough additional light for the nightvision to pick out some good detail.

  “Roger, that,” Puo says. “Squiddie still hanging out on the other side of the stadium. Careful of any squatters.”

  “Duh,” I say to Puo. “Liáng, follow me.”

  I gently kick over to the paved, submerged street, outlined in blue pixels. We go slowly. Very slowly. Careful at every yard opening to look around the corner and make sure there isn’t a nasty surprise waiting for us.

  “Puo,” I whisper getting frustrated at our slow progress, “We need a quiet runner. A silent scout. Something we can send in to map out the way.”

  “Hunh,” is Puo’s response. “The quiet bit is the hard part. That and the communication link back to us could be traced if it’s captured.”

  Liáng breaks in, “What about a dead man’s switch?”

  Fuck yeah, Liáng. A dead man’s switch is a device that if it doesn’t receive our regular signal in the event that it’s captured, it automatically self-destructs.

  “Damn, Liáng,” I say. “You keep it up, we’re just going to have to hire you.”

  “You couldn’t afford me,” he says dismissively.

  “Gah!” I snap. “What is with you? You’re worse than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Pick a freaking mood and stick with it—”

  “Isa—” Puo says.

  I continue: “—This bouncing between being helpful and an arrogant ass is annoying—”

  “Isa!” Puo cuts me off. “Not now. You have a candidate location? It looks like a squiddie may be heading toward you.”

  Grrr. “Negative on the location. Depth is forty feet, continuing to get deeper. As for you Liáng, pick a damn mood and stick with it. Got it?”

  Liáng is silent for a few seconds before saying in a perfectly normal voice, “As you wish.”

  I want to whirl around and strangle him, but resist the urge.

  The street is transitioning from one of row houses to a row of brick businesses with broken windows and crusted over signs. I head over to a narrow, brick alley on the right.