Deep Time

by Rob Sangster

  In two long strides, he closed on the driver, who dropped the jacket he’d just pulled off and started his switch blade in a horizontal slice. Jack moved in fast and swung the hookaroon. With his full weight behind it, he clubbed the driver in the side of his neck. The driver’s knife-hand dropped, as useless as though it had been unplugged. Jack drove the point of his elbow backward squarely into the driver’s right temple. His head jerked sideways, his knees buckled, and he sagged into a heap.

  Jack glanced at Gano and saw Hoodie squared off in front of him, weight balanced, hands high, eyes focused. Uh, oh. That one hasn’t lost many fights. But Gano’s bigger problem was the bartender. He’d hung back, probably sure Hoodie would take out Gano with the pipe. Now Jack saw the bartender reach behind his back in a move that meant only one thing: a handgun tucked in his belt.

  The bartender, focused on Gano fifteen feet away, raised a silver snub nose pistol. He paused, waiting for a clear shot. Jack threw himself around the hood of the truck. The bartender saw Jack coming at him and snapped off a shot at Gano that missed. He swung his pistol around to face the threat from Jack. The pistol was still in its arc when Jack hurled the hookaroon at the bartender’s head. The bartender’s gun arm came up reflectively to swat at the spinning spike. That gave Jack the second he needed to close at full speed. He grabbed the back of the bartender’s head, pulled it forward and jammed his thumb up along the man’s nose into his right eye. The bartender shrieked and clawed at his face. Jack launched his knee into the man’s groin with such force it lifted him onto his toes. As the bartender collapsed, Jack grabbed his head again and slammed him face first into the pavement. Jack scooped up his pistol, and then the insults being shouted at each other by Gano and Hoodie penetrated his consciousness.

  During the few seconds Jack had been in action, Gano and Hoodie had been circling one another looking for an opening. Hoodie made a couple of fakes with his pipe then launched a roundhouse. Gano tried to block it with his forearm but only deflected it. It slammed his shoulder so hard it staggered him.

  Hoodie took a step back, taunting Gano to come at him. Gano stayed put and let his guard drop lower. Hoodie couldn’t resist the temptation and cocked his pipe for another swing.

  Jack raised the pistol.

  Gano stepped inside, and put his full weight into an uppercut to the man’s solar plexus. The pipe fell out of his hand and the “arghh” sounded like a drunk trying to wretch, but he didn’t go down. Blood dripping from his nose and breathing heavily, he was paying a price for long nights in the tavern. Gano popped the guy hard in the face with a straight left, then struck with three more rapid-fire punches, drawing gouts of blood. Hoodie, infuriated, rushed forward to wrestle him to the pavement. Gano was ready and hammered Hoodie on the jaw with an overhand right. The man’s momentum carried him in a nose dive to the pavement.

  Gano looked at Jack. “What kept you, Joltin’ Jack?”

  “I was busy.” Jack leaned over, hands on his knees, totally winded, body craving oxygen. After sucking in a dozen deep breaths, he made sure Hoodie had no other weapon.

  “These guys must have been sent by Barbas, but I want to find out for sure.”

  “Let’s ask the driver.” Gano walked around the back of the pickup. “Holeeeeee sheeee-it. It looks like a slaughterhouse over here. These two aren’t going to be talking to us.”

  “I’ll explain later. The guy in the hood you were dancing with is still conscious. Ask him.”

  Gano said, “Petros Barbas paid you guys to ambush us, right?”

  “Screw off.” The answer came from between the bloody lips of a man beaten but still belligerent. He wiped his mouth. The back of his hand came away red. “This ain’t over, buddy.”

  “You’re damn right it ain’t,” Gano said. “I’m having the cops throw you in the slammer.”

  “Not our cops, you won’t.” He spat a bloody mess onto the asphalt.

  Gano looked up and down the street, and said, “We better mosey back to my ol’ Cessna before a posse shows up.”

  “Fine with me. My elbow hurts like hell.” Coveralls, the driver, and the bartender were completely disabled. Hoodie was making no attempt to get to his feet, but Jack took his cell phone, just in case.

  In front of Hotel Elliott, they jerked open the back doors of a cab and climbed in.

  “Airport. Fast.”

  “Waterfront’s a wreck, so I’ll stay two blocks inland.”

  But when he reached the bridge that led to the airport, several highway workers stood next to the road holding orange cones, apparently about to close the bridge to inspect for water damage.

  Those guys knew we were going to the airport, so they might have sent a gang out there. No time for a long detour.

  “Don’t stop, driver,” Jack ordered. “You get an extra fifty bucks in case you have to take the long way home.”

  The driver glanced over his shoulder and accelerated, ignoring the workman waving at him to stop. The bridge held. When he dropped them off and had the extra money in hand, he gave Jack a big smile. “You folks come back any time. We know how to treat strangers right.”

  “So we found out,” Gano said. “Listen, give 911 a call. We saw some guys fighting a couple of blocks from the hotel toward the river. Looked pretty bad. Might need an ambulance.”

  GANO BANKED THE Cessna until it was heading south for San Francisco. After leveling out, he settled back and cleared his throat. “Let me ask you something, old pard. Back on that street, I had my hands full with one guy. You wiped out the other three all by yourself. When did Mr. Peacenik turn into Rambo?”

  Jack wasn’t surprised by the question. “One night in Juarez, Debra and I were jumped by three men who’d been sent to ambush us. One of them knocked me cold, and they kidnapped Debra. After I came to, facedown on the gravel, I tracked them by following a scream from Debra. When I caught up, I surprised them and went in swinging. I was so nuts I might have killed the leader if Debra hadn’t pulled me off him.”

  “You never talk about that night,” Gano said.

  “I try not to think about it. It was such a close call that it taught me a lesson. I decided to learn how to fight better, so I took classes at the YMCA.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Gano frowned, obviously trying to reconcile the mayhem he’d just seen with a YMCA class.

  “Of course I am. I didn’t have time to spend years studying one of the martial arts, so I took a few lessons from a guy with a concept he calls ‘targeted fighting.’ He teaches that you never fight if you can avoid it, but if someone intends to do you serious harm, maybe kill you, you use extreme tactics to disable him before he can react. Back on that street in Astoria, nonviolence wasn’t going to cut it, so I used targeted fighting.”

  Gano gave a low whistle. “Rough stuff. Never seen anything like it.”

  “I tried to get them to walk away.”

  “Right now, they’re damn sure wishing they had.”

  “I wish they had too. I’m still against using violence, but when your life is at stake, or the life of someone you love, it may be the only way. My commitment to nonviolence was just an untested principle until Juarez. That forced me to get realistic. I did some serious damage to those guys, and I feel bad about that. Honestly, I worry that using a skill like that successfully will make it too easy to use it the next time.” What he wouldn’t say to Gano, could barely admit to himself, was how much that fight made him think of his own mortality. If he’d been a fraction of a second slow in disarming the guy with the switch blade, or if the bartender had gotten in a lucky shot, he and Gano would likely be dead in that Astoria back street.

  Gano looked bemused by his candor. “So, Jackpot, you’re a caveman just like the rest of us. You know, you look pretty much the same as you did three years ago—maybe a little gray in your sideburns, lost a few pounds from
working your ass off—but you’ve changed. You step up to trouble faster, take more risks.” Gano gave him an appraising look. He had to be wondering whether, if there were a next time, how far Jack would go.

  Chapter 26

  July 27

  12:30 p.m.

  San Francisco

  “HERE YOU ARE, Debra, panini sandwiches from Joe DiMaggio’s Chop House. Perfect for an al fresco lunch.” Jack set the tray, also loaded with cheese, fruit, and two bottles of San Pellegrino mineral water, on the trestle table.

  He’d chosen Washington Square because North Beach held good memories for him. He’d come here often as a student for cheap pasta dinners and wine where no one checked IDs. The Beat Generation—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and the rest—were long gone, but the place was still alive with fetching female artists in black leggings. Elderly Italian men in dark suits played bocce ball in the afternoon sun and reminisced about the old country. The way things had been going, he needed the good vibes.

  He sat facing Debra and, behind her, Saints Peter and Paul Church. He was ready to tell her about the stress-packed hours he’d just gone through. He started with the trip to Ironbound and the encounter with Renatus and the amazing DNA sequencing system he had assembled.

  “Why would he show you his laboratory?”

  “Can’t tell with Renatus. He wasn’t trying to impress. He doesn’t care what we think. Maybe he just wanted to get rid of us without having a confrontation.” He shrugged. “But he refused to tell us why he’d set up the lab. Anyway, after he let us walk through the spooky old lodge, he kicked us out. When we flew back to Astoria, I wanted to see the processing plant, so we approached from upriver and saw all hell breaking loose.”

  “You picked a heck of a time. The news said Astoria was hit by a minor tidal wave.”

  “Not so minor. It was a wall of water at least ten feet high that tore up the waterfront. The epicenter of the quake that caused it was somewhere near Chaos. Given what we know about methane hydrate in the area of the platform and the clathrate bomb hypothesis, and those structures on the seabed we couldn’t identify, I’m sure that quake was caused by Renatus and Barbas.”

  “I want to agree, but I’m not there yet.”

  “I’ll keep at it until I convince you. Anyway, Gano and I flew back to Astoria and met with Molly McCoy, who was badly shaken by the destruction. After I told her why I was sure Barbas had caused the tidal wave, she told us about the tension in Astoria that started building after Barbas took over. I asked her to give me the names of Astoria people who work on the platform and might give me information about Barbas. She’s thinking it over. I’ll call her later today.”

  “You’re lucky you got in and out of Astoria with no trouble. You told me some of the locals were pretty hostile last time you were there.”

  “Some still are.” He didn’t like withholding anything, but telling her about the attack on the way to the airport might cause an eruption that would throw them off track.

  “You were both crazy to go back there. Anyway, we need to talk about reality on our own waterfront. I’m fed up with Simms sending phony renters to poke around our office during business hours. They upset our clients and our lawyers. And those ‘unexplained’ power outages that shut us down twice? That was Simms, too.” Her voice was bitter. “With Barbas behind him, Simms thinks he’s invincible.” She turned away to glance at an ambulance screaming past on Columbus Avenue.

  She turned back. “When we agreed to file a lawsuit against Armstrong, we knew it could generate serious push-back, but that’s all the hostility we can handle right now. We can’t take on Barbas too. You have to ease up, at least for a while.”

  “There’s no time. Besides, as long as I’m after him even a little bit, Barbas will come after me. It’s all or nothing. Someone has to stand up to him. I’m that someone.”

  “You’re also the ‘someone’ who brought in big clients, won big cases, and earned big fees. That’s why we took the risk of quadrupling our payroll. But lately, instead of being the rainmaker, you’re calling in enemy fire on us. This firm is at a tipping point. You step up, or we go under.” She regarded him for a long moment. “Don’t you care anymore?”

  He didn’t miss the subtext in her question. She meant “Don’t you care about me anymore?”

  “Of course I do, but I can’t let Barbas go ahead. I just need a few days. After that, I’ll get the firm, and us, back on track. I promise.” Something in his wiring was driving him forward. At the same time, he felt guilty for not protecting Debra and their team. He had to find a way to get them through this together.

  “I know who you are,” she said, standing, “so I understand. I honestly do. I’m doing my share to keep our firm afloat. If I have to do your share too, I’ll do that. Right now, we don’t have anything else to talk about.”

  He saw sadness in her eyes before she turned and walked away, head up, back stiff. It hurt deeply that she was so disappointed in him.

  Let Barbas run loose? Lose the firm? Lose Debra? I won’t accept any of that, but I have to make choices.

  Seconds later, Gano walked up to the table. “Your assistant told me you were here, but I wasn’t about to barge in.” He sat where Debra had been. “Couldn’t help overhearing. By the way, you ever thought about a Dale Carnegie course?” He pointed to the panini. “Goin’ to eat that?” He wolfed down an untouched sandwich and hacked slices off a cylinder of Caciotta cheese, eating fast as though the food might be taken away any moment. “So is your firm still getting flack over taking the Armstrong case?”

  “We are, which is why the plaintiffs couldn’t find any other law firm that would touch the case. The defense contractors’ lobby has greased so many clever exemptions through Congress that interpretation of the law could go either way. I’m not going into it right now, but I have a plan.”

  “Let’s see, you have a secret plan to be revealed later that will keep Strider & Vanderberg from ending up like Custer’s Last Stand. Is that it?”

  “I don’t need your sarcasm. Barbas, Drake, and Renatus have conflicting goals, but they all revolve around one hydrothermal vent. Obviously, Barbas’s track record of environmental destruction sets off alarm bells, but what if energy from methane hydrate could end dependence on coal and oil? What if using it could slow or reverse climate change? Drake’s goal is to understand the origin of life on Earth. Problem is that he’s willing to kill to do that. I don’t know why Renatus is so focused on the HTV, but he’s as fanatical as the other two. All of them will try to run over me to get what they want.”

  Gano looked at the Pellegrino with distaste and said, “I’m just a simple Louisiana boy, so I’m wondering what I’m doing here, especially cuz I’m not the guy you need for climbing up or diving down. Maybe it’s time for me to head back to Copper Canyon and make some real money. And maybe”—he gave Jack a sharp look—“you should step aside and call in Seal Team 6. Let someone else carry the load of stomping Barbas’s ass.”

  “I can’t get Seal Team 6 to suit up because, so far, Barbas has committed no crime I can prove. In fact, he’s pumped hundreds of millions into the economy. He’s what some politicians love to call a ‘job creator.’ To the international media, he’s a rock star. No one else is going to confront him until it’s too late.”

  “So you’re going to mount up all your associate lawyers and form a posse?”

  “They didn’t sign on for that, but I have other resources. Drake has a ship and a sub and is willing to help me take on Barbas. And Molly McCoy can help . . . if she will.”

  Gano stopped idly scanning women strolling across the Square. “Molly, yeah, she’s a sweetheart. Wouldn’t mind seeing her again.” His eyes narrowed. “But you picked up on that already, so now you’re using her as a hook to keep me in the game.”

  “Of course, because now that Barbas is more on gu
ard it will be harder to get inside information. That’s where Molly comes in.”

  Gano reluctantly took a swig of Pellegrino. “All you’re likely to get in Astoria is your head busted, so I guess I better tag along. You know, YOLO.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You need to get out more. It means ‘You only live once.’ But I have one question, Chief. Deep down, you think you can stop this guy?”

  “I don’t know.” He realized his honesty surprised Gano. “Don’t look so damned shocked. No one is ever who you think they are.”

  Chapter 27

  July 27

  6:30 p.m.

  San Francisco

  “SHE MUST BE here,” Jack said, “I’m looking at our schedule. It shows her in the office all day.”

  “But she’s not here, sir.”

  Jack wanted to deal with the flare-up in Washington Square. Debra was far too important to him to let it fester between them.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “She asked me to book her on the next flight to Portland. There was one leaving in an hour and a half, so she left immediately to pack and head for SFO.”

  “Do we have a client in Portland?”

  “I can look that up, but she’s not staying in Portland.”

  “For God’s sake, where is she?”

  “I booked her to the regional airport in Astoria.”

  Astoria? She had no business reason to go there, and she knew he and Gano had left some hostile feelings behind. Then he thought of a reason. That’s where she’d go to fly to the Chaos platform. But that would be crazy. Why would she—it didn’t matter why. He called her cell phone. Not in service. He waited five minutes and tried again. Same thing. Alarmed, he consulted a file for a different phone number. After a long delay, Petros Barbas answered.