P Deutermann - The Moonpool

I waited by the edge of the container. I could feel sharp edges of ripped metal digging into my coat. How long had I been stopped? Would Pardee come around the corner in a minute? I tried to visualize our planned route in. I’d diverted into the dead end, but now I was back at the edge of the way we’d planned. Maybe the thing to do was to wait for Pardee before approaching those huddled figures out by the fire.

Except my scouts had gone missing. I felt like Lee at Gettysburg.

I waited and listened some more. The air had gotten colder the deeper I’d gone into the tangle. I was hoping for any sound I could recognize that might tell me where they’d run off to. It wasn’t like them to leave me in the dark like this.

There was a solid wall of containers on the other side of the rough path. Firelight illuminated the very top edges. I stared at the containers, trying to make out what was different, and then figured it out. These were intact. Rusty, spray-painted with all sorts of hip-hop tags, dented and scratched, but otherwise intact. The three straight lift rods on the backs indicated working double doors. Three in a row, end on to the path, and sitting fairly upright, unlike the majority of the containers, which sprawled at all angles in the darkness. Everything around them was wrecked, but these three containers were definitely not wrecked. I decided to wait some more, hoping that Pardee would come creeping down the alley between the other containers. I had an increasingly urgent sense that I badly needed my backup, or what was left of it. Where were the damned dogs?

After another two minutes of just standing there, I got out my cell phone and keyed Pardee’s number.

It wasn’t Pardee who answered. It was Trask.

“Hi there, Lieutenant,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“Let me talk to him,” I said.

“Afraid he’s somewhat indisposed just now, Lieutenant. Not harmed, mind you, but not available for phone-cons. Sleeping. In your Suburban.”

“Sleeping.”

“Yup. A little whiff of ether and down he went. It’s a lot more efficient than whacking somebody on the back of the head. You never know what will happen then. Ready to palaver?”

“I suppose I am,” I said, looking around again. I had the sense that he could see me.

“Right in front of you are three containers,” he said, confirming my worst suspicions. “The middle door is the one you want. Watch your step.”

He broke the connection. Well, shit, I thought. We did agree to meet him in his jungle, not ours. We should have figured a way to come by boat. I put my. 45 away and slipped across the open space between my detour and the middle container. There were no locks on the operating handles, so I undid the latches and shoved the two halves open.

I flipped on my penlight. The container was empty, just a blank cube of space that smelled faintly of some kind of exotic animal dung. I tried to remember where I’d smelled that before. The deck of the container was about a foot above the ground level outside, so I stepped up and into the container, keeping an eye on those doors. If there was someone waiting outside to lock me in, I thought I’d have a shot at keeping one of the door halves open long enough to deal with him.

I stood there and searched the interior with the penlight again. I thought I heard a faint whimpering sound-the shepherds? I saw what looked like a big floor seam halfway down the container. Maybe there was a trapdoor of some kind? I took one more step in that direction and felt the floor sag under my feet. In the next instant, before I could step back, the half that I was standing on dropped down to a forty-five-degree angle and I went sliding down the plywood floor into serious darkness. The moment I hit bottom, the floor panel snapped back up behind me with a loud bang.

I’d managed to hold on to the penlight, which I quickly shone around into the darkness. Instantly two fuzzy shepherd faces pushed into view and then into my own face. While I was fending off an incipient love-in, lights came on in the ceiling. One of the dogs knocked the tiny light out of my hand, but I no longer needed it. The lights were bright enough to make me blink.

I found myself sitting on a dirt floor in an underground chamber. Actually, I realized, it was another container, submerged ninety percent under the surface level of the junkyard. For that matter, this might be the true surface level of the junkyard, depending on how old the place was. The walls and ceiling were made of what looked like aluminum or light steel; the only thing missing was a plywood floor. The air was dry and musty, but the ground smelled of damp. There were four small lights embedded in the ceiling, and an even smaller hole, maybe two inches square, at one end of the container, high up on the wall. It looked like there was a glass cover on that aperture. High on one side wall was a black circle about a foot and a half in diameter, which I assumed was an air hole. That was not a good sign.

My cell phone began to vibrate.

“Lieutenant,” Trask said, when I opened it. “Glad you could drop by.”

“How’d you get the dogs down here?” I asked.

“Dragged a rat on a string in front of them and into the double doors,” he said. “Which were open when you made your little detour there, in case you didn’t notice, and I don’t think you did.”

“Got me there,” I said. I told the dogs to sit. I was trying to be really stern with them, but I was very glad to see them back. They sat, but they weren’t happy.

“I’ve got you here, actually,” he said, “and we’re going to have some fun, presently. But first: I’m curious. What is it you think we’re going to do at Helios?”

“I think you’re going to create some kind of fake terrorist incident. That wake-up call you were ranting about. Something to do with moonpool water.”

“You’re close,” he said. “Perhaps wrong about the fake aspects.”

“So why knock us off?” I asked, examining the space again. I didn’t like the sound of that have-some-fun comment, and I wanted out of here. Obviously I’d need to pull that plywood ramp back down, but I couldn’t see a seam anymore.

“Because you’re getting in the damned way,” he said. “I don’t have time for any more of your interference. We have a plan, and a window of opportunity, which is upon us, so to speak. I need you out of the way, which is where you are.”

“You keep saying ‘we.’ ”

“Some like-minded people in the nuclear power industry,” he said.

“What did you do to my partner out there?”

“Put him to sleep,” he said. “Temporarily, I hope. He’s going to be medium useless when he does wake up, though.”

“I told the Bureau you’re alive and kicking,” I said, “and where I was going tonight.”

He laughed. “Nice try,” he said, “but the Bureau is shortly going to be much too busy to worry about you.”

“Going to turn some more of your aliens loose in the container yard?”

“My aliens?”

“We ran into an ICE guy the last time we came over here. He told us he’s undercover over here in the junkyard, and that you’re part of an alien immigration surveillance program.”

“My, my, how some people do run their mouths,” he said. “But I’m not worried about the Bureau. Their only interest in me right now is that I’m not their vic in the moonpool. Where’s the little Italian wise-ass?”

“Out there somewhere,” I said.

“Or back in Triboro,” he countered. “That’s what my sources tell me, anyway. Back home doing some homework. Something to do with the Helios visitor logs. You don’t have any idea why your Ms. Gardner overran her sell-by date down here, do you?”

“You said you were going to enlighten me.”