Welcome to the Greenhouse (16 page)

“Hold it!” said a man’s voice. Amos and Stephanie came to an abrupt halt. The man, dressed dramatically all in black and wearing a ski mask over his face, stepped closer, the pistol pointed at Amos. “I warned you. Three times I told you to stop doing the devil’s work. And now God says you must pay.”

Stephanie turned toward Amos, fear and shock on her face; and the dawning realization that Amos had been threatened, and not told her. Then she took a short step toward the man with the pistol pointed at her husband’s stomach. “Greg? Is that you? Have you gone completely batty?”

Stephanie had recognized the voice. Gregory Hentson. And now Amos understood the threats, and why he had been singled out. They had never been friends, but he had known Greg since they were teenagers; attended the same high school in Orlando, and UCF in overlapping years. Stephanie had dated Greg for two months, breaking it off when she learned he was an avid hunter; she would not be involved with someone who got a thrill from killing wild animals. Greg had taken it badly, blaming Amos, though in fact he hadn’t even met Stephanie until weeks later. She had told Amos back then that she thought Greg Hentson a little offbeat; extremely religious, but handsome, polite, and less pushy for sex than most. And no, their relationship hadn’t gotten that far in two months.

Amos knew that Greg Hentson had been taught hunting and fishing by his father. In one of their few conversations in high school, Greg had earnestly explained that God placed man in dominion over the animals, and they were expressly put here to serve his needs. For his part, Amos had tried fishing but found it too slow a sport, and never gone hunting at all. He had heard from mutual friends that Greg, still single, worked for a local charity in Orlando. And apparently Stephanie’s rejection, and the supposed theft of her affections by Amos, had festered like an infected boil, growing steadily over the years and turning into blind, unreasoning hate.

“Greg?” Stephanie’s voice was tremulous. “You’ve been threatening Amos?” Her voice steadied, became firm. “But it isn’t really him you hate. No, it’s me, because I tossed you, twenty years ago. All this time… And you’re getting back at me now, by killing the man I love? While claiming you’re doing
God’s
work?”

“No! Amos is evil! These are the end times, and he’s trying to thwart the expressed will of God!”

Greg had let the pistol barrel fall, but raised it again and aimed at Amos. Stephanie screamed and jumped in front of her husband, arms waving wildly. The gun fired, a bright streak of red fire in the night. Stephanie’s momentum kept her moving past Amos, before she lost her balance and fell to the sandy ground.

Greg stared at Stephanie, uncertain of what he had done. Amos still held the empty coffee jug. He hurled the large container at Greg, then charged after it. The jug hit the gun in Greg’s extended hand and he involuntarily pulled the trigger, a second bright flash, directed toward the ground. Then Amos reached him, grabbing for the gun with his left hand and pushing it back as he hit Greg with a hard right to the nose. He hadn’t been in a fight since junior high, but had the satisfaction of feeling the nose flatten under his fist. The pistol went off a third time. Greg fell backward, dropping the weapon and clutching his stomach as he lay on the ground, moaning in pain. Blood from his nose soaked the black ski mask.

Amos grabbed the weapon first, then turned to Stephanie. She was scrambling to her feet, unhurt. “He pointed it away from me,” she said breathlessly. Stephanie hurried to kneel by Greg. She forced his hands away from his abdomen and examined him. “Through the left side and out again. Maybe got a kidney. Call 911! He should be okay if they get here fast enough.”

Amos pulled out his communicator and pressed 9.

Amos awoke late on Sunday morning, to find Stephanie already up and dressed. “About time, sleepyhead. Grab some cereal, and then we have to finish packing.”

The success with the baby turtles seemed to have lifted Stephanie out of her depression. She had shaken off the trauma of having Gregory Hentson appear like a ghost from the past and threaten their lives.

“I just called the hospital. They had to repair two holes in his intestines, but Greg is out of danger. He’s under arrest, of course, with a sheriff’s deputy at the door.”

“I wish I could feel sorry for him,” said Amos, “but I don’t.”

“Thank you all for coming.” Interior Admin Judge Sebastian Carver rose from a chair near the front of the meeting room in the Merritt Island Park recreation building and walked to the podium. About ten people were seated in the closest chairs. He spoke without using a microphone, the deep, soft voice easily heard. “First, every one of you is someone for whom I had the sad duty of deciding your home couldn’t be saved. I invited you here in the hope of possibly relieving some of the emotional pain you’ve suffered. Second, this is an informal meeting. I’m a member of an unofficial association of admin judges that tries to help people making difficult career moves. Interior cooperates by giving us early word on upcoming projects. I want to show you one of those tonight.”

Carver lifted a remote control off the podium and pointed it at the screen on the wall behind him. It flickered to life, the Interior logo large on the bottom right. The camera hovered far above a snow-covered mountain peak, wooded slopes spread around it on all sides. A narrator came on and explained that they were seeing the Mt. Hood Wilderness area, a federal park over sixty thousand acres in size, with several small rivers supplied by the glaciers on Mt. Hood. The camera view moved down and focused on one large wooded valley. And the narrator briefly detailed one of the largest, most ambitious plans in the Save America program.

Amos listened and watched, fascinated, for thirty minutes. This high-level valley in Oregon was to be diked at its three lowest points, creating a new lake fed by several of Mt. Hood’s rivers. When full it would exceed 200 square miles in surface area. But in effect it was nothing more than a huge reservoir. Giant pumps would be installed a few miles to the north at the Columbia River; fourth largest in volume in the United States. They would feed two large concrete pipes climbing up to the new lake. The dam that would protect the Columbia River gorge from the rising water of the Pacific was to be located near Astoria, saving the much larger city of Portland to the southeast. In addition, as much as possible of the 150 inches of rainfall a year, for which the area was famous, would be diverted to the new reservoir.

That much water would overflow even this huge high-level lake in just a few years. But two wide new covered aqueducts were to be built south and east of Mt. Hood, carrying two rivers’ worth of water south. The eventual users were the drier parts of Oregon east of the Cascades, and the states of California, Nevada, and Arizona. According to the narrator this huge and dependable new supply of water would turn the dry areas of those states into gardens, providing vast new areas of farmland. As a side benefit, the Colorado River would be much less used, and should once again provide a supply of freshwater to Mexico.

When the program ended, Carver returned to the podium. “This project is going to be one of the biggest of Save America. It was proposed decades ago, but the country wasn’t willing then to spend the money. Now we are, because we must be. The first thousand or so jobs are about to be posted, and each of you here have some of the required skill needs.” He picked up a printed list off the podium. “First, Amos Byers. How would you like to work on the pumps that will lift Columbia River water all the way to the new reservoir? And Stephanie Byers; there are jobs for biologists at the Pacific Coast Wildlife Rescue Center in Portland. You’ll be working to save the Pacific sea lions, finding higher level breeding beaches for them. Now Arturo and Juanita Delgado…” but Amos stopped listening when Stephanie rose, grabbed his hand, and led him to the door.

The area outside was brightly lit. Amos stared at Stephanie when she stopped and turned to face him, still holding his hand. “Amos—I want to go. I don’t want to move into that dreadful apartment, I want a whole new life! Becoming a part of something that will change our country for the better, not just save overpriced real estate… I want this, Amos.”

He stared at her, unable to believe the change in Stephanie. Her eyes were almost sparkling, her face more animated than he had seen in months. He had the awful feeling that if he refused to move and said no, she would leave him and go anyway.

“But the girls! Their senior year…”

“Amos, I talked to Judge Carver when he called and invited us to this meeting. I’ve had time to think about it, and talk with the girls. They say Florida with a dike around it won’t be the same, and they love the idea of moving to a cooler climate.”

“It was the turtles,” Amos said softly, his gaze still on Stephanie’s face. “You and your students saved
all
of them…”

Stephanie turned to look at him, surprised. “Yes, we did. But I’ve worked with turtles for decades. I’m ready for something new, and saving the Pacific sea lions will be fascinating work. They aren’t like turtles; they can be taught to change their habits.”

“And so can we,” said Amos. He pulled Stephanie into his arms and kissed her, thoroughly and warmly. Neither had ever lived outside Florida; it was time for a change.

But twenty years from now, he planned to bring Stephanie back here for a vacation. The first of the adult female loggerheads from the nest Stephanie and her students had saved should be coming ashore to lay their eggs. He wanted to watch the awkward, lumbering, indomitable females struggling to perpetuate their species, no matter the odds against the survival of their offspring. Someone would be waiting there, to move those eggs to higher ground.

The first sign of trouble was nothing more than a shadowy glint, and Taiesha missed it, being too busy arguing with the judge. The
California Queen’s
paddlewheel threshed the dark water at half speed as they edged their way past another half-drowned town full of skeletal trees and rotted rooftops. It should have been safe enough, this far offshore. There was no source of fresh water out here, so no people either.

A used-to-be someplace,
Taiesha thought,
without even a name nowadays.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. A hundred yards starboard, she caught a glimpse of an old water tower, its rusted remains still graced by dark lettering. Hilmar-something. Irving? Irwin? She couldn’t tell. The rest of it had been stolen by time, water, weather, and weariness. Some little farm town, then, swallowed up by the Inland Sea the same as so many larger cities—Sacramento, Stockton, Tracy… Half of California was gone, seemed like.

“Why me?” she demanded.

“Look, you’re a public defender,” Judge Hebert insisted. “It’s your job.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No,” he replied, with no hint of a smile. On his long pale deep-graven face, it would look out of place anyway, she thought, like a grim reaper’s grin.

Taiesha snorted at that notion, which cut a little too close to the bone. She turned away from her boss, but as the deck yawed underfoot, she veered to the right and the morning sunlight cutting across the Texas deck caught her full in the face. It blinded her for a critical moment, so bright that tears soon threatened to slide down her cheeks.

Oh, Lord. She couldn’t let Hebert see
that.
She grabbed hold of the railing in front of her and tried to get a grip of another kind. The blistered paint bit at the scars across her palms, but she ignored the lesser pain. She stared instead at the skeins of silvery water flying off the great paddlewheel as it churned away at the
Queen
‘s stern, two decks below.

“Well, Chavez is sick, and there’s nobody else aboard anywhere near as qualified,” Judge Hebert said.

“It’s a child murder,” Taiesha ground out, unable to keep her voice totally level.

“Yes. A capital crime,” the judge agreed. “And I know how much you hate kid cases. Even so, there’s no help for it. Somebody has to defend this man. He’s a pre-Rise landowner. His case is getting a lot of attention.”

Taiesha shook her head hard enough to arouse a faint jingle from the tiny metallic beads at the ends of her cornrows. The sound, as always, reminded her of the wind chimes her daughter brought home from the fair that last summer, before everything went to hell. Pretty things, those chimes, adorned with little butterflies of anodized aluminum, flashing blue and green in the sun as they spun about. How many years had it been since…

Somewhere below, a gun went off and someone screamed. A splash was followed by several men shouting, then more gunshots.

Only then did Taiesha notice the boats that had pulled up alongside the
Queen—a
kayak, a dinghy, and what looked like one of those fiberglass paddleboats she used to rent at Lodi Lake in the summer. The ungainly things were propelled by one or both of the passenger working bicycle pedals set under the seats. Her little girl had loved the silly contraptions.

Where the hell had this one come from?

The shadows, she realized. They’d been hiding behind what remained of the houses of Hilmar-Ir-whatever, counting on the glare of the morning sun to keep the
Queens
crew from spotting them too early on.

“Pirates!” somebody finally cried down below. The pilothouse bell began clanging like mad.

“Ah, shit!” muttered the judge.

Taiesha moved toward the portside stairway leading down to the boiler deck. Her hand found its way to the small of her back without her guidance, and then she had the comforting weight of blued steel in her grip. The judge did not follow. His post was right there, at the top of the stairs, where he could keep boarders from reaching the pilot, from taking control of the
Queen.

Her own lay two flights down, on the main deck, but already one of the pirates had swarmed up a column amidships. The barefoot bastard scrambled over the railing just as she reached the boiler deck. For a fleeting second, Taiesha gaped. He looked like a friggin’ cartoon of a buccaneer. White or Hispanic mixed with black, he wore brown dreadlocks and torn denim cut-offs and some sort of gun belt, but most of the rest was earrings and tattoos and beard stubble. Jesus! The scrawny little mutt even had a naked knife’s blade clenched in between what was left of his teeth.

All this news her eyes gathered in while her hands acted on their own. She heard a loud bang. Instantly, a small black hole appeared beside the blue spider tattooed above his left eyebrow. There wasn’t much blood. Just wide brown eyes full of dull surprise. Then he was falling back over the railing again, all before she’d even realized those two slender dark-skinned hands in front of her and the smoking pistol they held were her own.

“Good shot, lass.”

The voice was male and deep as the pit, but softened by a Scottish burr. Iain MacClure. Had to be, she thought, whirling around. The gun, by necessity, followed her line of sight, and she fired again but on the fly. A spurt of blood flew from the side of the Scotsman’s head as he threw himself at the deck but that didn’t deflect the bullet much. It still found its target—another boarder swinging an ax at MacClure’s broad back. The next man ducked and she missed him. Worse yet, the shell casing stove-piped, jamming her pistol.

Poxy thing. But there was no time to think about it. The third guy had already reached for the ax.

In two long strides, she delivered a place kicker’s boot to the third man’s gonads. It sent a shockwave of pain up her spine and lifted him up off the deck by a full three inches, but didn’t kill him. It did drop him onto his hands and knees when he came back down again, though, and thereafter he spent his time trying to vomit and scream simultaneously. She had to bring the gun’s butt down like a club and bash the man at the base of his skull to shut him up. Only then did she have time to worry about MacClure and his condition.

Had she killed him?

No.

Damn the luck!

Three hours later, they pulled into Atwater. Four dead pirates hung from the rails on the starboard side. The two they’d captured were chained to the same rails, spread-eagle, one of them wailing about it. The rest of them had either escaped or their bodies had been too much work to recover.

Right now, the crewmen were lined up along both sides of the boat, a show of force for the locals that took up entirely too much room on the cargo-laden main deck. Worse yet, Taiesha had to sidle past MacClure as she made her way forward. She braced herself for the too-close encounter, not least because of her still-aching back, but the auditor merely nodded her way and said nothing at all.

What was up with
that
anyway? Most men would have said: (a) “Hey, girl! Thanks for saving my ugly ass!” or (b) “You damn near blew my head off, bitch! What up!”

Not MacClure. He was too busy fluffing his gray-blond curls, still damp from having the blood clots washed out. His right ear had been bandaged, and that made his round ruddy face look a little misshapen, but when it healed up he would probably be more symmetrical rather than less, since his left ear had a chunk missing too.

Hunh. There were more scars that she’d never noticed before, underneath the long hair and the sideburns.

Where did he get those,
she wondered, next easing her way past a long row of steel water barrels.
And who saved his hairy ass last time around?

On reaching the capstan, she was none too pleased to discover the man had fallen in right behind her. What? Was he planning to follow her all day long? What on Earth had she done to deserve a six-foot-tall Scottish thorn in her ass?

There was no time to ask him. She had her own role to play right now, one that called for a navy blue pinstriped business suit, a lawyerly bearing, and her smallest hide-away holster. That was the part she disliked the most. The form-fitting suit made it nearly impossible to conceal any serious weapons. But as Hebert kept on telling her, appearances would, sooner or later, start making a real difference.

“Ah, there you are, my dear.” The judge looked as sober as… well, himself. He was wearing his black robes in spite of the heat, and carrying his symbol of office—the gavel he’d use when his clerk called court into session. “Look sharp,” he told everyone else.

The
Queen’s
white gangplank hung from her nose like an anteater’s long snout, not yet in actual contact with the docks. As soon as she reached him, however, Hebert nodded to the boat’s captain.

“Showtime!” the captain replied with a sardonic smile, and gave the order to lower the plank.

Judge Hebert was, as always, the first to disembark. He moved with a priestly air of deliberation and the crowd ashore parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Well, John Alton Hebert was also a lawgiver, right?

She’d just have to hope no one here realized how vulnerable they really were, how easily the man, the show, and the
Queen
herself could be blown apart.

Dry land felt odd underfoot, as if she were still aboard ship. Her feet kept expecting a rhythmic rise and fall that wasn’t there anymore.
Must make me look like a drunk,
Taiesha thought, trying to keep herself in hand.

It didn’t help, having to push her way through the crowd. They’d made way for the judge, but not for her, not until the detail assigned to her caught up and formed a flying wedge around her. She didn’t care for that either, though. Relying on somebody else for your safety made you careless. That’s how you wound up facing death all alone, with your family’s blood on the walls.

Then again, there were only the three of them. Well, four, counting MacClure. Most of the others were assigned to Bobby Rishwain’s detail. Already, she could hear pulses of radio code on her earbug as his squad spread out and began their half of the hunt. Her own team had been put ashore quietly almost a mile north of town, and an hour ahead of their reaching the landing. If all went well, they’d be showing up here any minute and then she could link up with Rishwain and finish the job. Meanwhile, Judge Hebert was joining a man on a plank platform up ahead. Who the hell was that? The mayor?

I’ll be damned,
Taiesha thought. The man was actually wearing a waistcoat over a short-sleeve dress shirt. The rest of his three-piece suit was missing (he had jeans on, not slacks), but it did lend the fellow an air of decorum. He needed it. He had to shout to make himself heard above all the general uproar.

“Welcome to Atwater!” he bellowed over the heads of his fellow townsmen. “We are delighted to have you here, Judge, and we hope this will be only the first of many official visits to our little town. I see you’ve already run into our biggest problem.” At which point, he waved at the pirates, living and dead, adorning the
Queen.

“Indeed,” answered Hebert. “And that will be our first order of business on the morrow.” He didn’t shout. He was wearing a lapel mike, and his somber voice boomed out across the dock with a startling volume thanks to loudspeakers mounted on the
Queen.
Several small children clutched at their mothers and cried. They were all young enough, they’d probably never heard the like. Hebert ignored them, aiming his words at their parents, who largely fell silent, more out of surprise than respect.

“Now, then. Ladies and Gentlemen,” said the judge. “It is my pleasure to be here, and I can assure you all, on behalf of the sovereign state of California, that Atwater will be a regular stop for the circuit court.”

That met with applause. Taiesha used it to cover a radio query. “Little Bo Peep, calling all her lost sheep… Buzz? Where are we?” “Already aboard,” Bustamente reported.

“What?!” Taiesha forced herself to maintain her direction. She would
not
turn and stare at the
Queen,
or get anyone else intrigued by doings on the boat, not right now. “Did you get all three?”

“Sure did.”

She wanted to smile. Instead, she asked him, “How did you manage it?”

Buzz chuckled. “Easy. I told ‘em there was too such a thing as free lunch, and it’s part of the witness fee. Never had to show ‘em the warrant.”

“Outstanding,” she told him. To the rest of the team, she said, “Okay, we have our material witnesses. Now, all we need is the defendant.”

She’d made it to the end of the platform by then, but she paid no attention to the two men presently treading the boards. Her attention was centered instead on a burly cocoa-colored brute with broad
indio
cheek bones. An ancient M-16 hung from his shoulder on a rawhide strap, much as a woman would carry a purse. While his stance was calm and his hands were still, his eyes danced over the crowd with professional speed, skipping over the kids and most of the women, zeroing in on a few of the townsmen and more than a few of the raggedy teenagers on the crowd’s outer fringes. He’s picking targets, she realized. Just in case.

Using hand signals, she split up her escorts, two and two, so they could set up a crossfire, should support in force be needed. “Look sharp,” she told them. “This could turn ugly in a heartbeat.”

MacClure nodded, grinning as if the fool didn’t know what ugly was, which might be all too true.

As she came closer to M-16, he turned his gaze her way, so, rolling her hips a bit, Taiesha smiled at him. “You the sheriff?” she inquired.

“Not exactly,” he replied.

“Hunh. Well, I don’t see a badge, but I do see… authority.”

That went over as she’d intended, allowing her to sidle closer.

Meanwhile, up on the platform, Judge Hebert was just hitting his oratorical stride. “As you know, the state is striving with all its might to suppress the kind of lawlessness represented by these sorry specimens.” He waved at the two surviving raiders, still hanging in chains. One screamed an obscenity in response.