Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

Joe’s words had been muffled by the mouth guard, but it sounded to Kurt like he’d said I ran over someone’s cow.

This round went quickly, with Joe dodging the thunderbolts and then landing a few jabs on Thor’s midsection. He might as well have been punching a stone wall. When Joe made it back, he was noticeably winded.

“You ran over a cow?” Kurt asked.

“Actually, I just bumped into him,” Joe said breathing hard.

“Was it the God of Thunder’s cow?” Kurt asked, nodding toward Joe’s opponent.

“No,” Joe said. “One of the ranchers here.”

Kurt did not feel the fog of confusion lifting. “How does that turn into a boxing match?”

“There are rules here,” Joe said, “but no fences. The cows wander everywhere, out onto the roads and everything. If you hit a cow at night, it’s the cow’s fault. But if you hit a cow in the day, it’s your fault. I bumped into one at dusk. Apparently, that’s, ah… una zona gris: a gray area.”

“So you have to fight to the death in a cage match?” Kurt said, joking.

“Does this look like a fight to the death?” Joe asked.

“Well…”

“The guy whose cow I hit owns the gym. The Scandinavian guy over there moved here and became the local amateur champ a year ago. The islanders like him but would rather see someone else as champ, someone who looks more like them.”

Kurt smiled. With his Latin background, Joe looked far more like the islanders than Thor did.

The bell rang again, and Joe answered it, stepping up and trying to get inside the Scandinavian man’s long reach. It was dangerous work, but aside from a few glancing blows Joe seemed to be holding his own, and the Scandinavian seemed to be slowing.

Joe sat down again, and Kurt changed the subject.

“I need to talk to you about the Barracuda,” he said.

“What about it?”

“Can it dive to sixteen thousand feet?”

Joe shook his head. “It’s not a bathysphere, Kurt. It’s designed for speed.”

“But could you modify it to do the job?”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “By putting it inside a bathysphere.”

Kurt went silent. Joe was a genius with machines. Still, he could work only within the laws of physics.

Joe rinsed his mouth and spat.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “What’s on the bottom of the Atlantic that you want to take a look at?”

“You heard about what happened the other day?”

Joe nodded. “A ship almost fell on your head.”

“It did,” Kurt said. “I’d like to get a better look at it now that it’s all safe and sound on the bottom.”

The bell rang, and Joe stood, his eyes on Kurt. He seemed to be thinking. “There might be a way,” he said, a gleam shining in his eyes.

By that moment, Joe had lingered too long. The God of Thunder had roamed across the ring.

“Look out,” Joe’s cornerman shouted.