Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

Zavala winked and slipped through the door. He was confident he could charm his way out of practically any situation and had already prepared a story saying he’d become lost looking for the baño. He found himself in a long hallway with no windows or other openings except for a steel door at the far end. He walked the length of the hallway and put his ear against the door. Not hearing anything, he tried the knob. The door was locked.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a modified Swiss Army knife that would have got him arrested in places where possession of burglar tools is illegal. The standard attachments such as scissors, nail file, and can opener had been replaced with picks for the most common locks. On the fourth try he heard the latch click open. Behind the door another corridor slanted down. Unlike the first, this passage had several doors. All were locked except one that opened into a locker room.

The lockers were secure, and he could have opened them with his picks if he had time. He glanced at his watch. The tour would wind up soon. On the opposite wall were shelves piled with neatly folded white coats. He found one that fit and slipped it on. In a supply cabinet he discovered a clipboard. He stepped out into the corridor and continued on to yet a third door. This, too, was locked, but he managed to open it after a few tries.

The door opened onto an elevated platform that overlooked a big room. The platform led to a series of walkways that crossed through a web of linking horizontal and vertical pipes. The low hum of machinery seemed to come from everywhere, and he couldn’t trace its source. He descended a set of stairs. The pipes came out of the floor, then disappeared at right angles into the wall. Plumbing for the tortilla factory, he surmised. At one end of the room was another door. It was unlocked. When he cautiously opened it, a cool ocean breeze hit him in the face.

He gasped with surprise. He was standing on a small platform perched high on the side of a cliff, facing out onto a lagoon about two hundred feet below him. It was a beautiful vista, and again he wondered why somebody hadn’t built a hotel rather than a factory there. He assumed the factory was behind the edge of the cliff, but he couldn’t see it from his angle. He looked down again. The water washed up against the jagged rocks along the shore in foamy ripples. The platform had a gate at one end that led to empty space with no steps going down or up. Odd. A few feet from the gate a metal rail ran down the side of the cliff and disappeared into the water.

He followed the rail down to the lagoon with his eye. A section of water appeared to be darker than that surrounding it. It might have been kelp and other seaweed washing against the rocks. As he watched, there was an intense bubbling at the base of the cliff, and a large, shiny, egg-shaped object suddenly appeared from the water and began its climb up the side of the cliff. Of course! The rail was for an elevator.

The egg rose steadily up the track. It would be there within seconds. Zavala ducked back into the big room with the pipes, keeping the door open a crack.

The egg, made of a dark tinted glass or plastic that blended in with the side of the cliff, came to a stop at the platform. A door opened, and two men in white smocks stepped out. Zavala dashed for the stairs. Within seconds he was back at the storeroom. He tore his coat off, folded it as neatly as possible, and quickly walked along the corridors to the bakery. Nobody saw him step back into the area open to the public. He hurried along in the direction Austin and the tour group had taken. The guide saw him approach and gave him a quizzical and not altogether pleased look.

“I was looking for the baño.”

She blushed and said, “Oh, yes. I will show you.” She clapped her hands for attention. “The tour is about over.” She handed everyone a sample package of tortillas and conducted them back to the reception area. As the cars and tour buses left, Austin and Zavala compared notes.

“From the look on your face I’d guess your little exploration was successful.”

“I found something. I just don’t know what it is.” Zavala laid out a quick summary of his findings.

“The fact that they hid something underwater indicates that they don’t want anyone to know what they are doing,” Austin said. “Let’s take a walk.”

They strolled around the side of the factory but only got a short distance toward the water before they encountered a high mesh fence topped with razor wire a few hundred feet short of where the cliff dropped off.

“So much for an ocean view,” Zavala said.

“Let’s see if we can get around to the other side of the cove.”

The two men returned to the pickup and drove back onto the road. Several tracks led down to the sea, but the fence blocked each potential access. They were just about to give up when they saw a man with a fishing pole and a basket full of fish coming from a path that led toward the water. Zavala called him over and asked if they could get to the water. The man was wary at first, apparently thinking they had something to do with the tortilla place. When Zavala extracted a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet, the man’s face lit up, and he said yes, there was a fence, but there was a place to crawl under it.

He led them on a narrow path through the shoulder-high bushes, pointed to a section of chain-link fence, and left clutching his windfall. A section of fence was bent back from the ground and a hole scooped out underneath. Zavala easily slithered under to the other side, then held the fence for Austin. They followed the overgrown path until they came to the edge of a cliff. They were near the tip of the southernmost promontory enclosing the lagoon.

A trail that must have been worn by the feet of fishermen descended down the less steep side of the point. The NUMA men were more interested in the unimpeded view across the cove. From this angle the dark metal structure looked like a sinister redoubt out of a Conan movie. Austin scanned the building through his binoculars, then pointed them at the side of the cliff. Sunlight glinted off metal about where Zavala had described the elevator track. He let his eyes sweep out to the wide entrance of the lagoon where surf broke on the rocks, then back to the factory.

“Ingenious,” Austin said with a chuckle. “If you stuck a big facility out here in the boonies, everyone, like our fisherman friend back there, would talk about it. But put it in plain sight, invite the public to come tramping in and out every day, and you’ve got an unbeatable cover for some kind of clandestine operation.”

Zavala borrowed the binoculars and scanned the opposite cliff. “Why a waterproof elevator?”

“I don’t have an answer,” Austin said with a shake of his head. “I think we’ve seen all we’re going to see.”

Hoping to detect signs of activity around the building or cliff, they lingered a few more minutes, but the only movement they saw was the soaring sea birds. They headed away from the sea and minutes later were crawling under the fence. Zavala would have liked to ask the fisherman if he knew about the elevator or whether he had seen anything unusual in the lagoon, but the man had taken his money and run. They got back into the pickup and headed north.

Austin drove without talking. Zavala knew from past experience that his partner was chewing over a plan and when he had it fully formulated he would spill the details. Just beyond Ensenada, Austin said, “Is NUMA still running those field tests off San Diego?”

“As far as I know. I was planning to check in after the race to see how things were going.”

Austin nodded. During the drive back they exchanged small talk, trading war stories about past adventures and youthful indiscretions in Mexico. The long line of traffic at the border crossing was moving at a snail’s pace. They flashed their NUMA IDs to save time and were whisked through customs. Back in San Diego they headed toward the bay until they came to a sprawling municipal marina. They parked and made their way along a pier past dozens of sail- and powerboats. At the end of a dock reserved for larger craft they found a stubby, wide-beamed vessel about eighty-five feet long. Painted in white on the greenish-blue hull were the letters “NUMA.”

They stepped across the catwalk and asked one of the crewmen puttering on the deck if the captain were aboard. He led the way to the bridge, where a slim, olive-skinned man was going over some charts. Jim Contos was considered one of the best skippers in the NUMA fleet. The son of a Tarpon Springs sponge fisherman, he had been on boats since he was able to walk.

“Kurt. Joe,” Contos said with a wide grin. “What a nice surprise! I heard you were in the neighborhood, but I never suspected you’d honor the Sea Robin with a visit. What are you up to?” He glanced at Zavala. “Well, I always know what you’ve been up to.”

Zavala’s lips turned up in his typical slight smile. “Kurt and I were in the offshore boat race yesterday.”

A dark cloud crossed his brow. “Hey, I heard about that thing with your boat. I’m really sorry about that.”