Tom nodded to him, too: The man was dressed in a pair of tar-stained breeches that ended at the knee, showing a remarkable assortment of scars on his whipcord-lean torso. God alone knew how he’d ended up here.
And according to Adrienne, his language is a creolized form of North Iranian with a heavy Sinic influence. Whatever the hell that means.
Captain MacKay was seated at the table on the fantail, under an awning, along with the rest of their party. A steward was just laying out luncheon: salad, skewers of grilled shrimp the size of Tom’s thumb in curry sauce, cold meats, bread, cheese and fruit. The skipper of the Sea-Witch had his white peaked cap on the table and was filling a foul old briar pipe; luckily the stiff breeze would snatch away everything but a hint of its reek.
“Aye, we’ll cruise a bit off Santa Barbara,” he said to Adrienne, giving Tom a courteous nod. “Those are well-traveled waters, s’truth. We’ll be seen by ships and aircraft both; then we’ll turn and head”—he waved to the southwest. “Off the wind on that heading lie the Marquesas, and we’ll be nicely making way. Cruise there, up to the islands, and it’ll be a while before it’s realized you’re no aboard, miss, but the Sea-Witch herself, she’ll be seen and spoken of at once—on the radio, too, no fear.”
Tom seated himself. “I’m a bit noticeable myself,” he pointed out.
McKay grinned, a snaggletoothed expression in his bushy beard and mustache, and pointed silently to his son.
The young man was in his twenties, and only a finger under Tom’s six-three and a bit, but he was gangly rather than broad-shouldered and deep-chested, and until today his freckled face had been topped by a thatch of stiff gingery curls. Tom’s eyebrow went up as he saw that the unruly mop had been cut close in a good imitation of the Ranger crop he wore, and dyed silver-blond as well.
“From a distance…” he said.
“Aye,” McKay said with satisfaction. He cocked an eye skyward. “This wind’ll no hold. I may need the auxiliary if we’re to make the coast again by sunset.”
Tom had the impression that McKay regarded using the diesel engine as a confession of failure of some sort. Purist, he thought.
Adrienne’s eyes met his; she was wearing a sarong, a halter, and red hibiscus flowers in her hair; she winked slightly, and he knew she’d read his thoughts.
Now, this is more like being on an op, Tom thought. The No Biscuit had made its rendezvous with the yacht neatly enough. One to pilot, one to come aboard the Sea-Witch and impersonate Adrienne… complicated!
The Sea-Witch pitched slightly as it lay with its nose into the wind blowing from the shore; the sunset was fading sternward, a smudge of red along a horizon fading from green to deep night blue. He could see the outline of the San Pedro hills to the southwest and the mountains behind Malibu—the place where Malibu was FirstSide—to the north. There was enough light from the stars, a frosted multitude that faded only around the one-quarter moon—more stars than he was used to seeing FirstSide except in the most remote desert wilderness.
The No Biscuit floated half a hundred yards away, and the inflatable boat shuttled between them. Adrienne’s cousin Irene came over the rail with a grin that was more than a little like hers, ready to take her place in the masquerade.
“This is like the story about the wolf, the sheep and the cabbage,” the younger woman said. “Good luck, Cuz.”
“Enjoy the islands, Cuz,” Adrienne replied. “Try to act like me.”
“I don’t know if I’m up to that, but I’ll do my best—it ought to be fun trying!”
Their gear went over the side in a net, hung from a cable on the long boom; crewmen held the rubber boat close to the yacht with boathooks. Tom followed, pulling his night-sight goggles down; the rope was harsh against his palms as they went over the side. A low, muted throb came from the schooner’s diesel, enough to cover the muted hum of the outboard; Tom took charge of that, since he’d had a fair bit of boat training, and the vibration surged up his hand and forearm as he opened the throttle wider and twisted the tiller to bring the inflatable around and away, settling on an eastward course toward the black outline of the land. The Sea-Witch turned westward as soon as they’d cast free, her bow coming about to the northwest and her sails rising with a rattle of winches and a flapping of sheets that turned taut as they caught the wind. The schooner heeled over and began to pick up speed; the seaplane remained quiet, pitching gently on the waves—it would stay there until the Sea-Witch was well away.
“This heading,” Adrienne said, settling in beside him on the rearmost bench and holding out a digital compass with a faintly glowing display.
The flat bottom of the inflatable struck the water, slapping it as they picked up speed. Their destination was a little north of where the Los Angeles River ran into the sea; here and now the stream reached salt water well to the north of the Palos Verdes hills, along the course of what he’d known as Bellona Creek. And “course” was a misnomer, since the river wandered through a broad ill-defined zone of wetlands and swamps all the way to the ocean; on the coast everything between Santa Monica-that-wasn’t and Palos Verdes was seaside swamp, saltwater or brackish marsh, miles of it. More stretched between those hills and the site of Long Beach. Even in high summer the scent from the land was damp, smelling of those vast wetlands.
“And on FirstSide it’s a dry concrete ditch,” Tom murmured, and heard Adrienne chuckle beside him.
Spray struck his face, cool and tasting of iodine and salt; he wiped his night-vision goggles with his sleeve and peered ahead. An endlessness of reeds rustled to the southward; now that the mudflats were covered by the high tide, but this shallow-draft boat could go almost anywhere. Tully called to him a moment before he saw it himself; a blinking light, so faint that it would have been invisible to unaided vision. White sand gleamed nearby, where higher land rose northward.
Tom’s teeth showed in a fighting grin. The pretense was over, and the mission was about to begin.
Tom brought the inflatable in quickly, running the bow up as far as he could on the wet sand. Then he jumped over the side of the rubber boat and held it as the waves thumped it against the ground and small tumbling ripples of foam hissed around his feet. The others followed, and the four of them grabbed the rope loops along its sides and ran it higher, up onto the sloping surface of the beach. He looked around; as best as he could tell, they’d landed right on target—around the southern part of Palisades Beach, near where the Santa Monica Pier was FirstSide, at the westward end of Colorado Avenue. A sandstone cliff stood inland a couple of hundred yards, low here but rising to the north; off that way he could just glimpse a few lights burning in the night, a large sprawling house or small village.
He felt a moment of disorientation; the geography was the same, but he was used to seeing this spot in a blaze of lights—some of the most expensive housing in the United States was within a mile or two, and a few miles north were the condos of Malibu, not to mention the meganecropolis that stretched from here to San Diego and inland to the edges of the Mohave. The smell was entirely different, sea salt and iodine, beach wrack crunching underfoot, the silty mud of the huge marshes to the south.