A quick glance back tells me the blue light has stopped moving, and then I hear the sounds I just made being repeated, as the HPD officer flops down the too steep hill after me. Breathing hard, I run as fast as I can south through the backyards of beach houses and the loading areas behind the restaurants along Kuakini. I can hear the cop behind me, not giving up, and I see two blue lights ahead of me, his buddies coming from the other direction.
I make a quick decision, jog across the road, down the hill to Ali'i, and plunge head first over the bank and into the ocean. Underneath, I grab the light and bubble a word, but nothing happens. Pretending to be a whale, I surface, blow my air out, say something unintelligible, and suddenly four inches taller, dive.
I swim northward for nearly 10 miles, exact measurement difficult underwater, but I'm past the airport, and far enough out to sea to make myself hard to spot from shore. I push on the molecules, jump into the air, and reach for 500 feet. Then very gently, I float back into town, and settle on the roof of my hotel. Two police cars and three police officers are standing at the edge of the ocean, talking to a group of what I assume are witnesses. I go back inside and become me, my wounds healed, but my pride damaged.
For once, I am happy to be leaving paradise, wondering what the statute of limitations is on running naked through town.
When we land in LA, there's a message from Perez to check out the channel 2 website. I start with the
Times
, and there I am again on page 1, a story of me trying to stop the drug traffic in the East Heights neighborhood, and how the local gang members tried, and failed, to take me out, complete with a bad cel phone photo. Channel 2 has 20 seconds of equally bad cel phone video, shot from behind, of me and my half naked ass getting shot up. Lovely.
Waiting until dark, it's back to Anaheim, then back to the corner of my indignity, but there are no drug dealers anywhere to be seen. There does appear to be a teenager selling copies of the cel phone photo, and the young entrepreneur has a cardboard standup of me made from it. He's taking pictures of a couple tourists standing next to "me", in the very spot I stood or floated or whatever last night. I make their day by swooping quickly past. Worthwhile to encourage the honest young businessman.
Otherwise, I decide not to visit the other drug infested neighborhoods, and spend the next four hours flying, enjoying the cool breeze, rocketing up into the clouds, practicing high speed dives and last second pull outs, flashing across the brightly lit night sky, and just generally forgetting everything for a while.
I see Perez at mom's on Sunday, and, after she's done laughing her ass off over my twin ass wielding adventures, she stops me in the middle of a bad joke.
"Air Force, you need to keep an eye on the Hawai'i papers and TV stations." I give my now all too familiar stupid look. "If they have video of you running in shot up underwear, or a report of someone in shot up underwear, our military friends could put two and two together. You might want to lay low in Hawai'i for a while."
Fuck me. All I've done for the past two weeks is dodge drones and piss off a couple dozen gang members. Now I have to give up the one fun time I have on account of the Army. Something needs to give.
Perez suggests meeting her for more target practice on Monday, but I tell her of my golf plans with Taylor. Her face says she's disappointed, certainly still worried that Lope is going to think badly of me, and therefore her, when he is unable to train me to shoot straight.
"Don't worry," I say, "I'll get some practice time in before the weekend." She's apparently unconvinced, because she still has that look on her face when we say goodnight.
I brought my police scanner with me and head to Anaheim to see if it will help me do better at finding the bad guys. For two hours it does not. The only active calls are for domestic violence, and I don't think beating up the husband for beating up his wife is really helpful. Everything else is after the fact. The house has already been robbed. The convenience store too. I need to find something in progress.
Then I get a high speed pursuit. Yes! Some fool is hauling his soon to be in jail ass down the 91 at about 91 miles an hour. I am faster. I stay high, a couple thousand feet, and rocket toward the freeway as fast as my furry little molecules will carry me. It's not hard to find.
An Anaheim cop, well out of his jurisdiction by now, and two highway patrol cars are a hundred yards or so behind a four door nice German car, probably stolen. The parade is headed east, most, but not all, of the cars on the freeway getting out of the way, and another 10 or so civilians following the pursuit at equally high speed. In all, more than a dozen cars 20 miles west of Interstate 15 and closing fast. At least the traffic's not too bad at 10 pm on a Sunday night.
Without slowing down, I dive for the surface, making sure to pass over the top of the lead patrol car so that they know I am there, then it's a small push to put me directly over top of the bandit. Stretching out, my hands go onto the edge of the roof on both sides and I lift the vehicle into the air, intending to make it stop. It gets about a foot off the ground when the sheet metal gives way and a newly convertible BMW is speeding away.
Throwing the portion of the roof I'm holding off onto the shoulder, I catch back up, parallel, two feet off the ground and a foot to the left of the car, then punch the rear tire right where the rim meets the rubber. It's instantly flat and the car squirms, straightens out and continues on its way, much noisier but not slower than it was a minute before. I punch some molecules, and punch some tires, three more flats in two seconds, until finally the driver has had enough and pulls over. He starts to get out of the car, sees me floating there, apparently looking mad, and settles back into the driver's seat until the CHP arrives.
I head for home, wondering if I'm going to be sued or applauded by the owner of the car.
Chapter 5
I spend a fun two hours with Taylor Mankat Monday morning, first hitting balls at the driving range, and then practicing putting. She wears a nice white golf shirt and blue short shorts, all of which show off her curves and her perfect copper colored skin. Her hair reaches all the way down to the shorts, thick and wavy. The sight of her swinging the club, her body moving with it, her hair going the other way should totally end my depression, but doesn't.
We have lunch in the club house, salads both, and then head out to our respective vehicles, both proud Honda owners. She unlocks her door a few feet from the car, and I open it for her. She stops, body between the door and the car, hands on top of the door, and looks at me.
"You're not ready yet. Everyone told me how great your girlfriend was, I should have known it would take longer." She pauses for a second, and I think about whether or not she expects me to say something. Before I decide, she starts again. "You're a great guy, Simon Packer, but let's wait to do this again until you can bring your head along with you."
I just nod in agreement, she slips into the car, and I close the door. I watch her drive across the gravel parking lot, kicking up dust, now the official sign I'm going to do something stupid, and, in fact, I walk back into the clubhouse to check something I saw on the TV while we were eating.
One screen of the many over the bar is showing the news, and it is a special report about a mine explosion in Chile, and 20 miners trapped 2,000 feet underground. I jump into Starbuck and head for home.
Chile is in our time zone, and, for me, a short flight naked or a long one with clothes. I have 18 hours before I am due at work, so the answer is I have to fly there naked, figure out something for clothing, save some miners, and get home before the sun comes up. I also decide I am willing to take some risks to make that happen.
It's a cool January day, there are a few people on the beaches, but not many, and no life guards in the nearest tower due to budget cutbacks. I put my swim trunks on and head for the ocean. There are a half dozen people there, wandering and sitting. I slip into the cold surf, enjoying the feeling while I can. The surf pounds toward the shore, and I dive into it, surface, and paddle out a few yards, then turn and head down the coast.
Counting on my fog powers to keep me clear, I wait until I think no one is watching, take off my trunks, then grab the light and say, "miners." The ocean holds in the normal flash of light, and I am him. I dive now, heading for the bottom, stow my clothing under a large boulder, and head out to sea. A mile or so off shore, I grab some salty molecules, tilt my head toward the sky, and explode upward.
I break the surface of the water and increase the pressure on the molecules, hurtling toward the clouds and slightly south, breaking the sound barrier, then up to suborbital velocity, miles above the coast. I can see the outline of Mexico and Central America, and the beginning of the South American continent in the same breathtaking eye full. Within minutes I am heading earthward again, past the Amazon, wondering again why I have done this so few times. (And if I should have brought my Kindle – Amazon – Kindle – OK, back to the story).
The light has directed me well, its flight management computer better than the one I use on my metal bird. I am a mile or so off the coast, somewhere in Chile, a busy beach before my eyes. Slipping into the water feet first, I swim to shore, still naked, until near the beach I stop and crouch in the water, only a couple feet deep, relatively calm on the surface. This must be the private beach of a high end coastal resort, with only a few sunbathers despite it being summer here, and a cart with a big stack of towels half way between ocean and buliding.
When as few people as possible are looking, I run at more than human speed out of the water, up the beach, grab a towel and hide the salami. Caught by surprise, the attendant at the cart jumps when he sees me. I ask him in Spanish where I can get a swimsuit and he points me to the shop just inside the resort. I thank him and start walking, he follows, wanting his towel back, I ask him to be patient.
He walks with me all the way to the shop. I find the suit I need, XXL, solid blue, drop the towel and put it on. The clerk in the shop screams at me and as I run out the door of the hotel, two middle aged men are running after me yelling very unkind things in Spanish. When I hit the sand, I grab some molecules, raise myself a dozen feet into the air, and floating there, turn to talk to them.
I tell them I am going to go help the miners, and I will return the suit
cuando haya terminado.
They say nothing, staring. Twisting around, I discover everyone on the beach heading my way, and interested in limiting my YouTube exposure, I rip into some air molecules and trust the light to find the mine.
As I get closer, it's easy, and not comforting. The mine is surrounded by a cloud of floating dust, a slight shiver going through me. Fighting the impulse to go home, I fly low over the site until I spot what I think is the command center, and drop to the ground next to a small group of men, not worrying about looking cool. Expletives fly from most of their mouths, as do references to deities. I am closer to an expletive than the other. I ask, and they confirm that they are the bosses, two from the mine, and the rest from the military, there to attempt a rescue.
Using my accented Spanish, I ask them to explain the situation to me. They tell me that there was a collapse in the main tunnel, they are still not sure how far into the mine. The elevator collapsed as well, so they cannot get down to the mine. Bringing out a map, they show me where the men are trapped in a secondary tunnel, the main tunnel that would normally be used for them to exit, and the nearest air duct, which is in the main tunnel, too far away to be providing air to the trapped miners. There is no way they can survive the night.
I ask them what their options are. The answer is go in through the tunnel once they get the elevator back on line, and pray the air holds out.
Muéstrame, por favor.
They take me to the elevator shaft in a small wooden building that looks as if I could blow it over despite the fact I don't have super breath.
There is an open shaft about 12 feet square, black as night. I ask for a helmet with a light, put it on, and drop down into the darkness. The tunnel is 2,000 feet down, but I don't quite get there. The elevator and what I assume to be its equipment stop me part way down. With only my little helmet light, it's hard to be sure, but I think I can extricate it.
It's an open elevator, with a cab that looks like one of those shark cages, steel edges with essentially chain link fencing for the walls. As carefully as I can, I shift and straighten the main steel supports and then lift toward the surface. When I get there, I realize that there is no place to put it, so I ask permission to go through the wall of the building. They agree, and exit the space as quickly as they can.
I knock the closest wall down, the rest of the building falls backwards and out like a house of cards. The aluminum roof falls in one piece over the shaft, and after putting aside the elevator, I pick the roof up and toss it toward what looks like a garbage heap a half mile or so away. It lands with the clank of metal on metal.
Then it's back down the shaft, looking for the tunnel. There's light down here now, nothing blocking the sun from entering, and it is much easier on descent. When I reach the bottom the tunnel is open, though again some floating dust which makes me wary. I need the light on the helmet now, because the light from above does not make the 90 degree turn too well.
