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58.
The Sunny Cleaners van sat parked on the heights in Barrio Logan under the ramps leading up to the Coronado Bay Bridge. The door was open and the supposed cleaning crew all sat in the grass in a small park, eating sandwiches and drinking soda. They looked like an innocent crew of youthful men as they laughed among each other, played a little soccer, or cooed at a small dog led on a leash by a young girl.
Thomas Blake eyeballed the ship in the 32nd Street yards with binoculars. What he saw interested him greatly. He counted at least twelve figures moving around on her deck. The dock, the ship, and the decks were noticeably coated with several shades of a reddish fungus. Sort of brick or Mars colored, or burnt siena. Maybe the crew had come back. Was it possible? But what for? Were they now like the missing Chen Lo—mushroom people? One way to find out—pay a visit.
He gave the men ten more minutes to finish their meal. Then he ordered them into the van. He drove slowly down to 32nd Street and passed through the guard gate. He had a pass specially signed by Mr. Collwood, and his men all showed their I.D. cards (fakes) and signed in. Nobody suspected that his cleaning crew were highly trained killers, nor that the floor of the van contained assault rifles and ammo. Each man had his favorite web belt and gear stashed in there, always including at least one or two good knives, cable cutters, all the essentials.
"Busy place today," said a female Navy guard, a blonde with pimples. She looked trim and athletic in her Shore Patrol uniform with black boots and white puttees.
"What do you mean?" Blake asked.
"Oh, they had a large truck in there this morning. Had trouble backing it in and getting out."
"We're just the cleaning crew," Blake said.
"Ship looks like it needs it."
"What did they truck away?"
"Beats me. We don't inspect civilian cargo. We should, I suppose, but we have our orders."
Blake nodded. Inwardly he snorted: Collwood probably has his pet Congressman fix things like that. Not that he knew of any such pet, but didn't all the really rich have some sort of mouthpiece in Washington on payola? Blake's interpretation of his life's experiences was such that his opinion of Third World corruption was converging with his newly forming observation of the more sophisticated but equally morbid and probably more dangerous corruption in the First World. He wondered what Collwood would have been anxious to sneak out the door—if it was Collwood behind it, not someone using Collwood for cover.
He drove slowly and observantly along the gravel drive among the Navy properties. Nothing looked out of place. He was sure there was surveillance, but they'd be in and out before anyone could get to them. He came to the dock and stopped. The men quickly opened the floor. They donned their combat gear and picked up their ammo and weapons. Each man had an O.D. poncho to cover what he was carrying.
There was a coating of that brickish or Marslike dust, probably pollen or spores or whatever, and a mossy fungus underneath clinging to stone, wood, or iron with equal tenacity. One could almost see the red dust moving slowly through the air.
First thing he did was cut the phone lines, in case someone wanted to use a land line to call out for help. Not much point in these cell phone days, but no sense skipping a measure.
He sent one man up the gangway about halfway, unarmed and without a poncho, to see what kind of attention he could attract and then say "I'm just the buffer, man. Is this the right ship?" or some stupid line like that, spoken with an accent.
No sign of life. The man returned and picked up his gear, then ran up the gangway and sprang on deck. Looking about, he signaled all clear. Blake sent the men up one by one, and each man jumped on board and ran for cover. One by one, they could not all be taken out at once. If there was an ambush, one man might go down but the others were well trained and fast. This had to go quickly now.
Brick-like red dust swirled with graceful, infinite slowness in the air around them. Nobody was coughing or sneezing yet, so Blake filed it away for future reference. He and one other man ran up into the bridge area and scouted around. Nobody in sight. Just in case anyone were in a closet or toilet, they rolled tear gas in and closed the doors. That would make them come popping out, but nobody did.
"I thought you saw a dozen men up here," his companion whispered.
"I did. They must be somewhere on board. Look, it's worth the try. If those dozen are the missing sailors, we've accounted for half of them and our job is nearly done."
"I'm with you."
Together, they went around the main deck from door to door, cabin to cabin, checking it out, popping in tear gas where they preferred not to enter. This way, they made a circuit all the way around, under the watchful eyes and gun muzzles of their four fellow mercenaries.
"It's time to go below," Tom Blake told his men. "Eyes on the backs of your heads."
"Got it," several men murmured. "Let's get it done."
Down the steps they went into the darkness. Each man had a police-style steel flashlight with six batteries that could be used as a club if all else failed. Down they went into the increasingly earthy smelling darkness. Six darting flashlight beams made for a peculiar disco-like ambience—all they needed was loud music, Blake thought hyperactively. He liked to use blue pool hall chalk to keep his fingertips dry, and he rubbed and rolled a cube of the stuff in one hand while keeping the other on his assault rifle.
They came to the main area of the A Deck below. The air was stiffling down here. "Somebody open a hatch or two," one man protested.
"Don’t touch anything," Blake whispered. "Stay focused. We can be in and out in twenty minutes if we don't get sidetracked.
"This is spooky as Hallow E'en Night," someone whispered.
Garlands of cobwebs hung from the ceilings, along with torn electrical cords, an open overhead panel, and other items. The walls were wet and streaked with rust. The overwhelming atmosphere was one of rust color, like the brick dust outside, and humid. "Air conditioning for mushrooms," someone whispered.
Blake could almost believe it. "Focus!" he ordered. "Sweep!"
They went from cabin to cabin, kicking steel hatches open and zigzagging their ready-to-shoot poses left and right. Shafts of their own light darted and stabbed all around them in that mad psycho dance floor whirl. Silent disco. Nothing.
They went down another deck, repeating the same process. The space got narrower. Along the keel in the center was a round chamber for a long worm gear running from the oil burning engines up front to the propeller at stern center below the water line. An old ship, Blake thought, and well in need of retirement. What kind of master had run this ship? This was heaven for a crew of pigs. Blake was no sailor, but even he would have had this crew scrubbing, scraping, peeling, and painting.
Finally, on the lowest deck, the stench of mushrooms grew until the underlying rot was nauseating. "If those are mushrooms," someone said, "they are rotting."
"Over here!" a man shrieked. "Come look at this!"
They warily surged forward, and came to a scene Blake thought resembled something from hell. In a large forward cargo hold abou twenty feet square and ten feet high, lay the bodies of at least a dozen men. Not men, but mushroom men. Dead ones.
Lights darted over the contorted tangle and heap of bodies, the gaping eyes and mouths, the stiffly upraised hands, the sprawled legs. Oddly, the usual Norway rats were nowhere to be seen. This must not be their kind of feast, Blake thought grimly. He could not see a single insect, not even the hardy cockroach. Something was very bad here.
"Didn't the boss tell us to look for all these damn bracket things along the lower bulkheads?" a man asked.
Another said: "I thought the ship was full of them."
"Now we know what Collwood's trucking crew removed from here this morning," Blake said.
"I smell something fishy," a man said.
"Let's get out of here. They're all dead."
With a last look over the dim, gray field of dead mushroom men, Blake turned and headed topside. "Let's evacuate.".
When they came to the last deck, they found that the hatch had been closed and sealed over them. Blake felt an ominous sort of dread and fear and anger all mixed together. Someone had lured them in here and betrayed them. Who? Collwood? Why? And he'd severed the land lines, so they couldn't call out.
"Radio's topside where we can't get to it," a man whispered.
"We're screwed."
Blake whipped out his cell phone. He shook it. "Dead. Someone has killed the local cell. We're going to die in this rusting bucket with those dead sponges down below."
"Keep cool. We'll pry open a hatch and climb out."
An hour later, after trying every hatch they could find, every possible exit, they found that they were all sealed shut and beyond opening. Rusted? Or purposely sealed. Blake was summoned to the main hatch leading up top by a man who held his finger over his lips. "What is it?"
The man whispered, pointing upward. "Can't you hear it?"
Blake signaled for total silence and then listened intently.
He heard a steady hiss. Shrugging, he looked questioningly at the man who had summoned him. The man said: "Someone is welding the hatch shut. They probably welded all the porthole covers and other hatches shut. We're trapped in here."
"Listen!"
The hiss stopped with a popping noise. Steps could be heard. Then silence. Then the starting of two or three car engines. "That's someone driving our van away."
"It could be years before anyone comes and looks in here."
What bothered Blake most was not dying, which was bad enough, or starving, or even drinking the filthy water in here. It was that the flashlights would be dead in a few hours. There would be total, oppressive, silent darkness. A floating tomb.
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