The Solid-State Shuffle (Sunken City Capers Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Information

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Elgin Deceptions Excerpt

  Also by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Jeffrey A. Ballard

  All rights reserved.

  Cover designed by Ravven (www.ravven.com)

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in a book review.

  If you want to be notified when Jeffrey A. Ballard’s next novel is released, and receive free short stories and occasional other perks, please sign up for his newsletter here. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe any time.

  www.jaballard.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT'S NOT EASY, or cheap, setting up shop in a new city. There's definitely a wrong way and a worse way to do it. No matter how you do it, you're going to piss people off. People don't like change, and if they tell you they do, then rejoice; you just found someone who lies to themselves and believes it—the easiest kind of mark.

  Eusebio Valle is not such a mark. Accountant to the powerful and corrupt of the Seattle Isles, the man knows how to hide and launder large amounts of money—including his own. You expect a guy like that to put his substantial emergency cash reserve in a bank. What you wouldn't expect is that bank to be abandoned under one hundred feet of salt water.

  Quite clever.

  Winn and I are in closed-circuit dry scuba suits fitted with rebreathers and are slowly, ever-so-boringly slowly, swimming our way through the watery underground tunnels of Old Seattle on a fine early-August evening—there's no need to risk our anti-gravity suits on this job. Every kick of my fins sends a pluming gray and brown fine-silt cloud whooshing out behind us that then slowly filters out in front of us through the narrow beams of white light shining out from our helmets.

  Digital readouts of a countdown timer, water temperature and depth from my heads-up display are spread out over the red and dark-brown brick tunnel walls which are interspersed with wide arched doors. The floor is cluttered with bits of trash that doesn't decompose: metal, plastic and broken brick that looks so brittle it would disintegrate in your hand if you dared touch it. In fact, all of the brick looks brittle and covered in a layer of silt which gives off a nice hey-we-all-might-die kind of vibe.

  I keep my head focused downward. It's so quiet down here I can hear Winn's gentle kicking behind me.

  I'm used to the sounds of the Atlantic Ocean, the roll of the waves, the thrum of distant boats, the chatter of underwater biological life. This tunnel has none of that. It's silent, like a grave.

  Except for Puo's mouth breathing through the comm-link.

  "Puo," I whisper. "Stop running a marathon up there. All your huffing and puffing might blow the tunnel over."

  Puo, the last member of our trio, is up above, safely tucked away in our brand new Seattle home base, monitoring the situation out in Elliott Bay—our final destination. He responds to my admonishment by altering his breathing to a rather inappropriate cadence.

  Not that I'm embarrassed mind you, or mind chatting with Puo. It's just the breathing is annoying. "Puo, shut up."

  "Shutting up, boss," Puo says. "I was just working on my impression of you two last night. Quite the performance."

  "Thanks," I whisper back. "But my voice is feminine and far more sensuous."

  Puo lowers his already deep voice and growls, "I'll work on that." He's a six-foot, three-hundred-seventeen-pound Samoan man. I can't imagine a feminine voice coming out of his frame (whiny yes, feminine no). In fact, his impression of me, a five-foot-nine, one-hundred-thirty-pound woman, is pretty damn hilarious.

  I suddenly grin, aware of Winn behind me. "But not bad, right?" I say to Puo.

  "Uhh ..." Winn breaks in over the comm. I imagine I can feel the water warming up behind me as his white southern face burns red.

  "Yeah," Puo says, "I'd give it an eight, eight-and-a-half."

  "Hunh," I say, "I thought we were in solid nine country."

  "Nah," Puo says. I can hear the smile on his round Samoan face, his long black hair pulled into a ponytail. "You started strong, wandered a little in the middle before the finale."

  "Guys—!" Winn breaks in.

  "I am not a guy!" I snap at him—pet peeve of mine.

  "Fine!" Winn retorts. "Isa! Puo! Can we please focus on the job at hand?"

  I break into laughter at his discomfort.

  Puo chortles.

  I think of several responses about Winn's legendary focus—he was a surgeon once—but I let it slide. I do like the guy after all.

  Winn has broad, wide shoulders and a thin waist, with crystal blue eyes and a strong jawline—I always was a sucker for blue eyes with dark hair. It's not the fact that he's attractive that I like (certainly doesn't hurt). It's the fact that his face turns red whenever Puo and I banter about particular subjects that I like.

  Puo and I are legacies—criminals since birth, born directly into a crew without citizen's chips—while Winn is a recent addition to the criminal underworld: he still has that new car smell on him. I've found I like it.

  "Fair enough," I say, cutting off whatever response Puo had cooked up. "How's it look out in the bay?"

  "Oh, it's a rager," Puo drawls.

  "What?" Winn asks. There's the barest hint of exasperation to the question.

  It's an inside joke between Puo and I—it's referencing the dullest, least-exciting affair/job evah when I had to attend a party thrown by physicists as a distraction—and believe me, a real live girl at a physicists’ party in four-inch heels and a short dress was quite the distraction. At least Puo and I took the opportunity to re-appropriate a whole bunch of sweet equipment out of their lab.

  "Nothing out of the ordinary so far," Puo explains to Winn and then expands, "Surface patrols are all in their normal routes, except for a state motorboat that’s escorting the MV McCall out. Looks like they finally fixed their engine and put in a request to get underway ASAP."

  "Squiddies?" I ask.

  Squiddies are the autonomous eyes and ears of the Federal Government below the waves, charged with preventing horrible, awful, despicable underwater-reclamation specialists from recovering and restoring priceless artifacts. And then heartlessly selling them to the highest bidder through an underground network. Here's where I'd make a farting sound, or actually fart.

  "Back to normal," Puo says. "They went back to their normal patrol patterns fourteen hours ago, and have completed four normal sweeps. The next group should pass over the bank in three minutes."

  Pacific View Bank. It's on Western Avenue
two blocks away from the old port and allegedly abandoned under one hundred feet of salt water—like every other building in the Federally Protected Underwater Heritage Site of Old Seattle.

  "We're approaching the end of the tunnel," I say.

  "Roger, that," Puo replies. "You'll have seven minutes to get through the gate."

  Good. I use the retina-tracking controls in my helmet to update the heads-up digital timer. We're running a bit ahead of schedule.

  My helmet lights lance through the swirling silt in front of me to reveal a brick wall with a rounded arch. Through the archway is a stairwell that should lead down to a locked black iron gate that will then lead out into an old sewer and let us sneak up from below to the underwater street level of Western Avenue just outside the bank.

  "Winn," I ask, "you ready?"

  "Yeah," he answers. Winn fishes in the backpack of wet/dry goodies he's carrying and holds up an underwater-outfitted laser cutter when I glance back.

  Winn really was a surgeon once; he's got rock-steady hands that are useful for all kinds of things (business and pleasure related).

  I enter through the archway first. It's hard to get a read on the time period of the space. The brick walls give a turn-of-the-twentieth-century feel, but the concrete steps and metal railings make it feel later than that.

  I work the moisture back into my mouth and wish for a sip of water. The air in my helmet is devoid of any moisture, filtered from the rebreather recycling our air so it's not being released above us in the form of air bubbles (kind of a giveaway).

  I use the metal railings as guides to pull myself down and try to keep silt from blooming up everywhere. The metal is cold, leaking in through my gloves. It feels like taking an ice tray out of the freezer every time I touch it. Everything is cold down here—having had eighty-six-odd years to reach the same icy thermal equilibrium.

  I hate being cold, which is why I'm nice and warm in my dry scuba suit—bit sweaty in the ass actually. Although, I still need to pee—go figure.

  My heart starts to race as I turn the corner for the last flight of stairs. Here's where it starts to get interesting.

  Squiddies are tuned to sound waves—sonar. If they hear us trying to cut through and move that black-iron gate, they'll swarm and alert their human masters. They're like bloodhounds, complete with being gangly, oversized and completely unaware of it. They'd be a disaster in the tunnels. They'd probably collapse everything—with us in it.

  I start to feel that familiar rush of adrenaline that I had been lacking at the start of this, until the gate comes into view.

  Shit.

  "Puo," I say. "The gate's already open."

  * * *

  The gate is technically already halfway open. The crisscross pattern of its shadows dances on the brick walls behind it as Winn and I quickly look around.

  The gate is supposed to be closed and locked—that's what our research of old Port and City of Seattle records turned up.

  Silt filters in and out of my helmet lights like dust motes on a lazy afternoon. There's a light layer of silt built up on the horizontal bars of the gate, and a partially filled trench in the silt on the ground is carved out from where the vertical bars were dragged through to open it.

  "I think it's okay," I say. "Whoever was here, was here on the order of months, maybe years, ago. There's a layer of silt over everything."

  Puo mmmm's. He doesn't voice the obvious questions. Who was here, and why were they here? There's only one type of person that would scuba dive through this near freezing water to enter a federally protected site: other underwater-reclamation specialists. So the real question is, were they successful? Or did they fail for some unknown reason that is still ahead of us?

  "So, it's a go?" Winn asks.

  "It's a go," I say. The unexpected development puts us even further ahead of schedule. "Puo, I intend to continue directly to the next phase. Keep an eye on the squiddies."

  "Roger, that," Puo says.

  I push forward with a light kick, billowing silt out behind me.

  "Ya know," Winn says, "I normally like being behind you, but it's not nearly so pleasant today as it usually is."

  Puo roars laughter over the comm-link.

  It's my turn for my cheeks to heat up. Well, at least Winn's learning to give as good as he gets. Puo and I go back to childhood; we have been through a lot—a lot—together. Winn and I ... are ... more complicated, without nearly so much history. I'm glad Winn's loosening up, but Puo's enough to deal with. I don't need another Puo.

  "The rookie," Puo says, "ain't no rookie anymore. Well done, sir."

  I pull myself through the crack of the gate, using my right hand to try and guide myself through by only touching the brick wall. I'm suddenly self-conscious about leaving traces of our passing. To Winn I say, "It's probably all this cold water that's making it unpleasant, shrinking your ability to perform."

  "Ha! And Isa," Puo declares, "remains the Queen Bee."

  The space directly after the gate is a cubic room that is two rooms smashed together. One is the continuation of the brick-walled under-city passageway that we've been following, and the other is an abrupt intrusion forming the back wall made of twenty-first-century gray concrete with a tunnel opening at the floor opposite the gate, roughly the height of my waist.

  I slowly breaststroke toward the tunnel.

  Winn starts to retort, but I cut him off, "We're entering the tunnel, no unnecessary communications beyond this point. Understood?"

  "Roger, that," Puo says. He knows full well I just made that up, but he's playing along.

  "Roger," Winn says more petulantly.

  He must have thought he had a zinger.

  The tunnel is made of metal with corkscrew ridges running down the length of it. A thick layer of gray-brown silt covers the walls and bottom. I can't decide if someone has passed through here or not. Then I can't decide if that's a good thing or not.

  I enter the tunnel and use the metal corkscrew ridges along the bottom to pull myself forward. I'm using just my fingertips, creating four small holes in the silt in the hope that the silt will settle back into them and obscure our passing. I direct Winn to do the same, and he acknowledges.

  I'm not sure how much it's really going to help. The water current from our bodies sliding over top of the slit is creating a dense murky cloud. It's much worse in the confined space of the tunnel. I'm now doubly glad for the dry, enclosed scuba suits. God only knows what this silt is made up of.

  The tunnel dips to a downward angle after ten feet or so, and we continue our silent descent. It doesn't take long to reach the end.

  Once again there's evidence of our predecessors passing through here. The tunnel exit is a flat iron crisscrossed gate that has been cut away. Short, stabby-looking flat metal remnants ring the exit.

  "Careful, Winn," I whisper. "There are metal spikes around the edges of the exit."

  "Got it," Winn replies.

  "More evidence of our friends?" Puo asks.

  I glide through slowly, being extra careful not to snag on those flat, sharp metal spikes. If squiddies get onto us and we're fleeing, those spikes could become a much bigger problem to get through in a hurry.

  "Yeah," I say to Puo.

  "Want me to—?" Puo says.

  "No," I cut him off. I know what he's thinking—he wants to start digging into who might have passed. "No multi-tasking right now."

  "Roger, that," Puo answers, and then gives me an update on the squiddies.

  The digital timer readout snapped to the floor in front of me informs me that we are now eleven minutes ahead of schedule.

  The metal gate is lying on the ground just opposite the tunnel exit, a raised layer of silt over top of it. We're going to have figure out who came through here before. Our understanding was that there were no other underwater-reclamation crews operating out of the Seattle Isles right now—Old Seattle has already been picked clean. Which made it ideal for us to set up shop.

&n
bsp; There's a saying to not shit where you eat. Most underwater crews do not observe this. Being local is key to their strategy of getting in and out of the federally protected waters. We don't have such limitations with the anti-gravity suits—which is why the suits were such a damn risk in the first place, and ultimately led to us having to flee from the east coast.

  The risk of local ops is that, you're ... well ... local. Local for the authorities, local for the fences, local for the area Boss. You become a known quantity, in the limit of time, easier to track down. We learned this the hard way.

  Since rolling into town two and half months ago, we've pulled necessary smaller jobs to get set up. But now cash is running low and another not-unsubstantial payment is due to the Citizen Maker—the person that set us up with these three new fancy, insanely expensive, modified citizen chips and a ridiculous payment plan. Puo and I have never had citizen chips before, and I already can't go back to not having one.

  So we need a sizable amount of money and fast, which necessitates a larger job, the first since we set up shop out here. So why in Old Seattle? Why are we shitting where we eat on the very first time out? Well, because Puo was never properly house trained, and I'm a slow learner. That, and sometimes the payout is worth a little risk—particularly when you're cash-strapped.

  We emerge out past the metal spikes into a concrete sewer section. The walls and ceiling are flat, covered in silt, algae growth, and faded graffiti. The floor is rounded downward at the bottom with flat concrete walkways on each side. A school of fish flee from our helmet lights. We're getting closer.

  The presence of fish is comforting. Familiar. At least the squiddies won't be so auto-tuned to movement—their false alarm rate will be desensitized, making them less responsive.

  The sewer section is much wider than the tunnels we just emerged from, and the silt isn't as settled from all the fish swimming by and eating it. It's a visually clear, if silent, swim to the next phase of the job.

  If there was any doubt about whether the Pacific View Bank held anything of interest, it would've started to fade upon seeing modern cabling running along the ceiling of the sewer toward the building. Another dead giveaway is that the cables are not as dirty as everything around it. They're semi-regularly cleaned. And now, why would someone do that? To detect and guard against exactly what we're about to do.