Zodiac. The Eco-Thriller

"That one seemed like about thirty seconds," I said.

"More like five."

The fragged compartment looked about the way I expected it to. The silver pipe had been severed halfway up. A golden fluid was welling calmly out the top, ru

We weren't clear about what to do with the dead guys. If it came down to it, we could certainly defend ourselves in court. But you're supposed to bury corpses, or put sheets over them or something, not leave them sitting in a barge compartment that's slowly filling up with toxic waste.

"On the other hand, why not?" Bart said. "For them, this is like dying in church."

"That's good enough for me," Boone said, and jogged away down the catwalk. After about a nanosecond of careful thought, I followed him.

We came down on the opposite side of the barge, in case the Satanists had decided to bring in reinforcements. Once we hit the ground, I waded out into the water a little ways, sweeping my flashlight back and forth across my path. Just before Boone had discovered the shrine, I'd been starting to put a suspicion together in my mind.

The odor we'd noticed on our way over wasn't coming from Spectacle Island. It was coming from the water. But we hadn't noticed it in other parts of the Harbor. Only the part right north of Spectacle Island-where the Bosco Explorer was anchored.

I scooped half a dozen dead fish out of the surf and tossed them up onto the land. We squatted around them and checked them over.

If the odor came from the dying of Boston Harbor-if these fish had died from infection with the PCB bug-they would have died at different times. Some would be decomposed, some would be fresh. But if I may be excused another disgusting thought, these fish all looked good enough to eat. They had died within the last couple of hours.

"There's something new in the Harbor," I said. "Something that stinks real bad, and is incredibly toxic. And it stinks worst around the Basco Explorer." "They must do something," Boone said. "We didn't see any dumping."

"Sure. Years ago, when we started taking movies of them dropping barrels into the water, they got really shy and came up with a new system. They've got tanks in there that can be filled from the top and then drained out the bottom of the hull while the ship is in motion."

"What did Fleshy say to you this morning?" "Make my day!" Bart said. "It was in the Herald." "That's what he said," Boone said. "Go ahead. Test the Harbor for PCB-eating bugs. Test the sewers. Make my day. You won't find anything."

"Say they filled those hidden tanks with some kind of massively toxic, concentrated stuff, probably an organophosphate, and dumped it into the Harbor tonight. They'd want to anchor near Spectacle Island-the center of the infection. They'd dump it into the water. Everything in the water would die. No one would find it remarkable that fish were dying-remember, the Herald called it the Harbor of Death. But at the microscopic level, all those PCB bugs are dying too."

"Just like Kelvin said," Boone said. "If it gets real bad, we might have to nuke the Harbor."

"Jesus," Bart said, "Isn't that a little overkillish?"

"Not at all. Look. Twenty-four hours ago, these guys were dead. They had illegally put a genetically engineered bug into the environment and it was creating a toxic catastrophe. They'd rigged up a scapegoat-Dolmacher-but he'd gotten wise. A loose waste barrel on the deck.

"Now that's all different. Basco's dropping the bomb. Murdering the Harbor. Shit, the sewers too. The drums they were offloading into the Boston Whaler? Probably full of the same stuff. They're probably dumping it into the gutters right now. Exterminating the bug, covering up their traces." "Kind of blatant," Bart said.

"Not at all," said Boone. "Shit, fiasco's back on its home territory here. They're old hands at poisoning the water and getting away with it."

"It can't be traced to the ship, and it can't be traced through the gutters," I said.

"The bastards are getting off scot free," Boone said. He was just breathing the words, he was almost inaudible. "Kind of looks that way," Bart said. "We have to get onto that ship." Boone was in outer space now, in a kind of trance, staring at the incantations on the barge. "Before they get rid of the evidence. We have to board the ship and find the tanks they used."

"What would you do then," Bart asked. "Just getting on board wouldn't prove anything."

"We'd have to get the media on board," Boone said. "No way to do that until they tie up somewhere," I said. "The ship is going to be moored on Basco property, and you can bet they'll have intense security. We can't even get within striking distance without trespassing on their property and getting popped."

"Maybe there's something real mediagenic we could do on board the ship, something the crews could film from a great distance."

"The toxin tanks are way down in the bowels of the thing. There's no way to make them visible from a distance without blowing the ship in two."

"We've handled this kind of thing before-remember the Soviet invasion? We could bring in our own cameras, do our own filming and distribute the tapes." "That's one option," I said. "One option. You have another?" Boone said. "Yeah."

"What's that? Blow it up?" "Shit no. This is a nonviolent action, I think." "And what might it be?" "Steal it. Steal the ship." "Whoa!" Bart said.

Boone's blue eyes were giving off kind of a Tazer discharge and I felt the need to scoot away from him. We had found a plan.

"Steal the whole fucking ship?" he said. But he knew exactly what I meant.

"Steal the whole fucking ship, before they've had a chance to destroy the evidence-that means tonight-take it out into the Harbor, where the media will be waiting for us. Better yet, take it to Spectacle Island. Have the media in place out here. We can turn it into an all-night minicam slumber party."

"That is just fucking great, man," Boone said, levitating to his feet. "Let's do it, man. It's time to rock and roll."

34

BART WENT AROUND to the party side of the barge to find Amy, and Boone and I cut straight across the island to the Zodiac. We were trying to figure out a way to steal the Bosco Explorer, but we were clueless. Our only real chance to get on board was right now, when it was on the open water. Once it was tied up at a pier, they'd have guards posted on it, toting machine guns and with every excuse to use them. But we didn't have a plan, so the only thing we could think of was to have Boone board it now and leave me on the outside to come up with the plan later. Boone was enthusiastic; he knew I'd think of something. Easy for him to say. We'd leave him a walkie-talkie and have maybe a fifty-fifty chance of being able to communicate with him.

We sat out on the Zodiac and got out two of my big old magnets. I used duct tape to coat them pretty thickly, so they wouldn't clang, and so they'd have good friction against the side of the ship. Then I rigged up little rope stirrups. Boone put on the Liquid Skin, put on a lot of it, then wrestled into a drysuit. It was black, the proper color for domestic terrorism during the evening hours, and would protect everything but his face.

I picked up the walkie-talkie once or twice and asked if Modern Girl was out there, but got no real answer. A walkie-talkie isn't like a telephone; you don't have a private line, just a thick chowder of noise that you try to pick something out of. I tried hard and only got a hint of Debbie's voice, like a whiff of perfume in a hurricane.

Bart came wandering along after about twenty minutes, alone. We went in and picked him up.