Desperation Reef

Kasper Aamon’s eyes bug as he shifts his light beam to Mahina, who has set down the phone and hefted her pistol-gripped, combat 12-gauge from the darkness at her feet. She goes nowhere without it. The man at her window springs away and Aamon takes a step back, too, trying to unsling his tightly strapped gun.

Brock swings open the van door, catching Aamon just right and knocking him to the asphalt. Then he stomps the gas and slams the door.

Engine whining under him, Brock doesn’t think these people will actually open fire on him, but his heart is racing and he hunches down behind the wheel in anticipation of small arms fire, his right hand on Mahina’s big shoulder, trying to scrunch her down, too, but she wrenches herself away and points her shotgun out the window.

“No!” yells Brock. “Mahina, no!”

She drops the gun back into the darkness.

There’s a tense few seconds as the Ford’s engine screams and upshifts, and the flats of water and soft drinks behind them topple and crash to the floor. Mahina mutters lowly to herself.

Brock waits for the bullets to slam into them, but by the time he realizes that nobody’s shooting, he’s around a bend and temporarily out of range.

One problem solved, but the next question is — will Right Fight come after them?

They’ve gone less than a mile when Brock sees in the sideview mirror not one, but three sets of headlights aligned behind him, running three abreast and gaining easily on the old van.

Mahina has taken up her phone again, holding it out the window to document their pursuers.

A red, searchlight-festooned Suburban pulls up on Brock’s side, as an old two-tone white-and-aqua Chevy pickup appears just a few feet from Mahina’s open window.

Brock can’t go right or left without hitting one of them, and when he looks up the straight, narrow highway ahead of him he sees distant headlights topping a rise. The pines that line the highway thrash, and a cloud of ash paints his windshield. Brock can hardly see. He hits the wipers, which help little. The trucks on either side of him are honking now, and the red Suburban has its remote rooftop floodlights trained on his face.

Brock squints and glances left a split second, just enough time to see the face of burly Kasper Aamon.

“Brakes, babe! Hold on!”

Mahina tries to work her big body down into the seat.

Brock presses his foot down, hard and steady, but not too hard; the old van’s brakes were never terrific and the antilock system is weak.

The tires bite and the Econoline hunches down. Brock feels the rear end shimmy, meaning crazy swerves if he pushes any harder.

Both vehicles roar past as Mahina shoots them on her phone, the drivers screaming and laughing as they merge into the right lane.

He lightens the pressure then reapplies force and the van slows back into control. As Brock stays to the right of his lane, the oncoming cars honk and speed past.

Up ahead Brock sees the Red Suburban and the two-tone Chevy at a northbound pullout, awaiting him.

He hits the accelerator and barrels past them anyway, both he and Mahina flipping them off as horns and “Born in the USA” wail from the pickup. Brock hates it when idiots misunderstand this song.

Mahina rolls up her window, lifts the shotgun to her lap, and goes to work on her phone.

A half mile farther up the road, Brock watches in his sideview mirror as the Suburban and the Chevy bounce onto the highway and head back toward Ukiah.

7

The following day, alone in the ocean at first light, Jen glides into a glittering Brooks Street wave.

She’s standing up on her paddleboard, guiding herself across the glassy shoulder, wielding her paddle as a rudder. The daily stand-up paddleboard session is one of her training tools — a fun way to build the muscle mass, cardio strength, and endurance when the waves aren’t big. Of course, there are also daily weights to be lifted in her garage gym; a two-mile run and a mile ocean swim most afternoons; high-speed, bone-crunching, open-ocean sprints in the jet ski three times a week — the rougher the sea the better; and her daily breath-holding sessions in the high school pool, where, as a celebrated alumnus, Jen is welcome pretty much anytime she wants. At yesterday’s pool session, Jen held her breath for one minute and thirty-four seconds before pushing off hard from the deep-end bottom, breaking the surface with a full-body gasp, her eyes bursting with stars. That’s enough time to survive the legendary back-to-back hold-downs at Mavericks, Jen knows — so long as the waves that have sent you to the rocky bottom haven’t first crushed the air from your body or snapped your neck. It’s a lot different in a pool than in a furious ocean trying to kill you, John used to say, and he always focused hard on his breath training.