Desperation Reef

With his knife still in hand, Red sweeps the pile of shark fins on the cleaning table into the ocean with his forearm. The Mexican does likewise.

“Empty the buckets,” says Brock, filming again.

Red reaches back and hurls the long, thin-bladed knife at Brock, who sees it pinwheeling toward him through the fog. He dodges it, blood drops smacking his shirt.

Red and the Mexican empty four buckets of shark fins, cursing with each heave. Brock shoots the silvery triangles glittering through the dark, clear Pacific.

Mahina blasts the electronics cluster on the bridge with her shotgun, then the big-game rods and reels lined up along the aft flank of the cabin.

Two fruitless days later, aboard Cinnamon Girl and acting on a tip from one of Casey’s many YouTube followers — Brock, Mahina, Dane, and the Go Dog flotilla jump Bushmaster. She’s one of King Jim Seafood’s sleek red Cigarette boats, thirteen miles off Crystal Cove near Laguna, in international waters. Where she rocks on the pale, breeze-scrubbed sea.

They glass it from an idling, near silent distance.

Darren Fang — Polo — is alone on board, downloading white boxes with “FROZEN FISH” stickers on them over the transom from a man in a white fiberglass panga with twin outboards.

Brock recognizes Danilo, the hapless gunman from the former flagship Empress II.

Who, feet spread, rocks in the stern, is passing up the boxes.

Thirty seconds later, Brock, Mahina, and the Dogs have surrounded them from the four cardinal points of the compass, guns drawn, cursing wildly and ordering their hands up, like furious cops.

Danilo looks up and into the short barrel of Mahina’s shotgun. Drops a box and raises his hands.

Fang — now clad like his boss in a black-and-white LA Kings warm-up suit — turns a half circle, staring silently at his tormentors, then drops the box and puts his hands on his hips like he’s had enough of these crazy California freaks.

As Mahina holds her 10-gauge steady on Darren Fang, Brock motions him onto Cinnamon Girl, then takes the man’s hand and pulls him aboard.

Same for Danilo from the panga.

Dane has already boarded the Cigarette boat and cut open one of the white “FROZEN FISH” boxes. Holds up a clear plastic bag heavy with gray pills.

“Fent?” Brock asks Fang.

Who shrugs and says nothing.

Brock watches Dane as he twists open the Cigarette’s fuel tank cap, then douses the entire boat from a red gas can.

Then clambers aboard the panga, unscrews the fuel line from its tank, then hefts the entire half-full thing over his head and empties it inside the bobbing panga — benches, bait and catch tanks, fore and aft decks, the center console, steering wheel, radio.

Soak it all, thinks Brock.

Dane drops the panga gas tank, throws his red gas can back to Mahina aboard Cinnamon Girl, who smothers it in her big arms like a rugby ball.

The Go Dogs clear out, except for Cinnamon Girl, piloted again by Dane, who nimbly guides his vessel to within twenty feet of the Cigarette.

Brock climbs to the crow’s nest with the flare gun in one hand, and when he stands on the platform sees what an easy shot this is going to be, what with his elevation and the low-slung Cigarette wide open below him.

The flare whooshes into the sleek red speedboat, clanging and caroming off the hull and the seats, spewing pink-black flames and smoke, a thrashing demon with his tail on fire.

Sparks jump into the breeze which carries them a few yards downwind and into the panga, where the gas fumes ignite with a loud thump.

Brock raises a fist to the inferno and steadies himself on the nest rails as Dane guides Cinnamon Girl away from harm.

Mahina watches her husband — a dreadlocked, tattooed figure washed in orange flames — and for a second sees a vengeful ocean god. A haole devil. Or maybe a different species of otherworldly being. She believes in such things. Would like to see a sea god one day. Welcome it into her heart to dwell within her Breath of Life. But as Brock climbs down from the nest, what Mahina decides she sees is just a man answering his calling, testing his limits, fueled, and now almost immolated by, his mysterious, bewildering anger.

A gift? she thinks.

A burden?

From his father?

A moment later, Brock is still in the crow’s nest, admiring his conflagration.

Dane eases Cinnamon Girl away from the Cigarette.

From a hundred yards out Brock watches Bushmaster explode, then slowly list into the sea, a gleaming, helpless former beauty.

Ten minutes later they’ve lowered their respective captives overboard, a hundred choppy feet from a rocky beach on San Clemente Island.

And thrown their cell phones into the ocean.

26

The next afternoon, Brock, Casey, and Mahina await San Diego Sheriff detective Bob Temple in Laguna’s Marine Room, a locals hangout with good views of Coast Highway and Main Beach.

They’ve got a table by a window and tequila sunrises, Casey’s and Mahina’s virgin, and Brock’s not.