unlock the door as the Camaro made a sharp turn out of the parking lot. The 455-cubic-inch engine and blown mufflers on the muscle car roared angrily past and sped up the street.
'Shit,' Shane said, finally piling into the Taurus and starting it up. He found a hole in traffic and pulled out, already dangerously behind. He watched, frustrated, as the Camaro went through the intersection up ahead on the yellow light. Shane tried to make up ground, spinning his wheels, chirping rubber, trying to get around slower traffic. When he got to the cross street, the light was against him, so he leaned on his horn and broke recklessly through the intersection against the red light, causing an eastbound truck on Atlantic to slam on its brakes. The angry traffic started screaming at him, blaring their horns and flipping him off.
As Shane shot through the red light, he could see the blue Camaro one block ahead, speeding through another light on the yellow.
'Slow the fuck down!' Shane yelled at the Camaro as he was forced to stop at the second light, trapped behind a row of cars, unable to get around them. He could see the Camaro a block ahead, turning right, heading up onto the 110.
'Come on, come on, come on…' Shane begged the five-way light that was trapping him. Then it turned green, but an old woman in a rusting Subaru was making a cautious left, blocking traffic, afraid to go. 'Come on, lady. You got the fuckin' right-of-way!' he shouted at his windshield.
'Six, I'm on 91, heading west, passing Olive,' Alexa's voice announced. Static, then: 'Six, do you copy?'
Shane had his hands full as the woman finally completed her turn. He was flooring it, illegally passing a city bus on the right, shooting past the line of traffic, hanging a right, going up the on-ramp. His tires squealed on the sun-hot asphalt.
He hit the 110 going way too fast for the flow of rush-hour traffic that loomed before him on the packed freeway. He had to hit his brakes to keep from plowing into the right side of a Ford Escort, startling the two hard hats inside.
'Six, this is Five. Do you copy?' Alexa's voice persisted. 'Six, you are Code One. Copy, please.' Code One was a command to respond and was given only when a unit did not answer a radio call and was perceived to be in difficulty. It was imperative to respond to a Code One, if at all possible.
Shane impatiently snapped the radio up off his lap. 'I copy. I've got my hands full, for Chrissake. Gimme a minute.' He threw the radio back down on the seat and managed to get around the Ford Escort. He couldn't see the blue Camaro anywhere. 'Fuck!' he said, but kept heading west on the 110, going as fast as he could, dangerously passing cars, trying to make up lost distance, driving on the right shoulder, getting angry horn blasts from a whole line of drivers.
'Six, Target D is transitioning to the 710. I'm making that freeway change now.' Alexa's voice, pissing him off, was cool and in control. Fuck her.
Shane was sweating. A river of perspiration ran down under his arm, slicking his shirt and rib cage. People around him were screaming through their car windows as he passed them on the shoulder illegally. He was running out of room, so he veered back into the right lane, forcing the Taurus between a sixteen-wheeler Vons Grocery truck and a green Chevy van. Both drivers yelled obscenities at him. The grocery truck blew its heavy six-tone air horn, scaring the shit out of Shane, but he forced his way in, now catching a glimpse of the blue Camaro in the far left lane. Kono was transitioning off the 110 to the 105.
Shane was fucked. He slammed the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. He was fenced off by four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic and was pushed helplessly along by the slow flow, past the 105 transition, heading uselessly in the wrong direction. The tail was completely blown. He snapped up the radio.
'Five, this is Six,' he said.
'Roger,' she said.
'I lost K. He was on the 110. I got trapped, missed the transition. He's southbound on the 105, running clean.' Shane waited for Alexa to curse him out or belittle him for losing his man. But she didn't do either.
'Okay, I copy,' she said. 'My guy just left the 710 at Ocean. We're down by the water. I'll talk you in.'
'Roger that, coming your way,' he said, feeling like a complete rookie.
For the next ten minutes she was silent, then: 'I'm Code Six at 2300 Ocean Boulevard. Take the 710 to the end of the freeway and turn left. I'm in a gas-station parking lot.'
'Copy that,' he said.
It took him another ten minutes before he pulled up Ocean Boulevard and saw Alexa's gray Crown Victoria parked in a Texaco station across the street from a vast piece of fenced property.
Razor wire ran for miles in both directions. He could see two big gates, each with a private security guard. The sign over the drive-through arch had been torn down.
Shane pulled into the darkened gas station, parked near the Crown Vic, got out, and slid into the front seat next to Alexa.
'Sorry, I got totally jammed on the 110.'
'It's okay,' she said. 'All roads lead to Rome.'
'Huh?'
'Your boy just pulled through that gate five minutes ago. A blue Camaro with racing stripes and a bondoed front fender, right?'
'Yeah.'
He looked through her windshield at the five-hundred-acre piece of land across Ocean Boulevard next to the bay. On the east side of the property, the buildings were still standing, but to the west there were piles of rubble where the structures had already been knocked down. It looked a little like pictures of Berlin after the bombings in '45.
'Is this place what I think it is?' she asked.
'Yep,' he said softly. 'The Long Beach Naval Yard.'
Chapter 34
The sun set slowly and magnificently over the Pacific Ocean. Scattered clouds that were strung across the horizon in steel-gray formations suddenly turned deep purple, riding above the dark blue sea like a colorful celestial armada until the sun was gone and night claimed its final victory.
Shane retrieved his new camera from the trunk of the Taurus, grabbed the heavy lens and some film, then walked with Alexa along busy Ocean Boulevard, across the street from the old naval yard. They were both looking for a good place to climb the fence. With cars streaking by in both directions, they picked a hole in the traffic, sprinted across the busy four-lane street, then continued west, looking through the fence at the property beyond.
There were security lights located inside the old naval yard every block or so, illuminating sections of the torn-down facility. This part of the huge yard had already been completely razed.
Behind them, on the east end of the property, the surviving naval buildings loomed.
Shane reasoned that they had a better chance of getting inside unobserved if they went west, where there were no structures left standing and, hence, nothing to steal and less need for security.
'Where do you want to try?' she suddenly asked.
He pointed to a place up ahead where the razor wire had come down, making it possible to get over the fence without ripping their hands and clothes.
'With all this traffic on Ocean, we'll be spotted; somebody's gonna call it in,' she said. 'Let's try over there.' She pointed to the far end of the property, where the fence seemed to turn a corner and head south toward the bay.
There was a huge lit structure looming down there that Shane didn't like the looks of. 'Except, what the hell is that?' he asked, pointing at it, but she didn't answer.
They kept walking and finally got close enough to see that it was an active Army Reserve post, with its own entrance located at the far end of the naval yard. A bunch of weekend warriors were standing around in the parking
