"I know where it is," snapped the Op. "I just haven't heard the name for a long time. That's the place where the moon rockets used to take off, right?"
"Yes."
Elvis looked at Krokodil, and found her as inexpressive as a statue. She was young, pretty and dressed in a conservative skirt and jacket, dark grey with a fine pinstripe. Immaculately made-up, her only really distinctive feature was the eyepatch half-concealed by a wing of raven-black hair. She was attractive, but there was something hard, almost scary, about her. Elvis had known cyborgs in the services, and there was something of the biomechanical about Krokodil. Her handshake had been a bone-crusher, he wondered how much of her was real, how much from the lab? She spoke perfect English, like an amnesiac who has had to relearn everything as an adult, but there was an occasional NoGo twist to her vocabulary. Krokodil hadn't been born to the style she was sporting.
The man was easier to take. Dressed in dusty denims, with a weathered face and a black pigtail, he was a Navaho. He had introduced himself as Hawk-That-Settles. Elvis had had a Cherokee great-great-great grandmother. Morning Dove White. As a teenager, watching Western movies from a pickup in the Tupelo Drive-In, he had been torn between his loyalties to the cowboy heroes all the fellows tried to imitate in speech and manner and his yearning for the Indian's life. One of his few regrets about quitting the movies is that he never did get to play the half-Kiowa hero of Flaming Star, the only decent script that got past the Colonel to him. John Saxon had been okay in the picture, but Elvis knew he would have been better.
Hawk was the talker, but Krokodil put over the punchlines.
They were meeting in a diner in Whitehaven, a Southern suburb of Memphis. Elvis knew the place well, and often used it as an office for the Hound Dog Agency. Gracelands, the mansion he had owned in the music days, was five blocks down, owned by a CAF auxiliary, the Church of Jesus Christ, Caucasian.
Cape Canaveral?
"Isn't that under water?"
Hawk smiled. "Yep, but only a foot or so. They threw up them walls along the Indian River Coast when the Cape was still NASA's head office. They leak a little bit, but you can walk around with your head out of the water."
"What about the diseases? And the skeeters?"
"Not much we can do about them, is there?"
"Fair enough."
Cissy, the waitress, came by and refilled Elvis' and Hawk's recaff cups. Krokodil still hadn't touched hers. The Op wondered if she needed to take nourishment at all, or whether a few hours jacked into the mains would juice her up.
"You ready to order?" Cissy asked, simpering a little. Elvis reckoned she was a little sweet on him.
Elvis went for the jambalaya, Krokodil had the crawfish pie and Hawk picked the fillet gumbo. If you're in the South, you eat Southern.
When Cissy had wiggled her plump ass back to the kitchen, Elvis got back down to business.
"I'm still not quite straight on this, ma'am? What is this job? Courier, bodyguard, shotgun?"
Krokodil explained patiently. "The job is whatever the job is. Colonel Presley. I have to make a trip to the Cape, and we would like you to come along to deal with any hazardous eventualities that might arise."
"We're way out of our territory, Colonel," said Hawk. "I'm from Arizona, and Jessamyn…Krokodil, I mean…is from Denver, originally. We're more used to sand than swamp. You must be familiar with the terrain, and with its dangers?"
Elvis knew what Hawk meant. "Uh-huh. Hazardous eventualities is what we have a bellyfull of. The further you get into the swamps, the harder it is, mister. You know about the skeeters and the speedboat gangcults, I guess. But there are other things out there. Lice the size of dogs…"
"You mean the trilobites?"
"Yeah, living fossils. Nasty li'l things. They take a chew on your arm and you're out of the game for a few months. And who knows what other things are coming back to the bayous? It's a regular primordial ooze out there. GenTech and the other corps have been dumping their toxic goop into the swamps for years, and weird things have been breeding. The way I hear it, the big lice ain't the only living fossils you've got to worry about."
"We are familiar with the weird," said Krokodil in a way that struck the Op as being seriously chilly.
"Then you've got your hostile natives. Them Cajuns are strange. One quarter French, one quarter Injun—no offence, man—one quarter skunk and one quarter 'gator. Sometimes, they like you, and kill you straight off. Other times, you're not so lucky and they invite all their cousins over for a party. I've got a few friends. I do favours whenever I can. But friendships don't stretch very far away from the PZs. There are lots of paranoid little communities on islands. People have been trying to clear them out and make them change their ways ever since the pirate days when Andy Jackson tried to make 'em all dance 'possum up a gumtree' on the end of a rope. They don't like strangers. You and me, we're strangers."
Krokodil didn't seem impressed. Elvis felt he owed them the full scare story before he took the commission.
"So, if you're really going to make this trip, then you'd better have a damn good reason for it."
"I have a good reason," Krokodil said, offering no more.
"And I need to know what it is."
There was a pause.
"That's a problem," said the Indian.
"It's easily solved. I've got two ears, and I've heard a lot of unbelievable stories in my time."
Krokodil brushed her hair away from her eyepatch. "I'm trying to salvage some equipment left behind when the space program closed down."
"Valuable equipment," underlined Hawk.
"It would have to be. If my cut is a million dollars, then you must stand to clear…what…ten? Twenty? More?"
"I will not profit personally."
"Lady, that I don't believe."
"You can believe it or not, but it's the truth."
Looking into her clear, green eye, Elvis was sure that it was. Not the whole truth, but a goodly chunk of it.
"This sounds straightforward, then. Dangerous, but straightforward. You must have a few details you want to tell me. The gig has to have some complications. At least a million bucks' worth, if I'm any judge."
The food arrived. Hawk hungrily spooned his into his mouth. Krokodil left hers alone.
"The Cape is owned by the Josephite Church. They bought it from the government last year."
Elvis looked at the Indian. "The Salt Lake City crowd? What do they want with a stretch of real estate under a foot of stagnant water?"
Hawk shrugged. "Who knows? The Josephites are crazies."
The Indian had spoken just a hair too quickly, had been just a mite too dismissive.
"They seem to be doing all right by their Deseret. though. I hear that they've been raising crops where everybody says that can't be done."
"I do not underestimate the Josephites," said Krokodil. "They are dangerous. They are hostile to me."
"Great. If we get through the mutant 'gators, the voodoo butchers and the swamp-skimming psychos, the Black Hats will preach us to death, eh?"
"The Church of Joseph is not what it seems."
"There's a lot of that about."
Did he catch just the barest flicker of an incipient smile twitching at the corners of her mouth? Probably not.
"So, we'll have to go into the swamps loaded for bear?"
Krokodil nodded.
"My advice would be to go in loaded for King Kong and Godzilla," said Hawk. "But what would I know? I'm a Navaho. We haven't won a war since the US Cavalry shoved us on the reservation."
"I'm from the South, mister. We know all about losing wars to the Yankees."
The Indian smiled easily.
Krokodil said, "I'll leave the armaments up to you. You know the country, you get to pick the tools."
"I wouldn't have it any other way. Who recommended me to you?"
The Indian answered. "You have a reputation for public-spiritedness."
"So?"
"We guessed that if you spent most of your time robbing the rich to feed the poor, then you could probably do with the mil…"