Red Thunder

PART TWO
15

THE BUILDING KELLY wanted to show us was over on Turnbull Bay, across from the New Smyrna Beach airport, one of a dozen similar structures built in marshy ground as part of an industrial park that never quite panned out. Only three or four of the buildings were currently occupied.

It was made of corrugated metal lapped over a steel framework. There were streaks of rust all over the sides and tall weeds growing in cracked concrete and along a railroad siding that was one of the chief reasons we were looking at the building. A sign along the roof ridge read: THE R. W. WHITE COMPANY.

Kelly parked in front of a loading dock with three truck bays, all closed and locked. Dak and Alicia pulled up in Blue Thunder as we were getting out.

We all stood there for a while, taking it in. It was noon on a hot, muggy day, five months away from M-day, the day the Chinese were going to land on Mars.

“Railroad siding goes right into the building, that’s good,” Dak said.

Kelly took a big ring of keys out of her purse and led us to a small [146] door scaled for people, not boxcars. The third key she tried turned out to be the right one.

It was cooler inside, which surprised me. The concrete floor was part of it, but I saw that overhead there were big fans that kept the air moving.

“I left the fans on after I saw the place yesterday,” Kelly said. “It was like an oven in here without them.” She turned to an electrical panel and flipped six rows of switches, one row at a time. Big overhead lights came on in sequence and we could see the extent of the space inside.

“We don’t need no more than a third of this space,” Dak said.

“Dak, if you think there’s another place within fifty miles of-”

“Shush, babe, I ain’t complaining. Better too much than not enough.”

“It was a hell of a list you gave me.” She began ticking off points on her fingers. “Railroad spur. High ceiling-but you never said how high. On the water. Heavy lifting capability-and again, you didn’t say how heavy. That traveling crane up there is rated for five hundred tons.”

“More than enough, more than enough, Kelly,” Dak said.

Kelly got out her laser range finder-a real good thing to take along if you’re hunting for an empty factory, lots better than climbing to the ceiling and dropping a string. She pointed it at the roof, then glanced at the readout.

“One hundred twenty feet,” she said. “Is that enough?”

“It’ll have to be,” I told her. “We’ll build it with that in mind.”

Our voices echoed in the big empty space.

The building consisted of two distinct areas. The part where we were was 120 feet high, as Kelly had just determined, maybe a hundred feet wide, and two hundred feet deep. Running on heavy rails overhead was a big traveling crane that could cover that entire area.

The rest of the building was only about twenty feet high. It accounted for two-thirds of the floor space. In a far corner of this lower area was standing water. Above it were rust streaks. Kelly saw where I was looking.

“That leak would be easy to patch,” she said.

“I don’t think we’ll really need to,” I said.

[147] We followed her to the big doors. She slapped an outsized button and the big doors began to slide back, making warning beeps like a bus backing up. The sun streamed in and we all squinted but Kelly, who was wearing her sunglasses.

Outside was a wooden wharf. An old guy sat on the pier and dangled a line down around the pilings. He looked at us, then went back to fishing. I could smell creosote, and warm brackish water, and fish.

“The rails for the crane run right out to the end of the wharf,” Kelly pointed out. “You said something about a barge. You can get a barge right up under the crane here.”

“That’ll make loading it a lot easier,” Dak said.

Kelly pointed to the east, then north.

“Turnbull Bay here connects with Strickland Bay. Then under the bridge on U.S. 1 and you’re in the Ponce de Leon Cut, turn left, and a mile later you’re in the open ocean.”

“Right there by the Coast Guard station?” I asked.

“That’s it.”

“Port,” Dak said.

“What’s that?”

“You don’t make a left turn in a boat. You steer to port.”

“Oh, the great admiral speaks,” Kelly muttered. She was not in a great mood.

“How high is the highway bridge?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll measure it later.”

“Wait a minute,” Alicia said. “Strickland Bay? As in Strickland Mercedes? As in… Kelly Strickland?”

“My family has lived in the area a long time,” Kelly said. Myself, I hadn’t even known that wide stretch of shallow water had a name.

“Mine, too,” Dak said. “Only we been fixin’ the cars your daddy been selling.”

“Has somebody got a problem with this?” Kelly asked, angrily. She looked at each of us. Nobody said anything. She sighed and shook her head.

“We got lucky here, people,” she said. “I looked at seventeen places [148] that were almost right, but then one thing or another didn’t work. No heavy lifting, no rail spur, crowded neighborhood, or way too expensive.”

“How much for this?” Alicia asked. Kelly named a figure that made me a little short of breath.

“So, doing the math,” I said, “we’re looking at six months at that rate, which-”

“Did I say month? That figure was per week.”

I needed a place to sit down. Talking about that much money makes me queasy.

“I can find you a dozen places much cheaper… but without the crane. Here’s the deal, folks. This place is in a legal limbo at the moment. The original developer went broke. There are lawsuits working their way through the courts. They can only rent month to month, which suits us down to the ground. There’s a group of investors who want to tear all this sh-… this stuff down and build a golf course.”

“Just what Florida needs,” Dak said. “Another golf course.”

“How’d you find it?” Alicia asked. Kelly gave us a small smile.

“In my father’s files. He’s the man behind the investors. He may or may not own this building, depending on how a judge rules on whether it was all done legally.”

“I thought your daddy sold cars,” Dak said.

“He’s thinking of getting involved more in land speculation.”

“Just what Florida needs,” I said. “Another land developer.” Kelly punched my arm, playfully, but with an edge to it this time. She really was feeling bad.

“So what do you say? Should I put down a deposit?”

“We’ll run it by Travis this evening,” I said.

“Travis. Right,” she said, bitterly.

No love currently lost between Kelly and Travis. And to think, no more than a week ago we were just like one big happy family…