The Ragged End of Nowhere

by Roy Chaney

  “We took him back to the barracks. The sergeant major decided to teach him a lesson and charged him with desertion. The Colonel gave him forty days in the detachment prison. It was run by a couple of corporals—a Spaniard and a Norwegian—who had a reputation for violence. We’d see your brother when they brought him outside into the yard for his exercise. While the corporals strolled around the compound, your brother was made to run in circles around them. If he didn’t run fast enough, they made him crawl on his hands and knees. One day we walked by the prison compound and saw him lying facedown on the ground, with his hands tied behind him, while the two corporals took turns beating on the soles of his feet with a stick. Your brother hadn’t run fast enough when they told him to run, so they decided that his feet needed toughening up.

  “He did his forty days and then came back to the unit. But as a deserter he was bad luck now and no one wanted to associate with him. We turned our backs. He tried to get back into the swing but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t keep his mind on the soldiering and his gear was always a mess. The sergeant major made life hell for him. Here was this young Legionnaire whose father had been at Dien Bien Phu and he’d gone and deserted—the sergeant major couldn’t stomach that. Dien Bien Phu—that’s a sacred thing to the old Legionnaires.

  “We weren’t surprised when your brother disappeared again. The sergeant major ordered us to find him, so off we went again to the big island. This time it wasn’t so easy. We spent four days trudging through the jungle on the big island, all of us getting more and more pissed off.

  “Finally we found him. He’d taken the girl from Chiconi and gone out into the jungle in the center of the island. He was hiding out, in a little village called Ouangani. We dragged him out of a hut and marched him up to the top of a nearby hill. We were hot and tired and completely pissed off. Your brother had put us to a lot of trouble and the corporal in charge—Corporal DeGreer—wanted his pound of flesh.

  “At the top of the hill there was a small clearing in the jungle. DeGreer handed your brother a field shovel and told him to start digging. He wanted your brother to dig his own grave.

  “No one said a word. We just stood there watching him dig his grave. When he was done DeGreer ordered him to lie down in it. Then DeGreer covered him over with dirt until only his head was aboveground. DeGreer ordered the rest of us to stand in a circle around the grave and sing the regimental song, ‘Le Boudin.’ So we started singing and kept right on, while DeGreer beat your brother senseless with the shovel head.

  “Then we dug him up and dragged him back to Dzaoudzi and threw him back in the prison.

  “He got another forty days for desertion. When he got out the sergeant major told him to pack his gear up. Your brother was a disgrace and the sergeant major didn’t want him around. The sergeant major had put him in for a transfer to the Legion post at Aubagne.

  “I saw your brother before he left the island. He swore he’d get even with us someday, all of us—DeGreer, the sergeant major, everyone in the detachment, everyone in the whole damn Legion. I shrugged my shoulders and told him to fuck off. He’d dug his own grave, so to speak. Now he was going to have to lie in it. But your brother didn’t see it that way. He thought the Legion had let him down. He’d believed in the Legion but the Legion had turned its back on him, and he was going to settle the score one day.

  “An hour later he was on the Transall, flying back to France. After he left the sergeant major ordered us never to speak of Legionnaire Hagen again. We never did.”

  Tate’s voice drifted off. In the glow of the dashboard lights Hagen could see Tate’s face contorted in pain. The Legionnaire swallowed hard, closed his eyes. Whatever else was wrong with him, he had lost a lot of blood. He must’ve been feeling it by now. Hagen glanced at the pistol in Legionnaire Tate’s hand. He was getting ready to reach over and make a grab for it when the Legionnaire opened his eyes quickly, alarmed and disoriented.

  “So what happened?” Hagen said. He wanted to keep the Legionnaire talking. Keep his mind off the pistol in his hand and his own fading awareness.

  “What happened?” Legionnaire Tate wasn’t sure where he’d left off.

  “In Aubagne.”

  A pause. Then, “I don’t know what happened in Aubagne. I was posted there a couple of years later. I saw your brother there a few times. They had him working in the motor pool. I didn’t speak to him. He was a nonperson as far as I was concerned. I was surprised to see him though. I would’ve thought he’d have deserted again and made it stick. But he didn’t. He finished his enlistment. It would’ve been better for the Legion if he’d deserted.”

  “Because he stole the hand?”

  “Yes. Your brother stole the Hand of Danjou.”

  The Hand of Danjou—Hagen thought again of what his father had told him once. A long time ago. His father had been drunk and feeling bitter that night. His father had talked of the men he’d seen die at Dien Bien Phu. They hadn’t died for a cause. They hadn’t even died for a half-baked notion of God and country. They’d died for the Legion and the Legion alone. They’d died because the Legion had ordered them to never retreat and never surrender—like Captain Danjou. His father hadn’t mentioned the wooden hand or the tale of Captain Danjou but Hagen made the connection now. Never retreat. Never surrender. March or die. Légio patria nostra—the Legion had been their God and their country.

  And the myth of the Hand of Danjou was the Legion.

  And Ronnie stole it. Ronnie stole the Hand of Danjou and brought it back to Las Vegas to sell it. To get even with the Legion for turning its back on him. For making him dig his own grave on a Mayotte hilltop.

  “So you came here to find the hand,” Hagen said. “And while you searched for it, Ronnie was killed. Which one of you killed him, Tate? Was it you?”

  “Killed him?” Tate shook his head slowly. He grimaced with pain. His voice was weak and unsteady. “Legionnaire Hagen died and was buried on Mayotte. He just didn’t have the good sense to lie down. Until now.”

  The cell phone beeped. Tate pulled it out of the pouch. His hand shook as he fumbled with the cover over the face of the phone.

  “Tate here. . . . I don’t know. . . . Almost—almost there. . . .”

  Tate said to Hagen, “How far, to Searchlight?”

  “Maybe five miles.”

  Tate repeated the information into the telephone, slurring a few words.

  Tate told the caller he’d meet them in ten minutes or so, then hit a button with his thumb to end the call. As Tate tried to close the cover the phone slipped from his hand, fell down between his seat and the gearshift console. Tate stared for a moment at the spot where the phone had disappeared. His head swayed, like he was dizzy. Like he was fading out.

  “Tate?”

  The Legionnaire didn’t respond. His eyes had moved to the steering wheel in Hagen’s hands. He stared at the wheel, blinking his eyes, as though his vision was fogged over and he couldn’t clear it. Then his eyes closed. His chin fell slowly onto his chest. The Glock in his hand fell to one side, limp fingers still half clutching the butt of the pistol.

  Hagen waited a moment, to see if Tate came to again.

  He didn’t. Legionnaire Tate was unconscious.

  Hagen slowed the car down and pulled off onto the side of the road. He reached over and pulled the pistol from Tate’s loose grip. The Legionnaire slipped a little farther to one side, his head against the seat. Hagen grabbed his wrist and checked his pulse. Weak, but steady. Legionnaire Tate wasn’t dead yet.

  Hagen set the Glock in his lap. He pulled back onto the highway and drove on.

  A few miles south of Searchlight he spotted a dirt road leading off into the desert hills. He turned onto it, the car bouncing and lurching as it traversed the deep ruts and the rocks in the road. An old utility road. Where did it come out? The road curved. The headlights illuminated the bare dry earth, the creosote bushes, the sagebrush. The road wound around the base of a rocky hill and descended into
a narrow valley and continued on. Up ahead in the headlights Hagen spotted an abandoned wooden shack that sat at the base of a hillside off to the left, fifty yards or so from the utility road. The wood was parched and weather-beaten. One wall stood crookedly, the roof sunken to one side.

  Hagen stopped the car on the road, switched on the high beams to illuminate as much of the desert around him as possible, then got out. He walked around to the passenger side, opened the door. Propping the unconscious Legionnaire up in the seat with one hand, he reached down and picked up the Beretta off the floor, closed the door, returned to the driver’s side of the car. Opening Ronnie’s valise he removed a cotton shirt and used it to wipe the small amount of Legionnaire Tate’s blood off the Beretta, then slipped it into his shoulder holster. Then Hagen picked up the Glock, removed the clip, pumped the round out of the chamber, dropped the clip into his pocket, tossed the loose round out into the darkness. He wrapped the Glock up in the shirt and tucked it under the driver’s seat.

  Hagen removed the blue bundle that contained the wooden hand from the bag. Ahead and off to the right, on the opposite side of the road from the shack, he could just make out a formation of boulders, and he carried the bundle over to the near side of the formation. At the outside edge of the light from the headlights he found two large rocks lying on the ground in close proximity to each other. Hagen searched the ground for a small flat rock. He found one and brought it over to where the larger rocks lay and used the flat rock to dig a shallow hole in the dry earth. He set the bundle in the hole and covered it with the loose earth, then pushed the two larger rocks together over the buried hand.

  The hand was safe there. As safe as it ever would be. And the shack and the boulders would serve as good reference points when he came back to get it. The Legionnaires would have to play Hagen’s game now. If they didn’t, this hand would rot out here in the desert for years. But what was his game? Hagen didn’t know. He only had one thought in his mind now, one overruling idea. And that was to talk to Colonel Zahn. Hagen would make a trade—the wooden hand for the Legionnaire who killed Ronnie. If Zahn wanted to leave Las Vegas with the hand, he’d have to leave that Legionnaire behind.

  When Hagen returned to the car he found Legionnaire Tate sitting up in the passenger seat, his back against the door and the cell phone in his hand. A small thin voice on the other end of the connection called his name. “Tate? Tate?” Tate didn’t answer. Tate’s eyes were glazed over, staring at Hagen but not seeing him. Tate had regained consciousness and found enough energy to pull the cell phone out from where it had fallen and put a call through. But now he couldn’t find the strength to speak.

  Hagen reached over and took the phone from Tate’s hand. Tate didn’t seem to notice. Tate’s breathing was faster than before—short sharp breaths with a raspy edge to them. How long was Tate going to last?

  The voice on the other end of the phone, speaking in French— “Tate? Are you there?”

  “Hello?”

  “Tate? What’s going on?”

  Hagen answered in English. “Tate is indisposed. My name is Bodo Hagen. I want to talk to Colonel Zahn.” Was this Zahn’s number that Tate had called, or was it the pair of Legionnaires waiting up the road?

  “Hagen?”

  “Let me speak to Colonel Zahn.”

  Hagen sat there with the phone to his ear, watching Tate as the Legionnaire struggled to keep his head upright and his eyes open. The towel Tate had held to his side had fallen to the floor of the car. Tate’s side was covered in drying blood from his armpit down to his trousers.

  A new voice came on the line.

  “Mister Hagen?” The voice was crisp and sure and spoke English with a strong French accent.

  “Colonel Zahn?”

  “Yes, this is Colonel Zahn. What has happened to Legionnaire Tate?”

  “He took a bullet in the side back in Laughlin. He’s not doing too well. I’m not doing too well either. But I have the Hand of Danjou. If you want it, we’re going to have a talk first.”

  Pause. Then, “All right, Mister Hagen. What do you have in mind?”

  “I want to know which one of you killed my brother.”

  “I don’t think that’s something I can help you with.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  Another pause, longer this time. Colonel Zahn was weighing his options. Then, “I’ll see what I can do for you, Mister Hagen. It may take some time. Can we meet face-to-face? Someplace that is con venient for you? Maybe we can do business then.”

  A meeting with Colonel Zahn—that was exactly what was called for. As long as it was on Hagen’s terms. “That’s fine. We’ll meet.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll call you when I get there. Give me your phone number.”

  Colonel Zahn gave him the number. “I look forward to seeing you, Mister Hagen.”

  “And, Colonel, tell your men to stay out of my way. I don’t have the hand with me, and if your men give me trouble I’ll make sure you never find it.”

  “I understand.”

  Hagen closed the cell phone.

  “You’ll have to hang on for a while longer, Tate.”

  Ten miles north of Searchlight on Highway 95 Hagen passed a blue Ford Explorer utility vehicle parked in a turnout on the northbound side of the road. In his rearview mirror he saw the Ford’s headlights come on. The Ford pulled out onto the highway and gained speed. But the Ford didn’t try to overtake him. The Ford stayed behind him, following him from a distance.

  Five miles farther on a sedan traveling in the southbound lane slowed down as it approached Hagen. Once Hagen had passed by, the sedan made a U-turn and fell in behind the Explorer.

  Two pairs of headlights now. Pacing him. Watching him.

  Colonel Zahn was giving him an escort back into Las Vegas.

  Hagen drove on. Every now and then a car came speeding up behind him. Hagen watched the approaching headlights carefully in the rearview mirror, prepared to hit the brakes as soon as the car came up alongside him and slowed down. A single pistol shot from a passing car—easy to do out here on a long quiet desert highway in the middle of the night. They might shoot a tire out and force him off the road. They might even shoot him as he drove. Get it over with, right off.

  But no one in a passing car took a shot at him. The cars flew past Hagen and moved on up the highway while the Explorer and the sedan stayed behind him. Hagen kept his own speed down. He didn’t want to attract the attention of any highway patrol units who might be cruising the highway. That would be a fine mess—a state trooper pulling him over for speeding, only to find a dying man in the passenger seat and a couple of high-powered pistols lying around. Better to keep the speed down, stay low-key. Low-key—that thought struck Hagen as grimly amusing. A band of well-armed soldiers from the French Foreign Legion tailing him, Harry Needles lying dead back in Laughlin and another man dying right beside him in the car and Hagen was worried about keeping a low profile.

  Too late for that.

  Legionnaire Tate had slipped back into unconsciousness again. He needed a doctor. Soon. But Hagen couldn’t take him to the hospital. He’d give him to Zahn. He was Zahn’s man—Zahn could take care of him. If Tate was going to die he could do it on Zahn’s time.

  It was another twenty miles before Hagen saw what he was looking for—a large parking lot outside of a business park on the outskirts of Henderson. The parking lot was well lit and empty. Hagen exited the highway, turned right onto a surface street, drove along for a hundred yards. When he reached the business park he turned in and drove to one corner of the parking lot, where a second entrance led out onto a side street. Hagen turned the car around, headlights pointed back at the main entrance, the second entrance a few yards off to his right.

  A moment later the Explorer pulled into the lot, followed by the sedan. The sedan stopped near the main entrance, headlights pointed at Hagen. The Explorer drove to the opposite side of the lot and turned around.

 
; Two sets of headlights pointed at Hagen. Three engines idling. And how many guns?

  Hagen hit the redial button on the cell phone.

  “Colonel Zahn?”

  “Mister Hagen, are you at your destination?”

  “Not quite. But your man Tate needs a doctor. I’m going to let you take him off my hands.”

  “How will we do this?”

  First thing, Hagen wanted Zahn’s two vehicles together, the sedan over with the Explorer. While Zahn kept Hagen on the line, the Colonel used another cell phone to talk to his men in the sedan. A minute later the sedan drove across the parking lot, pulled up next to the Explorer.

  Then Hagen gave Zahn the rest of the instructions.

  As Hagen watched, a man climbed out of the sedan. He pulled his shirt up over his head and tossed it back into the car, then began walking bare-chested across the parking lot. Hagen pulled out the Beretta as he watched the man’s progress. He was a short stocky man, his pale white chest covered with tattoos. He walked with his arms out from his side, like a Wild West gunslinger with his hands over his side holsters.

  When he was fifteen yards from Hagen’s car the tattooed Legionnaire stopped and turned fully around, so that Hagen could see that he had no weapon tucked into the back of his trousers.

  Zahn on the phone—“How are we doing, Mister Hagen?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Very well then.”