by G. M. Ford
NO MAN’S LAND
G.M. FORD
A Frank Corso Novel
Better to sink in boundless deeps, than float on vulgar shoals.
—Herman Melville.
Mardi and a Voyage Thither.
1
“As of this moment, we are holding one hundred sixty three hostages. Starting at eighteen hundred tonight, I’m going to shoot one of them every six hours until Frank Corso is delivered to me.” The hand held camera shimmied, but the voice never lost its tone of command and the hooded black eyes never wavered. The picture rolled once, then the screen went blank. Governor James Blaine looked back over his shoulder at Warden Elias Romero. An unasked question hung in the air like artillery smoke.
“His name is Timothy Driver,” Romero said. “He’s a transfer from the State of Washington. Doing life without . . . for double aggravated murder.”
A glimmer of recognition slid across the governor’s pouchy face. “The navy guy? The captain?”
“Yes sir,” said Romero. “Driver used to be a Trident submarine captain.” Romero cleared his throat. “Came home a little early from a cruise. Found his wife flying united with some local guy. Lost it. Got himself a gun and offed them both, right there in his own bed. Blinded another inmate and stabbed a guard during his first week in a Washington prison. The con was a big player in the Aryan Brotherhood. The guard was an old hand . . . popular G.M. Ford with the staff. Washington figured it wasn’t safe to keep Driver around their system anymore . . . so they shipped him to us.”
The governor jammed his hands into his suit pants pockets.
“How the hell could something like this happen?” he demanded.
“Meza Azul is supposed to be—” He stopped himself. “As I recall, the design was supposed to prevent something like this from ever taking place.”
“Yes sir . . . it was.” Romero pointed to the bank of surveillance monitors nearly covering the south wall of the security office. The screens were blank and black. Romero cleared his throat.
“We’ve got the last minute and forty-five seconds of tape before Driver turned the security system off. It’s quite—”
“Let me see it,” the governor interrupted.
Romero crossed the room, jabbed at several buttons and stood aside, allowing the governor to belly up to the monitor. White static filled the large central screen.
“It’s quite graphic,” Romero warned.
“I’m a big boy,” the governor assured him.
The picture appeared. Shot from above. Somebody in a guard’s uniform putting an electronic key into what appeared to be an elevator door. The figure pocketed the key and bounced his eyes around all four walls before removing something from his inside jacket pocket and turning his back on the camera for a full thirty seconds.
“It’s Driver in a guard’s uniform,” Romero said. On-screen, Driver had straightened up and was poking his index finger at the keyboard on the wall as Romero narrated. “He just used a security key in the elevator to the control module, then . . .” He raised his hands in despair. “And then somehow or other he disabled the fingerprint recognition technology.”
“Say again.”
Romero reached around the governor and pushed the STOP button.
“On any given day, only five men have access to the central elevator. The pod operator, who you’re about to see in a minute, and the four senior duty officers.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “Driver found some way around it.” He moved quickly to the console. The figure started to move again “Look. He’s punching in the security code.”
On-screen, the door slid open. Driver stepped inside and momentarily disappeared. Blaine’s face was red now. “How in God’s name did a prisoner get hold of any of that?” the governor sputtered. “A uniform”— he waved a large liver-spotted hand—“the security code. How could . . .”
Romero merely shook his head, refusing to speculate. He stuck to the facts.
The picture cut to the interior of the elevator, where the man in blue stood calmly in the center of the car, hands folded in front of him, bored expression on his face.
“Driver had an appointment for a medical checkup. We’re guessing he somehow overpowered the team we sent for him.”
Romero shrugged and swallowed hard. “Somehow or other, he must have . . .” Romero searched for a word. “. . . he must have induced the guard sergeant to part with the security code.”
“And the fingerprint identification?”
“No idea.”
The two men passed nervous glances as the picture cut to the interior of the control module, where an African-American man in a starched white shirt swiveled his chair, turning to face the elevator door just in time for the man in blue to step inside and point to the bank of security monitors. “Check sixty-three,” he said in a command voice.
Without a word, the man in white turned his back on the closing elevator door and began running his fingers over his keyboard. Whatever was supposed to appear on monitor sixty-three would remain forever a mystery as Driver looped what appeared to be a length of thin wire around the other man’s neck, made a sudden twist at the nape and began to pull with sufficient force to lift the man in white from the chair. His fingers clawed at his throat and his eyes tried to burst from their sockets, as rivulets of blood began to pour down over the white Randall Corporation shirt and he began to convulse, his legs beating time on the hard stone floor, his open mouth spewing . . .
James Blaine turned his face away. While the governor was busy retaining his lunch, Romero reached around him and pushed the STOP button. Silence filled the room like dirty water.
“This wasn’t supposed to be possible,” James Blaine choked out.
Elias Romero kept his face as hard as stone. “Yes sir,” was all he dared to say.
The governor was right. From day one, Meza Azul, Arizona, had been designed to hold the worst collection of criminals in the United States. Worse yet, the prison was the centerpiece of an entire community whose very existence owed itself to the twin notions that Meza Azul was one hundred percent escape-proof and that incarceration could be a highly profitable enterprise. Unlike many of its predecessors, MA, as the residents liked to call it, had not started life as one of those quaint little mining communities, wedged high among the jagged sandstone-and-granite spires of the nearby San Cristobel Mountains or as one of those dust-covered stage stops masquerading as ghost towns down on the valley floor.
No . . . the privatization of the Arizona Department of Corrections had led to a complete rethinking regarding the placement and staffing of new prisons. While the state had preferred to use the opportunity to revitalize one of these long-dead towns, private enterprise had quickly recognized the folly of this approach. First and foremost, to take on an existing town was to take on its residents, many of whom, it was sad to say, were ill suited to the rigors of employment in a modern maximum security prison. While the initial report to the state attorney general had used such terms as trainability and technological recidivism to describe the problem with the locals, it was generally understood that what they meant was that the kind of folks who chose to shrink from progress, the kind of iconoclasts who stayed behind when the circus moved on were generally either too smart, too stupid or too lazy to be of any use to a dynamic new enterprise such as the Randall Corporation had in mind. Of course they couldn’t come right out and say something like that, so they couched their recommendations in more positive terms such as family friendly and self-containment, and thus Meza Azul, Arizona, had been created.
Truckers along I-506 swore the facility had been born overnight, cut from a single piece of cloth and dropped whole onto the desert floor, prison, houses, school, post office, golf course, movie theater, swimming pool, pa
lm trees and all. Bada bing. Gone today. Here tomorrow. Welcome to the twenty-first century.
For the past seven and a half years, the State of Arizona’s cut from the Meza Azul Correctional Facility had been the difference between profit and loss, between surplus and deficit, and was regularly mentioned by the governor as being emblematic of the imaginative fiscal policy with which he had brought the state back from the precipice of financial ruin.
James Blaine had no doubts. Spin doctors be damned. No way he could distance himself from Meza Azul. This was his baby, and the longer it went on, the worse it was going to be for his chances of reelection.
“What now?” the governor demanded.
“We’ve got FBI negotiators on the way.” Romero checked his watch. “They should be here by six tonight.” His big brown eyes rolled over the governor. Waiting. Not wanting to be the one who asked the question. Ten seconds passed before the question asked itself.
“You think we can handle this on our own?” Blaine asked. Romero shrugged. “Probably not.”
“We’ve got over eighty State Patrol officers on the scene right now.”
“Driver’s opened two hundred forty of the cells. Mostly in Cellblock D. The Bikers. Maybe some of the Mexican Mafia too. We had to put some of the Hispanic overflow in with the Bikers.”
The Bikers owned the south half of D Building. The African American Congress had the north half. The Mexican Mafia and the skinhead Nazis shared B Building. The Bikers would have preferred to live with the Mexicans, but there was no way you could put the Nazis and the Africans in together. The Mexicans hated the Nazis, thought they were the biggest scum-sucking maggots on the planet. They’d have rather lived with either the Africans or the Bikers, but there was no way you could put the Nazis in with the Bikers. In addition to seeing the Nazis as mutants and as a disgrace to the white race, the Bikers also hated them for horning in on the methamphetamine business, both inside and outside the walls, and, most of all, they hated the skinheads for besmirching their much beloved Nazi insignia. The governor winced and ran a hand over his face. Before he could speak, Romero went on. “They’ve got hold of the armory,”
he said.
“Which means what?”
Romero had to force the words out of his mouth. “Which means they’ve got access to every kind of automatic weapon available on the planet.” He hesitated. Took a deep breath. “And about three million rounds of ammunition.”
James Blaine ran a hand through his hair and turned away. He could feel how thin his hair had become in recent years. He’d once had presidential hair. That’s what they’d called it, presidential hair.
A knock sounded on the door. Neither man spoke. The door opened a crack. Romero’s executive assistant, Iris Cruz, looked from the warden to the governor and back. She was thirty, twelve years Romero’s junior, her once hourglass figure turning into something more like a time clock. They’d been sleeping together for the past nineteen months. Ever since Iris’s husband, Esteban, had tired of his life in America and returned to Mexico. Esteban’s shadow was still in the yard when Romero made his intentions clear. He’d wanted to for a long time, but had resisted. Iris had known from the beginning. Women knew these kind of things. Just like they knew when a man was never going to leave his skinny wife like he’d been claiming he was going to do all these months. Sometimes a woman would block it out for a while, but she knew. She always knew.
“I got that book you wanted,” she said, without making eye contact.
Romero crossed the room in four quick strides, plucked the book from Cruz’s manicured fingers and closed the door. He stood for a moment looking down at the book’s cover, then flipped it over and glanced at the picture on the back before opening the back cover and reading the flap copy.
“What have we got?” the governor wanted to know.
“It’s a book by Frank Corso.” He held up the cover so Blaine could see. Red as a Rose: A Story of Passion. “It’s the book he wrote about Driver.”
The governor started his way. “Says this Corso guy lives on a boat somewhere in the Seattle area,” Romero said.
“Call Seattle,” Blaine said. “Get this Corso guy on the way.”
He blew out a huge breath. “I’m calling out the National Guard.”
2
With an ease often mistaken for arrogance, Melanie Harris allowed her eyes to follow the focus light along the overhead camera track until her gaze came to rest on number four an instant before the light turned green and the camera began to roll. “This is Melanie Harris for American Manhunt . Join us again next week when American Manhunt once again turns up the heat on the criminal plague permeating our nation.” She picked up a sheet of folded paper from the desk in front of her. While it would have been more efficient to have included the copy on the electronic prompter, Melanie preferred to use the closing notes as a prop, lending, she thought, an air of spontaneity to a segment of the show that could, without careful tending, become a parody of itself. She handled the page with only the tips of her fingers, as if it were hot off the wire. She then tilted the page outward, as if to show the viewers at home. “As of this week, American Manhunt and our millions of viewers at home are responsible for the arrest and successful prosecution of nine hundred and seventy-nine dangerous criminals.” She offered a twisted smile. “Nine hundred seventy-nine felons . . . murderess, rapists, carjackers and thieves who no longer walk the streets preying on innocent citizens . . . No Man’s Land thanks to the efforts of people like you.” She pointed at the camera. “Until next week,” she intoned. The red light went out. She got to her feet. A trio of technicians stepped forward with the speed and precision of a NASCAR team, flipping switches, sliding slides, turning knobs, disconnecting her from the collection of electronics she wore during a taping.
“Clear,” somebody said.
She cast a quick glance at the control booth, where Tommy Allenby, her longtime director, stood with a fake grin plastered on his face, making the victory sign with his fingers. She smiled back and stepped away from the desk. The affirmation from Tommy was little more than force of habit. In the seven years the show had been on national television, Melanie had steadily taken over what would normally have been the duties of the director, leaving Tommy in the role of little more than a cheerleader. A well-paid cheerleader, as she’d been forced to remind him earlier in the year when he’d threatened to quit. Since then, their relationship had become cool and strictly professional. It had come to her ears that he’d been shopping his services to other programs. After considering confronting him on the matter, she’d decided to let him test the waters. Might be better that way. Better for both of them. As she moved across the set, Leslie Hall, her executive assistant, began jabbering in her ear. “We’ve got another taping at nine-fifteen tomorrow.”
“What have we got?”
Leslie ran down the list of crimes and criminals scheduled for next week’s show. A pair of Midwest bank robbers, who, after nine bank robberies, were still at large. A missing father of four, whose slaughtered family had been discovered in the basement of their home and a recap of the year to date. Each half hour episode of American Manhunt consisted of three segments. The inclusion of a recap meant they were short on current material and were using the compilation as filler.
“It’s not much,” Melanie sneered. “We just did a recap. You tell Martin we need better content.” They all knew. After seven successful years, the show was beginning to fizzle. The mob was fickle. The onslaught of reality programs was eating away at their ratings. Melanie jabbed a long, manicured finger at the floor. “Producers who don’t produce find something else to do for a living.”
Leslie assured her the message would get through to Martin Wells, the show’s executive producer. She began to say that Martin was surely doing the best he could, but Melanie cut her off by throwing up what only Leslie could translate as a disgusted hand and kept walking. “Tommy wants to have an all-staff meeting on—” Leslie tried.
Leslie jotted notes on her pad. “The Berens people would like to have a word with you about the—”
Another wave of her hand. This time negative. “Have them talk to Trudy.”
They were off the set now, walking quickly down the hall toward Melanie’s dressing room. Third door on the left. “This afternoon—” Leslie began.
“This afternoon. I’m going to the beach with Brian. Period. End of story.” Another hand gesture. This one like the cutting of a knife. “I stood him up twice last week and it’s not going to happen again today.”
Melanie pulled open the dressing room door, stepped into the cool quiet and closed the door. She crossed the room to the lighted makeup table and began to work at removing the layer of makeup the technicians plastered and painted over her face prior to each taping.
Other than cosmetics, the only thing on the table was the framed photograph of Melanie and Brian’s first and only child, Samantha, a smiling four-year-old whose guileless grin could warm the coldest of hearts. Samantha’s headless and armless torso had been found behind a Chevron station in Grand Rapids, Michigan, ten years ago next month. Plucked from beneath the gaze of a nineteen-year-old babysitter whose anguished cries for help had gone unheeded, Samantha had been missing for four days before her mangled body had been found. Neither the missing pieces of her body nor her murderer had ever been found. Once the funeral was over, once the pain and the initial shock had subsided and the endless stream of phone calls had begun to taper off, the experience of losing their only child had affected Brian and Melanie in completely different manners. Brian retreated into a shell of self-loathing, blaming himself for not being there when his daughter needed him most, neglecting his successful criminal law practice, alienating his longtime friends and his family in favor of a three-year drinking binge from which he very nearly failed to emerge. Only in the past year or so had his former relationships begun to take on the kind of genuine warmth that had been the hallmark of his earlier life. For all intents and purposes, he’d put the matter behind him. As long as you didn’t look into his eyes too deeply. Nobody except Melanie did, so it wasn’t a problem.
