No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  “Get it rolling,” the colonel said. “We can do the IDs from the other side of the fence. Soon as we’re sure who we’ve got we can process them out and get them home to their families.”

  He turned his attention toward Dallin Asuega. The television image had reverted to the streams of water being directed toward the fiery remains of the admin building. The image seemed to jog the colonel’s memory.

  “Mr. . . .” He paused again. This time with a glint in his eye.

  “Asuega.”

  “Mr. Asuega. I relayed your contention to the fire chief.”

  “What contention was that?”

  “The contention that my men must somehow have been responsible for the destruction of your building.”

  “And?”

  “And he wishes me to inform you that the building was destroyed as a result of a natural gas explosion combined with significant amounts of an undetermined accelerant, quite possibly diesel fuel.”

  Asuega unhinged his jaw to speak, but the colonel beat him to it. “I believe his exact words were ‘thousands of gallons.’ ” He paused for effect. “He said you should call his office if you have any questions.”

  Whatever Asuega had to say, he kept to himself.

  17

  Numb to the bone, barely able to flex his fingers, Corso leaned back against the front of the tanker with his eyes closed so that he wouldn’t see the waves of diesel fuel sloshing back and forth inside the tanker.

  Seemed like they’d been inside for hours when the truck drew to a halt for the fourth time. Then started again, drove a short distance and stopped again. Ten seconds later the diesel shut down and everything went silent.

  Driver switched on his flashlight. Held up a “take it easy”

  hand. They waited. Seemed like days before Driver crawled over to the hatch, reached up with a gloved hand and pushed it all the way open, careful not to let it bang. The purple rays of the overhead lights glimmered on the wavering pool of fuel as Driver maneuvered one shoulder and then the other out into the night air. The sound of dripping diesel fuel ricocheted through the tank as he thrust himself up and out of sight.

  Unable to force himself to his feet, Corso crawled forward on his knees. By the time he reached the hatch, Kehoe had come around and was trying to push him out of the way. Corso mustered the last of his strength, shook off Kehoe’s clutching hands G.M. Ford and got to his feet. He got one shoulder out on his own. Driver pulled him the rest of the way out.

  They were parked inside a fenced truck yard. A dozen mercury vapor lights showered the area with artificial luminescence. Forty yards away, a red neon sign in the window of a dilapidated white shack blinked OFFICE over and over into the night. On the roof, clumsy six-foot letters spelled DESERT DISTRIBUTING. The erratic light of a television set bounced around the interior of the building.

  The diesel fuel had left Corso slick and slippery. He had to lie flat on his belly and hang on with both hands to avoid sliding over the side. He watched as Kehoe was birthed from the belly of the beast, one awkward movement at a time.

  Again, they waited. Again it seemed like hours before Driver was satisfied they hadn’t been seen, before he got to his hands and knees and began to crawl along the top of the tanker, moving slowly toward the rear, bridging the gap between the tanks, until finally he was all the way at the rear of the rig, where a stainlesssteel ladder was welded to the back of the tank. No more than a foot separated their plastic face shields as Corso lay on his belly and watched Driver reverse himself and climb down onto the ground.

  Then Corso and finally Kehoe descended, until the trio stood together at the rear of the truck. Took the better part of five minutes for them to free one another from the suits. Despite their best efforts, a trickle of diesel fuel here and a few drops there found their way up sleeves and down necks.

  Driver retrieved the pile of gear from the ground, clutching it against his chest with one hand. He nodded toward the flickering light coming from the office. “See who’s in there,” he said to Kehoe. “Find out what he’s driving. It’ll be best if we have the keys.”

  Kehoe put his hand in his pocket and disappeared into the darkness along the far side of the truck. “Lace your fingers together,” Driver said. “Give me a boost.”

  Corso did as he was told. “That lunatic is gonna murder whoever’s in there,” Corso whispered through clenched teeth. Driver raised one foot into Corso’s proffered hands. “Makes him feel better about himself,” Driver said with a grunt. “Makes him feel superior.” Driver wiggled. “Higher,” he said. Corso put all his frustration into it, lifting Driver high enough so he could put one foot on Corso’s shoulder. Took Driver half a minute to stuff the gear down the hatch, into the tank and jump to the ground. As if on cue, a shriek poured out of the office . . . then a second, followed quickly by a low, gargling moan, plaintive and resigned, the kind of noise a person makes only once. Corso felt his throat constrict. “I don’t want any part of this,”

  he said. He cut the night air with the side of his hand. “I’m done. I’m bailing out.”

  Driver threw an arm around Corso’s shoulder. The gesture seemed almost fraternal until Corso noticed the black automatic in Driver’s hand. He rubbed the front sight gently across Corso’s cheek. “I think you better stick around for a while, Frank,” Driver said with a sigh. “We’ve got a couple of days head start. I’ve got things I need to do, so I’d really hate to see anything get in the way of that.” Corso opened his mouth to speak, but Driver cut him off.

  “I know. I know,” he said. “You’ll lie low until they figure out we’re gone.” The barrel caressed Corso’s cheek again, rubbing back and forth. “I trust you, Frank. I really do. You tell me you’re not going to compromise our position . . . I believe you.” Again he tilted his head toward the office. “. . . but my friend Kehoe there . . . he’s a most untrusting fellow, and I just can’t see him wanting a loose end like you floating around, if you know what I mean.”

  Corso pulled himself out from beneath Driver’s arm. “Guy’s a stone killer, man. He snuffs out lives the way other people change their socks.”

  Driver nodded his agreement. “Prison breaks doth make strange bedfellows indeed,” he said. He reached for Corso again, but Corso stepped away.

  “The guy I used to know didn’t stand around and let some maniac do his killing for him,” Corso said. “The guy I wrote a book about had a sense of honor, a sense of pride. He was a good man caught in a bad situation. He—”

  And then the barrel of the automatic was jammed hard against his lower jaw, forcing the words to die in his mouth. Driver had his nose about an inch from Corso’s. “That guy saw the reflections,” Driver whispered. “Saw the light from the reflections.”

  Something in his own words seemed to calm him. “You live in front of a camera twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Never seeing anybody else. Never talking to anybody else. Having people watch you brush your teeth, watch you take a shit . . .”

  Driver’s breathing had gone shallow. His eyes held a gleam Corso had never seen before. “You either see the convergence or you die there on the tile.”

  “The convergence?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Does Cutter see the convergence?”

  “Only thing Kehoe and I have in common is the fact that neither of us is going back inside alive.”

  The sound of approaching feet stopped him. A moment passed before Kehoe stepped around the corner. “Got us a beater pickup, camper and all,” he announced. “I cleaned up after myself. Put the geezer who owns it in the back. That way we won’t have anybody looking for the truck right away.”

  Kehoe turned his feral eyes Corso’s way. “What about this faggot?” he asked. “Way I see it, we got no need for this motherfucker anymore.”

  “I need him,” Driver said quickly. “I got something I need to do, and I need him to tell the story.”

  Kehoe thought it over. “What’s
this thing you got about tellin’ your story, Captainman?” he asked. “You thinkin’ you some kind of hero people wanna read about?”

  “Everybody wants to tell their story,” Driver said.

  “Not me,” said Kehoe. “Other folks wanna talk about me when I’m gone . . .” He waved a hand. “Fuck it. Let ’em talk all they want.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Driver said.

  Corso started to move. Kehoe stopped him dead with a hand on his chest. Corso looked down. The hand was so big it looked like it must have belonged to a much larger man “For now you comin’ along,” Kehoe said. “You twitch . . . you fart . . . you do anything to make me nervous”—he hesitated for effect—“and your ass is dead. You understand me? Story or no story. Captainman or no Captainman. You do anything but what we tell you and you’re dead.”

  The overhead lights hissed. Corso nodded his understanding. Kehoe turned and left. Corso followed along, with Driver bringing up the rear.

  Beater was the right word for the pickup. An old Chevy from the early seventies. All the hubcaps gone. Once blue paint had oxidized to a dull satiny patina. Big old cab-over-camper. A caveman camper, its friendly Neanderthal logo looking down in horror at the trio standing at its back door.

  Driver clapped Corso on the shoulder. “Got a driver’s license, Frank?”

  Corso said he did.

  “Nice and easy then.”

  18

  Morning flickered like a flame. A spark alone in the darkness, then, as if it had lost courage, suddenly gone, before showing itself again, as two and three and four, until the sparks became a full-fledged fire and the outline of the San Cristobel Mountains stood sentinel in the east, grinning wild and crazy like some jagged jack-o’-lantern in the sky.

  Corso squinted, reached up grabbed the mirror and pointed it straight down. Nobody’d spoken for an hour. The interior of the truck smelled of men and motor oil.

  The glint of sunshine pulled him from his waking dream. Somewhere in his mind’s eye, he’d been riding in his father’s battered Chevy pickup, rolling along Route 74 on a hot summer’s day with the windows down and the thick air blowing around the cab like an overheated hurricane. He’d been watching his farther’s hands on the steering wheel. The hands . . . broken and twisted by the North Koreans until they looked like ancient roots, like his real hands had somehow been left behind in that POW camp, buried in the same cold grave as whatever humanity and kindness he might once have posessed. A single tear rolled down Corso’s cheek, He wiped it away with his sleeve and glanced to his right, where Driver and Kehoe slept. No Man’s Land The sights and sounds of freedom had mesmerized Driver and Kehoe, reducing them to a state of slack-jawed awe as they’d rolled west across the desert in the gathering light. The sun at their backs and the movement of Corso’s hand seemed to stir them from their stupor.

  “Where the hell are we anyway?” Kehoe asked.

  “About fifty miles east of Phoenix,” Corso answered. Driver stretched. “What’s the gas situation?”

  “Just over a quarter of a tank.”

  “I’m hungry as hell,” Kehoe said.

  Driver reached over the seat back, tapping Corso on the ear with the barrel of the automatic. “How much money have you got?”

  Corso thought it over. “Not more than a couple of bucks,” he said. “I’ve got a bunch of plastic, though.”

  Kehoe rolled his neck. “Good. Let’s stop and get us some—”

  “No plastic,” Driver interrupted. “We start using plastic, they’ll run us down in a heartbeat. We need to do business in cash.”

  “Which we ain’t got,” Kehoe added.

  “Then I guess we better get some,” Driver said.

  “Whatta you got in mind?” Kehoe asked.

  Driver considered the matter for a minute. “As I see it, the two things we need most are guns and money. For where we’re going, those two can’t be beat.”

  “Send lawyers guns and money.” Kehoe sang the tune. “The shit has hit the fan.”

  “And where are we going?” Corso inquired.

  “You mean geographically or philosophically?” Driver asked.

  “I’ll settle for either.”

  “East and straight to hell.” He looked at Kehoe. “What about you? You going some place in particular?”

  Took Kehoe a minute. “Ain’t thought about it. Only thing I made my mind up about was I didn’t want to die inside. Just as soon die like a bitch in the road as end up in one of them new wood boxes they put ’em in.” His eyes glazed over for a moment. He seemed to be staring at something far over the horizon. “Ain’t nobody waitin for me or nothin’. Hell, I been down a long time.

  ’Cept for nine months I was out in eighty-four, I been inside for the better part of twenty-five years. Anybody give a shit about me probably dead by now.” He looked from Corso to Driver. “ I ain’t headed anywhere in particular. I just wanna make a hell of a lotta noise on the way out.”

  “A noble calling,” Driver said. And then they went silent again.

  A series of crumbled buttes showed themselves in the brightening sky. The two-lane road lapped out in front of the truck for as far as the eye could see. The terrain would never make Sunset magazine. No Monument Valley vistas. No regal saguaro cactus pointing the way to heaven. No tiny desert flowers waiting for morning to show their delicate petals. No. This was no-man’s-land. The land God never got around to finishing, or maybe the land he’d used up before moving on to greener pastures. Broken land, falling in upon itself in a series of gulches and gullies, separated by discarded appliances, burnt-out cars and pathetic patches of trash-littered mesquite.

  A tandem semi came hurtling at them through the semidarkness, lights dimmed, engine roared, fracturing the air like an eastbound freight, its blast sending the old truck rocking on its springs, rendering its occupants short of breath and speechless.

  “Fucker,” Kehoe spit.

  Quarter mile ahead, a road sign announced FLINT . . . 1 MILE.

  “Stop. We can throw whatever cash you’ve got in the gas tank,” Driver said. “Maybe use the facilities.”

  “I surely need to drain the vein,” Kehoe announced. The sign read MAD MIKE’S CAFE, HOME OF THE THUNDERBIRD BURGER, a one-story shack added on to so many times it looked like a lumber truck had been involved in a pileup, and this was the result. An eye-level window ran the length of the building. Stools along the counter. Booths along the front wall. Half a dozen gas pumps outside. Chevron. One regular, one high-test, four diesel. Three cars and a pickup were nosed into the weeds hard against the building. Another five or six big rigs were spread out across the expanse of gravel to the north of the café. Looked like most of them were cooped up for the night.

  Corso nosed the pickup close to the regular pump. Two dollars and ten cents a gallon. Corso got out and frisked himself. Came up with six dollars and fifteen cents in cash. Driver and Kehoe stepped out onto the gravel, where they stretched and groaned and looked around, while Corso tried to get the pump to work.

  “Be back,” Kehoe announced.

  Kehoe was most of the way to the front door when Corso finally caught sight of the faded little card taped to the pump.

  “We’ve got to pay first,” Corso said.

  Driver walked to the far side of the truck, where he checked the safety and transferred the automatic from his pants pocket to the front of his belt, which he tightened a couple of notches before patting his shirt down over the front of himself.

  “Nobody trusts nobody anymore,” Driver lamented. Melanie Harris used the back of her hand to hide a yawn. Right at the end, her ears popped, causing her to wonder how long they’d been stopped up and whether she’d missed anything important as a result.

  Marty Wells ran one hand through his thinning hair while patting Melanie’s shoulder with the other. “Looks like the party’s over,” he said.

  As usual, Marty was the master of the obvious. The prison yard was nearly devoid of life. Only the firef
ighters remained, standing vigil over the steaming pile of smoke and refuse that had once masqueraded as the Louis Carver Administration Building. The ranks of once-naked cons had been stuffed into bright orange coveralls and returned to their cells, a few kicking and screaming, but mostly under their own power, escorted back inside by pairs of burly Arizona State Patrol officers. The hostages had first been separated from the eighteen or so cons who were found to be secreted among their number. After that, a consensus of prison officials, fellow workers and loved ones had been required for release. Wasn’t long before the sounds of tearful reunions rose in the predawn atmosphere. The media rumor mill was reporting prisoner casualties at somewhere in the low one hundreds and National Guard casualties as zero, but nothing official had been released and probably wouldn’t be until midafternoon.

  “I’m headed for the motel,” Marty said, “Nothing going on here.”

  “Been a long time since I stayed up all night,” Melanie offered.

  “We got some great footage.”

  “Nothing everybody else hasn’t got.”

  “Are you forgetting the other?”

  A shiver ran through her.

  “I didn’t tell you, did I?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Networks’ not gonna wait till Wednesday evening. They’re gonna run it as a special edition tonight.”

  She looked wan and haggard. He made a mental note to have a word with makeup and wardrobe, then did what he always did at times such as this: tried to cheer her up. She saw it coming and looked away.

  “Got some new material on the way,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Same source as the other.”

  “Something a little less morbid, I hope.”

  “Everything they’ve got on this Driver guy.”

  She stifled another yawn. “I don’t catch a few winks I’m gonna look like the Bride of Frankenstein tomorrow,” she said. He made it a point not to agree. “See you later,” he said. She stood in the fresh light and watched him walk away, wondering how he managed to keep his optimism. How he managed to keep from drowning in the drek.