“We believe it is, sir. We picked him up in the central section of the range, in a bivouac he’d put up. Tracked him there from one of the sites, the one that said ‘Wage Peace.’”
“He offer any resistance?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well,” Wardlaw said. “Leave him here with me. I’d like to have a conversation with this boy.”
“Sir?” Yato began.
“You have a problem with that, William? I’m not afraid to be left alone in a room with a pencilnecked geek like him.”
“Yes sir.” Yato and the Marine guards left and Wardlaw walked slowly around the prisoner, examining him. Looked like the Sierra Club type, all right. Fancy hiking boots. Nice tan on his arms and neck and face, where you could see his face under all the hair and beard. Looked like the tan ended under the shirtsleeves, though. Soft looking hands.
“What’s your name, son?” he asked.
“Dieter,” the young man replied. “Dieter Holtz.”
Kid had a foreign accent.
Wardlaw hated foreign accents.
“You’re not even an American.”
“No. I am from Germany.”
“You have a visa?”
“Yes. I am here on a student visa.”
“Some of those terrorists were in the country on student visas,” Wardlaw said. He leaned back against his desk, crossed his arms. “Did you know that?”
“I have heard that.”
“Is that how it works? You come here on a student visa so you can get into our country, and then you attack it from the inside?”
“I have attacked nothing,” Dieter said.
“You’re not a terrorist?”
“No. I am not a terrorist.”
“Then what are you doing trespassing on a United States Marine Corps facility?”
“I believe in peace, environmental protection, and social justice,” Dieter said. “I was merely making a statement about my beliefs.”
“By breaking the law.”
“Yes. Which I believe is a noble tradition in the United States, yes? The Boston Tea Party? Martin Luther King? Freedom Riders?”
“You don’t have to give me a history lesson about my own country, son,” Wardlaw said. “I could give you some history of your own. World War One, we kicked your asses. World War Two, we kicked them again. Remember?”
“Yes. I am not here as a citizen of Germany. I am here as a citizen of the world, concerned about things that affect the entire world.”
“Let me get this straight,” Wardlaw said. He moved around to the front of his desk and sat down in his chair. “What we do on my bombing range affects the whole world?”
“Yes. The destruction of natural habitat affects the world. War in Central Asia affects the world. Geopolitical borders are imaginary lines on a map, not real things.”
“So by writing silly messages with rocks, you’re putting an end to war and environmental destruction? I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this idea, boy.”
Dieter remained still, in the center of the room. His evident fear had gone and he seemed composed, even calm. This just pissed Wardlaw off all the more. “My hope was to stimulate dialogue,” Dieter replied. “To encourage people to seek to understand the link between military aggression and the natural world.”
Wardlaw picked up a pencil from his desktop pencil cup and tapped it on the desk, eraser-side down. Kind of bouncing it on the rubber end. Johnny Carson had done that, and Wardlaw had always liked it when Johnny did it. Sometimes he tried it to soothe his nerves, but it never seemed to work. “Do you think you’re better than I am, son?”
“Excuse me?”
“Better. Superior to. In any way smarter, more informed, more ethical. A superior human being.”
This was the first question the kid didn’t have a ready answer to. He blinked several times as if that would help him arrive at one. “Not better. Possibly more informed, in some areas, as I’m sure you are more informed than I in others.”
Wardlaw caught the pencil in both hands and snapped it with a sharp, loud crack. “More informed than me?” he echoed. “Boy, I am probably double your age. I have lived a long time and seen a lot of things. I’ve fought in wars, have you done that? I’ve killed men, have you? I’ve raised children and held my wife’s hand as she died. Have you done those things?”
“I have not,” Dieter replied. The more Wardlaw raged the calmer the kid seemed. “But I have summitted eleven fourteen-thousand-foot peaks. I have held the hand of my partner as he died of AIDS-related pneumonia. I have chained myself to friends and colleagues and lain across a roadway to block the transport of nuclear waste. Have you done those things?”
So the kid was not only a Kraut but he was a queer Kraut to boot. Wardlaw felt his blood pressure rising, like steam in a pot. “Were you alone out there in my bombing range, or are there others?”
The kid looked straight ahead but didn’t answer. Wardlaw stood, coming around the desk fast and stopping right in front of him, his face inches from the German’s. “Were you alone?”
No answer.
“Are there others? Are there still people on my range?”
No answer.
“Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you’re in, boy?”
“I believe so.”
“Are there others?”
No answer.
Wardlaw lost it then. He drew back his fist and drove it into the kid’s gut as hard as he could. Dieter doubled over, blowing out his breath and grunting, and Wardlaw wrapped an arm around his neck and twisted. Dieter tried to kick, his hands flailed around ineffectually. Wardlaw kept twisting until he heard a satisfying snap and felt the kid go still.
Now he just had to deal with the problem of the kid’s body. A sudden inspiration struck him and he lifted the dead weight, hoisting it over his head, and hurled it through the glass of his window. There was a huge crash, and the body thumped onto the parade ground below, accompanied by the tinkling of a thousand shards of glass, like so many tiny bells.
Marcus Jenkins rushed into the room. “Sir?”
Wardlaw pointed at the window. “Little shit tried to escape by going through my window,” he said. He looked down as Marcus joined him by the broken glass. “Doesn’t look like he landed well. Better get him cleaned up.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Marcus said. He hurried from the office.
Wardlaw hadn’t killed a man since the Gulf War. Until just this minute, he hadn’t realized how much he missed it. He felt suddenly very relaxed. This is the best moment of my day, he thought. The very best. He brushed some glass out of his chair and sat back down, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back. If only every day could end on a high note.
***
Ken had stayed and talked to Virginia for a while, knowing that each minute he spent with her was another minute that something could be happening to her husband. She seemed to need it, though—sitting alone in their RV, she clung to Ken’s arm as if it were a lifeline, and she’d drown if she let go.
Finally, though, he persuaded her that he needed to be on his way, that if he were going to find Hal he should be out looking, not sitting in here. She understood and released him, and he walked across the Slab in the quickly gathering dark. He’d brought a flashlight and a day pack with some food and water and blankets in it. Virginia said Hal was just wearing a light blue short-sleeved shirt and some old Sansabelt slacks and his loafers—not desert survival gear by any stretch.
He was taking a risk and he knew it. Maybe he should have called out a volunteer Search and Rescue team, a bunch of off-road enthusiasts and would-be cops who’d beat the bushes looking for the old man. But he was playing a hunch here—maybe a little more than a hunch, but a hell of a lot less than a sure thing—and his hunch was that, since he and Hal Shipp had felt some kind of bizarre connection earlier in the day, some kind of bond, he’d be able to find the man on his own.
Just like those “pictu
res” he’d seen of somebody digging, he figured. If he concentrated hard enough on Hal, he’d be able to see where the man was. And a bunch of other yahoos racing around on ATVs and calling pseudo police code into walkie-talkies would only interfere with that process. He zipped up his jacket and tugged his Smokey hat down on his head against the night’s coming chill and went to work.
Standing in the center of the Slab, he closed his eyes and tried to summon up Hal Shipp’s face. Remembering the details of someone’s appearance, Ken knew, as opposed to the general overview, or what you tended to think of when you thought about a certain individual, was a pretty tricky job. Within a month of his own wife’s death, he had realized he could no longer even conjure a complete image of her face. He could get the details: the tiny mole near her ear, the curve of her nose, the slight tilt of her eyes that gave her an exotic air, the fullness of her lips. But he couldn't put them together in a whole that approximated the real person, and he had taken to spending hours looking at photos as if they’d keep her appearance more clear in his mind and heart.
His method was to start at the top and work down. Hal’s hair was white and wispy, thinning as a man’s of that age will do, but he still had plenty. It was an inch or so long, and he combed it back off his forehead but it never stayed there. The old man usually had a lock of it hanging down over his forehead, almost boyishly.
The skin of that forehead was pale pink, almost porcelain-looking, like the surface of a cameo, with fine lines running parallel to one another above his eyes. The skin was smooth there, and looked soft as a baby’s.
Set into that skin, behind fleshy folds that had always reminded Ken of Robert Mitchum’s eyes, Hal had two sparkling chips of sky blue surrounded by whites clear enough, even at his age, to model for Visine commercials. In spite of what sounded to Ken like a rough life, Hal had loved to laugh, and years of that had etched dozens of fine creases at the corners of his eyes.
His cheeks were round and plump, also sunburn pink, Santa Claus cheeks, almost. They pressed against his eyes from below, as if forehead and cheeks conspired to blind the man, but the piercing blue always managed to show through anyway.
Hal’s nose was generous, pocked with large pores and mottled with broken capillaries, making it red enough to stand out even against the pink skin of the rest of his face. A testament, Ken figured, to the man’s hard-drinking days. A man couldn’t have a nose like that and not be reminded by every mirror of his mistakes.
But Hal had overcome his mistakes, and when Ken tried to envision his mouth he could only see it slightly open and curved in a wide smile. His teeth were white and all his own, he claimed. His lips were thin but sharply-drawn, handsome and masculine. The corners of his mouth dimpled when he grinned, creating a mischievous, almost elfin effect in one so aged.
Finally, Hal’s chin—a strong jaw, giving way in age to the folds of flesh that hung there, but still the lines of his original jaw were evident as they swept down to a serious chin, a chin of substance and character, Ken thought, with a small cleft right in its center.
Having picked out the individual pieces, Ken assembled them and came up with what he thought was a reasonably good picture of the man’s face. He put that on top of a basic representation of Hal’s body—a heavy-set guy, collapsing in on himself as people did when they reached his age. He still filled out a shirt but probably weighed less than he had at any time since reaching his full growth. Ken had noticed before that old people seemed to hollow out, as if their bones became empty tubes and their skin kept an approximation of its former shape but without the mass behind it.
With this image in his mind’s eye and his real eyes shut, Ken focused on Hal. Suddenly a flash of light blinded him, like a strobe going off, and then he saw a section of the Slab, the eastern edge of it, facing the Chocolate Mountains. That spot was just a little ways from where he stood, so he hurried there. Two minutes later, he stood on the same spot, and it looked just like it had in his vision, right down to the plastic grocery bag snared on a jumping cholla and fluttering in a night breeze. Ken flicked on his flashlight and looked for footprints.
There were dozens here, of course. There was a path leading off the Slab, and he didn’t know where it led but of course people walked on it occasionally. Even the most steadfast Slab dweller didn’t spend all his time on those strips of cement. He followed the path a little ways, and the footprints tapered off, and eventually he found a set that he believed were Hal’s. Keeping the light swaying from side to side across the path, he followed them off into the dark.
Part Three
Penny Rice
Chapter Nineteen
Penny clapped a hand across Mick’s mouth, interrupting a diatribe about the environmental costs of globalization. His eyes widened and he looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Shhh,” she cautioned. “Listen.”
She pulled her hand away and raised a finger to her lips, in case he needed reminding. But he kept his mouth shut, and after a moment he nodded. The evening air definitely carried voices, the tramping of feet, the creak and jangle of equipment.
“They’re coming,” Penny whispered. “They’re not far. We need to get out of here.”
“And go where?” Mick asked, fear making his voice rise.
“Keep quiet!” she instructed. “Listen, I saw a cave when I was exploring before. We’ll go there. They won’t find us inside it in the dark.”
This was not exactly true. She had seen a cave, but not in the actual physical sense of the word. It was more the vague, undefined knowledge of a cave. She knew where it was—was, in fact, willing to bet her life that it was where she somehow knew it would be. But she didn’t know precisely how she knew that, and had not, in fact, ever been to it. The cave’s mouth was in a valley she hadn’t even bothered to explore yet.
No time like the present, she thought. From the noises she heard, it sounded like the soldiers were about to top the rise that would lead them into this valley. The camp she had set up was most of the way up the far hill, so that she’d be able to slip up and over the hill if necessary. It looked like that necessity had arrived.
“We have to go,” she insisted. Mick was still sitting, even though she was up and stuffing things into her backpack—water, notebooks, personal items. She had kept most of her stuff in the pack anyway, ready to move out on short notice. “Mick, I’m not kidding, let’s go.”
It was hard to see him—the night was virtually moonless and they were under the camo netting, but she thought he blinked a few times. “Okay,” he finally said, and slowly got to his feet. She couldn’t tell if he didn’t believe the danger that they were in was real, or thought they wouldn’t be spotted, or if he was stoned or something, but she determined to just move out when she was ready and let him worry about himself. Even if they caught him, he didn’t know where the cave was so he couldn’t give her up. For a moment a thought flitted across her mind—why be so worried about getting caught, she wondered, when you knew all along you probably would be? She didn’t have an answer for that one; it just seemed urgent, all of a sudden, that she not be removed from this bombing range yet.
The sounds of the approaching soldiers grew louder. She slung her backpack over her shoulders and, with a final word to Mick, left the camp. He scrambled behind her, still holding his own pack by its straps and struggling to zip it shut as he walked. The night sky cast very little light, but she had already walked this path several times, in practice, and was able to pick her way up the hill, around the rocks and brush that studded the slope. In just a few minutes, she reached the top of the hill. She waited there for Mick, scanning the opposite hilltop, across the valley. The soldiers would have metal surfaces with matte finishes to avoid any telltale glints from the faint starlight, their faces would be painted, and they’d have night vision goggles, but she was sure she could see forms moving there, blobs of deeper black against the sky, blotting out the stars on the horizon. It could have been her imagination, but
she didn’t think so.
When Mick reached her she turned without a word or a look back and led the way down the hill on the opposite side. They made their way in silence, down to the bottom of this slope where a sandy wash cut north-south, and went to the right, heading north along the valley floor. At the end of this valley there was a low rise and then another, deeper valley on the other side, she knew. It was in that valley, on the west-facing slope, that the cave’s mouth was.
If her mind—which, she reminded herself, had never seen this so-called cave—was to be believed.
She didn’t think it was a good idea to start second-guessing herself now, though. She had come this far, convinced of the cave’s reality. No harm in remaining convinced. At worst, they were putting more space between them and the soldiers, covering ground on which it would be hard for the soldiers to follow their tracks in the dark, for the most part. The wash was the exception; their footprints here in the soft sand were deep and readily apparent. But it was still the fastest way to move, and the soldiers would have to get to the wash before they could find prints there.
With his long-legged gait, Mick caught up to her easily here.
“You do know where you’re going, right?” he asked. “Because it’d really suck if we went to all this trouble and just walked right into another troop or whatever.”
“I know where I’m going,” she assured him. “Just trust me. And I don’t think there are any soldiers in that direction—they came just the way I thought they would. Basically, they made circles around the rock message we left, until they eventually cut across our trail. Did you notice they were coming right along the same path we took when we came back from there?”
“No, because I couldn’t really see a damn thing. But I’ll take your word for it, I guess.”
“That’s good enough.”
“It’s a good thing I have you out here,” he said. “I don’t think I’d know what to do on my own in a situation like this. With the Marines or whatever.”
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