Vertical Coffin s-4

by Stephen J. Cannell

  Sonny stopped the truck and I turned on the map light.

  "Whatta ya got?" he said.

  "I found this at his place in Inglewood. I couldn't figure it out back then, but you know what I think it might be?" Sonny shook his head, puzzled.

  "A Marine Corps firing mission. MCAS could stand for Marine Corps Air Station. YUMA is the Yuma air wing. TACTS could be like Tactical Air Combat Training or Combat Target Systems-something."

  We both studied the sheet.

  7S

  MECH INFANTRY REIN

  1335

  PG783783

  N 33 13 57.1

  W 11505 16.6

  LIVE ORD

  1,2

  8S

  MECH INFANTRY REIN

  1539

  PG726796

  N 33 14 39.9

  W 11508 58.2

  LIVE ORD

  1,2

  10S

  SA-6 Site

  2240

  PG771820

  N33 15 56.5

  W 115 06 01.1

  LIVE ORD

  1,2

  11S

  ARMORED COLUMN

  2203

  PG773815

  N 33 15 38.1

  W 115 05 54.3

  LIVE ORD

  1,2

  12S

  SAM SITE

  1348

  PG735806

  N 33 15 12

  W 115 08 18.5

  LIVE ORD

  1,2

  13S

  MECH INFANTRY

  1444

  PG7718803

  N 33 15 02.9

  W 115 09 27.5

  LIVE ORD

  1,2

  14S

  MECH INFANTRY REIN

  2350

  PG771772

  N 33 13 14.5

  W 11505 57.4

  LIVE ORD

  1,2

  15S

  NE-SW AIRFIELD W/SAM, AAA, RADAR SITES

  0205

  PG736809

  N 33 15 23.6

  W 11508 17

  LIVE ORD

  1,2

  MT. BARROW

  NE-SW AIRFIELD W/SAM SITES

  0545

  PG895707

  N 33 09 42.1

  W 114 58 10.8

  LIVE ORD

  1,2,5.

  "I don't know what column one is, but column two is the target description," I continued. "Mechanized Infantry, Armored Column, SAM site. They drag these old garbage trucks and bulldozers out on the gunnery range, set them up to look like armored columns or a SAM missile site, then the jet jocks roll in and hit all this stuff with Tomahawk missiles. Column three is something. Numbers-I don't know what."

  "Could be the coordinates of the target. The latitude and longitude." Sonny said.

  "No, it looks more like military time. Thirteen thirty-five hours is one thirty-five p. M. Columns five and six look like the coordinates. That N33.13 would be longitude, W115.05, latitude. Then the next column says LIVE ORD. Means they're shooting hot ammo."

  "As opposed to what?" He grinned. "Rubber pellets?"

  "Inerts. We trained with the air wing when I was in the Corps. Inert ordnance is like bombs made out of concrete. They use that stuff to test for target accuracy, but it doesn't explode."

  "And that last column?"

  "I don't know," I admitted.

  "So why did Smiley print this out?" Sonny asked.

  "I don't have a clue," I answered. Again, we sat in silence. "Okay, we have a couple of ways to go here. Your choice," I said.

  "Don't do that 'your choice' BS on me again, Shane. I remember the choice you gave me up at Hidden Ranch Road."

  "Hey, Sonny, if we call the authorities, the Marines are gonna chopper out here in those big double proppers, bullhorn this place, and before they can catch him, Smiley will be long gone across the border into Mexico. Let's just go under the wire and get this puke."

  "With no backup."

  "Our backup is five miles south of this range, still up on the mountain, and we've got the truck."

  He thought about it for a minute, nodded. "Okay, I'm down. Let's see if we can find where he went in."

  I checked my cell phone again. Still no signal. We continued past the auto graveyard until, off to the right, I saw a wash leading away from the gunnery range with a lot of dune buggy tracks marking the deep sand.

  "Turn down there," I said, "Follow those tire tracks. Somebody must live down there. Maybe we can find out more about this place and use their phone to call in the locals."

  Sonny hung a right and headed into the wash. The SWAT truck was muscular but heavy, and the minute we slowed, the tires started to dig in and spin. Sonny had to keep the speed up or we'd be stuck. We followed the tracks. Then, off to the right, I spotted a small homestead. A trailer and junkyard sat next to a fenced parking area containing a bunch of radical-looking sand rails. I estimated we were about a mile east of the gunnery range.

  "Pull up," I said.

  "If I stop we're never gonna get dug out," Sonny answered.

  "We have to take a chance. We can't off-road in this truck. Look what's parked back there. Just stop," I said.

  We rolled to a stop and our tires immediately sank into the soft sand. Behind the six-foot-high fence we counted half a dozen unpainted dune buggy-like vehicles of various sizes. All were equipped with big, exposed V-8 engines and had massive tractor tires on the rear wheels, with smaller ones up front. The buggies were light and lean with open cockpits, bucket seats, and no windshields. A few had large flatbeds resting between the rear axles. None of them had headlights.

  The chain-link gate was bolted shut with a large heavy-duty padlock. Off to the left an old, rusted-out silver Airstream trailer was parked under a lone olive tree. All the lights were off inside. No phone wires anywhere. Whoever lived here was some kind of recluse. I walked to the trailer, climbed up on a creaking wood porch, pulled out my badge and knocked on the front door. It didn't look like anybody was home. Sonny followed and stood behind me.

  "What kinda fool lives out here, less than a mile from a live gunnery range?" he asked.

  "Desert Rat," I said. "Since nobody's home to lend us one of those dune buggies, whatta you say we just borrow one and call it a police emergency?"

  "How? They're all locked up," Sonny said.

  "I think I saw some bolt cutters in the back."

  Sonny nodded and took off running to the truck. He returned with a set of heavy-duty bolt cutters, put them on the padlock, and easily clipped through it. Then he carried the cutters back to the truck and disappeared inside.

  When he reappeared he was carrying two AR-15s and four circular C-mag hundred-round clips. He reset the complicated alarm on the truck, while I swung the metal gate open. He handed me one of the AR-15s and two of the heavy C-mags. Then we surveyed the motor pool.

  "How 'bout this one here?" Sonny said, checking out a two-seat racer with no flatbed. He unscrewed the gas cap and stuck his index finger inside. "Full. I can hot-wire it easy."

  A few minutes later Sonny had unhooked the ignition wires, twisted them together, and we had the sand rail going. It had straight pipes with no muffler, and the roaring engine fractured the still desert night. I climbed into the passenger seat. The owner had screwed in a metal pole between the seats, about where the windshield would be. The thick mast went up about a foot above our heads and had a huge bolt welded to the top.

  "What's this thing for?" Sonny said, pointing at it.

  "It probably ain't for water skiing," I quipped. "Let's get out of here."

  I stacked the two automatic weapons between us, then Sonny hit the gas and we careened out of the enclosure, passing our SWAT truck sitting low in soft sand.

  We raced back up the wash to the gunnery range fence, turned right, and continued running on the road beside the range, which was situated in a desert valley halfway between the Chocolate and Chuckwalla mountains. We were speeding along under a quarter moon, without a windshiel
d or headlights, the wind stinging our eyes, tears streaming down our faces, running almost blind at about forty miles per hour in a two-seat dune buggy with no suspension. I was bouncing hard and holding on with both hands. Every time we hit a pothole my cracked ribs talked to me. After this ride, I was going to need to get my prostate checked.

  Up ahead I saw a spot where somebody had cut a hole in the government fence. I pointed at it and Sonny steered over and parked. I got out and peeled back the wire flap. He slowly edged the rumbling, vibrating dune buggy through the opening and I jumped back aboard.

  We were inside the restricted area of the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range.

  I still had the night vision binoculars around my neck, so I pulled them up and focused them toward the center of the vast area. There had to be thousands of acres out here. I saw burned cacti and sand charred black from Nadaum drops. It looked apocalyptic, as desolate and bombed-out as any place on earth. Then I noticed a small outcropping of low buildings a mile or two away. I pointed them out to Sonny but didn't speak, because the straight pipes on the sand rail were so loud I would have had to scream to be heard. Sonny floored it and we were off again, heading toward the buildings, flying over the sand, jumping berms, Sonny driving like a man who had lost his mind.

  As we approached I saw that this was some kind of target town. There were two or three transecting streets and a main drag. The houses were all one-story, built out of adobe bricks and corrugated metal. Many of them had been leveled by past bombing runs, then rebuilt and tumbled down again. We slowed the sand rail and came to a stop on the outskirts of this little unmanned village. Our engine idle filled the night and vibrated the sand rail energetically. A hand-painted sign was posted directly in front of us. It said:

  cactus west city limits.

  Chapter 47

  DEADLY PREMONITION

  Sonny pulled slowly into Cactus West and drove through the little empty village once, taking each street to the end before turning around and retracing the route. After we looked the place over he turned off the engine.

  "Wait here," I told him and found a building that had a tumbled down wall I could use to climb up to the roof, one story up. I stood gingerly on the flexing corrugated metal and surveyed the flat, ugly terrain. From up there I had a good view of the desert gunnery range. I could see more vast, blackened napalm drops. The few yucca trees that had survived were also scorched black. I slowly scanned the landscape with the night vision binoculars. The strong lenses pulled the eastern mountain range into focus.

  The Dodge was parked about half a mile away. I saw a figure that had to be Smiley, walking around examining things on the ground. He picked up something large and loaded it into the back of his truck. It was hard to make out what he was up to, because he was so far away. The night scope bathed everything in a strange green hue but afforded me a lightened view of the area. As I watched, Smiley got behind the wheel, the truck started up, then turned and headed right toward us.

  I scrambled down off the roof and ran back to the sand rail.

  "He's coming this way," I shouted.

  "The black truck?"

  "Yep. Pull this thing around behind that bombed-out shed." I pointed to a structure that had only three sides. "Back it in so you're heading out. Gimme one of those AR-fifteens."

  Sonny handed me a carbine with a hundred-round clip, then twisted the ignition wires, restarted the rail, and drove it around to the back side of the nearest building. He put the dune buggy in reverse, backed it in, and shut it down. Suddenly the desert was very still. A second later Sonny ran toward me carrying the second AR-15, jamming in one of the large C-mags and tromboning the slide.

  The temperature fluctuation out here was amazing. Over a hundred degrees at noon, it was now close to freezing. The stars twinkled and winked as if somebody had punched a load of buckshot through a dark blue blanket. The quarter moon shed almost no light on the little uninhabited town.

  "Let's set up a cross fire," I said.

  "I'll take that wall over there." Sonny pointed to a bombed-out structure that would give him waist-high cover if he was standing, and would completely hide him when he kneeled. I picked a little square adobe shed with an open front window and corrugated tin roof. I pointed to it and we split up to take cover.

  Way off across the desert we began to hear the sound of the truck approaching, its engine growing louder, growling in low gear. It sounded like he had it in four-wheel drive to keep from sinking into the sand. Less than a minute later headlights appeared around the far end of the last building in Cactus West. The high beams shot light up the center street of the empty town. I was hunkered down under the small window, holding the AR-15 at port arms, listening to his truck engine idling. Then I rose up cautiously and peeked over the top of the window frame.

  "I see you, asshole," Smiley shouted, then opened up on my position.

  The walls all around me started to disintegrate. I immediately knew from the sound and fury of his weapon that this time he wasn't firing an AK-47. He was shooting at us with a.50-caliber Browning machine gun. The huge antitank exploding rounds were cutting the bricks in half, knocking my cover down around me with devastating efficiency. The.50 slugs contained exploding tips. If he kept this up, my little adobe shack would soon be dust. Sonny opened up on him trying to take some pressure off me.

  Smiley laughed maniacally, then turned the weapon on the low wall where Sonny was hiding. I heard the exploding shells tearing Sonny's cover down. I popped up and squeezed off a twenty-round burst. The.223 bullets ripped into the truck, but didn't seem to be doing much damage. Before I could fire a second burst, Smiley spun back and started unloading on my little adobe shack again.

  The AR-15 is a good assault rifle, but it's no match for a.50-caliber antitank weapon. Adding to the problem were the truck's high beams that were shining right at us, blinding me.

  Sonny made a move away from the crumbled wall, firing the AR-15 as he ran. I popped up and gave him some cover fire. He dove behind an old burned-out van just as Smiley started ripping holes through it. Suddenly he stopped shooting and I heard his engine accelerate. The black truck sped right down Center Street. I caught a glimpse of him as he roared past. His eyes were wide, the cords of his neck bulging. Then his tail lights receded as he headed back out into the desert.

  Sonny was on his feet, running toward me. "He's got us outgunned with that thing!"

  "Get the rail. We're going after him," I shouted.

  Sonny ran for the dune buggy and got it going, while I stood in the center of town with the night vision binoculars up, watching the truck disappear into the dark desert night, trying to see if he made a turn before I lost sight of him. Sonny skidded to a stop beside me.

  I jumped into the passenger seat, Sonny popped the clutch, and we shot out into the gunnery range speeding after Smiley.

  We were running at breakneck speed across the desert. The moon was almost no help. The ravines and gullies were hard to see and came up fast in the dark. Sonny was not slowing for any of it, swerving at the last minute to miss the few tall cactus plants that had managed to escape the napalm drops in this charred, bombed-out no-man's-land. Occasionally we were airborne, landing in soft sand throwing a rooster tail off both of the giant rear tractor tires. We were slowly gaining on Smiley, who was forced to use four-wheel drive and couldn't run the truck as fast.

  We were only about a hundred yards behind him when he turned off his headlights and swerved right, heading down into a gully. Sonny whipped the wheel and followed. We raced along the sandy wash, narrowing the distance between us until we were so close the flying dirt from the truck tires stung our cheeks and filled our eyes with grit. We rounded a turn and roared past a line of trucks and old bulldozers situated to look like a stalled armored column. Each one was identified in large, white letters that read: t-62 or armored troop carrier.

  Was this out here for a reason? Why had he turned off his headlights? Why was he leading us here? Suddenly
I had a deadly premonition.

  Just then, off to our right, a loud siren started blaring in the distance. I turned to see where it was coming from but couldn't locate it. Seconds later, five state-of-the-art FA-18 fighter jets dropped out of the moonlit sky, heading right at us. The Super Hornets roared down toward the column of parked trucks and bulldozers. Just as I looked up, a Maverick missile launched from under the wings of each plane. The pilots were a mile out and I doubted they could even see this little sand rail down here. Had Vincent turned off his headlights so they wouldn't see him in the low light of the quarter moon?

  The air-to-ground weapons streaked toward us and five loud metal clicks sounded from above. I'd only heard this once before when I'd done cross-training with the air wing, back in the Marines.

  "What's that?" Sonny screamed as we roared along.

  "Detonators!" I yelled as the warheads went hot overhead.

  The Mavericks vectored in over our shoulders. The first one blew an old dump truck off its axles and ten feet into the air. Little pieces of it rained down all around us. The other four hit seconds later, blowing up a bulldozer and some old trucks.

  Smiley had already turned right, driving the Dodge Ram out of the gully. But Sonny and I were stuck in the middle of this night fire mission. Suddenly, five more Mavericks came streaking in. Their detonators clicked on, followed ten seconds later by huge explosions. A bulldozer on our right turned into deadly shrapnel.

  I grabbed Sonny and threw him out of our speeding sand rail just as two more missiles struck, blowing up vehicles on both sides of us. We burrowed down into the sand as the four fighters screamed by low overhead, climbed into the night sky, and banked right to come around for a second pass.

  "We gotta get outta here now!" I pulled Sonny up and we started running back toward the sand rail, which had come to a rolling stop twenty yards away and was miraculously still upright with the engine idling. There were destroyed garbage trucks and bulldozers blazing all around us while the strike fighters climbed, making a sweeping turn, their wings glinting in the moonlight.

  "They're coming around!" I yelled. "Listen for the sound of the detonators. They click on about a hundred yards out. You can hear it happen. Means you got about five seconds to get in a hole somewhere."