Fangs Out (33 page)

A bee buzzed past my head. Then another, this one closer. In my stupor, it took me a half-second to remember that bees navigate by the sun. They rarely fly at night. Casually, I looked down the culvert at Sheen and realized those weren’t bees zipping past. They were bullets.

He was standing in a two-handed combat crouch beside his wrecked car, blasting at me with a .45 caliber pistol. Another round sparked off the pavement inches away.

I got up and hobbled for the cover of a copse of scrub oaks across the road, as Sheen climbed out of the culvert, firing at me on the run.

The Buddha teaches that all things in life are to be treasured no matter how mundane. This includes Saturday mail service, two-ply toilet paper, and, I came to realize as I fled, a matching pair of shoes. Outdistancing a gunman bent on killing you is no easy task with bleeding wrists, an aching lower leg, and a possible broken thumb; it’s even harder in inky darkness over rock-strewn ground, when all you’ve got protecting one foot is a crew sock from Costco. I vowed never again to take shoes for granted. Assuming I survived the night.

A bullet clipped a low-hanging branch to my right, followed a split-second later by the sharp report of Sheen’s pistol. Turning to face an onrushing enemy is often the most effective means of defeating him. But given my physical condition, discretion at that moment seemed the better part of valor. I zigzagged through the trees, angling upslope toward a dense forest of pines.

Another gunshot. This one thudded into the trunk of an oak just as I passed by it, stumbling uphill, gasping for breath. When I glanced back over my shoulder, I could see Sheen, a shapeless form in the darkness. He was less than fifty meters behind me.

“Save yourself the trouble, Logan!”

Three more shots ripped past.

The pines towered above me on the steeply rising slope. All I had to do was get there and I’d be home free. Find a place to hide and regroup. Hell, maybe I’d even fashion a makeshift wooden spear and go on the offensive.

Thirty meters.

My legs and lungs were on fire.

Twenty meters.

Exhausted and dizzy, I began crawling.

The tree line was now less than fifteen feet ahead, the pines looming sentries, beckoning safety. They could have just as easily been fifteen miles away for all the good they offered me. I was spent. Out of steam. Done.

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” the Rolling Stones intoned, but once in awhile, life’s got a funny way of giving you what you need.

“
Hombre
.”

The man was crouched just inside the tree line, motioning me frantically toward him, a young man in jeans and a black, oversized LA Kings hockey jersey. Perched on his forehead was a pair of night vision goggles.
“Vámonos, rápido!”

My legs no longer worked. All I could do was look up at him. He and two others were on me in seconds, pulling me up the hill and into the trees, where four other men, older and heavier, hunkered on their bellies behind a large rock formation like troops sweating out a mortar barrage.

None dared breathe as Sheen approached. He paused not twenty feet away, breathing hard, listening.

One of the men lying beside me quietly picked up a rock and held it at the ready, but there was no need. We were invisible in the night.

Sheen moved on, deeper into the trees, as my new friends and I waited, scarcely willing to breathe. About ten minutes later, about a half-mile away, came a single gunshot. It sounded smaller than a .45, but I couldn’t be sure. I was too exhausted.

The man in the Kings jersey issued a series of hand commands as complex as any I’d seen in my service with Alpha. The other men rose in unison and began moving in well-disciplined silence, away from the echo of the gunshot.

Somehow, I found a second wind and fell in behind them.

T
HEY NEVER
asked why I was being chased or why somebody was shooting at me. They were being polite, I suppose, which made us even. I never learned what they were doing out there at night, in the middle of a California pine forest, just north of the U.S.–Mexico border, but it wasn’t hard to guess. Up in Oxnard, there were strawberries to pick and, out in Beverly Hills, pricey cars to wax. There were construction ditches to dig and buckets of scalding hot tar to be hauled onto rooftops. And somebody had to do all that spine-snapping work because no American ever would, not for the money his fellow citizens were willing to pay.

One of the men gave me a sip of lime Gatorade while two others gently bandaged my wrists by flashlight. The biggest of the bunch reached into his backpack and insisted I take from him a pair of Air Jordan knockoffs to replace the shoe I’d lost. He wouldn’t accept no for an answer.

“
Gracias
.”

He gave me a thumbs-up and a smile.

The “Air Jordans” were purple and black. They actually fit.

I shook their hands, one after the other, and watched them move off single file, silently, through the trees.

“Good luck, you guys.”

“
Buena suerte, señor.”

Every inch of me hurt. My left thumb had swollen to nearly twice its normal size. I sat with my back against a boulder. The night was warm. An 18-wheeler let loose its air horn somewhere to the north. In the woods nearby, an owl hooted greetings to its mate, who hooted back. I found comfort in their dialogue. The birds, I knew, would go silent if Sheen were approaching. I lay down on a bed of pine needles and closed my eyes, too tired to think. When I opened them again, it was dawn.

I had no phone, no wristwatch, no food or drink, and not a clue as to my specific location. I did, however, have two matching Air Jordans, and for that, I reminded myself, I was grateful. I began walking downhill because downhill is how water flows, and it is always near water where people will be found.

The pines soon thinned, giving way to arid, rolling chaparral speckled by manzanita and chamise. Below me and to the east, a Jeep Wrangler negotiated a twisting dirt road at high speed, kicking up dust plumes in its wake.

Getting down to the road was easy. Not only because both of my feet were now uniformly and properly clad, but because, with the sun up, I could now see where I was walking.

Daylight. Another reason to be grateful.

I picked up my pace. After what I guessed to be about fifteen minutes, I stepped out onto the road just as a Chevy Tahoe with a throaty muffler rounded a blind curve and came barreling toward me.

The driver was a teenaged girl with long dark hair and big designer sunglasses. Her left hand was hanging out the window, a cigarette between her fingers. She rumbled past me without slowing, ignoring my waving. I couldn’t say I blamed her for not stopping, not after catching my reflection in one of those pole-mounted convex mirrors that help alert motorists to traffic converging from the opposite direction:

My face was a grotesque pastiche of cuts and abrasions. My hair was matted stiff with blood. I looked like an extra in a zombie movie.

I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

I headed northbound along the road without a trace of civilization in sight, when I heard a car coming up from behind me. I turned to see a San Diego County sheriff’s cruiser approaching. The driver skidded to a stop, threw open his door and took up station behind it, leveling an AR-15 assault rifle at me. His partner was similarly positioned behind the black-and-white’s passenger door with a Glock pointed in my direction.

“Am I glad to see you guys.”

“Kiss the ground! Hands outstretched! Do it now!”

Odd questions can rumble through your head at such moments. Questions like, “Who kisses the ground anymore other than the Pope?” And, “What happens if I lie down in the road, another car comes by and I get run over? Do these guys
really
want to assume that kind of liability?” But I said nothing. They clearly meant business and I was in no shape to cross swords with them.

I got down. But I did not kiss the ground.

The deputy with the assault rifle covered me as his partner holstered his pistol, kneed me in the small of my back, and yanked my left wrist back to handcuff me.

“Don’t move.”

“My thumb’s broken.”

“Shut up.”

He hooked me up, smelling faintly of Old Spice, and hauled me brusquely to my feet. His partner read me my Miranda rights.

“Do you understand these rights I have just read to you?”

I said I did. He keyed a coiled radio mic clipped to the left epaulet of his uniform shirt.

“Eighty-four Robert, suspect in custody.”

“You’re under arrest,” Deputy Old Spice said as he led me back to the patrol car.

“Can I ask what for?”

“Does the name, ‘Raymond Sheen,’ ring a bell?”

“You mean the same individual who tried to kill me?”

“He said you tried to kill him.”

I was too beat to laugh.

Twenty-one

M
y left thumb was fractured. Fortunately, an X-ray showed the break didn’t require surgery. After my hands were swabbed for gunshot residue, medical staff at the downtown San Diego Central Jail cleaned out my cuts and slapped on a cast that went midway up my left forearm. They gave me a thorough neurological exam to assess the severity of my concussion and an MRI for my leg, concluding it was merely sprained.

Then they tossed me in the slammer.

Aside from being in jail, I was convinced that I had hit upon a brilliant solution to affordable national health care: get busted for a crime you didn’t commit.

I had hoped I might be put in a cell with Bunny the Human Doberman and his cousin, Li’l Sinister. Granted, they were perverse and prone to violence, but they were entertaining, and I’ll take entertaining over dangerous anytime. Unfortunately for me, my cell mate turned out to be the very definition of dull. He was a husky African-American chap in his early thirties with some sort of tribal tattoo on the right side of his face, who sat on the concrete floor with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring catatonically into space. The steel door locked behind me as I entered. He pretended not to notice.

“Welcome to the Rock,” I said in my best Sean Connery, which is much worse that my best Humphrey Bogart, which some who’ve heard it have suggested should be banned as a crime against humanity.

Bad celebrity imitations aside, Chatty Cathy wouldn’t even look up at me. Nor did he respond when lunch arrived a few minutes later—two peanut butter sandwiches on white bread and a disposable paper cup of cherry Kool-Aid. Not having eaten anything since the day before, I wolfed down both sandwiches in short order, then asked if he was planning to eat his.

“You touch my food,” Chatty Cathy said, still refusing to look at me, “and I’ll gut you.”

I had considered asking him to sign my cast, but that offer was definitely off the table.

A
JOWLY
, sad-eyed deputy who reminded me a little of Huckleberry Hound escorted me into an interview room where Detective Alicia Rosario sat behind a gray steel metal desk, text messaging on her cell phone. The room was Modern Inquisition. Soundproof cork tiles lined the walls and ceilings. Two large eye screws were bolted to the floor beneath an unpadded metal chair opposite the desk. Deputy Hound directed me to sit, then strung my ankle chains through the eye screws while Rosario waited for him to finish locking me down. He gave my chains a good tug to make sure they were secure, then left, pulling the door closed behind him.

“Long night?” Rosario said.

“You have no idea.”

She yawned. “I’ve been up since two this morning, no thanks to you.”

“What are friends for?”

Behind her, facing me, was a large mirror. I knew it was one-way glass, and that there was probably a video camera recording us on the other side.

“For the record, you’ve been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. You’ve already been advised by the arresting deputies of your legal right to counsel and you’ve waived those rights. Is that correct?”

“Yup.”

“I need you to say it a little more formally.”

“Yes, I’ve been advised of my rights to legal counsel and I waive those rights.”

Rosario sat forward in her chair, her ballpoint pen poised over a legal pad. “OK, how about we take it from the top?”