No Man's Land (30 page)

“I’d bet it’s the same person set up the mail drop for her.”

“Mr. Corso knows some interesting people.”

Rosen nodded. “How much time have we got?” he asked. Westerman
checked her watch. “About six minutes.”

Rosen leaned back against the Lincoln’s front fender and sighed.
If the L.A. office was right and the local ABC affiliate had indeed
been given an ultimatum by Driver himself . . . he closed his eyes
and massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

“What’s the holdup?” Westerman wanted to know. “All
they’ve got to do is tell him he can have his half hour.”

“The network took a lot of flack lately. Once for the footage in
the Meza Azul control module and again for running the segment on the
mother last night,” Rosen said. “The FCC just hit them with a
hundred-thousand-dollar fine for
each
of their twenty-three
affiliates. That’s a lot of money. They’re gun-shy about what
might happen this time. They’re not doing anything without approval
from the top.”

Westerman’s mouth hung open in disbelief. “This guy’s going
to kill somebody, and these people are waiting for approval.”

“From the people who brought you Janet Jackson’s breast.”

“We’ve got to do something.”

Rosen shook his head in disgust. “We’re doing everything we
can do, Agent Westerman. We’ve got forty agents poking into every
driveway on this damn mountain and forty Forest Service rangers
working the woods. If they’re out there, we’ll find them.”

She felt her phone buzz, found it and brought it to her ear.
Special Agent Timmons on the line. “We’ve got the motor home,”

he said.

“Where?”

He told her. Rosen had started back for the car. “They found
it,” stopped him cold.

“Tell me,” he said.

She did. He listened in silence. “Get me the closest four units.
Have them meet us at the highway entry point.”

“Any help from the locals or the Forest Service?”

“No, we’ll handle this one on our own.”

Special Agent Rosen squatted in the bushes. Overhead, a jigsaw
puzzle of blue and white rolled east like a fast train. An
inconsistent wind tousled the treetops. Seventy yards away, on the
far side of the clearing, a big brown-and-white motor home sat silent
and dark. Special Agent Randy Timmons leaned close and whispered in
his ear. “Property belongs to a couple name of Kelly. Dick and
Donna Kelly. Neighbors say they’ve got plans to build a retirement
house up here next summer. Say they spent most of this summer
clearing the lot and getting utilities installed. Went back home to
Orange County about two weeks ago. Neighbors say the Kellys stay at a
motel when they come up here. Say they don’t own a motor home.”

Rosen thanked him for the info and made a gathering motion with
his arms, pulling everyone in as close as he could get them. Counting
Westerman and himself, there were ten of them. “Alright . . .
debriefing Mr. Corso tells us that Driver is armed with a Mossberg
twelve-gauge pump shotgun and a semiautomatic carbine . . . some kind
of newer version of an M16 . . . an M16 A2 we think.” He looked
around the tight circle of agents, making sure he had everybody’s
attention. “I don’t have to tell any of you No Man’s Land what
a formidable array of firepower that is . . . especially if it’s
being wielded by someone of Driver’s training and background.”

He made eye contact again. “We’re outgunned here. All things
being equal what we probably need is an entry team. Unfortunately, we
don’t have the luxury of waiting two hours for their arrival. He’s
got at least two hostages in there.”

Rosen pointed. “Timmerman . . .” He pointed again. “Santos .
. . I want you and your partners to take up positions opposite the
front and back doors of the vehicle.” He pointed downhill. “Take
a big loop through the woods. Stay out of sight. Come up the far side
of the hill and take the closest position you can safely occupy.”
He wagged a finger. “Hard cover. Remember, with the weapons he’s
got, he can kill you right through anything rotten or flimsy. Good
cover.” All four of men nodded solemnly. He pointed again. “Adams
. . . you and your partner get as close as you can to the rear of the
vehicle. Buttros . . . you and Speck come along with Westerman and
me.”

He looked around again. “Everybody got it?” They said they
did.

“Be careful,” Rosen admonished to their rapidly retreating
backs.

He took a deep breath, picked the electronic bullhorn from the
ground and started edging downhill. His loafers were never intended
for leaf-covered hillsides. He had to use his free hand to grasp
bushes and rocks so he wouldn’t go skiing down the hill on nothing
but his shoes. Westerman, Buttros and Speck were similarly
disadvantaged. It was slow going. One careful step at a time. Halfway
across, Rosen stationed Buttros and Speck at the front of the
vehicle, while he and Westerman continued on to a place about halfway
between the groups.

Westerman used a handheld radio to check with the other teams. She
nodded. “Everybody’s ready,” she pronounced. Rosen pulled out
his service piece. A Colt 9mm automatic. Eight in the clip. One in
the chamber. Westerman followed suit. All the curtains were closed,
leaving nothing to the eye except occasional patches of ceiling. Just
as Rosen was wondering if perhaps the RV wasn’t empty, voices
suddenly could be heard inside. The vehicle rocked slightly on its
springs. A light came on in the ceiling. The hair on Rosen’s arms
began to tingle. Rosen brought the bullhorn to his lips and pulled
the trigger.

“
This is the FBI,”
he said. “
Put your hands on
your heads and exit
the vehicle.”
A pause. “
This is
the FBI. Put your hands on your
heads and exit the vehicle.”
Nothing. Rosen got on the radio. Ordered the pair of agents
assigned to the rear of the vehicle to approach. It took about a
minute for the agents to be pressed up against the rear of the
vehicle, peering around the sides in anticipation of what was going
to happen next. The bullhorn. “
This is the FBI. Put your . . .”
And the door began to open. “Easy . . .” Rosen said into the
radio. “Easy.”

He picked up the bullhorn again. “
Put your hands on your
heads and exit the vehicle,”
he squawked. They came out. Two
of them. A man and a woman. The hostages. Melanie Harris and Martin
Wells. Driver must have released them “
Get down. Get down on the
ground. Keep your hands on
your heads and get down on the
ground.”
Slowly they followed orders.

Westerman squinted to see if she could recognize Melanie Harris,
but the wind kept swirling the woman’s hair around her face, making
it impossible.

Rosen spoke softly the radio, then suddenly everyone was in view.
Two teams covered the doors. Another two rushed the prisoners,
handcuffing them and pulling them to their feet before rushing them
off to the safety of the trees.

“No Driver,” Westerman said.

“He’s not coming out alive,” Rosen said.

“What now?”

“Let’s make sure he’s not going anywhere,” he said. He
picked up the radio. “Shoot out the tires,” he said. The volley
began slowly, then picked up speed. Took maybe forty rounds before
all four tires had been rendered flat.

The radio beeped. Rosen pushed the RECEIVE button. “Yeah.”

Timmons on the other end. “Guy here . . . the one . . . you know
the hostage guy.”

“Yeah.”

“Says his name is Richard S. Kelly and he doesn’t like us
shootin’ up his new RV one bit.”

“Not one damn bit,” Rosen heard the voice from the background.

Wasn’t like he’d been a tree hugger to begin with. No . . .
U.S. Forest Service Ranger Bob Temple hadn’t begun his career in a
spasm of idealism, and a decade in the woods had merely proved what
he’d always suspected. That money ruled the world and almost nobody
gave a shit about resources, natural or otherwise. On the positive
side, his years in the forest had given him a glimpse of the
interconnectedness of all things. A sense of how changes in the
smallest of things had unforeseen repercussions up and down a system
so complicated and diverse as to make human beings nothing more than
spectators. As far as he was concerned, notions that humans were
eventually going to ruin the planet were ridiculous. Push came to
shove, Mother Earth would pass us like a peach pit. He was certain of
it. And so it was with the smallest break in his usual routine that
Bob Temple set an invisible web of connections into motion . . .
connections he could not possibly have predicted.

Two hours earlier, over breakfast, Bob had lingered longer than
was his usual habit. He’d been talking politics with Walt Moller.
One of his favorite pastimes. Wasn’t a soul there but the two of
them, and Bob had just plain lost track. By the time he No Man’s
Land looked at his watch, he was forty minutes behind schedule and
had swallowed probably three times as much coffee as was his custom.
And now, as might have been predicted, he needed to take a piss, so
he pulled off the highway at Blue Creek, wheeled into the little area
behind the Road Department’s gravel piles, got out of the truck,
unzipped himself and with a heartfelt exclamation of, “Aaaaaah,”
had begun to relieve himself of the extra coffee. That’s when he
saw the tire tracks. Big wide tracks running away from him, back
toward the section of old highway concealed by summer bushes and fall
weeds. Temple finished his business and followed along on foot,
walking in the wake of whatever had made the tracks. Recent rains had
soaked a small depression in the ground. The tread patterns on the
tires were visible in the muddy earth. Scattered leaves and the tips
of oak branches littered the ground. Bob Temple looked up into the
trees above, where the lowest-hanging branches had been snapped off.
Whatever had made the tracks was at least nine feet tall. Some kind
of RV, he figured. If someone had merely busted the lock or clipped
the cable, he probably would have gotten on with his business for the
day. Going where and when they felt like it was pretty much par for
the course as far as the locals were concerned. Way they saw it,
since they lived here, it belonged to them. This, however, didn’t
smell of locals. The locals weren’t sneaky about it. They just
pulled up, attached their bumper winch to whatever was in the way and
yarded the whole thing right out of the ground. Then sooner or later,
Bob would see the damage, call a crew in to fix it, and the cycle
would begin anew. The fact that whoever this was had bothered to hide
their intrusion by putting it back together with a piece of coat
hanger wire piqued his interest. So it was with a dual sense of
interest and curiosity that Bob Temple dropped the thick, rusty chain
on the ground and drove his U.S. Forest Service truck over onto the
cracked pavement of the old Angels Mountain Road, as the gold miners
used to call it a hundred fifty years before.

Whoever it was hadn’t been up there long. For the first half
mile, as he crossed a little clearing, the tire tracks were still
visible on the bare pavement. Once the road started up, however, the
overhanging trees had covered the pavement with a thick blanket of
leaves, obscuring any evidence of recent passing. Temple dropped the
automatic transmission into second gear as the grade began to get
steeper. The locals called this section “Lookout Road,” after the
Angels Mountain Fire Lookout Station, a seasonal fire lookout manned
only in the months of June through September. Lookout Road was only
one of three sections of the old highway periodically maintained by
the Forest Service and the only section where a big RV would be able
to turn around. He slowed as he neared the top. The trees began to
thin, then disappeared altogether as he entered the clear-cut at the
very top of the rise. Built up high, on stilts, the Angel’s
Mountain Lookout stood sentinel over the entire eastern sweep of the
Sierras. All the way out over Mount Whitney and the Mojave Desert
beyond. Back around the north side of the tower sat a big
brown-and-white motor home with a white satellite dish pointing at
the heavens. Bob Temple gave the truck a little gas and eased it
forward. He rolled down the driver’s side window as he crept along.
High above the tower a single turkey buzzard floated on the airways,
using its giant wings to veer this way and that, rising one second
falling the next as it rode the chaotic breezes. He listened for
music, a sure sign that whoever these idiots were, they’d come to
party and get down. The afternoon air was silent. The turkey buzzard
was spiraling upward on the thermals as Bob Temple brought the truck
to a stop behind the RV and got out. As a precaution, he pulled the
seat forward and pulled out his gun and holster. When he’d first
started on the job, armed rangers would have been unthinkable, but
the world was a meaner place these days and park rangers had become
just another authority figure in a uniform. He strapped the gun to
his waist and walked around to the passenger side of the RV.

The road fell off on all sides. Prior to the fire tower, the top
of this ridge had been a scenic pullout on the old highway . . . a
place where the tourists could take a break from the nail-biting ride
and take a few pictures. For a while, they’d even had a few of
those silver binoculars that required a quarter to operate, but the
locals kept shooting them to pieces, eventually convincing the
service to remove them altogether.

Bob Temple rose on tiptoes and knocked on the passengerside
window. The road sloped away from window, making it difficult for
Temple to see inside. He knocked again, then walked around the front
of the vehicle.

And there she was sitting behind the wheel. Looked like she had
her eyes scrunched closed. He moved slowly, sidestepping his way
across the front of the vehicle. As he approached the driver’s side
window, her eyes popped open.