Vertical Coffin (2004) (36 page)

"Cain't git no lard without boilin' the hog," he said softly.

"Ain't gonna be much fun, but I gotta tie off them bleeders, or this boy's gonna be tradin' his guitar for a harp."

He crossed to his backpack, pulled out a small nylon combat medic's bag, and returned to Sonny. "Keep this handy and gimme what I ask for."

For the next ten minutes, while Sonny screamed in pain, this man, whoever he was, searched Sonny's bloody stump for the main arteries, then one by one, pulled them out, then clamped and sutured them.

Somewhere in the middle of this Sonny stopped screaming. He had fainted.

The FA-18s had completed their run and were gone. It was strangely quiet in the little concrete room. Finally, the man completed this field surgery and bound up the stump with strips of my shirt. He did it all in thirty minutes.

"Help me move him over there to the bed," he said.

We carried Sonny to a futon by the far wall, laid him down and elevated his leg. I sat on the floor next to him while the man went back and washed Sonny's blood off his hands. Then he returned and slumped down next to us.

"Who the hell are you?" I asked.

"I'm the guy you stole that feckin' sand buggy from," he said, flat southern vowels ringing on poured concrete.

"I'm a police officer," I said.

"Then ya oughta know better," he replied.

He had iridescent blue eyes--the kind of eyes I'd sometimes seen on the criminally insane. Madness glinted there. Everything else screamed hillbilly. The bony hips and the lean frame with the bulging beer belly, an Adam's apple that looked like somebody had shoved a tennis ball down his throat.

"I'm Shane Scully," I said. "This is Sonny Lopez."

"Royal Mortenson," he answered, but made no move to shake hands.

"I've gotta get him to the hospital," I persisted.

"You go back out there before the twenty-three-fifty strafing run and Blackie will drop you with that big Browning. He's pretty damn good with that thing. Knows the terrain. He'll set up over at the wall, or north a' Cactus West where he can see us coming. Before we get to any of my through-holes, mother
-
fecker will rip us all new assholes."

"What the hell do you do out here?" I asked, wondering why he and Smiley were wandering around at night on an active gunnery range.

"I'm a scrapper," he said. "All this shit lyin' around out here--the fins on the inerts and stuff--is worth money."

He wiped his hand across his mouth, then pulled out a can of Skoal, took a pinch, and put it behind his lower lip.

"Aluminum on them fins of the two-thousand pounders is worth plenty." He pronounced it al-ow-min-eum.

"Depending on the market, I kin git ninety bucks a fin on them thousand-pound inerts. Sometimes I'll disarm some of the smaller unexploded stuff. A seventy-pound fin is worth thirty
-
five bucks a blade. Then, twice a week them Cobra assault choppers with twenty-millimeter cannons, swoop in here, blow up some dump truck. Brass cartridges coming down all over the place. Fifty cents a round, like it's raining money." He smiled at me, his brown, uneven teeth looking like a busted-down fence.

"And Smiley? Does he scrap too?"

"Who's that?"

"The guy in the black Dodge Ram."

"Ya mean Blackie? Blackie is a big feckin' problem. I'm out here pickin' up scrap, tryin' to make me a livin'. He's bringin' the EOD down on us."

"Don't you need a permit for this?"

"I got me a permit." He held up the .45. "The EOD don't got no problem with me, on account they know I'm an ex-Ranger and I'll do the right thing, by God. Yessir!"

"I was a Marine," I said, looking for some connection.

He seemed to think about that. Then he went on.

"Blackie's a problem cause he don't give a shit. I only take fins off the inerts and the low-yield ordnance. Them's the blue bombs and the yellow stripers. But we got a lotta UHE shit out here--that's undetonated high explosives, and it's stuff EOD doesn't want messed with."

"What's EOD?" I asked him.

"Explosive Ordnance Disposal. They shut this place down once a month and go searching for unexploded JADAM two
-
thousand pounders and up. Hot ordnance that didn't detonate. Them's the bombs got C-four packages in 'em. Gotta disarm the warhead to get a one-pound package out, but it's worth fifteen grand or more on the black market, especially now, with terrorists tryin' to buy it. I could mine C-four easy, but I never do it. I'm an American. Ain't gonna help no sand nigger terrorist assholes get shit to blow us up. That's why EOD kinda leaves me alone. Fifteen years out here and they coulda busted me easy, but they let me be. Blackie, he's a whole 'nother story, 'cause he's in the C-four business. He's out here three times a week pullin' warheads off the reds, takin' out C-four packs. I been tryin' to catch the fecker myself, but he's tricky, and smart as a windmill fixer."

That explained where Smiley got the C-4.

The strange man spit a stream of tobacco juice across the room into a Folgers coffee can. He hit it pretty much right in the center and it rang loudly. Bull's-eye.

"With Blackie puttin' the heat on, EOD's gonna end up throwin' me out, right along with him."

"How soon till we can we get out of here?" I asked.

"Now that I got the bleedin' stemmed, yer friend's probably gonna hold up for a while, but he's gonna be needin' some regular doctorin' soon, antibiotics, a proper stitchin'. 'Course, we try to get outta here now, Blackie's gonna make some trouble. That big Browning's got some bite to it." He looked at hi
s w
atch. "Like I said, ain't got another firing mission until eleven
-
fifty. Warthogs gonna be takin' out a phony SAM site. That's our best chance fer gettin' outta here. While they kick ass on them targets on the east ridge, he's gotta keep his head down. That's when we go."

Chapter
49

THE WIRE

We sat on the floor of the old pumping station, the Coleman lantern hissing loudly, Sonny lying unconscious beside us. The Warthog fire mission was scheduled to begin in an hour. Then we'd put Sonny in the sand buggy and make a run for it. Royal was talking softly, his voice droning in the dimly lit room.

"Ain't nobody comes out here much. 'Round April, it gets so dry the jackrabbits is all totin' canteens." He shook his head sadly. "After Nam, didn't have no place to go. Seemed there was no place I fit in. Folks spittin' on me, callin' me baby killer. But how do ya tell some snotty draft dodger who never served that some o' them kids over there would ask ya for a Hershey, then trade ya a hand grenade for a candy bar? After I got back, seemed weren't nothin' much to give a shit about no more. I
seen my share of misery and there's no doubt it changes ya. Out here I don't gotta explain it to nobody. It's just me and the range. Takes my chances, makes my livin'. If I pull the wrong wire, it's adios, motherfecker. Nobody's even gotta come to my funeral, 'cause there ain't gonna be nothin' left t' bury."

I listened to him ramble on like that, talking about South Carolina and Vietnam. Royal Mortenson was what you became if you gave up and withdrew. A lonely, angry old man who had retreated to a spot so unforgiving and desolate that he no longer had to deal with life. As he talked my thoughts about my own future sharpened. I knew one thing: Whatever happened, I didn't want my journey to end up there.

Royal suddenly switched to current events. "Blackie, he seems t' want you dead pretty bad."

"He hates cops," I said flatly.

"I can get behind that one," he joked, then spit some more tobacco juice.

Another bull's-eye.

"Course, bein' as you're a cop, I know y'all gotta do things a certain way. You probably got some penal code tells you when t' shit and how far out in the woods to bury it. But sometimes I've found things work better when ya skin yer own possums."

He looked at me with a sharp twinkle in his eye.

"I'm listening."

"Ol' Blackie, he's clever. He hacks into the Yuma Range Management computer, just like me. Gets the time of the firing missions. Them Marines are always right on time, Drop their loads, regular as Presbyterians. So he knows, just like me, when them planes is comin'. Once they start bombin', he's ducked down in a safe place like this one. Rest of the time, he's out there on the range, prospectin' C-four."

He looked up at me, shrewdness a cagey visitor on his weathered face. "So here's the way I see our choices. We could wait for that flighta Warthogs to come in at twenty-three fifty, the
n m
ake our move, get yer Mexican to the hospital. But looks to me like this boy could go inta shock. Blood pressure gets too low and his heart could just plum quit. Not wantin' that ta happen, maybe you and me oughta advance up the timetable a smidge." He started picking at a loose thread hanging off his pant leg. "I seen ol' Blackie shootin' at you in Cactus West, then lettin' you chase him out by Kill Hill, down inta Jackrabbit Creek, leading ya in there right on time, so them Hornets could have their shot at ya."

"Are you telling me he knew they were coming?" I asked.

"Yep." Royal kept picking at the loose thread. "Knew the exact time and exact coordinates. Got 'em off the range computer. Took ya down there specifically so you could French-kiss a Maverick."

He snapped the thread off, then looked over at me. "If ya wanta get Pancho to that hospital a scootch ahead of schedule and keep him from singin' in the celestial choir, then I might have a way we fix ol' Blackie. Make it so he loses his head and makes a mistake. Or, if it pleases ya, we could arrange it so that happens the other way around."

Then Royal told me why he had the metal masts screwed into the front of the sand rails. The government strung low wires at various places on the range to make it dangerous for scrappers that were running fast without headlights at night. The EOD kept moving the wires to new locations so the scavengers wouldn't know where they were. The masts on the sand rails were up front to catch a missed wire and snap it.

" 'Course, I don't hit many of them things, cause I make it my business to know when them EOD boys change a wire. But ol' Blackie, he's in that big truck with a cab to protect him so he don't pay them wires no nevermind. Maybe we can arrange it so things happen a little different tonight."

He looked up and flashed his yellow smile. Then he told me his plan. When he finished, he looked over at me, his criminal blues blazing.

"Can't shoot the fecker, 'cause if EOD finds him fulla lead, it looks like a murder, and I got a lotta explaining to do. This way it looks like he just got careless and paid the price." Then he stopped talking and a crafty look followed.

" 'Course, with you being a cop, I wouldn't want to be facin' no bullshit trial afterwards. You want my help, you and me gotta come to an understanding."

I stayed quiet for a minute, thinking. He could call it an accident, but what he was really talking about was murder.

Then I thought about the last two weeks, and about Emo and Jo. I remembered how Emo's son Alfredo, had held onto Elana's hand at the funeral, standing tall, refusing to cry, knowing he and his mother would have to go on alone. I remembered Emo up on Smiley's porch, dead in the vertical coffin. Smiley had opened the front door and shot him at point-blank range. He'd had no chance.

I thought of Jo, lying in her hospital bed, hovering near death, a victim of the same situation. Only with Jo, I had to share the blame and it weighed heavily on me. I looked down at my shirt wrapped around Sonny's stump, his life slowly seeping out, his blood staining the cloth. I needed to get him out of here before he died. Add in Greenridge and Nightingale and the score was five to zip. I was getting pretty tired of losing.

I could feel Royal's eyes on me as I weighed the decision.

"We do this right, it'll go down slick as snot on a doorknob," Royal drawled. "But you and me, we gotta swear us a oath, first. We gotta swear to both take this piece'a business to the grave."

Then Sonny coughed and moaned, helping me make up my mind.

"Let's do this guy," I whispered.

Royal looked up, smiled widely, then nodded.

I put my Tac vest back on and we left Sonny lying on the futon with the empty pint of scotch now filled with water.

Royal and I exited the pumping station and stood outside in the moonlight.

"Things're goin' so good, I might have to hire me somebody to help enjoy it," he joked, then turned to me. "You know what you're gonna do?"

"Right," I replied, thinking I shouldn't be taking tactical orders from a withered old hick who was probably half insane. But as he'd said, this was his backyard. He knew the rules and the terrain.

Royal unscrewed the mast on the front of my sand rail and leaned it against the pumping station. "Now git, and keep your head down," he warned.

I nodded, fired up the buggy, and drove back into the drainage tunnel. Royal was already removing the mast from the second rail as I pulled out. The engine echoed loudly in the metal pipe. After a quarter of a mile, I stopped at the end of the tunnel and removed the bush blocking the opening. Then I drove back out onto the desert floor heading toward Cactus West. My forearm was aching where the shrapnel hit me and my fingers were going numb, but I ignored it and kept driving.