by Don Winslow
Neal muttered, “You could have had the decency to growl while I was on the outside of the fence.”
But it wasn’t a guard dog, Neal realized—guard dogs are trained to bark. It was an attack dog, which was trained to … well, attack.
And this one had ambushed him.
The dog took another careful step forward. It was sizing him up and quickly arriving at the conclusion that this particular human wouldn’t be much of a problem. It showed even more fang and boosted the volume on the growl.
It would leap for his throat at any moment.
There’s only one thing to do, Neal thought.
Panic.
Turn and run for the fence and hope you can climb high enough before Hans here rips into your leg, pulls you backward off the fence, and tears your throat out of your neck.
Panic.
No, no, no, no, no. Think. Surely Graham must have covered this subject in one of his endless lectures. He had covered everything else. Barbed wire, alarm systems … dogs.
What you have to do, Neal, is pretty goddamn weird and presents an enormous initial risk. . . . What you do is …
Neal reached down with a quivering hand and unzipped his fly. Then he assumed the classic men’s room position.
Talk about presenting an initial risk, he thought. As for the “enormous,” well …
The dog kept growling but stopped advancing.
Why is it, Neal asked himself, that when you absolutely have to piss … you can’t? Like when you’re taking a physical and the nurse hands you a jar, or when you’re standing exposed to a potentially homicidal canine …
Come on, come on, come on.
The dog got impatient and started to come forward. It was staring at Neal’s crotch.
Come on, come on, come on … ahhhh.
Neal zipped his fly.
The startled dog came out of his crouch. His nose started twitching madly. He bent his head down to get a closer sniff. Then he turned his back to Neal and lifted his leg.
Now you have established—what do you call it—a rapport with Spot. He understands that you understand doggy etiquette. Of course, if he is really well trained, he’s just going to piss on your puddle and then kill you anyway. Otherwise, try to show him that you consider yourself lower status than he is. With you, this is no problem …
Neal laid down on his back, making himself completely vulnerable to the dog’s attack. The Doberman came over, growled, sniffed Neal’s crotch and stomach, and then opened his jaws over Neal’s throat.
If you move during this pan, you’re a piece of meat …
He felt the dog’s fangs press gently onto his skin.
The dog growled again. Then he let go, straightened up, and wagged his tail.
Then lick his ear.
Lick his ear?
Lick his ear! That’s doggy talk for telling him that he’s the boss. Once he’s confident that you admit that, he probably won’t attack you.
Probably?
What, you want a sure thing? Go into insurance.
Shuffling on all fours to the dog, Neal slowly put his tongue to its ear, and made a great show of licking. If it can be said that a Doberman can smile, the dog positively beamed. It wagged its stub of a tail and invited Neal to have a look around the place.
Neal made directly for the largest building, the one that looked like a barracks. He trotted down the steps to the sunken entrance. The thick wooden door was unlocked.
Of course, thought Neal. They aren’t expecting anybody until the End Time, which is still a few years off.
He opened the door and stepped inside.
It was a white supremacist whacko’s dream. The main rectangle was split into three rooms, each of which could be sealed off by a thick metal door in case part of the bunker was overrun. The first section was the barracks. Bunk beds lined the walls between ground-level fire slits that had been dug at angles to ward off shell fragments.
Hoping to see the form of a sleeping child under the military blankets, Neal looked into each bunk. But Cody McCall wasn’t in bed.
He went into the next section, which looked like a planning room. A wooden table sat in the center. A U.S. Geological Survey topographical map of the area had been spread on the tabletop. There was a small chalkboard on an easel and about a dozen metal folding chairs in front of it. The walls were decorated with posters—a picture of bodies stacked up outside a crematorium, with the caption “A Good Start”; a religious poster of God talking to Jacob in heaven and pointing to America down below; a framed photograph of Adolph Hitler. A pine bookrack held a section of supremacist writings including some back issues of a newsletter called The White Beacon, by Reverend C. Wesley Carter.
Neal fought off the queasy feeling in his stomach and checked his watch. Had it only been half an hour? He figured he had another hour or so before the boys wound up the exercise in the hills and made it back. He checked the gun ports at each corner of the building. No Cody.
He went back outside. The Doberman had brought a stick to play with and Neal obediently threw it. He had to check each of the smaller, circular concrete bunkers. The first held a survivalist cache—stacks of canned food, bottled water, and fuel. The second one was an armory, surprisingly skimpy. There were a few civilian rifles and pistols, one M-16, and what looked like some Korean War vintage land mines. Neal ran to the last bunker.
It was a jail. Iron rings were bolted to the walls. Chains and shackles were run through the rings. Neal felt his skin tingle with revulsion. He could smell the fear in here. Traces of stale sweat clung in the closed air. Bloodstains marked the concrete floor. Something horrible had happened in this place.
Neal felt the chill of a pervasive evil and backed out the door.
That’s when he heard the dog barking joyfully. A greeting.
Because his master was home.
“You think it’s late for you?” Ed complained into the phone. “How do you think I feel?”
Ed drummed his fingers on the desk. He was hungry. He wanted a pastrami on rye with mustard and a beer—and not a lite beer, either, but a full, dark beer with some heft to it. And a bag of potato chips.
“So tell me,” Ed said, then listened while Carter told him what he needed.
“Reverend, we’re talking a tall order here,” Ed said when the man had finished. “I mean, you’re asking me to take a terrible risk. We’re talking big bucks.”
“How big?”
“Like you-pull-up-truckloads-of-money-and-I’ll-tell-you-when-to-stop big.”
The man bitched and moaned and Ed bitched and moaned back and they finally settled on a number.
“Do we have a deal?” Carter asked.
“We have a deal,” Ed answered.
Hell of a deal.
He hung up, lit a cigarette, and dialed another number.
Neal listened to the voices and the footsteps coming toward him. They were laughing, speculating as to how Neal had gotten lost, where he was, and how long he’d be wandering around the sagebrush before he got back.
The door opened and Cal Strekker came in, followed by Craig Vetter and Randy Carlisle. Neal could see that the two Hansens and Dave Bekke were right behind them.
When they were all inside, Neal threw the door open and lifted the pistol he’d taken from the armory.
Strekker started for him.
“Please keep coming, head of security,” Neal said as he pointed the gun at him.
Strekker froze.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Vetter said.
“No kidding.”
“What are you doing, Neal?” Hansen asked.
It’s fourth and long, Neal thought. Nothing to do but throw deep.
“Well, Mr. Hansen,” Neal answered, “I’m just trying to show you what I can do … what kind of man I am. I’m the kind of man who can get into places, past twelve-foot fences, barbed wire, and attack dogs. I’m the kind of man who can penetrate security and take what I want—witness the gun in
my hand. I’m the kind of man who wants to lay a hurting on ZOG. I want to fight for the white race, and I’m smart enough to figure out that you have more going on here than hide-and-go-seek games. I want to be a part of it. You were right the first time, Mr. Hansen, you can use a man like me.”
Neal flicked the clip from the pistol and tossed it to Hansen.
Cal Strekker sprang toward Neal. Hansen’s sharp voice brought him up short.
“Hold it, Cal.”
Hansen turned to Neal. “We call ourselves the Sons of Seth. The Reverend C. Wesley Carter himself gave us that name, so we wear it with great pride. And you’re right, Neal, we’re training to be the fighting arm of the True Christian Identity Church. We’re training to strike a blow against ZOG and to serve as a base of operations when the End Time comes.
“But you can’t just become a Son of Seth, Neal, just because you have some useful skills, and may I add, one hell of a nerve. You have to earn the name.”
Neal gave him his best flinty-eyed look. “Just give me a chance, sir.”
“I will, Neal,” Hansen said. “You can count on that. You’ll get your chance to show us what kind of a man you really are.”
I’m really a jerk, Bobby. Because Harley McCall isn’t in your damn compound and neither is Cody. I’ve wasted two months being stupid, stubborn, and selfish.
That’s the kind of man I really am.
“He’s cute,” Karen Hawley said to Peggy Mills, “but isn’t he supposed to be nuts or something?”
“No, he just needed some time alone.”
“Well, I guess he has it, living up there in that cabin. I don’t know if I’m up for another survivalist type, Peggy.”
“Just dance with him.”
“He hasn’t asked me.”
“True.”
Peggy Mills and Karen Hawley were having one of those ladies’ room conversations, if you could call the women’s lavatory at Phil and Margie’s Country Cabaret a ladies’ room. There was no pink wallpaper, plush banquettes, or mirrors framed in makeup lights. Instead there were two stalls divided by paneling, a sink with a rubber stopper on a broken chain, and a mirror that teamed up with a fluorescent light to tell some harsh truths about the cosmetic effects of long months and short paychecks.
Peggy and Karen were hip to hip, leaning in to share the single mirror as Peggy dusted her face with a little powder and Karen replaced some of the lipstick she had left on her beer glass. Lipstick was one of the few concessions Karen made to the magazine image of femininity, that and a little eyeliner on Saturday nights. She’d long ago taken an inventory of her physical features and found them quite acceptable on their own. She had thick black hair, cut just above the collar, and blue eyes as deep and sparkling as a lake on a brilliant winter day. She had a long face, a strong jaw, a sharp chin, and if some guys thought her nose was a little big, too bad. She had come to like it, even the little bump right there on the bridge. Her mouth was wide and her lips a little narrower than she’d ideally like, but her smile had been known to turn big lumberjacks into little boys, and if those little boys could turn back into men they’d find she was a great kisser.
She liked her body, too. She was tall—even taller now, in her cowboy boots—with long legs made taut and muscular by a lifetime spent hiking in these mountains. And if her hips were a little wider than you’d see on a Paris runway, she didn’t want to be seen on one anyway. Her jeans fit her real nice, thank you, and the white western shirt she was wearing had to stretch over breasts to tuck in over a tummy that owed her, dammit, for all the sit-ups. It was a good body, Karen thought. Good for backpacking, good for dancing, good for whatever the dancing led to, good for having babies. Except she hadn’t met a guy who wanted to settle in long enough to have a baby with her.
“I just don’t want to get involved with another ‘I have to be free like the wind, darling,’ ‘Love me, love my dog,’ guitar-strumming, moon-howling, living-in-his-car-and-my-kitchen cowboy mountain man who’s going to make me fall in love with him and then leave for California to ‘find himself,’” Karen said.
“You can screw him without falling in love with him.”
“He is cute.”
Peggy Mills took a brush to her hair. “He reads books,” she said.
Well, that is interesting, Karen thought. She had been teaching third grade in Austin for five years now and had heard more than one parent tell her that his son didn’t need to know how to read in order to rope a calf or dig gold. That was, of course, when she could even get a parent to come to one of the conferences. A lot of the parents were great, but there were also a lot she had never seen, not even once, not even for the Christmas pageant, when half of central Nevada came to town to see their kids dressed up as reindeer or the Virgin Mary or something. And while most of the kids in her school were happy, healthy, well-scrubbed kids, there were also a sad number who were dirty, malnourished, and just plain sad looking, and there were those kids who had bruises they didn’t get playing kickball at recess. And when one of her boys had shown up with actual burns on him, it was Karen Hawley who had driven up to their remote shack, woke his daddy up from his alcoholic stupor, stuck a shotgun into his crotch, and explained precisely what would happen if Junior didn’t stop “falling against the wood stove.” Word on The High Lonely was that you didn’t mess around with Karen or with anyone Karen put her arms around, and she definitely had her arms around the kids in that school.
“What kind of books?” Karen asked. “Remember Charlie? He read books. They were mostly about Swedish stewardesses.”
“Neal was working on his master’s degree in English.”
“Another hard-core unemployable.”
“You’re a hard woman, Hawley.”
“I’m a marshmallow.”
“Too true.”
“If he asks me, I’ll dance with him, okay?”
“You’re glued to that chair like you’re paying rent on it,” Steve Mills was saying to Neal Carey.
Neal was drinking beer straight out of the bottle, munching on peanuts, and feeling about as comfortable as a eunuch at an orgy.
Neal Carey had been in some bars in his life, early and often. He had been in Irish pubs in New York on Saturday nights when both the booze and the blood had flowed, when on- and off-duty cops laid their revolvers on the bar while they knocked back double shots, when the band had led the crowd in cheerful sing-alongs about martyred heroes and killing Englishmen. None of it had prepared him for Phil and Margie’s Country Cabaret.
First of all, there was the location. Austin, Nevada, could have been built by a Robert Altman set crew. Its broad main street was mostly mud, flanked by wide wooden sidewalks. Phil and Margie’s was a large, low, ramshackle building with a classic western facade, heavy screens over the small windows, and swinging doors, and if Gary Cooper had come through, Neal wouldn’t have been at all surprised.
They hadn’t arrived until after nine, and by that time the crowd had a good start on the drinking, smoking, and dancing, so the air in the place was a rich mixture of second-hand alcohol, smoke, and sweat with a heavy overlay of perfume, cologne, and failing deodorant. The delicate scent of grilled hamburgers and deep-fat french fries wafted from a grill in the back. The ceilings were low, the room was dark, and Neal knew that if any of his white-wine-sipping, vegetarian, rabidly antismoking Columbia friends could be condemned to a Saturday night in hell, this would be it.
The noise was literally earthshaking as about fifty pairs of cowboy boots, miner’s boots, and hiking boots pounded on the sagging floor to the beat of the Nevada two-step and the bar glasses rattled and the walls trembled. What conversation there was got shouted at full voice and close range and wasn’t really given to serious dialogue about deconstructionism in literary analysis or pithy interplay about what James Joyce may or may not have said to Ezra Pound.
They had elbowed their way to a table in the back, Steve exchanging back slaps and Peggy swapping hugs with just about every person in
the place. Peggy insisted on making the first trip to the bar and returned with four beers and Karen Hawley.
Peggy made the introductions, Karen and Neal shook hands, she sat down in the chair next to him, smiled, and Neal found that he had a sudden fascination with the band.
Not that the band wasn’t fascinating. To Neal, country music had meant anything sung or strummed in New Jersey or Connecticut. So he wasn’t ready for New Red and the Mountain Men. New Red was the lead singer and rhythm guitar player. He was a young guy with sandy hair and a beard. He wore a Caterpillar gimme cap, plaid shirt, black logger pants, and tennis shoes. He had a face as friendly as an old pair of socks. The drummer was a woman with waist-length blond hair, a black cowboy hat, black western shirt with red roses on the chest, tight black jeans, and black cowboy boots. Neal sensed a sartorial theme and wasn’t surprised to find out from Steve that her name was Sharon Black, aka “Blackie.” She was a good drummer, anyway. The bass player was a big guy with curly brown hair falling to his shoulders and a bushy beard, bib overalls over a denim shirt, and cowboy boots he probably hadn’t seen for a while. The violinist (“That’s a fiddle player, Neal”) was a woman in her indistinct forties who looked like the kind who had about twenty cats at home and wind chimes. She wore a flower print blouse, painter’s pants, and sandals, and her hair was a wild quarrel between the colors gold and gray.
Whatever they looked like, they could play. Over the din of the pounding crowd Neal heard music as sharp and clear as the creek that rippled down by his cabin, each note distinct but blended into one stream. And just about as effortless. Neal watched the guitarists’ fingers sliding over the strings, pressing down strong and precise chords, or flying over the frets to pluck individual notes. He watched Blackie’s hands flash patterns with the sticks on the drumheads, her hips bobbing as she stepped on the bass pedal. He watched Cat Lady nestle the … fiddle … into her cheek as if it were a baby, but stroke the strings as fast and hard as if she were trying to start a fire. He watched it all the harder as he felt Peggy watching him and Karen trying not to.