The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller

by Pierre Ouellette

  Rachel pockets her handheld and stares out her office window. Whatever happened out there, it all rolled down off Mount Tabor. She’s almost sure of it. So how did they get to him? Whatever it was, they most certainly knew that he’s Lane Anslow, the cop, the brother of Johnny, and not Allen Durbin. It’ll eventually come out and the Feed will feast on it. FIRED COP OFFS CEO.

  She considers her own situation. No one seems to know about her connection with Lane. For the time being, she’s covered, but she has to act carefully. There’s no way to reach out to him directly. Whatever she does will have to be very circumspect, because Green’s in on it. He has to be. Whatever they did to Autumn West, he’s probably next in line. In the end, he may give new meaning to the old tin-pot title of “president for life.”

  She returns to her desk and absently slides into her chair. It’s not hard to extrapolate Lane’s future. They’ll put him in Pima. But there’s an odd twist to her concern for him, which runs deeper than she’d like. It’s not his personal safety that gnaws at her; it’s the fact that he’ll be alone, without her, without anyone. In one sense, he seems so secure in his intent and actions, but in another, he seems utterly lost and on his own. All Lane has left is this search for his brother. He needs more, and she’s not sure what will fill the vacuum.

  There has to be something she can do.

  ***

  Habeas corpus.

  All experienced criminals and attorneys understand its significance. As do a few informed individuals in the general population. But there it ends, because the concept seldom impacts the life of the ordinary citizen.

  Now that it’s gone, fewer still grasp its meaning.

  As a cop, Lane knows all about the phrase. It demands that there be a lawful reason why a person is being held in custody. In other words, you can’t just randomly throw people in jail on a whim. If you try, a writ of habeas corpus can spring them, at least until they are formally charged and stand trial.

  And so it was for the longest time, in many countries, including the United States. But then came the Midland Mall Massacre, a massive act of terrorism involving multiple bomb blasts coupled with withering automatic weapons fire. It infected the electorate with a novel strain of horror and revulsion. The World Trade Center tragedy had involved an atypical setting in an atypical city. Not so with the Midland Mall. It was full of average people in an average setting in an average city. Moms, kids, babies, teenagers, fathers, and grandparents. National paranoia ascended to an unprecedented level and the government responded in kind. The long-dreaded strike on the heartland was now a horrific reality. There would be a “temporary revocation” of habeas corpus to ensure the safety of the public in these supremely troubled times.

  Of course, the state of emergency never ended, and now Lane sits in the visiting room of the downtown detention center staring through the glass at the public defender who’s been assigned to his case. The young lawyer is well intentioned, but she can’t explain why he’s being charged with a federal offense for a local homicide. It’s all very complicated. And not surprisingly, there are delays in setting an arraignment date, so it seems that he will be detained indefinitely.

  “Let me help,” Lane offers the lawyer through the glass. “I was a cop for twenty years. I can boil all this down into one word.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pima.”

  Pima

  Chapter 20

  Enhanced Best Friends

  The truck jerks to a rude stop, and Lane sways violently on the wooden bench. He catches his balance against his duffel bag, which is stuffed to bursting with the standard prison issue. Denim shirts and dungarees. Socks, underwear, and basic toilet items. A field jacket with wool lining for winter. A sleeping bag, liner, and inflatable mattress. A single pair of work shoes. A mess kit with utensils.

  Outside, Lane can hear voices. Male voices engaged in the universal banter of the workplace as they go about the dull comfort of their daily business. The truck is empty today, except for him. A dim overhead light shines through a tarnished plastic cover to illuminate the vacant benches and metal-lined walls. Someone has scratched the word FREEDOM into the metal on the opposite wall.

  The back door jerks open and the desert light blasts in, full of heat and sky. Lane squints out at the searing expanse and sees a fantastic collection of aircraft tails stretching off to the horizon, like a great swarm of shark fins swimming the waters of a dead and desiccated sea. The bodies of the permanently grounded planes are hidden behind a shiny steel thicket of razor wire and fencing one hundred yards away across a no-man’s-land of hard, barren ground studded with sensors on small poles. The truck that brought him is parked at an outer gate at a secondary perimeter of fencing and guard towers. A gravel road runs straight from this outer gate across the barren earth to an open gate in the inner fence, where various crates and containers are stacked along the road’s shoulder.

  Lane knows that the gate swings shut one hour before sunset and that no one has ever succeeded in breaching the no-man’s-land, because on the far side are towers with machine guns, floodlights, and infrared scopes. But the guns are more symbolic than anything, because the no-man’s-land is patrolled by packs of enhanced dogs, which form a novel and deadly layer of security.

  Lane knows all these things and many more about the Pima Detention Facility. Every cop did. Pima is all about money, or more specifically, the lack of it. With soaring incarceration rates and budgets cannibalized by dubious political agendas, the justice system needed a radical solution to the problems presented by its swollen penal system.

  Then someone in the private sector stumbled across the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Five thousand planes parked in the desert just south of Tucson. Seven square miles of aircraft in various stages of interment. Row upon row of dead, dying, or embalmed metal birds, all plucked of their guns, ejection charges, and classified avionics; their canopies and observation domes sprayed white with vinyl plastic to ward off the heated blast of sun and the scouring of wind-driven sand. They sprawl over two and a half square miles of compacted alkaline soil and now house a prison population of more than two thousand men.

  As Lane stands outside Pima and stares down the road at the great herd of metal tails cutting into the blue horizon, he hears the sound of footsteps, and a guard moves into view.

  “All right, up and out,” the guard orders.

  Lane grabs his duffel bag, moves to the lip of the truck bed, and jumps out. He now sees three additional guards dressed in military combat gear and carrying assault rifles. Behind them, he sees the outer security perimeter stretching into the distance, the fence with razor wire and the squat towers topped with tinted glass and gun ports. Out in the no-man’s-land, he can make out a cluster of slinking figures, a pack of enhanced dogs weaving among the sensors.

  “Okay, duffel bag down and hands behind your head,” the guard barks as he removes the scanner from his belt of many things, all anodized and black. As Lane complies, the guard scans his lobe and then retreats to a small building, where he checks the scan against a database.

  “Hands down,” the guard orders as he returns. Then he shoves his hands into his fatigue pants pockets and his face curves into a nasty grin behind big aviator sunglasses. “Welcome to Pima, Mr. Anslow,” he says as he points down the road. “We hope you have a pleasant stay.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of orientation?” Lane asks.

  The guard shares a smirk with his peers. “Pima has a way of explaining itself,” he replies. “Now hit the road, buddy. And don’t go off it. The doggies don’t like that. Know what I mean?”

  Lane lifts his duffel bag onto his shoulder and starts down the road. Soon, the silence of the desert prevails as he travels across the barren stretch between these outer and inner worlds. A weak but persistent wind blows across him and churns small clouds of white dust in the afternoon heat. In the far distance, out on the open desert, a twisted funnel
of dirt rises hundreds of yards until it dissolves into the blue emptiness. He checks to his right and notes the movement of the enhanced dogs, which appear to be loping away from him. The duffel bag bears down on his shoulder and he shifts its weight to a slightly different position as he walks at a steady pace down the middle of the road.

  Waste containers cast short, intense shadows across the road, and as Lane passes them he looks ahead to the snarling cascade of razor wire, now very near. It seems weird to see the big gap where the double frames of the gate are wide open, giving a clear view down an open corridor lined by the great tails and fuselages of old C-130 transport planes. The corridor cuts to the center of the prison, where a large water tower sits on a high frame of four stout legs. Lane thinks he spots human figures there, but the detail is lost in the shimmers of radiated heat from all the baked ground and abandoned metal.

  He picks up the sound of panting over the whisper of the wind, and stops. The dogs are here. He slowly advances until he can see around the corner of the last waste container, then pauses.

  Five bodies line the shoulder of the road, each laid out on a black plastic tarp. Three older men and two younger, all dressed in prison denims, but stripped of their shoes, with white toes pointed skyward as the wind stirs a murmur of life into their dead hair.

  Three dogs stand over the corpses and carefully sniff, then face one another and pant, their tongues flapping gently like pink flags between a wicked set of carnivorous teeth. They wear radio collars around their huge necks, which taper up into the skull and jaws of a breed descended from the bullmastiff. The nearest one spots him and shoots Lane a look of cognition he will never forget. The beast issues a sharp, abbreviated bark, and the other two also turn toward him. The first dog pants briefly and keeps his eyes locked on Lane as the other two return to sniffing the corpses. Lane understands: The quick pant is a code, an order. It’s how they communicate, a code embedded in a stream of staccato breathing, a way around the lack of vocal cords. Their vocabulary is only roughly known but estimated to run into the hundreds of words.

  Lane heeds the guard’s advice and keeps to the center of the road as he moves slowly forward, eyes fixed on those of the dog. He now understands the dogs’ current mission. There has to be some way to remove the dead from the prison, both for ID processing and burial, so they are brought out along with the waste material. But what about the escape possibilities? What if you injected a drug that nearly killed you and you got a free ride out? Not with the dogs. They could clearly smell the difference. He guessed there were standing orders that, if you were still alive, you became fresh dog food.

  Lane moves forward and the alpha dog drifts out of his peripheral vision, listening intently for the pounding of paws on the hard ground that would indicate a rear attack. But as he walks up to the open gate, he hears only the wind, which sings a strange little song as it blows through the razor wire and tickles its harmonic resonance. As he passes through, he sets foot onto a bridge of corrugated and perforated metal that spans a pit full of even more coiled and barbed wire. Halfway across, he realizes he is on a drawbridge that would probably be raised at the same time the gates are closed in the evening.

  The first planes are now only a few yards away, and Lane can see how the fat fuselages taper up to the big tail sections. He stops for a moment and looks back. The guards, the truck, even the dogs are gone. The outer perimeter looks seamless except for the road running up to it.

  “Welcome to Pima, friend.”

  The deep voice shatters the desert solitude and Lane whirls around to locate the source. A man emerges from out of the shadow of the first plane’s tail, a large man clad only in shorts, sandals, and a cotton vest draped over thickly muscled shoulders. A deep tan crowns his bald dome, and bright eyes beam out from below a jutting brow line. From the center of a black goatee, his broad smile reveals big teeth that take on an almost predatory cast. He walks slowly forward with a confident, athletic ease.

  Lane unshoulders his duffel bag and counts his assets. The man is not armed, which gives him at least a fighting chance. Also, Lane has heavy shoes against his opponent’s sandals. The man stops a few yards away and folds his massive arms, their sinews amplified by the angular afternoon sun. A small cross is branded in the flesh high on his forehead, above where the hairline would naturally fall.

  “Are you a reasonable man?” the stranger asks.

  “I suppose you could say that,” Lane answers. He looks down the long line of fuselages. No one else in sight. He is on his own.

  “Good,” the man says. “Then you’ll understand that there’s a price of admission here.”

  “Says who?” Lane asks defiantly.

  “Says me,” the man snaps back without hesitation. “You might say that I have the box office concession.”

  “And how did you get that?”

  “It’s a long story and I wouldn’t want to bore you with it.”

  “Then don’t,” Lane replies as he reaches for his duffel bag. He has a plan. If the man attacks, he’ll counter with a powerful swing of the bag, which ought to be enough to knock the man off his feet, where he will be an easy target for Lane’s shoes.

  “Look,” the man says as he unfolds his arms and shows his palms in a conciliatory gesture, “I’m just trying to earn my keep as best I can. Can you blame me for that?”

  “No,” Lane replies tartly as he heaves the duffel bag onto his shoulder.

  “Then let’s be reasonable. All I want is the field jacket, and the wool socks. Yeah, the wool socks.”

  Lane goes to full internal alert. He’s seen this trick before on the street. The man’s passive bargaining stance is a ruse, meant to lull Lane into a false sense of control over the situation. The attack is probably already on its way. But from where? He takes his eyes off the man for an instant, scans the full periphery of his vision and sees nothing. The assault must be coming from behind. He unshoulders the bag and pivots to his rear in a single motion.

  And sees the same man who is standing in front of him.

  His eyes dart back to the first man to make sure there are really two of them. They’re twins. The second one, still a couple of yards away, has stopped now that Lane has spotted him. Lane realizes that the shock and confusion of this routine probably gives them the edge they usually need to complete their dirty business. But not this time. He backs up out of the line between them so he can clearly see both at once.

  The second twin clutches a thick metal bar about two feet long.

  “Not a weapon,” he says. “The code doesn’t allow weapons. But that don’t help you any. Now step away from the fuckin’ bag before I bash your brains in.”

  “Don’t think so,” Lane says evenly. Besides the attitude difference, he notices that the brand on the upper forehead of this twin is a small rectangular bar instead of a cross.

  “Then let me explain what I’m gonna do,” the second twin growls. “First, I’m gonna break your arm with this,” he says as he brings up the metal bar. “Then I’m gonna smack you alongside the skull. But not enough to kill you, no sir. Just enough to make you all gimpy, so you won’t bother me while I shove it up your ass.”

  “Now hold on a minute,” the first twin interrupts. “I’ve made the man a very attractive offer. Just the field jacket and the socks. Everything else he keeps. Who knows? He might even live. Let him settle up and be done with it.” The first twin turns to Lane. “What do you say, friend?”

  “Fuck him. I don’t care what he says,” the second twin shoots back. “We take it all.”

  The first twin sighs as if to apologize for the rude behavior of his brother. “He’s probably right. We should probably take it all. I was just trying to get creative, that’s all.”

  “If you take the bag,” Lane says, “I walk in empty-handed. Everyone will know. Then I’m dead meat.”

  “Now there’s some truth in that,” the first twin admits. “But we all die when we come here. In one way or another. Know what I
mean?”

  “We’re through talkin’,” the second twin proclaims. “Now let’s get it on, fuckhead.” He comes slowly forward in a crouch.

  Lane takes a quick look at the first twin, who gives a passive shrug while taking a step backward. Somehow, Lane knows that he is not going to help his brother. He is about to bet his life on it.

  Lane places himself behind his upright bag, denying his attacker the advantage of a frontal assault. If the man lunges in to strike a blow, he’ll have to take a side step, and become vulnerable to a counterattack.

  The twin anticipates this problem. He lashes out with his foot and kicks the bag onto its side, knowing that Lane will be hopelessly exposed if he stoops to right it. He takes a step back and charges, leaping over the bag and swinging the deadly weight of the bar toward Lane’s head. Lane nimbly sidesteps the charge and the man twists sideways from the torque of the missed swing. Before he can recover, Lane knocks the bar out of his grip. As the man crashes to the ground, Lane secures him with a choke hold. His left forearm locks the throat while his right pushes on the nape of the neck. Basic cop stuff. His opponent’s air supply is now severely compromised.

  The twin’s arms flail widely, but find no purchase. The man’s great bulk and strength let him drag the two of them into a sitting position, but it does him little good.

  The first twin comes over and squats in front of them. “Maybe we can work something out,” he says calmly. “How about if I leave you the bag itself, with a pair of socks and the sleeping bag liner? How does that sound?”

  Lane feels the second twin start to sag from the effect of the choke hold. “Not too good.” He nods at his adversary’s bulging eyes and purple face. “His brain is running on empty. You better get creative.”

  The twin purses his lips in resignation. “Okay, you keep it all and I guarantee your passage to the Inner Section.”