No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  “I’ve had it with this place. I want to go home,” Brian said.

  “Home?”

  “Michigan.”

  “You can’t be serious. This is our home.”

  He got to his feet. “I spoke with my dad tonight. He’s finally gonna retire. I can take over his practice. We’ll be fine. Better than fine. We can—”

  “I can’t leave here. There’s nothing back in Michigan for me.”

  His eyes held hers now. “Then we’ve got a problem.”

  “I’m in the middle of negotiations for a new show. I’m—” She stopped herself and began to massage her temples. “Not now, Brian . . . please, not now . . .”

  “There’s never going to be a better time,” he said. Melanie began to sputter out a denial but stopped herself.

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” she said finally. “There’s no way I can possibly . . .”

  The phone rang. It was as if a stranger had entered the room. It rang again, and then a third time before Melanie reached down and picked up the receiver. “Yes.”

  “You wanted fresh content well . . . I’ve got it for you, baby,”

  her producer, Martin Wells, blurted into the phone.

  “It’s late, Martin,” she said with a sigh. “And it’s really not a good time.”

  He ignored her. “I’ve got the first unit on the way to Arizona as we speak. They’ll be set up and good to go by morning.”

  “What’s in Arizona?”

  “Just the biggest prison riot in U.S. history. Prisoners have taken over the supposedly escape-proof prison. They’re armed with automatic weapons. The governor’s called out the National Guard. There’s a hell of a fight brewing.”

  “Are you talking about that place where they send the worst of the worst. Meza somethingorother?”

  “Meza Azul. Yep, that’s the one.”

  “Are they holding hostages?”

  “Something like a hundred and fifty of them.”

  She started to speak, but Martin Wells cut her off. “Here’s the good part. You know who’s leading this riot? Who’s turned out to be in charge?” He didn’t give her time to answer. “Guy named Timothy Driver. Name ring a bell?”

  “The navy captain. Guy who shot his wife and her lover.”

  “Know what he wants? What he says he’s going to shoot one hostage every six hours over until he gets?”

  “What’s that?”

  “He wants Frank Corso delivered to him at the prison.”

  “The writer?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “How long before the first deadline?”

  “Just under two hours.”

  5

  “Can you zoom in? Can you get his badge number?” Elias Romero reminded himself to relax and not breathe into the microphone.

  “He’s too deep in the shadows,” the CNN cameraman yelled over his shoulder. “I can’t get anything from here.”

  “I don’t believe it,” somebody whispered from the back of the van. “You think he’s really gonna do it?”

  “Let’s pray he doesn’t,” the state police captain said.

  “Here he comes,” the cameraman shouted.

  All eyes turned to the screen, where a sandy-haired man in a guard’s uniform was being pushed through the central arch of the administration building, out of the shadows into the harsh overhead lights. His gait was a stiff-legged stagger; his face was white with fear. His hands were manacled to a wide leather belt encircling his middle. The camera caught the clenching and unclenching of his fingers as he walked out into the stark artificial light, then zoomed in closer and closer until only the portion of his blue shirt holding his badge filled the grainy screen inside the van. The degree of magnification combined with a slight jiggle of the camera made the numbers on the badge dance before their straining eyes.

  “One seven three four five,” somebody finally read out loud. Elias Romero repeated the numbers into his cell phone and waited for Iris Cruz, who was back at the command center, to look up the number.

  They were parked on the grass, hard along the left side of the main gate, just as Driver had ordered. One remote truck providing the video feed for the multitude of media outlets now lining Boundary Road, the access road to the prison, a quarter mile to the east. Only the cameraman was outside, shooting the man standing in the prison’s front courtyard from a distance of seventy yards. He had his camera pressed hard against the chain-link fence. Above his head, massive coils of razor wire garnished the fences for as far as the eye could see. The air smelled of dust and steel. The manacled guard stood motionless. Movement could be detected within the deep shadows of the arch. He seemed to turn his head to listen. Seemed to nod in agreement before dropping to his knees. His face knew.

  “Cartwright, Wally A.” Iris Cruz’s voice pulled Elias Romero’s attention from the wavering picture of the kneeling guard. “Single white male. Only been on duty for a month and a half. Still on probation.”

  His given name was Waldo Arens Cartwright. He’d been named after his only reputable uncle, a steely-eyed beet farmer with a jaw like a bass, who, having had the great misfortune to have stepped on a land mine on only his second day in Vietnam, had thus earned a place of honor in the sparsely populated Cartwright family wall of fame, where he now rested in perpetuity on the north wall of Aunt Betty’s dining room. As the name Waldo seemed to attract derision in much the same manner in which a spring flower attracts the bee, the war hero’s namesake had, early on, made certain that he was always known as Wally. The way Wally figured it, life was hard enough without asking for trouble, so he’d used Wally on his job application.

  Ten minutes ago, Wally had been sitting on the bench in front of his locker scraping the last of the chicken gravy from the plastic plate with a crust of bread. Some of the guys hadn’t eaten at all. Nerves, Wally guessed. Being held hostage affected some guys that way. As for Wally, way he saw it, a meal was a meal. The locker room had been crowded. The takeover had happened right at shift change, when there weren’t more than two dozen officers walking the cellblocks. Everybody else was either coming or going. The guys on duty had been rounded up and stuck in the locker room with both shifts. The duty sergeant had run the roster for both shifts and, lo and behold, nobody was missing. The announcement sent a shiver of hope through the hundred or so corrections officers. Maybe they were all going to come through this. Maybe the inmates were going to go through the standard list of demands, then it would be over and they could all get back to their lives. Maybe.

  When the door was flung open and a half dozen inmates armed with everything from Mac 10s to a machete strode into the room silence settled like a mantle. Spoons stopped in midair, mouths hung open as a pair of Bikers grabbed Wally by the elbows and lifted him from the bench. Had Wally the slightest notion that he was about to join his namesake on Aunt Betty’s dining room wall, he surely would not have gone so quietly.

  “Thanks, Iris,” Romero said. He snapped the cell phone shut. Keeping one eye glued to the screen, he had begun to repeat the information for the benefit of the others crammed into the interior of the CNN van when the chatter of automatic weapon fire suddenly filled the air. He watched in horror as a withering salvo of fire drove the kneeling figure face-first onto the ground. Watched the body twitch for a few seconds as the river of fire continued, and watched still as the firing stopped and the body grew still.

  “Son of a bitch,” somebody said.

  Silence filled the air around them like molten metal. Seemed like there was nothing to say. A moment later, a pair of inmates came loping out of the shadows, grabbed the fallen guard by the ankles and dragged him back inside. The powerful microphone picked up the click click click as the victim’s teeth chattered across the asphalt even after he disappeared from view. Still no one spoke.

  At the back end of the arch, Driver looked down at the guard’s carcass. At Kehoe holding the rifle in his arms as if it were a baby. “Put him with the others,” D
river said. So far, they had nineteen dead. Guys who’d finally had the chance to settle old scores. Guys like Harry Ferris, who’d spent the past eleven years as the wife of a con known only as the Butcher. Ferris repaid the Butcher for his sexual favors by emptying a whole clip into him, wounding two other cons in the process. Things like that were going on all over the joint. Driver could relate. He remembered his sixth day in Walla Walla. Almost seven years ago. Remembered Kehoe’s warning and how he’d stayed in his bunk that day. Literally hid under the covers like a woman, until the voice came.

  “Let’s go.”

  A pair of guards stood in the corridor. They took him by the elbows and marched him down two flights of stairs, through two checkpoints and two metal detectors, before depositing him in the custodial staff locker room.

  Driver had tried to stammer out a question. “What’s . . . I don’t . . .”

  “Orientation,” the fat guy said.

  “Yeah . . . orientation,” the other guy chuckled. “You’re gonna get your horizons expanded.” The door snapped shut. Driver could hear the bald one yapping as they walked away. “His horizons expanded . . . that’s choice, man . . . horizons expanded.”

  And then it was silent. Driver looked around. Gray steel lockers lined the walls. Each locker was fastened by an identical combination lock. White number on black dials. A worn wooden bench ran down the center of the room, its once gleaming finish nearly washed away, leaving irregular islands of shine adrift on a sea of dull wood.

  His attention slid toward the sound of running water in the next room. He sat down on the bench and began to listen intently, hearing each drop rhythmically followed by another, numbering them in his mind as they fell. After a few moments, his ears began to clear, as if he had come down from a mountaintop. Beneath the persistent plopping he was able to hear the drops surrendering themselves, gathering in the grouted joints as trickles before running down the drain. He closed his eyes and followed the water down the grated hole. He saw himself swimming alone in the damp blackness, using his hands to pull himself around the metal corners, diving through subterranean culverts, sliding through languid cataracts, until finally following the expanding cone of light toward the smell of the sea and the cries of shorebirds. When he opened his eyes on that afternoon nearly eight years before, two Mexicans were standing in front of him, their perfect blue shirts buttoned only at the collar, washboard bellies bare. The one on the right wore a red bandana over his shaved head. He had something tattooed on his chest in old English letters. The one on the left had his hair pulled tight by a net, its nylon web gathered in the center of his forehead like a fearful third eye. Bandana looked to his left and whispered. Driver reached for his right shoe.

  Bandana spoke. “No no, man. You gotta wait till we leave.”

  The Mexicans were elbowing each other, cracking up at what they saw.

  “Look at that thing,” said Hairnet. “You got to put that thing away, cholo. Got to put it away.”

  “Madre de Dios,” said the other.

  Hairnet covered his mouth and looked away just in time to see Driver fitting the dowel through the hole in the toothbrush handle. He’d leaned over and whispered in his buddy’s ear. They both watched as Driver folded his arms across his chest, his hands out of sight beneath his arms.

  Kurtz was totally hairless. The lack of eyebrows made the blue doll eyes seem loose on his face. He was nearly as wide as he was tall, and his doughy white flesh filled the room with the smell of camphor and stale sweat. His massive belly would have hidden a normal cock. As it was, the fat fingers on his right hand flexed as they stroked an erect appendage that looked more like a pipe fitting than a penis.

  He had a curious, high-pitched voice. “Hands and knees,” he said.

  When Driver failed to move, Kurtz started shuffling his way. As he drew near, Kurtz suddenly raised both arms to shoulder level.

  “Gonna have to choke you down some, Mr. Navy.”

  At the last moment, Driver brought his right hand out from beneath his arm and pistoned it toward Kurtz, who did what he always did when somebody threw a punch at him. He ducked his huge bald head and waited for the sound of broken bones to tell him the fun was about to begin in earnest.

  The plastic point of the toothbrush had been no match for Kurtz’s bald dome. The shaft bent on impact, numbing Driver’s arm, sending the point skidding over the sweaty surface, plowing a bloody trench across the skull until it slid down the side of his face, in search of softer flesh. The highly honed point finally found ingress in Kurtz’s right cheek, entering his mouth at a forty-five-degree angle, skewering his tongue and pinning it to the soft tissue of his lower jaw.

  Kurtz went mad, throwing himself at Driver, butting him in the face as he drove him into the wall hard enough to break three of Driver’s ribs.

  At his resentencing hearing, Driver had been told he’d stabbed Kurtz another dozen times, including once through each eye. Not only that, but he’d supposedly stabbed one of the officers who’d tried to break it up. All of which had been news to Driver. He didn’t remember anything past the point when Kurtz butted him back into the shower wall.

  After fourteen days in the hospital, followed by sixty days of close confinement, he’d been summarily shipped to Meza Azul. Right next to Cutter Kehoe again. Old home week until they moved Driver to the punishment cell. And now, here they were.

  “Hey,” Cutter Kehoe yelled.

  Driver pulled his eyes from the dead guard being dragged across the asphalt. He blinked several times and looked around.

  “Don’t be getting loopy on us now, Captainman. Got a lotta boys inside countin’ on you to lead ’em to the promised land.”

  “Most of these boys are already in the promised land.”

  “How long you figure we got before they come for us?”

  “Less than twenty-four hours. They won’t let it go on for longer than that. It’s bad for morale.”

  Kehoe bent his head toward the fallen guard. “They ain’t gonna let that one go.” He shook his head. “Bulls gonna kill my ass for sure, Captainman. They’ll find somethin’ . . . some reason why I got to die.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” Driver said.

  The words stopped Kehoe in his tracks. He had a half smile on his face as he ambled over and stood toe-to-toe with Driver.

  “You got somethin going?”

  “Just an idea,” Driver said.

  “And what kinda idea might that be?”

  “One that might get us the hell out of here before the army arrives.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s a long shot.”

  “Always is.”

  “You do what I told you with them drivers?”

  “I had somebody take care of it.” Kehoe eyed him. “Why?”

  “Let the linen supply driver go.”

  Kehoe opened his mouth, but Driver cut him off. “First, take everything out of the truck. Then hand him his keys and stick him behind the wheel. Give me a call when you’ve got him ready, and I’ll open the front gate.”

  6

  He looked away from the wavering water and wondered why he only imagined her in the mornings. Something about the flat water of dawn always brought Meg’s face to mind, as if the first silver sheen of the day was forever devoted to her smile. He pulled on the wet line, bringing the float over the rail and down onto his feet. Her childlike printing encircled the white plastic: SALTHEART, Seattle Wa. 206-933-0881. He kept at it, his breath steaming from his lips in the cold morning air as he formed a circle of line around the bucket at his feet. When he looked back, she was still there, laughing now, floating on the shiny surface of the water like a mercury apparition. Corso shook his head and returned to the task at hand, hauling hard on the bright yellow line, taking up the slack until he felt the crab trap come loose from the bottom. He used his long arms to hand over hand the trap to the surface.

  That’s when he saw them coming. Working their way from cove to cove, checkin
g every creek and estuary deep enough for a dinghy. A pair of those little Safeboat twenty-seven-footers they made over in Port Orchard. Homeland Security Boats. Coast Guard’s newest toy, an aluminum-hulled, unsinkable boat, pro-No Man’s Land pelled by a pair of Yamaha 225s. Stable as hell at sixty knots. Rumor had it they’d ordered seven hundred of them at a hundred eighty-five grand a pop.

  Corso pulled the crab pot into the dinghy, careful to keep the collection of slithering crabs and dripping metal out of his lap. The six captive Dungeness crabs had gnawed the turkey leg down to blue-tinged bone. One by one he checked the crabs. Four female, two male. Careful to grab them from the rear, where their pincers wouldn’t reach, he threw the females over the side and dropped the males into the white plastic bucket in front of the steering podium.

  The sky and the water were slate gray and slack. The surface was smooth as glass; here and there patches of fog slid along the surface like ghost ships. To the northeast, he could barely make out the Wescott Bay Oyster Company at the far end of the bay. He’d been buying a couple of dozen a day for the past week. Throwing them on the barbecue until they cracked open, then washing them down with cocktail sauce and a frosty Heineken. He shot a glance at the Coast Guard boat; just as he figured, they were headed his way. He heaved a sigh and picked up the crab bucket.

  He’d been moored in Garrison Bay for a week. Other than emptying his crab pots and making his daily pilgrimage for oysters, all he’d done was write, sleep and eat. Crab omelets for breakfast, crab quesadillas for lunch and crab cakes and oysters for dinner.

  Settling back into the seat, he eased the throttle forward. The prop pulled the stern down into the water for a moment, then, as Corso fed it more gas, began to lift the inflatable up onto plane. Corso pushed the throttle lever all the way forward and aimed the nose at Saltheart, floating, barely visible through the morning haze a half a mile away on the east side of Garrison Bay, just offshore of the English Camp.

  During the summer months, Garrison Bay would have been thick with pleasure boats, but on this rainy November morning, with the kiddies back in school and the temperature in the middle thirties, Saltheart had the moorage to herself. By the time he was halfway up the bay, the Coast Guard boat was running parallel to him, its bright orange paint job skipping along the gray water about twenty yards to port. A crew member stepped out on deck. He brought the red bullhorn up in front of his red face and rested it on his red life jacket. The electronic voice, shattered the stillness of the morning. “Cut your engine back and pull alongside.”