No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  Corso shook his head and pointed forward, toward Saltheart sitting at anchor a quarter mile away. The Coast Guard repeated the order. Corso repeated the gesture.

  The crew member ducked back inside the cabin for further orders. By the time they sorted out what to do next, Corso had pulled the dinghy parallel to the swim step, tied off and killed the engine.

  The Coast Guard boat was no more that ten yards astern as Corso climbed on board, secured the crabs and the dinghy and pulled off his black neoprene gloves.

  “You Frank Corso?” somebody yelled.

  Corso ignored the query. Instead, he knelt on deck and transferred the crabs from the bucket into an old topless cooler full of fresh salt water. He watched the two new crabs settle in. Watched how they fought for territory even within the featureless plastic domain of a cooler, thinking maybe there was some deeper truth to be found in the mindless battle for space, but not being quite able to put his finger on it. He didn’t straighten up until he felt Saltheart twitch as somebody put his weight on the swim step. He got to his feet and looked down.

  Wasn’t the kid with the bullhorn; this one had himself a little gold braid on his cap and shoulders. He was about forty. Thick black eyebrows accented an angular face that looked like it had been assembled out of spare parts. The sight of Corso sent the eyebrows scurrying toward the center of his brow.

  “You deaf or something?” the guy demanded.

  “I don’t remember inviting you on board,” Corso said. The guy laughed in his face. “We’re the Coast Guard, man. We tell you to pull alongside, you pull alongside.”

  “I had crabs needed to be put away.”

  The guy sneered. “Under the provisions of the Patriot Act I could—”

  Corso interrupted. “Don’t even start with that shit. You want to check my paperwork or my gear, then go ahead. That’s your legal right. Otherwise, I’ll be up top cleaning crab.”

  The guy was nimble. He slipped a foot into one of the arched holes in the transom and hoisted himself on board in a single smooth motion.

  Corso’s first instinct was to grab him by the arms and pitch him overboard. He took a deep breath and restrained himself.

  “Okay, so I’m Frank Corso.”

  “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

  Something in his tone brought Corso up short. “What’s that?”

  “In Arizona.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  The guy told him the Reader’s Digest condensed version. “He shot the third one a couple of hours ago.”

  “Jesus,” Corso muttered.

  “I know it’s a hell of a thing to ask of a man, put himself in jeopardy for the sake of people he doesn’t even know.” He raised his hands in frustration and let them fall to his sides with a slap.

  “People down there are hoping maybe if he sees you’ve showed up, maybe he’ll stop. I’m supposed to tell you they don’t expect you to go inside or anything, They just want you to show up and maybe talk to him. Something like that.”

  “And if I don’t see this as my problem?”

  The guy thought it over. “I guess that’s between you and your conscience.”

  “I gave up guilt for Lent.”

  “My orders say it’s up to you.”

  Corso ran a hand through his thick black hair. “My boat . . . ,”

  he started.

  “I’ll personally take her back to your slip.”

  Corso nodded his thanks. “How am I supposed to—”

  A sound in the distance stopped his thoughts. The noise was rhythmic and growing closer. More of a pop than a roar. Familiar. And then it was on them like a giant grasshopper, the helicopter pushing its way through the ceiling and settling down on the old British parade ground, scattering the ground fog like frightened children.

  “The governor of Arizona’s jet is waiting at Boeing Field,” the guy said.

  Corso checked his watch. “What time’s he supposed to kill another one?”

  “O-six-hundred.”

  “I need to change clothes. Come on inside.”

  The guy followed Corso into the salon. Stood there looking around while Corso navigated the three steps down to the storage lockers and the forward berths.

  “Beautiful rig,” the guy said.

  “Thanks,” Corso said from below.

  “You live aboard full-time?”

  “Yep.”

  “I always wanted to . . . you know, something like this . . . but you know, kids and such . . . and my old lady . . . I mean, there’s no way in hell . . .”

  “People do it with families.”

  The guy turned his back and changed the subject.

  “What’d you do to this Driver guy where he wants you so bad?”

  “I wrote a book about him.”

  The guy watched as Corso traded coveralls and long underwear for jeans and a black silk shirt. “Book must have really pissed him off.”

  Corso came back up the stairs into the galley. He pulled a black leather jacket from the nearest hook and put it on. “Actually, he was quite fond of the book.”

  “Then how come he wants to kill you?”

  Corso barked out a sinister laugh. “Driver doesn’t want to kill me. He wants to make sure his story gets told. That’s my end of it.”

  “You’re kiddin’ me.”

  Corso signaled “Boy Scout’s honor” with his fingers. “Honest.” He pulled open the top drawer and grabbed his wallet, stuffed it deep into his hip pocket. “Listen, man . . . I don’t want to rain on your Western hero motif or anything, but if I thought for one minute Driver was planning to off my ass, I wouldn’t be going anywhere near that place.”

  The guy checked Corso for traces of irony and came up empty.

  “When you get her back home, leave the lines loose,” Corso said. “We’ve got some big tide shifts coming up here pretty soon.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Corso looked around, then drew a deep breath. “Let’s go,” he said.

  7

  “I thought Arizona was supposed to be hot,” Melanie groused as she walked in a circle, hugging herself and stamping her feet to keep warm. The wind was everywhere. Seemed like whichever way you turned it was in your face. Melanie raised the collar of her coat and pulled her head in like a turtle. On the roof of the satellite truck a pair of technicians engaged in the never-ending task of tuning and fine-tuning the dishes.

  “Not this high and not this time of year. Minute the sun goes down so does the temperature,” one of them said. “Around here’s got some of the biggest daytime to nightime temperature differences in the country.”

  “What’re you, the weatherman?” his partner wanted to know. Melanie gazed out over the barren landscape. Banks of portable lights had been brought in to light the perimeter, but the prison itself lay dark and silent. In the distance, the San Cristobel Mountains stood sentinel against the night sky, their jagged peaks offering the proceedings little more than a crooked grin. Another gust of wind swirled the desert dust, making Melanie’s lips feel chapped and eyes feel heavy and full of grit.

  “I’ll be in my trailer,” Melanie announced to the deepening No Man’s Land night. Her trailer was actually a forty-seven-foot mobile satellite unit designed to Melanie’s specifications. Her agent had made it part of the last contract negotiation. As Melanie left the comfort of the studio less and less these days, they’d included the motor home merely so as to have something to jettison when negotiations got serious. Turned out, the network had given them everything they’d asked for . . . including the motor home. In the past five years, she’d used it less than a dozen times. Tonight, however, she was glad to feel the warm glow of heat on her cheeks as she climbed inside and closed the door. She rubbed her hands together as she made her way to the refrigerator and opened the door. The usual. A fresh carton of half-andhalf for her coffee, lots of bottled water and not much else. She grabbed a bottle of water and walked over to th
e dinette, where she sat down in one of the deep, upholstered chairs flanking the table. She blew on her hands before lifting the phone from the cradle. Memory Dial 1. Home. She listened through several clicks, then through half a dozen rings before her own voice instructed her how to leave a message. She followed the recorded instructions. Wasn’t until the beep sounded that she realized she had no idea what she was going to say. “Brian . . . er . . . it’s me . . . I just wanted to . . . Anyway I’m here. Hope you had a good day. You can get me on my cell. Okay . . . see ya.”

  She sat back in the chair and took a deep breath. She couldn’t remember anytime in the past thirteen years when she and Brian had left so much unsaid. When so many words had hung in the air at one time, so many confessions, admissions and epithets left to fester on the vine like overripe fruit. Her stomach felt like it had a hole in it. Her breath tasted of metal.

  Brian had been gone by the time she set her bag by the door and returned to the back of the house to tell him she was leaving. She’d just begun to ponder the significance of his absence when the cab blew its horn from out front. She’d snapped off the TV on her way out. On the way to LAX she’d tried Brian’s cell, but got nothing but voice mail.

  She was halfway through the bottle of water when a knock sounded on the door.

  “Come in,” Melanie said.

  Martin Wells poked his head in the door, then mounted the steps and came inside. “Fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “What’s in fifteen minutes?”

  “They shoot another hostage in fifteen minutes.”

  “I thought we were meeting with the prison people.”

  “They’ve got problems.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “National Guard problems.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the fact that very nearly every combat-trained member of their National Guard is somewhere in the Middle East. They’ve still got a bunch of cooks and drivers and clerks here stateside, but that’s about it.”

  “What are they going to do?”

  “They’ve been trying to borrow soldiers from Nevada, but the governor of Nevada doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to send his soldiers into anything where the opposition is as armed to the teeth as this.”

  “Are we set up and ready?”

  Martin shook his head. “We’re all sharing a CNN feed. Right now that’s as close as we can get.”

  Melanie swallowed a mouthful of water. “Nobody’s gonna tune in to see what they already saw on the news, Marty. We need something of our own.”

  “I got my people working on the Driver angle. He’s the one shooting the hostages. Seems to be the leader of this thing. We’re working on a full profile.”

  “So is everybody else. What else?”

  “Rumor has it they’ve got tape of the moment when this Timothy Driver guy took over the prison’s control module, which is like the macher of this whole prison. We’re working on maybe getting a copy.”

  Martin liked to throw in occasional Yiddish words. Melanie figured it made him somehow feel more ethnic. Whatever.

  “Working?”

  “We’re pushing on both ends. Freedom of Information Act on the front and we’ve got somebody who might be willing to cooperate on the back side.”

  “This somebody gonna come through?”

  “Too early to tell.” He made a conspiratorial face. “Source’s got big-time money problems. We could be manna.”

  “Any idea what this Driver guy wanted with Frank Corso?”

  “Nothing other than the obvious fact that Corso wrote a book about him.”

  Martin ran a hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair.

  “You remember when we had him on the show . . . what was that . . . five, six years ago?”

  “Women don’t forget men who look like Frank Corso.”

  Something in her tone caught his attention.

  “Everything okay?” he inquired.

  “I’m fine,” Melanie replied. “Only thing could be better was if we had something the networks didn’t . . . some angle of our own.”

  “At home?” Martin pressed. “Everything okay with you and Brian?”

  Melanie rose to her feet. “You spend as much time finding us an angle as you seem to want to spend inquiring about my private life and we’ll be back on top of the ratings in a heartbeat.”

  Martin held up a hand of surrender, then brought it down and checked his watch. “ ’Bout eight minutes,” he said. “State cop said Corso is on the way. Didn’t think he’d make it in time to save this one though.”

  “It’s like the Roman circus,” Melanie said. “Kind of makes you wonder if we’re as civilized as we like to think we are.”

  “Civilized my ass,” Martin said. “We’re not civilized. We just created this little Disneyland of a world where we’re on top of the food chain. We’ve taken the law of fang and claw and arranged it so the killing takes place offstage. All nice and neat so’s we don’t have to look at it. Dead cows come shrink-wrapped. Headless chickens were happy free-range fowl. Salmon are caught with hooks instead of being scooped up in nasty old nets. It’s all a bunch of bullshit designed to make us feel better about ourselves.”

  Melanie walked forward, opened the cabinet beneath the built-in TV and pulled out a bottle of Dalwhinnie scotch. She read Martin’s expression. “I’m just a little chilled,” she said, pouring herself three fingers. “Trying to get a little blood flowing.”

  Martin Wells kept his face as blank as blank and as open as concrete. He pushed open the door and stepped out onto the first riser. “Come on. Bring it with you,” he said.

  “You’ll excuse me if I skip the Christians and the lions today.”

  “Come on,” Martin coaxed.

  Melanie crossed to the refrigerator, found a handful of ice cubes and dropped them into her drink. “Close the door,” she said. “You’re letting all the heat out.”

  Martin gave a look and a shrug and disappeared into the night. She waited a long moment, making sure he was gone, then brought the glass to her lips and took a substantial pull of the scotch, shuddering slightly as the liquor wound its way down her throat and came to rest as a warm puddle in her innards. The effect was sufficiently pleasant to encourage her to repeat the process.

  With her free hand, Melanie, slid back the door in front of the TV and grabbed the remote control, before returning to her seat. She sat for a few moments sipping the scotch and looking out the window into the darkness. She aimed the remote at the TV, then changed her mind, pulling her cell phone from her jacket pocket instead, pushing the button for memory one . . . home . . . the phone rang eight times before her own voice came on the line and invited the caller to leave a message. She sighed and dropped the phone back into her pocket. Picked up the remote and turned on the TV. Moved up to forty-four, CNN. She took another sip of her drink and turned up the volume. Dateline . . . Musket, Arizona.

  8

  The helicopter pilot checked his watch. “You can usually see it by now. They must have turned the lights out.”

  “What time is it?” Corso asked.

  “Four minutes to midnight.”

  Corso craned his neck and looked upward, out through the plastic roof at the glimmering carpet of stars overhead. The pilot, whose monogrammed jacked proclaimed him to be Arnie, pointed with his free hand. “Bingo,” he said. “That’s gotta be it right there.”

  Corso squinted out into the darkness. All he could make out was a dull line of oddly spaced lights in the distance. “You sure?”

  The pilot checked his GPS. “Gotta be,” he said after a second.

  “Ain’t nothin’ else out here but jackrabbits and that damn prison.”

  Corso had his nose pressed to the plastic when, as if on cue, an area a mile in front of the helicopter lit up like a college football game. From two thousand feet above the desert floor, the banks of lights surrounding the prison yard formed a blazing bracelet of light surrounding the unadorned build
ings, lighting the rolls of razor wire spiraling atop the chain-link fences like No Man’s Land curls of steel smoke . . . making it possible to see the tiny figure in the blue shirt, walking a crooked line out onto the concrete.

  “They’re gonna shoot another one,” the pilot announced.

  “Just like on the TV this morning. Goddamn.”

  “Put it down in the yard,” Corso said.

  “What?”

  “Put it down in the yard.”

  Arnie made a rude noise with his lips. “You gotta be crazy.”

  “In between the guard and the building.”

  The guy waved him off. “No friggin’ way. Maybe you got suicide in mind, buddy, but I got me a wife and three boys I plan on seein’ again.” He cut the air with his rigid hand. “I done my tour in ’Nam. That’s the last chance anybody’s ever gonna get to shoot up my ass.”

  “Put her down just long enough for me to hop out. Maybe we can save a life here.”

  Arnie rocked his head back and forth. “Ain’t gonna happen.”

  “That’s somebody’s boy down there, Arnie. Just as easily could be one of yours.” Arnie kept shaking his head. Corso kept talking. “That was your boy . . . what would you want us to do? Just sort of fly around up here until he was dead? That what you’d be expecting of us?”

  “Aw, don’t start that shit with me,” Arnie whined. “You’re startin’ to sound like my old woman with all that guilt trip crap you’re throwing around.”

  Corso kept his eyes on the ground, watching as the blue-clad figure walked slowly across the pavement, then stopped. “Come on, Arnie. Hurry up. Set this damn thing on the ground.”