No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  A sergeant hopped up onto the step and brought a black army-issue forty-five caliber automatic to bear on Paul’s right ear.

  “Out” was all he said.

  Paul left the rig running and popped the handle. As he began to slide across the seat, he heard the passenger side spring open and looked over his shoulder just in time to see another soldier step up into the other side of the cab.

  He kept his hands high in the air as he hopped out onto the tarmac. The barrel of the automatic ground into the soft flesh of his ear, as somebody patted him down hard, came away with his wallet and flipped it open. Paul wanted to speak, to tell them who he was and how he wanted to get the hell out of here, but couldn’t manage to spit it out.

  The gun barrel left Paul’s ear as the sergeant perused his ID and slammed the wallet against Paul’s chest.

  “Take it,” he said.

  Paul brought one hand down and grabbed the wallet, pressed it hard against his breastbone for a moment, then used the other to return it to his pants pocket.

  He watched in silence as a soldier climbed on top of the rear tanker, popped the bolt on the hatch and peered inside. “Full,” he reported to the sergeant, who nodded and motioned him forward. The soldier had just gotten to his feet and was making his way forward across the top of the cars when suddenly . . . out of nowhere . . . all hell broke loose.

  Corso sat with his back against the front of the tank. He worked at keeping his breathing shallow, trying to pull as little air through the filter as possible. He was freezing. Chilled to the bone by the pool of diesel fuel that reached nearly to his armpits, he looked to his left, toward Kehoe, who was covered nearly to his neck and beginning to shiver.

  Wasn’t until he swiveled his head back around that he saw Driver was up and moving, bent at the waist and sliding along with great deliberation. He held a phone in one gloved hand as he slid his feet carefully across the bottom of the truck until he was directly beneath the partially open hatch.

  In slow motion, Driver pushed the phone’s antennae out into the open air. As Driver pushed the first button, the keyboard lit up green. Corso winced and pulled his hands into knots. Before his brain could begin to process the possibilities, however, the earth gave a sudden violent shake, then a second, and a roar before a shout from outside worked its way inside the tank. Driver was on his way back toward Corso and Kehoe when the truck’s engine raced and they began to move. The fuel sloshed back and forth in the tanker, at one point completely covering his clear plastic face panel. Corso closed his eyes and tried not to breathe.

  • • • Paul Lovantano watched the soldier get to his feet and begin to walk along the top of the rear tanker, then suddenly throw his hands out for balance, wobble once and fall headfirst toward the pavement below. Paul’s exhausted mind had just begun to register the fall and the fact that the front hatch was ajar when he experienced what he would later describe as “one of those lightning things.” One of those moments when the air seems to stand still as the nostrils twitch at the acrid odor of cordite, in the seconds before the sky is ripped apart by sudden thunder. In this case, however, it wasn’t thunder. Or lightning or any other natural phenomenon. It was the administration building trying to take off like a rocket ship. Paul watched openmouthed as a bright blue flame lifted the brick building completely from its foundations. Within two seconds, the building had divided in two. One half was sinking in upon itself, falling back toward a roaring pit of fire, no longer blue, but orange and smoky as it poked its dirty fingers higher and higher into the sky. The other half of the building was airborne, blown upward and outward by the force of the blast, tracing fiery fingers across the night sky in all directions.

  The sergeant pushed Paul toward the open door of his rig.

  “Go. Go,” he shouted. “Get that damn thing out of here.”

  15

  They put her on the roof. Up there with a microphone and a Japanese camera operator who had mastered the art of shooting her upper torso while, at the same time, looking up her skirt. The original plan had been to tape a lead-in for the takeover segment. The idea was to get her high enough off the ground so they could shoot out over the top of everybody else, leaving only Melanie and Meza Azul in the frame, creating the illusion that they were the only people on the job.

  As was often the case, what had seemed like a nice low-key, low-tech idea had turned out to be a nightmare. First of all, Melanie’s lead-ins and promos nearly always began with her striding confidently onto the set looking for all the world as if she’d just slammed the cell door on yet another lawbreaker. On the motor home’s roof, however, she was forced to stand absolutely still. Not only was there a danger of inadvertently stepping off the roof and falling the eight or so feet to the ground, but the sheet metal beneath her feet rumbled ominously with even the hint of movement.

  “Let’s try it again,” Marty Wells shouted from below. Melanie adjusted the microphone on her lapel, heaved a sigh G.M. Ford and nodded at Yushi the cameraman, signaling she was ready to start. Before she could begin her recitation, however, a series of loud pops suddenly filled the air. Melanie turned away from the camera in time to see several arcs of light speeding up into the sky. Wasn’t until they reached the apex of their flight and burst into flame that she realized they were flares.

  As the balls of orange light began their slow descent back to earth, Melanie Harris turned back toward the camera and rolled her wrist quickly over itself. The red light on the front of the camera appeared as Yushi began to shoot.

  “This is Melanie Harris for American Manhunt .” She swept an arm across the sky. “We are coming to you tonight from Musket, Arizona. From outside the front gates of the Meza Azul Correctional Facility, where for the past eighteen hours, a prison riot has put the facility in the hands of the inmates and put at risk the lives of more than a hundred and sixty prison personnel who are presently being held hostage by some of the most dangerous criminals in the United States.”

  Melanie sneaked a quick peek down at Marty Wells, who was smiling for all he was worth and bobbing his head up and down like a bobblehead doll. “As we speak, the tense standoff seems to be reaching a new stage as National Guard units prepare to storm the prison.”

  At that moment, another, deeper growl reached her ears. She turned in time to see a Texaco tanker truck come rolling out from behind the building, elbowing around the sharp corner like some kind of segmented beetle. “What we would seem to have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the release of yet another tradesman.” As the prison’s gate began to slide out of the way, she looked into the camera with an intense gaze. “All day long, for reasons known only to themselves, the inmates have been releasing those delivery drivers who were unlucky enough to have been trapped inside when the riot began.”

  She half turned back to the prison yard, where the soldiers had parked an armored vehicle across the mouth of the gate; the Texaco truck was pulling to a halt as the flares found their way back to earth and extinguished themselves.

  “As has been the case all day, authorities are conducting a thorough search of the vehicle, both underneath and up above.” Although Yushi’s upward angle prevented him from taping anything on the ground, Melanie was confident that the ground unit was getting the shots of the driver being dragged from the cab of his truck. “Here comes the driver,” she intoned. “They’re checking him out.” A moment of silence followed. She watched as the driver lowered his hands. “The authorities seem to be satisfied about the driver and are now checking out the truck itself.” Again she assumed the other unit was getting the shots. “As you can see . . . ,” she began.

  Later reviews of both the video-and audiotapes would reveal the basement windows of the Louis Carver Administration Building imploding as the impending gas explosion sought sufficient oxygen for the conflagration to follow. A second later, a great whoosh roared through the surrounding air as an inferno of bright blue flame took the building in its grip and tore it free of its foundations, lifting
the entire structure a full foot in the air before opening its hand and allowing those parts of the building not reduced to flying rubble to settle back into the cauldron of flame. The blast wave took but a second and a half to cross the yard. Next thing Melanie Harris knew, she had been knocked from her feet, thrown facedown on the roof of the motor home by the sheer power of the explosion.

  A heaviness in her feet and ankles told her that the lower third of her body was hanging over the edge of the roof. She scuttled forward like a crab, using her knees and elbows to propel her to safety. The hail of dirt and bricks and glass had just begun when Melanie rose unsteadily to her feet. Across the roof, Yushi sat openmouthed, breathing hard, staring dumbly down at his upturned palms. Half a brick bounced off the roof with a boom. Yushi looked up. A single rivulet of blood had escaped his right nostril, crossed his lips and now dripped from his chin.

  “Roll it,” Melanie shouted his way.

  He dusted his palms on his sides and put his eye to the viewfinder.

  “You’ve seen it for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. A massive explosion has rocked . . . no, rocked can’t be the word . . . has . . . an explosion has totally destroyed . . .” Another substantial piece of debris shook the motor home, obliterating whatever Melanie said next. By the time the camera stopped bouncing up and down, she had regained her poise and had once again become . . . “Melanie Harris broadcasting live from Musket, Arizona, for American Manhunt .” At ground level, the technicians had the camera rolling again.

  “The National Guard is going in,” she chanted. “The first two armored vehicles are moving quickly across the prison yard. And then another pair and another.”

  A wall of soot and flame rose from the carcass of the administration building, nearly obscuring the cellblocks. Sirens approached in the distance. A loudspeaker blared orders but Melanie could not make them out. She watched in stunned silence as the lead pair of Strykers came to a stop about forty yards in front of the cellblocks. Melanie let the pictures speak for themselves, a trick she’d picked up from sports announcers. The lead Strykers began to rake the building with heavy machine-gun fire. Above the roar of the flames and the clatter of the machinery, shouts could be heard from within the cellblocks in the moment before the Strykers’ back hatches began to rise in unison and the soldiers hidden within began to step out onto the ground and sprint toward the building. Melanie had the odd thought that the troop carriers were a lot like the story of the Trojan horse in the way they discharged their hidden cargoes. Next thing she knew, she was talking.

  “The assault has begun in earnest, ladies and gentlemen. The armored vehicles are now deploying their troops. As we speak, the first soldiers have breached one of the lower doors and have entered the prison.” She hesitated. The prison yard was full of double-timing soldiers, trotting along, using the armored vehicles for cover as they hurried their way across the debris-strewn pavement. Melanie felt the blood rising in her cheeks, almost as if she were down there with a rifle She rolled her wrist at Yushi again.

  “This is real-time action from American Manhunt . Melanie Harris coming to you today from Musket, Arizona, where . . .”

  16

  “Damage?” Dallin Asuega sputtered. “What damage? We’re not talking about damage here, for christsakes. We’re talking about the whole damn building being . . .” He searched for a word, then forced himself to say it. “. . . gone. Twenty-three million dollars and it’s gone. Vaporized, then burnt to a cinder.” He threw a hand in the direction of the prison. “Probably another twenty million or so damage to the cellblocks.” He paused, as if overcome by his own words. “And that’s just structurally. God only knows what kind of damage has been incurred to the interior.”

  Asuega threw a quick glance at the TV monitor. CNN must have hired a helicopter. The sound of the rotors could be heard above the voice-over. “ Clop clop clop . . . high above Meza Azul Correctional Facility, where units of the Arizona and Nevada National Guards . . .”

  “Turn that damn thing off,” Asuega demanded.

  Iris Cruz lifted an eyebrow, as if to ask Warden Elias Romero if she should comply with the directive. Like most men, Elias liked to think of himself as inscrutable, but she could read him like a lunch menu. He was in a full sweat. Almost as bad as when No Man’s Land she pressed him hard about dumping his wife. He was trying to figure how all of this was gonna come down on him. Typical. He met her eyes briefly, then an almost imperceptible movement of his head told her to turn off the volume but leave the picture in place.

  From a thousand feet above the prison yard, the picture showed a trio of fire trucks pouring high-pressure cannons of water at the smoldering pile of debris that had once been the Louis Carver Administration Building. The camera panned out, revealing row after row of prisoners lying belly down in the yard, arms handcuffed behind them with those white plastic cinch strips. Stark naked . . . every one of them, all of them with their faces turned to the side and their butts pointing up at the sky. Didn’t matter that she’d turned down the volume. The closedcaption function took over and the words appeared on the screen anyway. It was all Iris Cruz could do not to laugh. Apparently, Mr. Asuega felt differently. His face was turning the color of an eggplant as he watched the flickering images dance across the screen. It was as if they were hypnotized. Standing around with their mouths open reading the little white words as they popped up on the screen. Iris didn’t bother to try reading. The words always came too fast for her anyway. She brought the back of her hand to her mouth to hide her mirth. And then the blue shirts appeared, coming out in twos from the doors, with their hands waving high in the air like children at play. Rows of soldiers, guns at the ready, trotted alongside the blue shirts, prodding them forward, forming a nearly solid line between the blue shirts and the naked prisoners.

  “They rescued the hostages,” said Elias Romero.

  “Thank God,” somebody whispered.

  “How many?” another voice asked.

  “Why have they got their hands up?” Asuega asked. “It makes them look like they’ve done something wrong.” He pointed at the screen, where the camera had panned back far enough to show the blue-clad men and women being lined up against the fence. Hands on the chain link. Feet spread out behind like the cops are always making people do. Asuega was incensed “Look. What are they doing? Why are they lining them up like that?”

  Nobody answered. They stood there in the sun-washed room watching the little box with the picture of the guards coming out of the cellblocks two by two like calves out of a chute, then lined up against the fence. The line seemed to go on forever, until finally the color changed to white.

  “Kitchen crew,” somebody said.

  And then gray. “Maintenance and Sanitation,” Romero offered. His big round face split with a smile. “Looks like they got most of them,” he said hopefully. When he closed his eyes and allowed a silent prayer to find his lips, for a moment Iris liked him again. She got over it as soon as he started to talk “We better start making phone calls,” he said. “We don’t want anybody finding out about their loved ones from the television.”

  A hum of agreement rolled around the room.

  “Iris . . . ,” he started. She was about to cross the room and whisper in his ear. Tell him that they couldn’t be calling anybody at home because they were all out there on the access road, behind the barricades and the soldiers, waiting to find out what had happened to their loved ones; but she never got that far because the door banged open.

  Colonel Williams had a black smudge on one cheek and a bloody knuckle on his left hand. He threw his leather gloves into his helmet and stuffed the helmet under his arm. His thick sandy hair was soaked with sweat. He gave the room a curt nod, sending several drops of sweat cascading from the tip of his nose. He ran a sleeve across his face, caught himself and stopped. “I need personnel files,” he announced. “Anything official with a photograph.”

  Asuega stepped forward. He pointed at the TV. “What’s this?�
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  “That’s my men doing your job,” Williams said. “Case you haven’t noticed, we got your hostages back for you.”

  “How many?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.” He turned his gaze to Elias Romero. “The files?”

  Romero shrugged resignedly. “They were kept in the admin building.” He pointed at the TV set and shrugged again. Williams gave a short bark of a laugh, as if to say “wouldn’t you know it.” Before he could decide what to do next, Asuega stepped right up in his face.

  “Why are our personnel being treated like common criminals?”

  “Because some of them probably are,” the colonel answered.

  “I’ve just rescued twenty more people than supposedly were missing, and I’m betting some of them are convicts. Ergo, nobody’s going anywhere until I’m damned well sure everybody’s who they say they are.”

  “I can get shift commanders down here,” Elias Romero volunteered. “I can get Human Resources to help out.” He nodded Iris’s way. “My assistant, Ms. Cruz, and I know most of the staff. We could—”