by G. M. Ford
45
“Get your TV camera out,” Driver ordered.
Marty pulled his head from between his knees. “Me? You mean . . .”
“The camera . . . now,” Driver growled.
When Marty failed to move, Driver started his way. Melanie reached out and grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t hurt him,” she pleaded.
“He’s lucky I need him,” Driver said, pulling his arm from her grasp.
Marty was on his feet now and shuffling forward. Driver watched impatiently as Marty pulled the steel case from the closet and set it on the table.
“Open it,” Driver said.
Marty fumbled with the snaps a bit but managed it. Driver pushed him aside, peered down into the case. He pulled out the satellite phone and handed it to Marty.
“You call that network of yours. You tell them we need a half hour of airtime.” He looked up at the clock over the cockpit. “In an hour. Thirty minutes. Two to two-thirty.”
Marty started to babble. “They can’t just . . .”
Driver brought the gun butt crashing down on Marty’s toes, sending Marty to the floor clutching his foot, his throat emitting a high, keening sound as he rolled around on his hip. Driver bent at the waist. “You listen to me, little man,” he intoned. “You tell those friends of yours . . . we don’t get our airtime, I’m going to off ONE OF YOU out there. On national television . . . big as life, for everybody to see.” He kicked Marty in the side. “I get through with the first one and it’s going to be the other. You hear me?”
Marty nodded and got to his knees. He dialed the phone and waited three rings for an answer. “Let me have Ellen Huls,” he said. “Martin Wells,” he said a question later. He quickly lost patience. “Phyllis,” he croaked. “It’s Marty. It’s an emergency. Just put her on the goddamn phone.”
A frozen moment later. “Ellen, it’s Marty.” His face was etched with exhaustion. His hand shook. “No . . . no . . . no,” he said. “Just listen to me.” He listened again. “I know, Ellen . . . he’s standing right here, Ellen.” Marty massaged his throat. “Yes . . . he’s got Melanie and me. Right. Just listen. He says he’s going to kill one of us if we don’t put together a half hour of network airtime.” He listened again. When he spoke again, his voice took on a pleading tone. “Call whoever you need to call, Ellen. He’s not kidding. This is the same guy . . . yes . . . yes . . . Meza Azul, that’s right.”
Driver grabbed the phone away from Marty. “Listen to me, whoever you are. I want a call back on this line within thirty minutes guaranteeing me thirty minutes of airtime. If I don’t get it, I’m going to start doing things to these people you won’t believe. Do you hear me?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He hung up, dropped the phone on the desk and lifted Marty from the floor by the hair.
“Get the satellite ready,” he said.
Marty limped noticeably as he scrambled to obey. He opened the dish’s control panel and pulled the lever down. The whine of hydraulics sounded as the dish began to move into place. He watched her pocket her phone. “Something?” Rosen asked. She shrugged and made a pained face. “Nothing to help us here,” she said sadly.
“So?”
“Local authorities in some place called Drake, Nevada, found a body in a ditch this morning. Prints came up Harry Delano Gibbs.”
“They’re sure?”
“We had the file flagged, so the minute they got the match, they called.”
“What else?”
“Guess what they found in Doris Green’s house.”
“Tell me.”
“Passports. Birth certificates, California driver’s licenses, social security cards. Two or three each for Doris and Driver.” She held up a finger. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “They’re all real. Run them through the system and they come up valid. Where do you get something like that?”
“I’d bet it’s the same person set up the mail drop for her.”
“Mr. Corso knows some interesting people.”
Rosen nodded. “How much time have we got?” he asked. Westerman checked her watch. “About six minutes.”
Rosen leaned back against the Lincoln’s front fender and sighed. If the L.A. office was right and the local ABC affiliate had indeed been given an ultimatum by Driver himself . . . he closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
“What’s the holdup?” Westerman wanted to know. “All they’ve got to do is tell him he can have his half hour.”
“The network took a lot of flack lately. Once for the footage in the Meza Azul control module and again for running the segment on the mother last night,” Rosen said. “The FCC just hit them with a hundred-thousand-dollar fine for each of their twenty-three affiliates. That’s a lot of money. They’re gun-shy about what might happen this time. They’re not doing anything without approval from the top.”
Westerman’s mouth hung open in disbelief. “This guy’s going to kill somebody, and these people are waiting for approval.”
“From the people who brought you Janet Jackson’s breast.”
“We’ve got to do something.”
Rosen shook his head in disgust. “We’re doing everything we can do, Agent Westerman. We’ve got forty agents poking into every driveway on this damn mountain and forty Forest Service rangers working the woods. If they’re out there, we’ll find them.”
She felt her phone buzz, found it and brought it to her ear. Special Agent Timmons on the line. “We’ve got the motor home,”
he said.
“Where?”
He told her. Rosen had started back for the car. “They found it,” stopped him cold.
“Tell me,” he said.
She did. He listened in silence. “Get me the closest four units. Have them meet us at the highway entry point.”
“Any help from the locals or the Forest Service?”
“No, we’ll handle this one on our own.”
46
Special Agent Rosen squatted in the bushes. Overhead, a jigsaw puzzle of blue and white rolled east like a fast train. An inconsistent wind tousled the treetops. Seventy yards away, on the far side of the clearing, a big brown-and-white motor home sat silent and dark. Special Agent Randy Timmons leaned close and whispered in his ear. “Property belongs to a couple name of Kelly. Dick and Donna Kelly. Neighbors say they’ve got plans to build a retirement house up here next summer. Say they spent most of this summer clearing the lot and getting utilities installed. Went back home to Orange County about two weeks ago. Neighbors say the Kellys stay at a motel when they come up here. Say they don’t own a motor home.”
Rosen thanked him for the info and made a gathering motion with his arms, pulling everyone in as close as he could get them. Counting Westerman and himself, there were ten of them. “Alright . . . debriefing Mr. Corso tells us that Driver is armed with a Mossberg twelve-gauge pump shotgun and a semiautomatic carbine . . . some kind of newer version of an M16 . . . an M16 A2 we think.” He looked around the tight circle of agents, making sure he had everybody’s attention. “I don’t have to tell any of you No Man’s Land what a formidable array of firepower that is . . . especially if it’s being wielded by someone of Driver’s training and background.”
He made eye contact again. “We’re outgunned here. All things being equal what we probably need is an entry team. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of waiting two hours for their arrival. He’s got at least two hostages in there.”
Rosen pointed. “Timmerman . . .” He pointed again. “Santos . . . I want you and your partners to take up positions opposite the front and back doors of the vehicle.” He pointed downhill. “Take a big loop through the woods. Stay out of sight. Come up the far side of the hill and take the closest position you can safely occupy.” He wagged a finger. “Hard cover. Remember, with the weapons he’s got, he can kill you right through anything rotten or flimsy. Good cover.” All four of men nodded solemnly. He pointed again. “Adams . . . you and your partner ge
t as close as you can to the rear of the vehicle. Buttros . . . you and Speck come along with Westerman and me.”
He looked around again. “Everybody got it?” They said they did.
“Be careful,” Rosen admonished to their rapidly retreating backs.
He took a deep breath, picked the electronic bullhorn from the ground and started edging downhill. His loafers were never intended for leaf-covered hillsides. He had to use his free hand to grasp bushes and rocks so he wouldn’t go skiing down the hill on nothing but his shoes. Westerman, Buttros and Speck were similarly disadvantaged. It was slow going. One careful step at a time. Halfway across, Rosen stationed Buttros and Speck at the front of the vehicle, while he and Westerman continued on to a place about halfway between the groups.
Westerman used a handheld radio to check with the other teams. She nodded. “Everybody’s ready,” she pronounced. Rosen pulled out his service piece. A Colt 9mm automatic. Eight in the clip. One in the chamber. Westerman followed suit. All the curtains were closed, leaving nothing to the eye except occasional patches of ceiling. Just as Rosen was wondering if perhaps the RV wasn’t empty, voices suddenly could be heard inside. The vehicle rocked slightly on its springs. A light came on in the ceiling. The hair on Rosen’s arms began to tingle. Rosen brought the bullhorn to his lips and pulled the trigger.
“This is the FBI,” he said. “Put your hands on your heads and exit the vehicle.” A pause. “This is the FBI. Put your hands on your heads and exit the vehicle.” Nothing. Rosen got on the radio. Ordered the pair of agents assigned to the rear of the vehicle to approach. It took about a minute for the agents to be pressed up against the rear of the vehicle, peering around the sides in anticipation of what was going to happen next. The bullhorn. “This is the FBI. Put your . . .” And the door began to open. “Easy . . .” Rosen said into the radio. “Easy.”
He picked up the bullhorn again. “Put your hands on your heads and exit the vehicle,” he squawked. They came out. Two of them. A man and a woman. The hostages. Melanie Harris and Martin Wells. Driver must have released them “Get down. Get down on the ground. Keep your hands on your heads and get down on the ground.” Slowly they followed orders.
Westerman squinted to see if she could recognize Melanie Harris, but the wind kept swirling the woman’s hair around her face, making it impossible.
Rosen spoke softly the radio, then suddenly everyone was in view. Two teams covered the doors. Another two rushed the prisoners, handcuffing them and pulling them to their feet before rushing them off to the safety of the trees.
“No Driver,” Westerman said.
“He’s not coming out alive,” Rosen said.
“What now?”
“Let’s make sure he’s not going anywhere,” he said. He picked up the radio. “Shoot out the tires,” he said. The volley began slowly, then picked up speed. Took maybe forty rounds before all four tires had been rendered flat.
The radio beeped. Rosen pushed the RECEIVE button. “Yeah.”
Timmons on the other end. “Guy here . . . the one . . . you know the hostage guy.”
“Yeah.”
“Says his name is Richard S. Kelly and he doesn’t like us shootin’ up his new RV one bit.”
“Not one damn bit,” Rosen heard the voice from the background.
47
Wasn’t like he’d been a tree hugger to begin with. No . . . U.S. Forest Service Ranger Bob Temple hadn’t begun his career in a spasm of idealism, and a decade in the woods had merely proved what he’d always suspected. That money ruled the world and almost nobody gave a shit about resources, natural or otherwise. On the positive side, his years in the forest had given him a glimpse of the interconnectedness of all things. A sense of how changes in the smallest of things had unforeseen repercussions up and down a system so complicated and diverse as to make human beings nothing more than spectators. As far as he was concerned, notions that humans were eventually going to ruin the planet were ridiculous. Push came to shove, Mother Earth would pass us like a peach pit. He was certain of it. And so it was with the smallest break in his usual routine that Bob Temple set an invisible web of connections into motion . . . connections he could not possibly have predicted.
Two hours earlier, over breakfast, Bob had lingered longer than was his usual habit. He’d been talking politics with Walt Moller. One of his favorite pastimes. Wasn’t a soul there but the two of them, and Bob had just plain lost track. By the time he No Man’s Land looked at his watch, he was forty minutes behind schedule and had swallowed probably three times as much coffee as was his custom. And now, as might have been predicted, he needed to take a piss, so he pulled off the highway at Blue Creek, wheeled into the little area behind the Road Department’s gravel piles, got out of the truck, unzipped himself and with a heartfelt exclamation of, “Aaaaaah,” had begun to relieve himself of the extra coffee. That’s when he saw the tire tracks. Big wide tracks running away from him, back toward the section of old highway concealed by summer bushes and fall weeds. Temple finished his business and followed along on foot, walking in the wake of whatever had made the tracks. Recent rains had soaked a small depression in the ground. The tread patterns on the tires were visible in the muddy earth. Scattered leaves and the tips of oak branches littered the ground. Bob Temple looked up into the trees above, where the lowest-hanging branches had been snapped off. Whatever had made the tracks was at least nine feet tall. Some kind of RV, he figured. If someone had merely busted the lock or clipped the cable, he probably would have gotten on with his business for the day. Going where and when they felt like it was pretty much par for the course as far as the locals were concerned. Way they saw it, since they lived here, it belonged to them. This, however, didn’t smell of locals. The locals weren’t sneaky about it. They just pulled up, attached their bumper winch to whatever was in the way and yarded the whole thing right out of the ground. Then sooner or later, Bob would see the damage, call a crew in to fix it, and the cycle would begin anew. The fact that whoever this was had bothered to hide their intrusion by putting it back together with a piece of coat hanger wire piqued his interest. So it was with a dual sense of interest and curiosity that Bob Temple dropped the thick, rusty chain on the ground and drove his U.S. Forest Service truck over onto the cracked pavement of the old Angels Mountain Road, as the gold miners used to call it a hundred fifty years before.
Whoever it was hadn’t been up there long. For the first half mile, as he crossed a little clearing, the tire tracks were still visible on the bare pavement. Once the road started up, however, the overhanging trees had covered the pavement with a thick blanket of leaves, obscuring any evidence of recent passing. Temple dropped the automatic transmission into second gear as the grade began to get steeper. The locals called this section “Lookout Road,” after the Angels Mountain Fire Lookout Station, a seasonal fire lookout manned only in the months of June through September. Lookout Road was only one of three sections of the old highway periodically maintained by the Forest Service and the only section where a big RV would be able to turn around. He slowed as he neared the top. The trees began to thin, then disappeared altogether as he entered the clear-cut at the very top of the rise. Built up high, on stilts, the Angel’s Mountain Lookout stood sentinel over the entire eastern sweep of the Sierras. All the way out over Mount Whitney and the Mojave Desert beyond. Back around the north side of the tower sat a big brown-and-white motor home with a white satellite dish pointing at the heavens. Bob Temple gave the truck a little gas and eased it forward. He rolled down the driver’s side window as he crept along. High above the tower a single turkey buzzard floated on the airways, using its giant wings to veer this way and that, rising one second falling the next as it rode the chaotic breezes. He listened for music, a sure sign that whoever these idiots were, they’d come to party and get down. The afternoon air was silent. The turkey buzzard was spiraling upward on the thermals as Bob Temple brought the truck to a stop behind the RV and got out. As a precaution, he pulle
d the seat forward and pulled out his gun and holster. When he’d first started on the job, armed rangers would have been unthinkable, but the world was a meaner place these days and park rangers had become just another authority figure in a uniform. He strapped the gun to his waist and walked around to the passenger side of the RV.
The road fell off on all sides. Prior to the fire tower, the top of this ridge had been a scenic pullout on the old highway . . . a place where the tourists could take a break from the nail-biting ride and take a few pictures. For a while, they’d even had a few of those silver binoculars that required a quarter to operate, but the locals kept shooting them to pieces, eventually convincing the service to remove them altogether.
Bob Temple rose on tiptoes and knocked on the passengerside window. The road sloped away from window, making it difficult for Temple to see inside. He knocked again, then walked around the front of the vehicle.
And there she was sitting behind the wheel. Looked like she had her eyes scrunched closed. He moved slowly, sidestepping his way across the front of the vehicle. As he approached the driver’s side window, her eyes popped open.
The terror in her gaze sent his hand traveling toward his revolver. Unfortunately, the move was about five seconds too late. Before his hand reached its mark, a smashing blow to his face sent him reeling sideways; he felt his nose explode, felt teeth fall onto his tongue, felt the rush of blood to his head, then before his roaring senses could regroup, another blow struck him, this one to the side of his head, dropped him to his knees, coughing blood. The third blow nearly broke his neck.
He fell over onto the ground in the fetal position and did not move.
Kenny looked over the pair of concrete dividers blocking the Joe Road entrance to old Route 180 and got back in the truck. “Ain’t nobody moved those things lately. Not since last winter anyway.”
He slammed the door and threw the truck into reverse. “We can skip the one by the Tolbert house and the other one by the café.”