No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  A long silence ensued. Finally, Driver pushed his way past Corso and walked to the front of the vehicle. “Take ’em,” he said.

  “Take ’em and get the hell out of here.”

  Corso moved quickly. He lifted the cushion and the lid, dug around in the storage area and came up with a couple of blankets.

  He pulled the tape from Melanie’s mouth with a single rip. She squealed and gulped air. Marty wasn’t moving. Corso found a pulse.

  He found the ends and unwound the tape encircling her wrists and ankles. She was shaky getting to her feet but managed it. She pulled the blanket tight around herself and leaned against the wall while Corso wrapped Marty up in a blanket and lifted him from the floor as if he were a child. “Go,” Corso said to Melanie.

  Melanie walked unsteadily up the aisle, never letting her eyes come to rest on Driver as she stepped down out of the vehicle. Corso had to turn sideways to squeeze Marty through the door. He turned back and spoke to Driver. “Good luck,” he offered. Driver closed the door. Melanie slipped and fell.

  “Get up,” Corso said. “I can’t carry both of you.”

  She struggled to her feet and began to shuffle forward. Corso turned back. “Just for the record . . . in case anybody asks me . . . what was it you wanted to say?”

  “What?” Driver appeared dumbfounded.

  “You wanted all this airtime from ABC. What were you going to say?”

  Driver gave a halfhearted shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “I figured I’d make it up as I went along. Maybe . . .” He stopped and seemed to laugh at himself for a moment. “I just wanted to go out with a bang was all. Just wanted people to remember I was here on this planet with the rest of them.”

  “They’ll remember,” Corso said.

  The RV started. The rumble of its engine filled their ears as they moved downhill. Corso heard the RV drop into gear and begin to move. He picked up his pace. Ahead of them, down at the corner, Westerman took a peek. Then Rosen and Marino. Westerman hustled out and threw an arm around Melanie. Martini offered his arms to Marty, but Corso shook him off.

  “He’s coming,” Corso said as he bent low and set Marty on the edge of the road. He stood for a moment and shook out his trembling arms.

  Melanie stood in Westerman’s encircling arms. Corso called her name. Melanie looked at him. “Come on,” he said. “We need to get out of the way.”

  She moved like she was in a trance, crossing the two-lane highway to Corso’s side. She wanted to say something . . . to express her thanks . . . something kind, something loving . . . maybe even something more than that, but her lips couldn’t form words. He body felt like a tree in a windstorm, waving back and forth, at the mercy of forces beyond her control.

  Corso lifted her from her feet and placed her among the rocks on the low side of the road. He slipped over the edge, rolled Marty into his arms, and began to pick his way down the hillside.

  “Come on,” he said over his shoulder to Melanie. She sidestepped along, unwilling to remove either hand from the blanket, following Corso downward to the same crevice he’d occupied earlier. He set Marty carefully on the thick moss, then hurried to her side.

  The sound of an engine pulled his head around. He picked her up, covered the ground quickly and set her down next to Marty.

  “We’ll be okay here,” he told her.

  “Is he coming?” Her eyes overflowed with terror.

  “Not here,” Corso said, smoothing her tangled hair away from her face. The gesture seemed to send her back to the last happy moment she could remember. She brought a hand to Corso’s cheek.

  “The sex was great,” she said with a loopy smile. Corso looked around to see if anyone else had heard. Mercifully, Marty was out of it and the feds were too busy figuring out what to do next to pay any attention to civilians. “We’ll talk about it,” he said. “You know, when things aren’t so . . . you know . . . aren’t so . . .”

  The roar of an engine snapped his head around. The big RV came barreling around the corner, scattering the FBI like so many leaves.

  55

  They got off one shot each. One slug went wide right. Would have hit a passenger right in the face if there’d been one. One lodged somewhere in the body of the vehicle. Driver felt the impact of metal on metal. The third bullet plowed through the windshield and into the tabletop Driver was holding between his legs as he drove. Half again as long as it was wide, the tabletop covered Driver from the chin down, except for his hands and arms, which he needed to steer. The tapered end was down by his feet, allowing him to work the pedals. The piece of laminated three-quarter-inch particle board stopped the slug cold.

  Rosen and Westerman had each gotten off one round, then thrown themselves over the edge to get out of the way. Martini had proved less nimble and had found himself pinned against the bank as the RV came sliding around the bend.

  Corso got to his feet. He scrambled up the hillside. By the time he got to road level, Martini was down in the ditch, rolling around on his shoulder blades, clutching his head and moaning. Rosen was trying to climb the grade in loafers. Westerman was sitting with her back against a boulder, teeth bared, eyes screwed No Man’s Land shut, cradling her right shin with both hands. Fifty yards downhill, the RV was nose to nose with the Lincoln. Driver fed the engine more gas and, between the power of the big RV and the effects of gravity, the Lincoln began to move. More gas meant more speed. The Town Car was sliding sideways at a pretty good clip when it left the roadway and became airborne, turning a lazy somersault in the air and landing on its roof, where it lay tinkling and steaming in the cool afternoon breeze. Driver had negotiated the turn and was speeding along the next straightaway when the beige government-issue Ford Taurus came into view. The car was packed to the rafters with FBI agents. Driver leaned on the horn and fed the big rig more gas. The agent behind the wheel of the Taurus decided to make a run for it, in reverse. Driver applied just enough pressure to keep them weaving ahead of him, but not so as to make them feel any more threatened than necessary. He knew from command experience what came next. The blind curve was just ahead. Driver slowed, allowing them to increase the distance between the vehicles. The Taurus veered wide and disappeared from view. Driver put the gas pedal to the floor. Swung the RV as wide as the road would allow, crimped the wheel hard to the left and put the big rig into a power slide around the bend. Just as he’d figured, they’d tired of running and had decided to fight. Young men were like that. Always spoiling for a fight.

  Driver caught them half-in, half-out of the car. He put the middle of the rig on the double yellow line and ducked his head. In the five seconds before impact, the windshield exploded. Shouts and screams ricocheted among the trees. Half a dozen rounds plowed into the tabletop. The staccato rap of automatic weapons rose above the roar of the engine, then bam, the RV hit the Taurus like a runaway freight, driving the smaller vehicle up onto its side and propelling it over the edge, pinwheeling down into the steep gully below.

  Inside the RV, the air bag had deployed, completely obscuring Driver’s view of the road. Bullets slammed into the metal siding as he threw the tabletop aside, grabbed the air bag in both hands and jerked it completely out of the steering wheel. By the time he threw it aside, the RV had smacked into the inside bank, plowing a deep furrow in the brown dirt and very nearly coming to a halt. Driver steered right and floored it again, forcing himself back onto the highway.

  Steering had become the problem. The right front suspension was seriously out of whack. Driving in a straight line required keeping the steering wheel turned nearly all the way to the left. He was dragging something. The radiator had begun to leak steam.

  Worse yet, Driver had a bullet in his side. He could feel blood leaking down over his belt line onto the side of his pants. He groaned from the effort of steering. His vision strobed a couple of times, going white, then black, then back to normal again. He drove the last couple of miles at a placid pace. Wasn’t like anybody was chasing him down the h
ill. He stopped at the crest of the final grade. Two hundred yards ahead a pair of FBI Fords were nosed up to one another blocking the mouth of the road. He cleared the glass from his shoes, took several deep breaths, then gave it all he had. The fan belt screamed as he started down the hill toward the roadblock.

  The gunfire started almost immediately, so he leaned over to the right, getting the upper part of his torso all the way over to the passenger seat. Bullets slammed into everything. The interior of the RV was disintegrating around him, blown to dust and slivers by a torrent of gunfire.

  The RV rammed through the roadblock, brushing the cars aside like a cow shoos flies. He sat up just in time to steer around the pile of gravel, then quick to the left, sending him out onto the highway, where he skidded to a tire-shredding halt.

  Amazed to be alive, Driver smiled as he popped his seat belt. He groaned as he leaned over and picked the carbine from among the debris covering the floor. He pulled the door handle upward and began to step out onto the ground when he thought he heard somebody singing. He looked up.

  56

  The boys called her Wanda. Wanda Lackanooky. The spring-loaded hula doll superglued to the dashboard was dancing up a storm. Ray Lofton had his little radio wedged between Wanda and the windshield. Jimmy Buffett was “wastin’ away again in Margaritaville” and Ray Lofton was about to join him. He had the old truck going flat out in high gear, running downhill like the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. “But there’s booze in the blender. And soon it will render that frozen concoction that helps me hang on.” Packed full, stuffed with more refuse than she’d probably ever had crammed in her innards before, she was top-heavy and unresponsive. “A lot like my first wife,” he thought to himself with a big smile.

  Lest anything spoil his plans for the afternoon, Ray opted for caution and thus began feathering the brakes well before he went into the steep turn at Blue Creek. He moved her as far out into the top of the turn as he dared, then leaned into it. “Searching for my lost shaker of salt.” He howled the lyrics and turned the wheel. Ray was still warbling at the top of his lungs when his worst nightmare was realized. Midway around the turn, sitting sideways across both lanes, was a huge brown-and-white motor home. No Man’s Land “. . . Nibblin’ on sponge cake . . .” The lyrics died in his throat. He had nowhere to go. In the brief seconds prior to impact he managed to get both feet on the brakes, but the effect was minimal. The rig began to slide sideways.

  He hit the motor home nearly dead on, just about in the middle of the driver’s door. The impact tore the cab section completely off the rig, sending it skidding along the pavement in front of the runaway garbage truck in a hail of sparks and dust. Ray knew what was coming. He saw the guy with the gun, half-in, half-out of the door. Felt his rig start to go. Felt the tons of bottles in the overhead beginning to pull her over. He jacked the wheel hard the other way but to no avail. Gravity and centrifugal force had taken over. With all the grace of a wallowing pig, his rig rolled over onto its side.

  Ray lost his grip on the steering wheel and fell hard to the low side of the cab. Below his right shoulder, Ray could feel the pavement tearing the door to pieces. And then he heard the bottles go. Crashing and clanging, making a sound like a thousand drunken bell ringers as the tons of glass spilled from the truck and shattered on the pavement. And then suddenly the truck stopped skidding and all was silent.

  Only the radio played on. “Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame . . . and I know . . . it’s my own damn fault.”

  57

  The last ambulance down the mountain carried the remains of Bob Temple, or at least those parts they’d been able to find before darkness settled in. Corso overheard the Forest Service supervisor arranging a ten-man search party for seven the next morning, in hopes of finding the rest of their fallen comrade’s remains.

  Before that, the professionals had satisfied themselves with carting off the living. He’d heard an EMT say they’d called in every ambulance and aid car within a hundred-mile radius and had still come up two short. Westerman had broken her lower leg when she’d leapt from the roadway. Martini had taken the RV’s side mirror flush in the face, breaking his jaw and plowing a bloody divot across his forehead. They’d shared an ambulance down the mountain, as had a couple of minimally injured FBI agents who’d gone over the side in the car.

  Melanie and Marty had gone separately. Both of them down to the airport at Caldwell, where an air ambulance was waiting to whisk them back to Los Angeles.

  When the pair of giant tow trucks had successfully lifted Ray’s rig back onto its tires, what was left of Driver could have been No Man’s Land most anything . . . a deer . . . or a dog . . . anything made of meat. Driver and the flattened remains of the cab went down the hill on the back of a flatbed truck, bound for the state crime lab at Glendora, where highly trained personnel could poke and prod him to their heart’s content.

  Rosen had refused to leave until every one of his agents was accounted for and had received appropriate medical treatment. Two shots of Novocaine and eighteen stitches had put his lip back together.

  Corso sat on the running board of Kenny’s truck, which, interestingly enough, had been the only vehicle still in running condition when the smoke had cleared.

  “I don’t see what you so damn glum about Ray Ray. It was like Rambo, man,” Kenny said. “This one badass dude come in here and just fucked everybody up. And you . . .” He shook his friend’s shoulder with his big hand. “. . . you single-handedly put an end to his reign of terror.”

  Ray Lofton looked dubious. “I seen ’em, Kenny. He had some kinda rifle in one hand. He had one foot out the door.” He shook his head. “I ain’t never . . . you know . . . hurt anybody before . . . you know what I mean. I never figured . . .” Ray began to weep. Kenny took him in his arms.

  Rosen strode over to Corso. “I’ve got a car,” he said. “You headed for L.A.?” Corso thought it over. If he hadn’t been so tired, he’d have laughed. A week of madness. A trail of dead bodies from Arizona to California, leaving untold lives changed forever. National news coverage. Murder, mayhem, kidnapping, you name it . . . and somehow it all boiled down to same old question. Whether what everybody said was true. Whether victories were only worth savoring, defeats only worth weathering, if you had somebody to share it with. Whether, like the old song said: in the end the love you get is equal to the love you give. Or whether, as he liked to think, some strand of nobility could only be found in solitude. As if silence were required for serious thought and the only true joys were self-generated. The older he got, the more of a statistical anomaly he became. To him . . . the best moments in life were silent, like sitting alone in the cool grass.

  “So?” Rosen said.

  “Seattle,” he said after a minute’s hesitation. “I’ve got a boat to look after.”

  58

  “It was awful,” Heidi said. “That Harry Gibbs shot my papa right there in our front room. Just walked up to him and shot him in the head.” Tears began to leak from her big blue eyes.

  “He drug me off and raped me over and over. Kept at me day and night, like some kinda animal.” She stopped to collect herself.

  “Kept me locked up. Kept me tied to him all the time. I didn’t have nothin to do with any of them killings. That was all Harry. I’da tried to stop him, he’da killed me for sure.” She pointed at the back of the room, where a phalanx of uniformed police officers stood. “I can’t imagine why the police don’t believe me. Why they think I must have . . .”

  Her recitation was interrupted when the door directly behind her chair opened and a large middle-aged blond woman entered the room. She threw her briefcase onto the table, then leaned over and whispered in Heidi’s ear. Heidi nodded.

  The woman looked the assembled media over with an expression of thinly disguised disgust. “My name is Lisa McClendon,”

  she said. “I have been retained by the Women’s Domestic Violence Commission to act as Ms. Spearbeck’s attorney unt
il her permanent representation has an opportunity to arrive. Ms. G.M. Ford Spearbeck will neither be answering any further questions nor holding future press conferences until such time as Mr. Cochrane arrives from Los Angeles.”

  “He was sooo nice on the phone,” Heidi cooed.

  “That’s all,” McClendon said.

  Heidi waved good-bye.

  About the Author G.M. FORD is the author of four previous, widely praised Frank Corso novels, Fury, Black River, A Blind Eye, and Red Tide, as well as six highly acclaimed mysteries featuring Seattle private investigator Leo Waterman. A former creative writing teacher in western Washington, Ford lives in Seattle and is currently working on his next Frank Corso novel. To receive notice of author events and new books by G.M. Ford, sign up at www.authortracker.com.

  Also by G.M. FordThe Frank Corso Series Fury Black River A Blind Eye Red Tide The Leo Waterman Series Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca?

  Cast in Stone The Bum’s Rush Slow Burn Last Ditch The Deader the Better Credits Jacket design by Gina R. Binkley Jacket photograph by Frits Berends/ Picture Arts/ Nonstock Copyright This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  NO MAN’S LAND. Copyright © 2005 by G.M. Ford. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.