by Kirk Russell
Now the officer looked over and saw Beatty with the phone to his ear. It rang once, twice, and on the third ring Grale picked up.
“Sir, get off that phone immediately.”
The holster opened. The gun started to slide out.
“A cop just rousted me. He’s got a—”
“Drop the phone! Drop it!”
Beatty dropped his cell and saw it go dark. The officer backed him away from it at gunpoint.
“I called an FBI agent named Paul Grale.”
“Do not talk. Do not speak!”
Beatty looked out across the wide valley at the eastern sky lightening with the coming dawn. The officer picked up the phone and returned to his radio mic. He asked for backup and was told it was on the way. With his gun still out but not pointing, he asked “What are you doing up here?”
“Sleeping.”
“I asked why you were here.”
“I don’t have a place to go to.”
“Are you the drone pilot who was questioned about the attacks?”
“Yes.”
“When I tell you to, I want you to turn around and face your truck. Spread your legs and arms and put your hands on the roof of the vehicle and do not move. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
When Beatty started to turn toward the truck, the officer yelled, “Freeze! Do not move until I tell you to move! Turn now. Slowly! Put your hands on the roof of your vehicle.”
Beatty exaggerated the slowness, and the officer handcuffed him and led him to the back of his patrol car. Fifteen minutes later, two Nevada Highway Patrol cars arrived, and though he could turn his head and look at them, he didn’t. He watched the sunrise and heard them talking, though not their words. Then his door opened and the officer who’d handcuffed him told him to get out. They removed his handcuffs and watched him put his sleeping bag in the pickup cab and rearrange the gear in the back.
“Can I have my phone back?”
“You can pick it up at the station.”
Beatty started his engine and backed up slowly. When he was ready to drive away, one of the two officers who’d arrived after he was handcuffed rapped on his passenger window. Beatty lowered it.
The officer said, “I want you to know I did three tours in Iraq. If it was up to me you wouldn’t be walking around. Now, get out of here.”
Beatty kept his foot on the brake. He left the window down. The engine idled.
“I just told you to leave.”
“I’m leaving. You did three tours. Okay, and I flew drones for the US Air Force for eight years, and I lost pilot friends in the bombing, and whatever you’ve heard about me is wrong.”
“Is that right?”
“You don’t believe me? Okay, I’m out of here, but just so we’re clear. Fuck you!”
Beatty took his foot off the brake and rolled. He expected lights and sirens and to be handcuffed again and hauled in, but nothing happened. In his rearview mirror he saw the three officers watching as he rounded the curve. But where should he go?
He reached under his seat for another of the burner phones and powered it up. He punched in Grale’s number but didn’t have a signal. He dropped the phone on the seat and made the long drop back down to the highway and went north on 95. Grale had said don’t run. He remembered Laura’s skin against his and her saying, “Do not forget who you are.”
He swept past Creech Air Force Base and Indian Wells. A senator from Utah had told Fox News that Beatty should be held until there was more information. Jailed until there was evidence. Maybe that’s what the cop back up there in Red Rock was thinking. Was this even America anymore?
When he’d joined the United States Air Force, it was easily the proudest moment of his life. He loved flying drones and learned everything he could about remote split operations. He learned on the MQ-1 Predator and flew the RQ-1, which was about the size of a small plane. Press the button and it went and stayed up, cruising near dry mountains in Afghanistan for twenty-four hours, reading everything through the ball, one camera for day, one for night. It read through smoke and dust with synthetic aperture radar, and targeted with lasers, and dropped Hellfire missiles. He made good friends among the pilots in the flight trailers and everyone kept track of their kills.
But they didn’t talk about the collateral dead very often. There were fewer civilian deaths using drones, so it was better than before. But there were times when you watched a house long enough, and you knew who lived there. You saw the kids run around and play. He had started to envy the old-school pilots with the bomb bays and drive-by bombings. They never saw what they did.
Up the highway he doubled back and took the road to the airfield, crossed through the wash, and climbed into the narrowing valley. He tried the gate combination and when it still worked, he drove through, relocked it, and climbed the rock hills. He was sure the security dudes would come charging, but no one did and he continued down and took the old prospector track, breaking right toward the Ghost Mountains.
He had plenty of water. He had food, beer, and a bottle of whiskey. Maybe this was a good place to hole up and think for a few days. If the security dudes intercepted him, he’d turn around and find another place to disappear. No one stopped him, and from this distance it didn’t look like anything was happening at the airfield. Even if they saw him, who was going to follow him up this forgotten road? Soon he disappeared into the dry mountains.
He switched into four-wheel drive as the road climbed, and he recognized the big band of red iron ore across the gray rock as the road rose along a rock face. Another quarter mile up brought him to a cave-like overhang of rock. He parked and checked it out. It looked really good, then not that great, pretty small and hard to back into. But it had shade and a view of the airfield in the valley below. He spent ten minutes backing the truck into the cave, during which the left front tire came dangerously close to the edge.
Now he was under a rock roof where no sunlight would reflect off the truck and give him away. He had food and water. He could deal with the heat, and no state troopers would ever be up this mountain. He doubted anyone ever came out here. He got out one of the little coolers with food and sat on a flat rock.
He opened the cooler and checked the sandwiches and beer. Both were still cool, not cold anymore, but still pretty good. He pulled out one of the beers and, even though it was morning, twisted off the top and drank and thought about the cop rousting him and what the other cop said. He thought about Laura and how he lost her, the hard things he’d said to her way back then. He never wanted to hurt anyone that way ever again, and in some way couldn’t even understand her reaching out to him the way she had.
He checked his phone, saw he had a signal and called Grale. When it rolled to voice mail, he left a message that he was where he could watch the airfield. A drone was on the runway. With binoculars he saw two people standing nearby. He couldn’t make out their faces, but one stood like the Saudi who’d trained on fighter jets. The first question the Saudi had asked him was what he flew before drones. What he’d flown was a PlayStation 4, but he didn’t tell the Saudi pilot that. Instead, he’d ignored the question.
He shifted the binoculars again and watched a guy who must be the new flight instructor turn and look this way.
“Weird that,” Beatty said. “But you’re right on, buddy, I’m out here and I’m watching you.”
His phone rang, and when he saw it was Grale he put the binos down and reached for the phone. But something stopped him. He let it ring. He let it go to voice mail. No one knows where you are, he thought. For now, leave it that way.
43
Beatty left me a disjointed message I couldn’t deal with yet. I looked over at the San Diego County deputy who’d ride into Cargoland with me, a young guy who looked at home on a mountain bike, so at least that part was right.
“Ready to roll?” I asked.
“Whenever you are.”
We bounced down the washboarded dirt desert road, playing th
e part of two tourists. It was an awkward cover, half-assed, really. Within minutes, we were in the village, if you could call it that. More like a postindustrial-age apocalyptic vision. The bar made from a cut-open steel cargo container was still here, though it looked bigger. I saw a bartender and rode toward him, and per plan, the deputy continued forward into the rows of rusting, sun-faded, blue and red containers. Stacked two and three high, they formed a village like the drunken dream of an ex-maritime officer run aground. The deputy would scout out the village, then circle back and meet me at the bar.
The bar was changed, different than what I remembered. The steel rings welded to the wall that had held the girls’ chains were gone. Nothing left there but the weld scars. A large segment from the side of a steel container provided shade now for a handful of rusted tables and chairs that sat out front. The bar top, also made of steel and fabricated from scraps welded together, was longer and had a row of metal bar stools. I saw a lot of new steelwork and welds. Maybe an alcoholic welder had traded work for whiskey.
I leaned my bike against a rusted post as Ace Marks, the bartender, tried to place me. It didn’t take him long, and it was bad luck to get made so fast, but I’d known it was a possibility.
Marks was a big guy with prison muscles and still lifting, from the look of him. He wore sideburns from another century and a T-shirt that read Bastard Bar. He had the same tattoos but no new ones. He looked at my biking shorts and cleated shoes and closer at my face as the helmet came off.
“We’re not open yet,” he said.
“I’m here to talk to you, Ace.”
“I know you are, but I haven’t broken any laws since I last saw you. I don’t do drugs and I don’t trade them. I don’t drink. I don’t even have a girlfriend, though you look cute in your shorts.”
“Back at you—love those Civil War sideburns. I thought you went home.”
That seemed to reach him. His voice was slower when he spoke again.
“I did, I went home for a while, for a couple of years, but things had changed and it’s just too fucking cold in Minnesota.”
“You were complaining about the heat here.”
“Well, I didn’t know anybody at home anymore. They’ve all moved or gone back to prison. Can’t get a straight job once you’ve got the record.”
“Well, good to see you again. I’m not here to bother you. I’m looking for a guy.”
I reached around to the back middle pocket of my biking shirt, then started to unfold Nora’s sketch but stopped when Marks preempted me, saying, “Don’t bother, I don’t recognize him.”
“I haven’t showed him to you yet.”
“People come and go around here,” Marks said, but was focused on the helicopter floating above pale desert mountains to the southwest. “That helicopter with you?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether we can do this another way.”
“The drug fucks stick people in here every now and then, but I don’t listen to the talk, and so far I’ve avoided the money they push in my face. I’m living clean.”
“I wouldn’t be here over drugs.”
“Whatever you’re here for is bad news. That’s all I know.”
I let that be, but then because I’m always curious about people, said, “I can understand you not wanting to go back home, but I’m surprised you’re here.”
“I lost some weight and the heat doesn’t bother me the same way anymore. You want to chat me up with that thing flying around up there? Who is it you’re looking for?”
“Someone who might be hiding here. Does Coffina still own this bar?”
“This bar and about half of everything here. He only did about two years of his sentence and must have gotten to the money. I don’t know what he’s thinking. The first one of those dudes who gets out of prison will kill him.”
I had checked on all of them before coming here. The other three guys got thirty-year sentences, so Coffina didn’t have to worry for a while.
“Where is Coffina?”
“Don’t know.”
“He needs to be here if this is going to go well. This is what I suggest. Call him. Tell him it’s not about drugs or anybody other than one guy who has probably only been here four to six weeks. Tell him we’ll have to search container to container if he can’t help. You know how that can go. Things get found, people get arrested, there’s a lot of shouting and sirens. It would be a lot better for Coffina if he talked to me first.”
“Describe this guy you’re looking for.”
He said that in a command voice that annoyed me. I unfolded the sketch and slid it across the bar.
“He’s in his midthirties. He’ll be friendly but will mind his own business and won’t want anything from anybody. Maybe he’ll have a beer here occasionally, but he won’t talk about himself, and if he does, he won’t brag in any way. If he rented a place here, it’s a quiet spot on the outskirts where no one will bother him. He will have paid cash up front. He’d want air conditioning. He’s not American, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that.” I gave it a beat and added, “You might pick up a little accent.”
Marks flipped the sketch back like he was tossing down a bar napkin.
“I heard about him, a serial killer we’re all supposed to be afraid of. One of the Diego cops was pushing the story yesterday. A bartender friend told me about it, but fuck, everyone knows it’s drugs.”
“That’s the cover story we’re using in town,” I said. “This guy is actually a lot worse than that. You don’t want him here. I mean that. You really don’t, and it’s not about drugs.”
I let Marks think about that before adding, “He could be a poet or a painter this time. You won’t have seen him much and he’s not selling you anything and doesn’t want anything from you. If he bought a beer, he probably left a good tip and didn’t sit at the bar. He doesn’t bother anyone’s girlfriend. He’s not really here. He’s a ghost moving among you.”
“How tall would he be?”
“About my height, maybe a little taller but with a little bit of a stoop.”
“He’s got a beard?”
“Look at the fucking drawing, okay?”
Marks smoothed the edges of the sketch and surprised me. “That artist who lives here drew this,” he said. “I know her. I like her.”
“Nora?”
“Yeah.”
“She did draw it.”
I glanced at the tats that wrapped his biceps, then looked at his face.
“I know your boss Coffina doesn’t like to lose tenants and you don’t want to fuck up with him by leading us to his doorstep, but this time the alternative is far worse. We’re not leaving here without searching everywhere here. I really wouldn’t fuck with me too much longer.”
“You’ve got warrants?”
“Everything we need.”
“If I help you and he’s a major with a Baja cartel, they might cross for me.”
“Last time I say this—we’re not here about drugs.”
“So what are you going to do if you find drugs?”
“If we’re forced to search every unit and drugs are found, people will get arrested. People in jail can’t pay rent. Coffina will want to keep the rent coming. He’ll cooperate. Call him. Quit stalling, we’re running out of time.”
The San Diego officer, Pentane, came around the corner and rode up. He smiled at Marks and showed me a text: Ready to go.
I nodded then showed the text to Marks.
“They need an answer from us, Ace.”
“One man, this guy in the picture, that’s all?”
“Just him.”
“Who is he?”
“If we get him, I’ll tell you.”
Marks held my gaze.
“He was here. I don’t know if he is still, and I don’t know where he lives. He comes from that direction and drives a ’98 Honda Civic.”
“Ever see a white Mercedes in here?”
�
��No.”
“Tell Coffina he gets thirty seconds.”
“Why are you always so fired up? Chill. I’ll call him right now.”
44
Marks knocked hard on a steel door and the sound reverberated. Nothing happened for thirty seconds, then footsteps thudded toward us and the door swung open. The red-bearded, thick-shouldered Coffina looked like he’d walked off the set of Game of Thrones. He said, “Shit, not you again.”
“Good to see you too. Look at this and tell me where this guy lives.”
Coffina stared at the sketch as he debated how to avoid dealing with us. He squinted at the helicopter shadowing the mountains to the west, so Marks must have brought him up to speed.
“I rent to him but he’s not here right now, and I don’t know where he is. He left yesterday or the day before.”
“What does he drive?”
“An old beat-to-shit gray Honda Civic.”
“Okay, so knowing you, you’ve got the plates and his driver’s license number.”
“I’ve got the plates. They’re California. His license I don’t have. He said it got stolen. He was getting a new one. I never followed up because he paid for everything ahead.”
“How far ahead?”
“Three months and in cash.”
“Show us where he lives.”
I checked it out with binoculars before approaching. The house, if you could call it that, sat in desert scrub on the western outskirts of Cargoland and was built from two shipping cargo containers welded together. A dirt track crossed a dry gully and climbed through sand to it. Two clouded Plexiglas windows faced this way. The only door in was locked with a hardened link chain looped through the steel door and wall and held tight with a heavy padlock. Behind the makeshift house was a dusty area with a propane tank and a wood-framed storage building on concrete pads.
“Door hinges are welded on,” Coffina said, like a realtor noting a selling point, which out here translated to “no one is going to kick that door in and steal your shit while you’re gone.”
Solar panels were on the roof. So was an air-conditioning unit. There was Internet and cell coverage. Of course there was. After all, this was the States.