He cradles it lovingly, a mother and her new born, and the ergonomically crafted weapon sits in his grasp as snugly as if it was always supposed to have been there. Noone can't believe he'd never thought of getting hold of guns before. Put together with his capacity for killing, the Micro Tavor pushes him towards godhood.
Gena taps a finger on the gun's stock. 'You ever fired anything like this before, son?'
He shakes his head.
'Uh huh, nothing like this.' He doesn't let Gena know he's never so much as handled a gun before. Gena takes the weapon from Noone and he has to suppress a momentary desire to grab it back.
Gena explains the technicalities of the gun for twenty minutes, breaking off now and again to change the TV channel or take one of the kids to the bathroom. By the end of it Noone feels comfortable. He wants to load the Mic now and feel the juddering roar as it spits.
He wants to shoot Gena and the brats just to feel what it's like.
He won't, for so many reasons, but the temptation to load and fire is there. Noone doesn't think he can wait until Saturday.
Gena puts the gun back in its box and taps a finger on a second box.
'There are three clips in here, darlin'. More than enough to get the job done.' Gena flicks a glance at Noone. They're straying into territory that neither of them wants to occupy, the reason Noone wants the gun. Gena hurries towards the third box. He lifts the lid.
'Glock 22 RTF2. Also nine millimetre. This one's fully legal.'
Noone picks up the Glock.
It's beautiful too but can't be compared to the Mic. Gena runs through the basics with Noone and their business is complete. No money changes hands; Mickey's taken care of all that beforehand. Cash money only makes everything dirtier.
'Let me go get my vehicle,' says Noone. 'I parked it round the corner until . . . well, until I was sure of how this'd work out.'
Gena nods. 'Sure. Don't blame you, hun.' Hector's pulling at her hip and Gena rubs his head fondly. 'Good kid,' she says to Noone but he just smiles and heads out.
He gets the jeep and backs it onto Gena's short drive, the trunk almost at the mouth of the carport shade. He opens the Jeep back gate and puts the boxes inside in a steel lock-up box. He doesn't shake hands or say anything else to Gena before he leaves and she looks comfortable with that. Hector's face is impassive.
Noone pulls off, leaving Gena and the kid watching him drive away through the rainbow sticker on the window.
Thirty-Two
'I'm in the wrong business.'
It's the first time Frank's seen Ben Noone's house at Pacific Palisades. Warren and Koop had been handling that side of things.
It's late afternoon. The two of them are parked in a car lot on the beachside of the Pacific Highway. Instead of peering at the ocean Frank's got the binoculars up to his eyes and is looking at a glass and steel house high on the hillside a little north of Santa Monica. The morning fog is long gone and the temperature has been climbing steadily.
'Not bad.'
Frank puts the binoculars down.
Both men look up at the house. Two large glass boxes set at a ninety degree angle to each other with an infinity pool between them. There's a cantilevered steel bridge connecting the two parts of the building, one part of which juts out into space. In front, the grounds drop down the steep slope of the canyon. Lush landscaping hugs a curving driveway that opens out into an expanse of concrete on which stands a car Frank can't identify but imagines would cost more than his house. Next to it – so says Koop who has seen the place from close up – is the space where Noone's jeep usually sits and next to that an older vehicle that looks too basic to be at the property.
A Santa Monica police cruiser rolls into the lot and drives past Frank and Koop's car. Frank resists the instinct to nod at the patrolman.
Koop unfolds a shiny tourist map and makes a show of looking at it.
The cruiser comes back after doing a circuit of the lot and, with a last glance in their direction, drifts back onto the highway and south towards Venice.
They step out and lean against the guard rail in front of a bike track which runs along the ocean front between the highway and the water.
'You still OK with this?' Frank asks Koop.
'No,' says Koop. 'But I'm still going to do it.'
Frank's about to say something else when there's movement. Frank lifts the binoculars.
'Someone's moving.'
A Hispanic woman walks out of Noone's house and to the back of the white car. She loads a box of what might be cleaning products into the trunk, gets in and reverses out of the driveway.
Frank and Koop get back into the rental and wait. A minute later, the cleaner's white car passes them in the rear-view mirror.
'Now or never,' says Frank. He pulls the car out into traffic and swings across the intersection before taking the turn into the street behind Noone's place. Koop's already done a recce. Noone's property backs onto a couple of undeveloped lots and a sliver of the Topanga State Park reaching down towards the coast like a green finger. They park in a quiet corner of a cul-de-sac and move into the trees.
Three minutes later they're at the edge of Noone's property.
Frank hands Koop one of the ski masks they'd bought at an outlet mall on the way over.
'I feel stupid,' says Koop, but he rolls it down over his face. Noone may have security cameras. Frank has a small bag of tools they got at Home Depot. It's not perfect but they'll work. Frank doesn't want to think about what might happen if Noone comes back home but the way things are going they don't have much choice.
They hop over the small wire fence and jog down the embankment to the house. There's a hot tub set on an escarpment overlooking the Pacific. Behind it is a small door that looks like a good entry point. Frank takes out a short-handled sledge hammer.
'Ready?' he asks.
Koop gives the thumbs up and Frank splinters the lock. They both tense, waiting for an alarm that doesn't come. When there's nothing, neither man relaxes. Most alarms in a place like this would be silent, linked to a central operations room.
Frank's banking on Noone not having this arrangement. It's risky, but after Warren's death they're both in the mood. Besides, if Noone does have the place linked to security, there's nothing he or Koop can do about it.
Inside they find themselves in a short corridor of polished concrete. A translucent glass door at the end opens into the main body of the house. It's an open plan, industrial-scale building with almost 360 degrees of glass.
'Not the best place to stay hidden,' says Koop.
'The cocky fucker probably doesn't think he needs to,' replies Frank. He thinks of what Salt told him; this man does not believe you can beat him. He's had everything he's wanted all his life – except, perhaps, his father's attention. There's no reason he wouldn't have a glass house; from his perspective, he's normal.
Frank takes the upper level, Koop down.
Upstairs the rooms are divided more privately but it's still a very open arrangement. In the main bedroom Frank opens the walk-in wardrobe. It's like a department store both in the amount of clothes and in the precise arrangement. Everything looks brand-new. Expensive. But there's nothing of interest.
He moves to the bedside cabinet and finds a similar story. Neat, nothing overly personal. In the bathroom there are cupboards stocked with enough toiletries to open a drugstore. Even the toothbrush looks box fresh. Frank spends another ten minutes searching without finding anything. His stomach is knotted with tension.
Downstairs Koop has a similar story. Fridge well-stocked. Everything stored exactly where it is supposed to be. The only sign of any personality is a small pinboard in the kitchen. On it are the usual banal detritus of a householder. Two power bills. A delivery order menu from an upmarket deli. Five or six business cards, most of them for tradesmen: electrician, plumber, pool. One has a black and white photo of a young woman. Frank lifts it from the pin holding it and flips it over. Angie Santamaria. Angie lists herself as a m
odel/actor.
'That's who we saw him with a few days ago,' says Koop. 'At the cafe.'
Frank writes down Angie's number and replaces it on the pinboard. It's a pathetic haul from the daring raid. After the buildup, both of them feel slightly foolish.
'There's nothing,' Frank says. 'Unless you have any bright ideas?'
'No,' says Koop. 'Let's go. I don't know about you,' he says, pointing to the ski mask, 'but I feel a complete tit in this thing.'
They reach the car unobserved, removing their ski masks under cover of the trees.
'What now, boss?' says Koop. He's driving.
Frank leans an arm on the sill of the passenger window and watches the Pacific Ocean slide past. The landscape, used in so many TV shows and movies, is curiously familiar. It's an odd feeling.
He shakes his head. 'No idea.' He turns his gaze back to the road.
Their whole investigation feels dead. Frank's just about had it. He turns the radio on. The DJ's in the middle of talking about the guest list for tomorrow's presidential fundraiser. Air Force One arrives at LAX inside the hour and the traffic is expected to be horrible. Frank switches it off and they sit in silence for a while.
'What about the girl on the card?' says Koop. 'We should talk to her.'
Frank shrugs. 'Why not?'
It's not like they've got anything else to do.
Thirty-Three
After getting the guns from the old woman in Corona, Noone heads up the Riverside Freeway until he intersects with the connecting roads onto I-10 going east.
The traffic's heavy here but moving steady enough. Noone passes the turn for Twentynine Palms and curves south until he enters Joshua Tree National Park around eleven. The green National Parks sign, like many in the area, is studded with a matrix of rusty bullet holes and dents. Guns and high spirits. Noone had heard ads for survivalist outfitters on the drive over – Off the Grid, for all your survival needs! – and seen posters for candidates running for election on anti-gun control tickets.
'Fucking right,' Noone had smiled, the guns snug in the lockbox of the Jeep. In this landscape it's practically compulsory to be packing. He'd always sneered at rednecks but now, a gun-owner himself, he feels he may have misjudged.
He drives for ten minutes into the park and stops at the station to buy a Parks pass from the ranger station. The pass will enable him to continue across to Twentynine Palms almost an hour north. About halfway through, just past somewhere called Fried Liver Wash, Noone swings the Jeep east and bumps along a sand road to a dead end far from the main route. He parks and steps out of the car.
Foggy in LA when he left, the summer heat out here is unreal.
There is a complete absence of sound. No wind today, and too far from anything to hear or, more importantly, be heard. After taking the assault weapon from the lockbox, Noone stands for a moment contemplating the panorama. The landscape in the high desert is composed of vicious spinifex, twisted, tormented Joshua trees and Flintstone-like rock formations looking like they've been drawn in place.
The big sky and wide open space make him feel small. An uncomfortable experience but a familiar one. I could stop all this right here, he thinks. Pack up and work it out some other way, a voice whispers. Forget all this killing and complexity and rage. You can't unkill those already dead, and you can't become someone you're not, but you're not a monster, Ben, are you? Not like Terry.
If he hadn't been holding the new gun he might have got right back in the car and gone back to LA.
But the gun is there.
Its solid black presence, its fat weight in his hands, is so real, so viscerally satisfying, that it's enough to see him through the moments of doubt.
He remembers seeing a movie about Mark Chapman, the dumb fat fuckwit who killed Lennon. Chapman had doubts too; set out a couple of times to do the deed and even decided that he wasn't going to pull the trigger. Got John to sign and walked away, happy to be the spectator not the performer.
Then he just did it. Told the cops later that he just decided he really did want to know where the ducks went in winter and the time was now; global fame in the couple of seconds it took to unload the .38. Five shots and he's better known than Salinger. On equal billing with Lennon, for a time.
In Norway, Anders Breivik had moments of doubt.
Just like Noone, Breivik hadn't thought of himself as a monster. He had a mission which transcended his own humanity and overcame his revulsion at the way that task had to be achieved.
And like Breivik, Noone's not ready to die. Not before he's explained everything; delivered the monologue, played Hamlet.
The quiet of the landscape, the geological weight, gives Noone confidence. He doesn't want to do what he's planning to do. It's something he must do.
It's inevitable.
He puts the assault weapon in his backpack and sets off on foot. After ten minutes he arrives at a fold in the landscape. This will do.
Energised, Noone takes out the gun and slides the clip in as Gena had told him. He makes sure the suppressor is snug, thumbs the automatic switch and takes aim at a dry log resting on a sandbank.
Motherfucker!
The Micro Tavor comes alive, there's no other way to describe it. It just erupts. Heavy bullets pour out like liquid and the sand in front of Noone explodes. He can feel the impact through the soles of his boots.
Noone takes his finger off the trigger, frightened and exhilarated at the same time. He resets himself, this time taking more care, and rips the log in half with a short burst.
It's better than sex.
He spends five more minutes handling the weapon before reluctantly heading back to the Jeep. Although confident he's not being observed out here, you never know. He doesn't want to risk a stray hiker making a report about some nut with an assault weapon.
Having fired the Micro Tavor for the first time, Noone now wants to put his plan into action more than he's ever wanted to do anything in his life. He can almost hear the soundtrack playing behind him. The doubts of twenty minutes ago seem as substantial as this morning's fog. Thursday can't come soon enough.
But before then there's business to take care of in Twentynine Palms.
Thirty-Four
The town, straggling along the highway, sits between the edge of Joshua Tree National Park on one side and the massive, largely unseen, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center on the other.
It's high desert country here. If you climb the ridges of the rolling scrub to the south and look across the Yucca and Morongo valleys you can see Palm Springs and the snow-capped ridge line of Mount San Jacinto, and, on a clear day, the Salton Sea and the Colorado Desert beyond.
Noone gets there from Joshua Tree around one.
He gets a drive-through McDonald's and pulls the Jeep up on a dusty lot across the way to eat alongside a detailed mural depicting the fall of Baghdad painted on the back wall of a Japanese massage joint. The mural's done in the style more often seen in Soviet propaganda except now these soldiers are Marines and wear the stars and stripes. The spindly palms that rise above the stucco facade and the dusty desert hills lend the painting a disorienting geographical shift. Only the fast-food joints across the intersection spoil the illusion. Twentynine Palms is a Marine town.
Noone eats a burger and drains a jumbo Diet Coke. He balls the wrappers and throws them in the back before checking the GPS and heading north up the Adobe Road. He follows the directions until he gets to the Bagdad Highway.
'Spelt the goddam American way too,' murmurs Noone as he passes the sign. 'Fucken A.'
He'll have to be careful out here; the road runs close to the base and intruders aren't welcome. Especially intruders with assault weapons stowed in the trunk.
Five minutes down the highway he turns off down a scrub road so sand-strewn that it is difficult to differentiate between asphalt and desert. There are few buildings out here and those that are are scattered far and wide. Some trailers, a few low-roofed adobe shacks. The base itself, fro
m what Noone can gather, is a shadowy presence, its exact location sketchy on Google Maps and the GPS. There are frequent live-fire operations and training in the hills and scrub around the Marine Combat Center.
But it's not the base that Noone's looking for.
Approximately eight miles along the highway, Noone drives past a small white house sprouting a giant satellite dish on the roof. The dish is so big Noone is sure it must be supported by some sort of bracing underneath to prevent it plunging through the roof. Noone parks the Jeep at the side of the road about half a mile away. It's a risk leaving the vehicle here so close to the base, especially with the guns, but he hopes what he needs to do won't take long. He props the hood open to make it look like a breakdown.
Noone puts on a baseball cap and starts walking in a wide arc around to the rear of the white house. By the time he gets close he's sweating heavily. He's taken the long way round, trying to keep out of sight as much as possible. Although the landscape is mostly flat, there are undulations in the terrain that enable him to get within thirty yards relatively confident that no one has observed him.
This will be the tricky bit.
Noone kneels in the sand and watches the house but, after five hot minutes, has seen no movement. It's the second time he's been along this road in recent weeks and neither time has he seen anyone on the Bagdad Highway. A helicopter clockworks its way towards the Combat Center to Noone's left, too far away to worry about.
Close up against the house, tucked into the shade of a corrugated lean-to, is a dark blue mini-van. Noone stays kneeling for another minute until he feels he's going to boil away like spit on a rock. It's almost one-thirty in the afternoon now and this isn't an environment you want to be hanging around in.
Noone stands and starts walking purposefully towards the building. He moves slowly; if he's challenged he's going to say his car broke down. Sprinting would be hard to explain and Noone has no doubt whoever is inside the house is armed. Guns are mandatory in this part of the world.
Down Among the Dead Men Page 34