by Jeff Gulvin
‘How come you didn’t get off with your buddies, dude?’ Limpet spoke softly.
Harrison looked him in the eye and spat another stream of juice.
‘They ain’t my buddies.’
‘This is our boxcar.’
‘You figure.’
Limpet had his thumb hooked in the top of his belt. ‘They belong to us, all of them. You can’t just hop any train you please.’
Harrison ignored him and slipped off his battered combat jacket. The day was stifling and the enclosed wooden space accentuated the heat. All he wore underneath was a singlet; and his hair hung loose against his back and the rat tattoo crawled on his arm. The older one, with the long tooth, looked at it and frowned. He exchanged a glance with Limpet, and Harrison recalled Hooch and Carlsbad doing much the same thing. He sat back, perched his hat higher on his head and looked straight at the one with the long tooth. What he saw was recognition in the man’s eye. Harrison unscrewed the lid on his rapidly warming bottle of water and sipped from it, then he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
When he woke up it was cooler, the sun had gone and a freshening breeze was picking out the holes in the boxcar. Harrison yawned and scratched his head, and looked across the car to where the two Southern Blacks had been joined by two more. All four were resting against the far side of the boxcar and all four were watching him. The two newcomers were younger and cold-eyed, and one of them sat on a small wooden crate that had not been there before. Harrison sat up, sipped water and rolled himself a cigarette. All the time they watched him and he could feel the steady rise of the pulse at his temple. His jacket lay behind him now and the sinewy muscle of his arms stood out as he worked at the cigarette.
‘Where you from, man?’ The man with the long canine tooth spoke.
Harrison licked the paper down and stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. ‘Nowhere.’
He lit the cigarette, scraping a match against his boot heel, then he stood up and stared out of the open doorway. The sky was darkening visibly in the east and he frowned. There was a stillness in the air despite the breeze and the movement of the train, and a feeling of anticipation settled in his stomach. A movement next to him and the man with the long tooth stood there. This was his opportunity to push Harrison out if he wanted to. Harrison leaned nonchalantly, smoking, but he was already sprung on the balls of his feet, ready to take the man down with a spin-kick to his knees.
‘Storm blowing in.’ The man pointed east. ‘Could be a tornado.’
Harrison said nothing.
‘You ever see a twister hit ground?’
‘Nope.’
The man screwed up his lip. ‘Ain’t a pretty sight. Not a good time to be on a freight train.’
Harrison looked at him. ‘I figure if the railroad thinks there’s one coming, they’ll pull the train off the tracks.’
‘Yeah. That’s what they usually do.’
‘You been on one when they done that?’
The man nodded. ‘One time near Oklahoma City.’ He looked again at Harrison’s arm. ‘Where’d you get that thing?’
‘Tattoo shop.’
The man looked at him and then he smiled, showing that one tooth. ‘Where?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Just interested. Just being neighbourly.’
Harrison leaned against the wall of the boxcar. ‘You guys—neighbourly? Kiss my ass, brother.’
For a long time they looked at each other.
‘That’s what you heard, huh?’
‘That’s what I heard.’ Harrison flipped away his cigarette and immediately reached for his pouch.
The man looked once more at his arm. ‘You got that in Vietnam, didn’t you?’
‘You know what it is?’
‘I heard about it one time.’ The man showed his tooth again. ‘Not worth a rat’s ass.’
Harrison laughed then and sat down. He took a drink of water, then lifted a paper-wrapped bottle from his pack, some cheap bourbon he had bought last night in Henderson, to keep him warm at night. He took a swig, rescrewed the lid and set it back in his pack. He had worked the Beretta loose from its oil cloth, and he sat now, legs stretched and crossed at the ankle, resting his hand on his pack.
‘Boys,’ the man with the tooth said. ‘Our friend here doesn’t think we’re too neighbourly.’
Harrison felt his heart begin to pump and he let his fingers dance up and down the butt of the Beretta.
‘What d’you figure to that, Limpet?’
Harrison watched Limpet’s eyes. They were shifty, nervous. He figured he could take him out just by looking at him. Limpet laughed, a liquid cackling sound like an old mad woman. The two younger ones just sat and stared at Harrison. The one with the tooth nodded to the open doorway.
‘We’re coming to the yard at Broken Arrow, Mr Rat Tattoo,’ he said. ‘That’s a twister blowing in, right there. The railroad’ll haul the train off the tracks, so we’ll be pitching camp in the freight yard.’
‘So what?’
‘So we’ll have a fire and if you wanna share it, you can.’
They built a fire in a space surrounded by bits of blackened sleepers and stones. Clearly, there had been many before, in the lee of the concrete wall. There were no security guards that Harrison could see and before long they were huddled in their jackets round the flames, as the wind blew in from the south. Harrison had seen a few tornadoes in his time and he thought the Southern Black was wrong. There was a big storm coming and some pretty high winds, but he did not think it would build to a twister.
Some of the men had food and they shared it out and set it on the fire to cook. Harrison sat slightly apart from the others and kept his own counsel. He was suspicious and it showed, which was OK with his cover, because of his recent release from Angola and the fact that he was aware of who these people were. After an hour or so, three more men in black bandanas strode into the yard and now the odds were stacked heavily against him. Seven to one. Even with three weapons, those were serious odds. The man with the long tooth was clearly some kind of leader: the three newcomers acknowledged him with respect and eyed Harrison warily. He was just as wary and sat with his blanket draped, round his shoulders. He brewed a little coffee, sipped it and gnawed at some beef jerky. He thought about Jean Carey and how she had looked in bed last night; how he had lain in that other bed restless to go over there and slip between the sheets alongside her.
‘Hey, bro.’ He looked up and the guy with the long tooth threw a bottle at him.
Harrison caught it deftly in one hand and looked at the label. It was mescal, yellow with the agave worm in the bottom.
‘Go ahead. Sup.’
Harrison looked at him, nodded and lifted the bottle to his lips. The mescal was warm, sweet and sickly against his teeth. He preferred the sharpness of whiskey, and he followed the shot with another of Kessler and then hefted the quart bottle at the man with the long tooth. He caught it one-handed, pulled off the top and drank. Silence descended round the fire; eight men, seven in black bandanas, all with their backs to the wind.
‘What’s your name, partner?’ Limpet spoke to him. He had long dark hair, but no beard, and his face was so pockmarked it looked as though he had never got beyond puberty.
‘Four-String.’
‘Four-String?’
Harrison nodded and brought his banjo round from behind him, tweaked the strings and grinned suddenly. He looked across the fire at the man with the long tooth. ‘I ran into a couple of your guys just the other day,’ he said. ‘Hooch and a red-haired sonofabitch called Carlsbad the fucking Bad.’
They all laughed. ‘Sonofabitch is right,’ Limpet said. ‘You was lucky he never blowed your head off. He’s one mean motherfucker.’
Harrison strummed his banjo. ‘Hooch called me Four-String on account of this banjo only having four instead of five.’ He looked sideways at Limpet then and began to pick at the strings, fingers deft and lightning fast all at once.
‘I can still play the fucker, though, huh?’ He stopped as abruptly as he began, laid aside the banjo and rolled another cigarette.
The man with the long tooth was staring through the flickering flames at him. ‘Was you in Vietnam?’ he asked.
Harrison sucked smoke, looked at the men around him, all of them just a little too young to have been there. ‘Why?’
‘Was you?’
Harrison sat cross-legged. ‘You know somebody who was there, then?’
The man looked at him darkly, irritation in the dead of his eyes. ‘Maybe.’ He gestured with the bottle to Harrison’s arm. ‘I knew somebody one time had a tattoo similar to that one you got right there.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Yep. Where’d you get yours?’
‘Saigon. Where’d he get his?’
‘I don’t know. I never asked him.’
Limpet frowned. ‘You talking about …’
The other man looked sharply at him and Limpet tailed off, recoiling under the gaze.
Harrison pretended to ignore them and stared into the fire. He took another sip from his bottle. For a moment, the man with the long tooth watched him and then he glanced at Limpet, who looked away again. ‘They call me Southern Sidetrack,’ the man said. ‘I run this outfit.’
Harrison sipped again from his whiskey bottle, aware of the gooseflesh on his arms. All he could hear was the crackle of the flames and the wind lifting dust from the concrete walls. The shadows crawled over the broken-down freight cars scattered about the yard, and somewhere off in the desert a coyote howled for its mate. Harrison watched Sidetrack watching him.
Sidetrack’s voice was low in his chest. ‘You just got outta the can, right?’
Harrison didn’t say anything.
‘Being on your own out here ain’t good for you. Man needs friends on the skids. If we ain’t your friends, then nobody is. You understand what I’m saying to you?’
Harrison looked coldly at him then, hating him all at once. ‘I spent ten years on the farm. I survived without getting butt-fucked.’ He paused. ‘You understand what I’m saying to you?’
Limpet roundhoused him, swinging his fist backhanded at Harrison’s head. But Harrison was ready for him, ducked and grabbed the hand and had it twisted up behind his back. He pressed him into the dirt, knee to his back, bowie knife to his throat. His eyes were mad and rolling and he leaned close to Limpet’s face. ‘Don’t ever come at me, asshole. You understand me? Not unless you’re gonna kill me.’
Sidetrack was on his feet. ‘Let him up.’ Two of the others had drawn handguns and were pointing them at Harrison. Harrison stared at them and then he released Limpet, throwing him to one side. He got to his feet.
Sidetrack was staring at him. ‘Nobody fucks with us, man.’
‘That’s what I heard. “Be your best friend, buddy, but when your back’s turned, we’ll kill you.”’ Harrison spat into the fire. ‘I trust nobody in this world, bubba. And nobody fucks with me. I crawled underground in Cu-Chi and learned how to kill gooks one on one, with no fucker to help me. You think I’m scared of a buncha chickenshit assholes who hassle old men on freight trains?’ It spilled out of him like venom, and all at once he was not acting. He was back there in those sweating jungles, with nothing but his wits and six bullets to protect him. Snakes, spiders and punji stake mantraps, and up ahead, a VC ready to blow your brains out.
Sidetrack stared at him and then he raised a hand and indicated for the others to put their weapons away. ‘What you heard about us is right. And I don’t care how mean you are, you can’t ride the skids without my say-so.’ He paused then. ‘So you can put your blade away and sit down. Either that or get outta here. And the next time any guy in a black bandana sees you, you’re dog meat.’
14
SWANN SPOKE TO SPECIAL Branch in the UK from the hotel bedroom telephone, while Cheyenne showered. He asked them for every scrap of information they had on both Fachida Harada and the Japanese Red Army. He then contacted the National Police Agency officer who was resident at the Japanese Embassy and asked him to get the same from his people back in Tokyo. Swann had spoken to him many times before and they had worked together on some of the yakuza activities in London. The policeman said he would work as quickly as he could and pass all the information to the FBI team resident at the US Embassy in Tokyo. That way, they could wire it to Washington over the encrypted lines. When Swann came off the phone, Logan was standing naked in front of the mirror, her jet-black hair glistening with globules of water. Swann looked at her and felt the tightening in his throat.
They made love frantically, passionately; Swann pressing her against the bed—their fingers entwined—holding her under him until they both came, she with a cry in the back of her throat. Then he rested against her, smelling the scent of her skin. He kissed her on the face and neck, working his tongue over the cords of muscle that fell from jaw to clavicle. Eventually, he sat up and reached for a cigarette. ‘Why does he want Shikomoto out three years after he was picked up, Chey?’ he asked.
She sat up and crossed her legs under her like a Native American. The sweat still clung to her body, her nipples points of dark flesh.
Swann sucked on the cigarette and prodded a pillow into shape under his head. ‘Why wait three years?’
‘Maybe that’s how long it took him to set this up, Jack. You said yourself, it was very well planned.’
Swann twisted his mouth down. ‘But what’s the relationship? The JRA’s been dead and buried for years. Harada was back in Japan, a bloody gangster for God’s sake. That’s a far cry from the idealistic world of the terrorist.’
‘Is it?’ Logan cocked her head to one side. ‘From what you said, the JRA were little more than mercenaries, anyway.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ Swann got up, crushed out the cigarette and paused at the bathroom door. ‘How did you get Shikomoto?’
Logan followed him into the bathroom and twisted on the shower taps. ‘We had him fingered after the attack in 1986. The CIA identified him for us initially, and we tracked him from then on. He disappeared for a while, no doubt to the same enclave that Harada was in, and then we lost touch till the CIA got word he was in Osaka, Japan.’
‘What was he doing?’
She shrugged. ‘Not a whole lot from what I can gather. But we had an international warrant out on him and we tipped off the Japanese that we thought he was there. They did some digging and—bingo—we extradited him back here.’
‘Why don’t we talk to him?’ Swann suggested.
Logan sighed. ‘I ran that by Kovalski again this afternoon, honey. Shikomoto isn’t interested in saying anything to anyone.’
They ate dinner downstairs in the restaurant and Logan told Swann about Harrison’s visit to Washington. ‘I think he’ll quit the job after this thing he’s working on now,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen him so thoughtful as the time he came up here. You know, he’d spend hours just sitting out by the reflecting pool, looking at all the names on the Vietnam War Memorial.’
‘The man’s got no family, Chey. Maybe you get to an age when that really matters. I don’t suppose he has anyone in the world to really care about him.’
‘I told you before, Jack. Johnny Buck’s a dinosaur, one of the old school. A serious “kiss my ass” agent. All those guys were married to the job.’
Swann nodded. ‘Maybe he thinks it’s time to get divorced.’
Logan sipped wine. ‘I was really surprised he went UC one more time. Mind you, I can’t think of anyone who’d make a better hobo.’
Swann laughed then. ‘I’m sure he’d take that as a compliment, Cheyenne.’
He looked beyond her then and saw a man smiling at them from the restaurant door.
Logan recognised him instantly: Carl Smylie, the freelance reporter. ‘Hello, Carl. How’s BobCat Reece?’
‘He’s fine, Logan. If a mite pissed off.’ Smylie chuckled and sat down, flicking his lank hair back and pressing his glasses on to
his nose. ‘Helluva situation going down in Austin right now. The people are really pissed about what you’re doing to the Second Amendment.’
Logan laid down her fork. ‘Carl, we’re not doing anything to the Second Amendment and you know it.’
‘Well,’ he said, sitting back. ‘That’s not how they see it.’ He picked up the wine bottle and examined the label. ‘That looks good.’
Swann took it from him. ‘Buy your own.’
‘Ah, English chivalry.’ Smylie rested his elbows on the table. ‘I bet you could teach the Feds a thing about bomb scenes. Did you see how bad they fucked up at Oklahoma?’
Swann did not reply. Smylie turned to Logan again. ‘Mr Reece is one unhappy man, Logan. So is every other patriot leader in the country.’
‘Patriot’s your word, Carl. Not mine.’
‘What would you call them, then. Subversives?’
‘I’d call them cerebrally challenged. They keep seeing black helicopters and Russian tanks, and the US government training Crips and Bloods.’
‘Ah, but there are black helicopters, aren’t there? And there are unmarked trucks and Asian gentlemen in suits abducting US citizens.’ Smylie tucked himself further under their table. ‘You know, you ought not to dismiss this so lightly. Ordinary citizens have seen those guys. The bartender in Hope Heights, the gas station attendant in Austin, to name but two. Have you seen the website activity, Logan? It’s not just recognised patriots that are pissed off, it’s ordinary, regular people. If you guys don’t watch yourselves, you’ll be dealing with something ten times the size of Waco.’
Logan pushed her plate to one side. ‘Are you all done, Carl?’
‘Unless you wanna give me an exclusive on why the government’s targeting the militia.’
‘Nobody’s targeting anybody.’
‘OK. If that’s how you wanna view it.’ He leaned forward again. ‘Tell me about this bomber. You got a warning today, right?’
‘Talk to the press officers, Carl.’
‘They don’t tell me anything, Logan. Come on, this is Carl Smylie, the people’s investigative reporter. I’m the guy that always gets his stuff from the horse’s mouth.’