Walker waited for his face to stop burning, but on it went. He kept an impassive expression in place, heavy like a welder's mask. And then, slowly, gradually, he started to believe the mask.
"Who are you?" The boy stood in the threshold, tugging the sliding door so it knocked against him at intervals. Fair hair, light blue eyes, pug nose-the kid looked like a JCPenney model.
Walker studied him, then cleared his throat. "I'm-"
"An old friend," Pierce said, appearing behind Bronson and ushering him inside, large hands encompassing the narrow shoulders. Walker stood and caught the airborne keys. The circle tag of the key ring had an address scrawled in black ink. Walker memorized it and left the incriminating tag on the picnic table. Pierce had already vanished into the house, and somewhere one of the kids started banging "Frere Jacques" on a piano.
At Walker's approach, the scruffy dog retreated across the driveway, where it crouched at the neighbor's mailbox, longingly regarding the plunder he'd been forced to abandon. Walker rustled in the curbside bags and dug out a few shirts and one of his father's outmoded court-appearance suits. Even as he drove off, the mutt remained at bay, skinny and trembling.
Chapter 22
The stumps of Marcel Deron's arms waved in circles as he laughed. The left, which flapped like a vestigial wing, terminated midbiceps, the right two inches below the elbow, so its narrow tip squirmed above the joint like a sightless head. The medical ward at the VA Hospital, sectioned by vinyl sheets to accord each bed a four-foot buffer, housed about twenty patients, most of them grizzled survivors of wars well past. Marcel and his buddy, currently being changed by a burly orderly behind a drawn curtain, were the youngest vets Tim and Bear had encountered on the VA grounds by a good two decades. Judging from the black orbs of Marcel's eyes and the drawl of the friend's complaints one bed over, both soldiers had been easing their pain with a steady stream of morphine. The sheets, strung on overhead tracks like massive shower curtains, offered an illusion of privacy, but the various patients' smells and sounds pervaded the ward.
"You think that was a war?" Marcel answered Bear with a snicker. "That was a corporate action. Look at me." Wearing a mock kung fu expression, he arranged his stumps into a martial arts pose, then chuckled. "Half of me's still MIA. And what for? Liberating Fallujah. Is it even liberated? Hey, Mikey? Is Fallujah liberated yet?"
"Fuck if I know," a voice returned from the far side of the partition sheet, picking up the well-worn routine. "But Nafar ain't."
"Nafar? Why you talkin' 'bout Nafar?"
"That's where I left my fucking leg."
Marcel joined Mike's braying laughter, writhing on his sheets. Dirty fingernails, sweat-glazed skin, grown-out hair like an Afro that couldn't get up momentum-it wasn't a stretch for Tim to envision Marcel pushing a shopping cart and mumbling to himself like one of the Vietnam vets camped out on the surrounding blocks.
Tim rephrased the question. "You served with Walker Jameson."
"Yessir. I was enlisted. SAW-gunner Deron." Marcel raised his arm in a salute, though there was no forearm and hand to finish the job. No matter how many times Tim had seen it, the abbreviated movement of a stump was always shocking, always grotesque. Marcel continued, "Saw the world with Walkman." With pride he added, "The Corps's been there longer than anyone else. We were the first boots on the sand, you know. Year and a half I served in Iraq, till I caught a rocket-propelled grenade. Something comes at you like that, it's instinct." The blunt ends of his arms tapped together once, twice, Bill Buckner reliving the passed grounder. Marcel caught himself, mounting a carefree grin and a mouthy follow-up. "Oh, yeah, I stuck around Iraqtown. You got your duty extensions, your stop-loss programs. Six months, 'nuther six months, 'nuther six months. Shit, Rummy keep pluggin' quarters into this motherfucker. Game continued. Game continued. Game continued."
"The phrase 'the left side' mean anything to you? About Walker or anything else?"
Marcel shook his head. "What's a sniper like you doin' Dragnet for anyhow?" Raised voice: "How 'bout that, Mikey? The cops here are Rangers, but we got leathernecks playin' po-lice in Baghdad. Upside-down world. Go fuckin' figure."
"Can you tell me anything about Walker that we might not learn from his SRB?"
"Walkman? Uu-ee. Like they say in the NFL, he had good motor. You could cut off both legs and the boy'd keep on giving. Or one." He flung back the sheet and wormed a bandage-capped knee around, clearly enjoying Bear's discomfort. "He's a dangerous mofo, Walkman. Goju-Ryu karate or some shit. Knew every pressure point on the body, and that's a fact." His right arm shot out, catching Bear above the wrist, the nub jackknifing. Bear dropped his weight quickly, sitting on the floor before twisting his arm free of Marcel's elbow joint. Quickly finding his feet, Bear rubbed the meat of his forearm and scowled, clearly displeased at the prospect of retaliating against a triple amputee.
"Who says you can't teach a crippled-ass dog new tricks?" Marcel said.
"You pull that shit again," Bear said, "I'll nail you to the wall."
"I wish I had my old form back to make it a fair fight," Marcel said, without a hint of animosity. He warmed again to his story. "Walkman would sneak off when we'd put into port, come back bruised with wads of cash stuffed in his pockets. Finally I cornered him. Turns out he was tracking down underground street-fighting circuits. 'Keeping up skills,' he called it. Homeboy kicked ass in Phuket, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi…"
A coldness overtook Tim's stomach. His adversary's credentials-already more impressive than those of anyone Tim had tracked-continued to mount. Seven years younger than Tim, Walker was more fit physically and tactically, and practiced in the next generation of war toys and techniques. Tim pictured himself coming off Afghanistan-cocksure, skills honed from day-in, day-out soldiering-and figured he wouldn't want to meet his former self now in a mano a mano. For the first time in recent memory, he wondered how he'd fare against a fugitive, and he could tell from Bear's restless shifting that his partner felt the same way.
"And that was just extracurricular," Marcel continued. "Walkman killed hajjis by the bagful. Right up until he got the shaft. Dishonorable. Ouch ouch ouch. No pension, no health care, no fine VA benefits. Walkman got nu-thin'. He ain't here to enjoy the gour-met cooking. Orange roughy Sundays. None of it."
"Why'd he get court-martialed?"
"Well, as you may have read in your USA Today, they didn't send us over so well equipped."
A surprisingly smooth baritone issued through the curtain: "Dubya sent in 'Merica's trooops. Said he'd armor us head to booots. Family back home, ain't they the best? Mama done pass the hat for a bulletproof vess."
Mikey's chanting provided accompaniment as Marcel continued. "We rolled out in unarmored Humvees-thinskins. Patrolled in flimsy-ass flak jackets couldn't stop an AK round if someone threw it at you. We didn't like it, but we did it. Like most of us dumb-asses, Walkman thought the war was…What's that term, Mikey?"
The song abruptly stopped. "Boo-shit."
"That's right. And this one LT, Lieutenant Lefferts-I ever tell you about Lieutenant Lefferts, Mikey?"
"'I'm beset by the undisciplined and the foolish,'" quoth Mikey from the privacy of his bed.
"I had the privilege of speaking to Lefferts this afternoon," Tim said.
Marcel's grin widened. "So you know. Silver-spoon Academy family. Well, us enlisted swine, we'd do what we do for a few days, then LT would get it in his head to put his own special touch on our mission plans. He'd read up on base intel, mix in a bit of that classroom magic they taught him at Annapolis, and retrace our patrols, routing us through dead spots or hot spots, wherever the pencil drew. And when you're light on armor, you get tired playing bullet sponge for a legacy ring-knocker. Walkman let him know. Not directly, but he, you know, body-languaged his displeasure. One night Lefferts personalizes our patrol right through an urban ambush, we near get our asses shot off. We scatter, regroup, and limp in some twelve hours later, minus one. We pass LT just inside the base checkpoint
, wearing his pressed garrison fatigues. Walkman don't salute. And LT's like, 'Didn't they teach you to salute in boot camp, Marine?' Still Walkman don't salute. LT get up in his face, saliva and shit flying, says, 'I'm talking to you, Marine.' Walkman still don't move. Not an inch. Starts to walk away. So LT grabs him by the equipment harness, spins him around so hard his helmet falls off, starts finger-pokin' him in the chest."
A dramatic pause. Mikey swept the curtain aside so he could take in Marcel's face.
"With just a single thumb, Walkman strikes him. Once. Like this." The stub of an arm corkscrewed up from the sheets. "Right up under the rib cage. LT went down, was sucking dirt for ten minutes. Shit hisself, even. Paramedics and all."
The SRB's tailored vagueness and Lefferts's defensiveness on the phone were all the clearer now, though Tim doubted that Walker had broken out of prison now to go after a shithead lieutenant. Tim considered the conviction that had landed Walker in TI-stockpiling frag grenades after being fired from a job. Maybe he'd been looking for a cause, and finally, in the prison chow hall, he'd found one. But what?
When Tim refocused, Mikey had again drawn his privacy curtain and Bear had just put another question to Marcel.
"What did we do?" Marcel repeated. "What didn't we do? We were an Advance Force Recon Team. When I was with Walkman, we spent a lot of time in the Anbar province and Sadr City, working in support of infantry operations. A lot of scouting, mountainous navigation, sure. But more night ops." His eyes took on a soulless gleam that Tim recognized immediately as the detachment required for routinized killing, so ingrained it emerged even in recollection. Marcel's voice had gone cold and humorless, and it was clear he wasn't going to stop talking anytime soon. "We broke off into hunter-killer teams. Sometimes we'd parachute in under cover of night to clear a landing zone. Pick off unfriendlies, secure the area for helicopters to unload the main body in the A.M. Sometimes it was urban settings-reconning enemy positions, sniping targets of opportunity. That was a different game. We'd take fixed positions at elevated sites so the rags couldn't determine the base of fire. We could knock 'em down from eighteen hundred yards. Symbolic shots, too, oh, yeah."
Tim, a former sniper with the Rangers who'd neutralized targets on three continents, was intimately familiar with the expression, but Bear asked, "Symbolic shots?"
"Through the spine." Marcel's truncated arm stabbed the air. He wore an unrecognizable smile. "Leave the target alive but in a location where rescue ain't gonna happen. Let his cries work on the opposition for an hour or two. Sometimes we'd go for a more immediate effect, like if we spotted an enemy mortar position. We'd snipe the Head Freds in command simultaneously. Three headshots, three towelheads hit the sand, one echo rolls back from the foothills. Get the cronies scared, get 'em running. Flush 'em onto open ground. Then Walkman would take target practice. No tremor in that trigger finger, I can tell you that." His onyx eyes met Tim's. "You wouldn't believe how good Walkman was unless you saw it. You just wouldn't believe it."
His right arm poked around under the sheets and came up with a clicker for the morphine drip. His nub moved over the button and tensed, and then he settled back on his pillows and closed his eyes. Within seconds his breathing took on a rasp.
As Tim and Bear threaded through the web of curtains to the exit, a dopey rendition of the Marines' Hymn followed them out: "From the halls of Montezu-u-ma to the shores of Tripoli…"
Tim listened for irony in Mikey's robust voice but found he'd momentarily lost his perspective.
Chapter 23
Soiled with a fringe of water stain and an excessive smattering of bird shit, the billboard proclaimed SUNNYSLOPE FAMILY HOMES-OVER 30 % SOLD! A healthy family-Caucasian, shiny teeth-gathered around a nicely set wooden table in a light-suffused kitchen, eagerly waiting for Mom to portion salad from a transparent bowl.
Walker nosed the car around the circular entry below, paved with beiged cinder blocks, and fitted the cylindrical key into the pad mounted on the abandoned guard booth. The mechanical gate topped with anti-climb serrated spikes opened, then rumbled shut behind the Accord. The permanent fence-mock adobe to match the pavers-extended a mere fifteen feet from the guard booth before terminating abruptly, a few blocks still floating in their mortar grips like offset Legos. Left-behind supplies still overloaded their pallets, though sun exposure had baked the lettering off the bags and crates. Picking up where the wall ended and encircling the rest of the complex was a transportable chain-link fence. Rising crookedly from occasional concrete bases, it was topped with three strips of barbed wire. Walker would feel right at home.
As promised, a security truck was parked in the partial shelter between a stack of lowboy Dumpsters and a toolshed. Walker hid the Honda behind the truck, out of view from the gate, shouldered his duffel bag, and climbed out. The stench of sewage intensified-rich, waterlogged, fetid-seeming to emanate from the ground itself.
The development was tucked into the Santa Monicas at the terminus of a quarter-mile private road that intercepted Sepulveda about midway up its tortuous run from Sunset to Mulholland. The stand-alone units, uppity town homes that had outgrown shared walls, remained in various stages of incompletion. A hammer lay on a garage overhang, a trickle of dried rust staining the brief run of shingles below it. A blind hung crooked from a second-floor window. A fluttering tarp stretched across a roofless first story. A shipment of squat palm trees, their bulbous bottoms still wrapped in burlap, sat clustered in a common patch of dirt, leaning sickly in all directions like an old-timer baseball lineup.
Though generic, the houses stayed well spaced as they climbed the slope, their driveway tributaries connecting to a haphazard loop of dirt-blown thoroughfare. The model stood out easily for its finished touches, which imbued the house with artificial coziness. Brushed-nickel numbers on the mailbox. Painted gutters. A valance puffed into view behind fake plantation shutters. Walker crossed the grounds, stepping over a stalled tumbleweed. The place looked like a ghost town from a cheap apocalypse flick.
Pausing outside the house, he kicked in some of the lattice surrounding the porch, then fell to a sniper position and had a quick look at the crawl space. His nose wrinkled against the smell, more pronounced this close to the dirt.
The third key on the ring fit the khaki front door, and Walker stepped inside. A film of sawdust moved as a piece against the draft. He hit the light switch, but nothing happened. A scattering of flyers on the floor broke down unit numbers and prices. North of a mil for a petite house in a gulch filled with emissions. Walker slid his hand along the curve of decorative railing, then stepped down into the sunken family room. Built-in shelves housed what proved to be fake book spines and empty CD cases. The house felt barren, though it was embellished with on-the-nose furnishings-a sectional with a loose-fit twill slipcover, an oversize marble planter housing a dying fern, even a TV in the entertainment built-in that occupied the east wall. Walker dumped his duffel by the stone hearth.
A stingy hall led to the master bedroom decorated preciously in a samurai-sushi-bar motif. A framed photograph of a robe was mounted on the wall. A two-fold shoji screened a teak-stained bureau. Memoirs of a Geisha sat on a bamboo nightstand. The silk duvet cover flipped back to reveal a bare mattress and a raised bed frame on wheels. Save those seven items, the room was empty. Walker worked the north-facing window open. A half mile of chaparral rolled upslope before hitting the shoddy fence line. Near the chain link, fumes curled the air above an offset sewer grate, left bare in the ground beside a few protruding pipes. He turned to the bamboo nightstand, picked up Memoirs. The book slid out from the too-big dust jacket to reveal The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. With a smirk he returned it to its place.
The upstairs featured a den cramped by two rooms for imaginary kids, one done up with pink curtains and a vanity, the other with a race-car bed mismatched with a spaceship comforter. The ceiling hatch in the hall tugged down to disgorge a spring-loaded ladder. Walker took a climb up and crouched in the swe
ltering heat. Ankle deep in pink insulation, he noted the locations of the various vents. Hundreds of flies speckled the wooden beams; he didn't realize they were dead until he shuffled to lean on a four-by-four, brushing a few dryly from their perches.
He returned to the family room and sat on the couch, which slid back a few inches on the hardwood floor. Just another guy coming home from a long day's work.
He removed Tess's weekly planner from the duffel. A strip of photo-booth pictures fluttered out. Tess and Sam. The first had caught them unaware, still facing each other, probably plotting their poses. The others featured the obligatory faces-tongues out, cheeks puffed, crossed eyes. Sam's mouth was stained blue from some candy and his hair stuck up on one side like he hadn't brushed it since waking. He'd set his glasses crooked in the last, and Tess was laughing so hard she looked unattractive, which was a helluva feat. Studying the first pic, Walker flashed on another photo strip, from another decade. He and Tess used to ride the same wavelength that way, consulting on everything. What flavor ice cream to buy. What to name the puppy. How to mug for the camera.
Walker stared at the browning fiddleheads on the fern, then rooted around in the kitchen until he found a coffee mug in the bare cupboard. He filled it at the sink, watered the fern, and sat back down. Opening Tess's planner, he located her final entry. June 1. Seven P.M. Vector Party, The Ivy-Bev Hills.
Walker worked a 7-Eleven bag from the duffel and upended it on the cushion next to him. Five prepaid disposable cell phones fell out. He called information, waited to be connected after hearing the number for Vector in 310, and asked for Human Resources.
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