Digger 1.0 (19 page)

The white socks. The long shorts. The white
t-shirts. Tattooed tear drops falling from an eye.

They called him “little man”.

They told him he’d been robbed.

They told him they would never desert him.
They would take care of him. He was one of them now.

A week later, he tagged a fire extinguisher
in an apartment complex. Then a fast food joint bathroom. That one
felt “
big time
”. A
Gangbanger. But he wasn’t, not yet.

He never got caught for the tagging.

It was the rock that he’d get caught
for.

The Rosecrans Crew, named after the street
that crossed over the 710 freeway. The initiation was a rock.
Thrown. Thrown at the passing cars. A passing car. You had to break
a windshield. Causing an accident was bonus.

That day, Reyes, whose real given first name
was actually Digiberto, crossed onto the bridge all alone. Southern
California fall. Hot and windy. Other boys, tall dark-eyed, fat,
shaved heads, watched him from the far end of the overpass.

Everyone knew the sound a breaking
windshield made.

Today was the day.

He crossed alone, walking up the concrete
rise, feeling his heart thunder with the excitement of impending
wrong being done. Knowing that when he saw his uncles, both of whom
were doing a stretch in Corcoran, they’d be so proud of him.

One of us, they’d tell him. One of us,
“little man”.

He saw the lady he’d kill from far down the
freeway. Saw the silver Mustang she was riding in as a passenger.
Saw it all as a target moving toward him in very slow motion. As
destiny approaching. Like Alexander must have seen Bucephalus. The
car was in the fast lane but it might as well have been moving
slow. In one motion he turned, raising the rock high over the back
of his head. Like an “
Elle Lay
Dodger,
Homes”. He saw the driver, a man, eyes wide, knowing
they were the target of this becoming boy, speeding at Digiberto
Reyes Navarro—who’d one day be Reyes Badfinger; a One Percenter; a
gangland biker and emissary of the Black Hand. The man saw the kid
and knew there was murder in those deep brown eyes, even if the kid
didn’t know it yet.

Reyes threw with all his might.

Not because white people had taken
California from him—or so he’d been taught by his uncles, La Raza,
the schools, his people. No, not at all. Not because his father had
died of a heart attack on the way to work stuck in traffic, trying
to make a better life than the one he knew all too well in Mexico.
The one Reyes’ Uncles talked so fondly of. Even romanticized.

No, not at all.

He threw the rock as though it were a plea.
A work to be judged and valued. An offering to something
unknown.

Value this, he told the world and hurled it
almost straight down into the speeding car. The windshield. The
lady.

Later, the arresting officers told him she’d
died at the scene. But that was days later. Days after the
horrible-beautiful sonic “SMACK” the rock had made when it smashed
into the windshield of the speeding car. Days after Digiberto, now
Reyes, had fled across the bridge to his waiting “homies”, all of
them running in the fall heat and laughing as they did so. Days
later as the police searched for him in the neighborhoods and later
at the school, rumors abounded that Reyes had even killed a baby in
the car. Or that he’d smashed the lady’s skull in. Or that the car
had flipped end over end and killed several people including a
movie star. Tales and non-truths abounded and made legend.

Days later, as Reyes was led out from the
school by two uniformed cops, one of them told him what had really
happened. The rock had smashed through the windshield and killed
the woman. The driver, her husband, had pulled over, and by the
time he’d gotten off the freeway, his wife was dead.

Later than night, in juvenile holding,
booked for murder, Reyes sat in his cell, still awake, long after
lights out. He stared at the floor and the bars, thinking that he’d
be welcomed in the big prison up north with his uncles, the one
called Corcoran. He would be a hero. He would get his teardrops.
One for every three years.

Something to look forward to.

Something hoped for.

The old janitor with the gangbanger tats
mopping back and forth down the hall stopped with his bucket in
front of the cell. Kneeling down in front of the bars he whispered
to Reyes, in Spanish, to hold out his hand. For a long moment Reyes
did not.

“You want in?” said the Viejo. The old man.
The old gangbanger.

Reyes nodded, his dark eyes like two frozen
pools of oil.

“Then hold out your hand, mijo.”

Reyes did and watched with amazement as he
trembled.

This was real. As real as it gets in this
life.

Working fast with a needle gun and getting
the ink cartridge inserted, the old man, kneeling before the bars,
anointed Reyes Badfinger. Thirty minutes later the tiny Black Hand
was finished. Forever.

“
Now you are one of the Black
Hand and you serve the eighty-eight and their queen,
mijo.”

Without another word the Viejo stood and
continued mopping his way down the wide hall between the cells in
juvenile holding.

Five years later, the boy who’d been
Digiberto, “my strong Digiberto” to his father, was all gone. Reyes
Badfinger walked away from juvenile holding thanks to the efforts
of a non-profit legal aid clinic who felt that youthful offenders
deserved better than life in prison. Even if they’d killed
someone’s wife. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s hopes and dreams.

Six months later he did two more years in
county for assault. A year after that, another six months for car
theft. He stabbed six people in prison and never got caught. When
the world ended he was doing eight years federal for rape and
second degree murder. When the world ended he was in a transport
van in the middle of nowhere Texas.

The world ending was the best thing that
ever happened to Reyes Badfinger. The best thing. Within an hour
he’d murdered both guards, stolen a Hog and headed out with three
guns. Five years later he led the One Percenters and raped,
murdered and tortured whomever he pleased.

Redistribution in action.

Five years later, now, he held the tequila
bottle up to the rising sun, his mouth full and hot and hungry, and
then he smashed it down onto the old road.

Within seconds Hogs were firing up, kicked
to angry life in roars and blue smoke.

The plan was simple, race for the bridge,
hit them hard and take their stuff.

Reyes wanted a new groupie. That was for
sure. A young one. Maybe they would have really young ones.

The Man in Black, the Stranger in Black,
he’d said the ancient word that was a sign. And when the word was
said, given to a member of the Black Hand, then the Black Hand
obeyed.

“Destroy them, Reyes Badfinger, destroy them
all,” the lunatic Man in Black murmured over and over as they’d
finished the homebrew tequila. “Destroy them, mijo.”

And…

“They are survivors… and all survivors must
die.”

Reyes drove the hog hard and Jim Morrison
was still in his ear and the wind was in his hair and yes, this was
indeed the day one could “Break on through to the other side”.

The bridge rose up across the dusty flats
and beyond was the river and the rise into the high valley.

Isn’t it funny that this all started on a
bridge?

Reyes was too far gone, too manic, to see
the circle completing. He just thought, another bridge to be
crossed in life. I just need to break on through…

“…
to the other
side.”

Reyes screamed at the world and wrenched the
throttle wide open.

“We chased our pleasures here…”

A racing biker fell off to his side. Reyes
heard the gunshot above his engine’s roar and rumble. Another shot
and another One Percenter was down.

Reyes screamed again, readying himself for a
fight.

“We chased our pleasure there…”

~~~

Walker heard them from a long way off. Heard
them coming. Heard them racing forward and knew, knew for certain
they were coming for the valley. And knew they were the same ones
that had destroyed his convoy and killed his friends.

The sniper on the hill began to fire but the
crazy bikers, determined, sped on toward the undefended bridge. In
a moment Walker was up and racing into their throng, his 9mm
blazing. The revenge had taken hold of him and he didn’t care what
came next.

Dead bikers were down everywhere. Dust
roostertailed into sudden fronts as the remaining reprobates
circled. The sniper on the hill was still taking shots at targets
of opportunity, occasionally dropping one as blooms of dirt and
dust rose in swirls and clouds.

The slide on the nine locked back and Walker
knew the gun was done forever and that he was probably next. A
Mexican biker came in at him swinging a chain. Walker took a blow
to the face and the biker slithered away, leaning way out from his
bike. As the rider turned, Walker scrambled off into the dust.

He found a fallen machete and hacked at
another biker who came out of the dirt cloud and tried to run him
down. Stepping away and striking downward, Walker buried the
machete in the man’s skull. The motorcycle dragged both men away
and Walker finally let go of the handle and rolled in the dust.

He was unsure of where he was. Where the
river was and where, more importantly, his rifle was. All was
chaos. Bikers were still appearing and disappearing in the dust
like sudden phantoms, their mustaches and leathers covered in
white-yellow chalk. They screamed and laughed even though their
dead numbered as many as the living.

Reyes Badfinger dropped his bike and watched
it slide out and onto the bridge. The front tire had shredded from
a bullet or some unseen trap. Now incoming fire was coming from
more than one direction. Reyes dropped and crawled like a frantic
gecko for the cover of the dust cloud. One of his own bikers ran
over his leg and then took a bullet in the chest, toppling from the
now riderless Hog. A moment later, Reyes was inside the cloud.

Badfinger placed two fingers in his rotten
mouth and whistled. It was the signal to dismount. He needed to
organize. Count the living and the dead. Attack again.

He would kill these people, he promised
himself.

That’s when he saw the gringo. Saw the man
who was not one of his brothers moving through the swirling dust
ahead like an angel of vengeance. Saw the man turn and not see him.
Reyes drew his knife and charged.

He was two steps away from Walker when the
back of his skull erupted and a bullet came out between his eyes,
spraying the gringo’s long leather coat with blood and brain
matter.

Reyes had always wondered what came “after,”
and in the eyes of all the dead, he’d decided long ago the answer
was “nothing”. But now he knew, as consciousness of this broken
world faded and was replaced by something infinitely more horrible.
His sightless eyes stared finally at nothing but the swirling and
settling dust, seeing something unconsidered and truly terrible. He
knew he’d been wrong. So foolishly wrong.

Down in the tunnel, the clock is
ticking.

That’s what they say
, Delores thought
as she and Chuck stopped at the pile of munitions.
The clock is
ticking
. As if there is ever a time when the clock is not
ticking.

“We’re running out of time,” she grunted to
Chuck through clenched teeth. “The clock is ticking.”

Chuck pulled on a headlamp, adjusted it
quickly, flicked on the light, then started handing her things from
the pile. “If he’s locked in some kind of steel grate, we have to
blow him out,” he said. “
We
don
’t have time to pick a lock.”

“Will it kill him?”

“Not if he dives down and we’re really
careful.”

Chuck grabbed a roll of det cord, a small
box of trigger devices, a roll of duct tape, and a “clicker” that
would provide the electrical spark to set off the explosive.

“Does that take batteries?” Delores
asked.

“Not this one,” Chuck said as he finished
his task and then rushed toward the ladder. He answered over his
shoulder, pulling Delores along behind him. “This one has a small
crank. It builds up a charge and then you flip the switch. Ellis
let us practice with some small explosions just last week. Tiny
ones. This one will be bigger.”

They descended the ladder as fast as they
could without risking falling to their own deaths. Still, on two
occasions Delores felt her foot slip on the slick rebar. Inside
herself, she was screaming, “Ellis! Ellis! Ellis!” over and over.
She kept the scream bottled up, but it was still there, birthed
from somewhere deep inside her.

At the bottom of the ladder, Chuck glanced
back at her and she hustled past him.

“Follow me,” she said.

“Right behind you.”

At the grate, the water was disturbed and
rollicking, but there was no sign of Ellis.

“Ellis!” Delores cried.

Chuck knelt down and began looking at the
locking mechanism, ignoring the water for a moment.

“Ellis!” Delores screamed. “Where is he? He
was just here!”

“If he’s down there, he can’t hear you,”
Chuck said. His teeth were clenched tightly and he was using his
fingers to locate just the right place to set the C4.

“He’s been in the water so long!”
Delores said.
“What
if—”

“We’re not what-iffing right now,” Chuck
snarled as he worked. “I know you’re upset, but we have to do this
thing, and we need to keep our minds positive and focused.”