Down Among the Dead Men (44 page)

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, from 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.

Noone himself has nothing except a fat short-bladed knife with a rubberised grip in a looped sheath on his belt. There's no point bringing any of his new guns. The last thing he wants is any noise, and the Micro with the suppressor fitted is too visible.

At a distance of some ten yards from the back of the property a straggling line of rocks marks out some sort of nominal garden. There is nothing growing inside the designated area and nothing to separate it from the ground beyond, yet it's clear that the rocks now tell anyone that they are inside a private zone.

Noone steps across the rocks and as soon as he does a shape rolls out from the dense black shadow of the lean-to and onto a section of concrete in the sun. A slim, heavily bearded man of approximately thirty years of age wearing army surplus pants, a check shirt and reflective sunglasses glides a few yards towards Noone on a bulky motorised wheelchair. He has a red bandanna wrapped around his head and holds a shotgun comfortably across his knees. Although it's not pointing directly at Noone the man in the wheelchair has his trigger finger resting inside the guard.

The guy's name is Kenny Hoy.

Kenny's the reason Noone's in Twentynine Palms. Even with the beard he looks much younger and fitter than Noone had envisaged. Noone wonders how long Kenny Hoy's been watching him.

'Stop,' says Hoy. His voice is neutral but precise. The voice of someone who knows what they're doing. In the glare of the sun every detail seems hyper-real.

Noone stops and holds up both his hands in a placatory gesture. 'Hey, man,' he says. 'I'm stopped.'

'You can step back a couple,' says Hoy. 'That way you won't be on my property and I'll feel a little better.'

Noone moves back over the rocks.

'What the fuck you doing arriving over my back fence like that?' Again, despite the words, Hoy's voice is controlled.

'I broke down,' says Noone, jerking a thumb in the direction of the highway. 'I'm looking for a buddy of mine lives out on Monte Vista.' Noone plucks the name of a road he's seen on the GPS.

'I know some folks over there. What's his name?'

'Sheehan,' says Noone without hesitation. 'Dennis Sheehan.'

'Like the politician.'

'Yeah, except this guy's about forty. Most people call him Shorty on account of being tall.'

'Don't know him,' says Hoy. Noone notices that he no longer has his finger in the trigger guard.

'He's ex-corps,' says Noone. He knows Hoy's military past. 'You?'

'What division?'

Noone shrugs. 'I don't know, man. I never served. I do what I can for Shorty when I can and he moved over here a few weeks ago. He's got some . . . well, he's got some problems since getting home from Kandahar. You know.'

Hoy nods. He does know. But he's not about to put the shotgun down anytime soon.

'So what you doing at my place? Breakin' down don't mean you have to sneak round back.'

'Like I said, I broke down. This looked the quickest way here. And my phone's got no reception.'

'That can happen, I guess,' says Hoy. He looks over in the direction of the Marine Base. 'On account of all the electronics they got. Star Wars shit and all manner of doo-dahs in there. Fuck up the radio waves something bad. You need a booster like I got on the roof.'

'Listen, man,' says Noone, 'I know it's a lot to ask but could you call a tow truck for me from Twentynine Palms?'

'OK,' says Hoy. Instead of moving, Hoy slides a hand inside the top pocket of his shirt and pulls out a smartphone. 'I know a guy who'll get it done. What's your name? You got any ID?'

Noone takes out his wallet, steps a little closer to Hoy and flips it open to his driver's licence.

'Ben Noone,' he says. Hoy asking for ID is clever. Noone once again makes a note not to underestimate him.

Hoy takes a good look at the licence.

'Santa Monica? Fancy.' Hoy's smiling but he looks like he thinks the ID is for real. Noone is who he says he is.

Noone can almost see Hoy relax.

He knows that he's going to have to do it now before the call's connected and his name's out there. Noone plants his hands on his hips and, covered by the angle of his right palm, thumbs open the flap on the knife sheath.

Hoy tries to dial one-handed but it's tricky with the sun gleaming on the glass front of the phone. He angles his head down to look more closely.

Noone takes the opportunity to take out his knife and put it behind his back. He stands like his hands are clasped together. Behind his back, Noone's left hand lightly grasps his right wrist. With his right he takes a firm grip on the rubberised handle of the knife.

Hoy looks up. 'What was the name again?' He's relaxing a little.

'Noone. Ben Noone.'

As Hoy glances back down at the phone, Noone sprints the four paces towards the wheelchair. It's quiet out here and the sound of Noone's boots on the grit is loud.

Hoy looks up and sees Noone almost upon him. He drops the phone and swings the shotgun up but Noone's already right there and he blocks the barrel of Hoy's gun with his left forearm.

'Motherfucker!' screams Hoy. He punches Noone in the kidneys with a hard left that has real power. Hoy picked up his disability on his second tour of duty in Kandahar. The metal frag had nicked his spinal column and left him paralysed from the waist down. Hoy hasn't let the injury stop him; he plays basketball and does everything himself. His upper body is hard and his reactions are fast. He might be in a chair but he's still a Marine.