No Man's Land (34 page)

Rosen and Westerman had each gotten off one round, then thrown
themselves over the edge to get out of the way. Martini had proved
less nimble and had found himself pinned against the bank as the RV
came sliding around the bend.

Corso got to his feet. He scrambled up the hillside. By the time
he got to road level, Martini was down in the ditch, rolling around
on his shoulder blades, clutching his head and moaning. Rosen was
trying to climb the grade in loafers. Westerman was sitting with her
back against a boulder, teeth bared, eyes screwed No Man’s Land
shut, cradling her right shin with both hands. Fifty yards downhill,
the RV was nose to nose with the Lincoln. Driver fed the engine more
gas and, between the power of the big RV and the effects of gravity,
the Lincoln began to move. More gas meant more speed. The Town Car
was sliding sideways at a pretty good clip when it left the roadway
and became airborne, turning a lazy somersault in the air and landing
on its roof, where it lay tinkling and steaming in the cool afternoon
breeze. Driver had negotiated the turn and was speeding along the
next straightaway when the beige government-issue Ford Taurus came
into view. The car was packed to the rafters with FBI agents. Driver
leaned on the horn and fed the big rig more gas. The agent behind the
wheel of the Taurus decided to make a run for it, in reverse. Driver
applied just enough pressure to keep them weaving ahead of him, but
not so as to make them feel any more threatened than necessary. He
knew from command experience what came next. The blind curve was just
ahead. Driver slowed, allowing them to increase the distance between
the vehicles. The Taurus veered wide and disappeared from view.
Driver put the gas pedal to the floor. Swung the RV as wide as the
road would allow, crimped the wheel hard to the left and put the big
rig into a power slide around the bend. Just as he’d figured,
they’d tired of running and had decided to fight. Young men were
like that. Always spoiling for a fight.

Driver caught them half-in, half-out of the car. He put the middle
of the rig on the double yellow line and ducked his head. In the five
seconds before impact, the windshield exploded. Shouts and screams
ricocheted among the trees. Half a dozen rounds plowed into the
tabletop. The staccato rap of automatic weapons rose above the roar
of the engine, then
bam,
the RV hit the Taurus like a runaway
freight, driving the smaller vehicle up onto its side and propelling
it over the edge, pinwheeling down into the steep gully below.

Inside the RV, the air bag had deployed, completely obscuring
Driver’s view of the road. Bullets slammed into the metal siding as
he threw the tabletop aside, grabbed the air bag in both hands and
jerked it completely out of the steering wheel. By the time he threw
it aside, the RV had smacked into the inside bank, plowing a deep
furrow in the brown dirt and very nearly coming to a halt. Driver
steered right and floored it again, forcing himself back onto the
highway.

Steering had become the problem. The right front suspension was
seriously out of whack. Driving in a straight line required keeping
the steering wheel turned nearly all the way to the left. He was
dragging something. The radiator had begun to leak steam.

Worse yet, Driver had a bullet in his side. He could feel blood
leaking down over his belt line onto the side of his pants. He
groaned from the effort of steering. His vision strobed a couple of
times, going white, then black, then back to normal again. He drove
the last couple of miles at a placid pace. Wasn’t like anybody was
chasing him down the hill. He stopped at the crest of the final
grade. Two hundred yards ahead a pair of FBI Fords were nosed up to
one another blocking the mouth of the road. He cleared the glass from
his shoes, took several deep breaths, then gave it all he had. The
fan belt screamed as he started down the hill toward the roadblock.

The gunfire started almost immediately, so he leaned over to the
right, getting the upper part of his torso all the way over to the
passenger seat. Bullets slammed into everything. The interior of the
RV was disintegrating around him, blown to dust and slivers by a
torrent of gunfire.

The RV rammed through the roadblock, brushing the cars aside like
a cow shoos flies. He sat up just in time to steer around the pile of
gravel, then quick to the left, sending him out onto the highway,
where he skidded to a tire-shredding halt.

Amazed to be alive, Driver smiled as he popped his seat belt. He
groaned as he leaned over and picked the carbine from among the
debris covering the floor. He pulled the door handle upward and began
to step out onto the ground when he thought he heard somebody
singing. He looked up.

The boys called her Wanda. Wanda Lackanooky. The spring-loaded
hula doll superglued to the dashboard was dancing up a storm. Ray
Lofton had his little radio wedged between Wanda and the windshield.
Jimmy Buffett was “
wastin’ away
again in
Margaritaville”
and Ray Lofton was about to join him. He had
the old truck going flat out in high gear, running downhill like the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. “
But there’s
booze in
the blender. And soon it will render that frozen concoction that
helps me hang on.”
Packed full, stuffed with more refuse than
she’d probably ever had crammed in her innards before, she was
top-heavy and unresponsive. “A lot like my first wife,” he
thought to himself with a big smile.

Lest anything spoil his plans for the afternoon, Ray opted for
caution and thus began feathering the brakes well before he went into
the steep turn at Blue Creek. He moved her as far out into the top of
the turn as he dared, then leaned into it. “
Searching for my
lost shaker of salt.”
He howled the lyrics and turned the
wheel. Ray was still warbling at the top of his lungs when his worst
nightmare was realized. Midway around the turn, sitting sideways
across both lanes, was a huge brown-and-white motor home. No Man’s
Land “
. . . Nibblin’ on sponge cake . . .”
The lyrics
died in his throat. He had nowhere to go. In the brief seconds prior
to impact he managed to get both feet on the brakes, but the effect
was minimal. The rig began to slide sideways.

He hit the motor home nearly dead on, just about in the middle of
the driver’s door. The impact tore the cab section completely off
the rig, sending it skidding along the pavement in front of the
runaway garbage truck in a hail of sparks and dust. Ray knew what was
coming. He saw the guy with the gun, half-in, half-out of the door.
Felt his rig start to go. Felt the tons of bottles in the overhead
beginning to pull her over. He jacked the wheel hard the other way
but to no avail. Gravity and centrifugal force had taken over. With
all the grace of a wallowing pig, his rig rolled over onto its side.

Ray lost his grip on the steering wheel and fell hard to the low
side of the cab. Below his right shoulder, Ray could feel the
pavement tearing the door to pieces. And then he heard the bottles
go. Crashing and clanging, making a sound like a thousand drunken
bell ringers as the tons of glass spilled from the truck and
shattered on the pavement. And then suddenly the truck stopped
skidding and all was silent.

Only the radio played on. “
Some people claim that there’s a
woman to blame . . . and I know . . . it’s my own damn fault.”

The last ambulance down the mountain carried the remains of Bob
Temple, or at least those parts they’d been able to find before
darkness settled in. Corso overheard the Forest Service supervisor
arranging a ten-man search party for seven the next morning, in hopes
of finding the rest of their fallen comrade’s remains.

Before that, the professionals had satisfied themselves with
carting off the living. He’d heard an EMT say they’d called in
every ambulance and aid car within a hundred-mile radius and had
still come up two short. Westerman had broken her lower leg when
she’d leapt from the roadway. Martini had taken the RV’s side
mirror flush in the face, breaking his jaw and plowing a bloody divot
across his forehead. They’d shared an ambulance down the mountain,
as had a couple of minimally injured FBI agents who’d gone over the
side in the car.

Melanie and Marty had gone separately. Both of them down to the
airport at Caldwell, where an air ambulance was waiting to whisk them
back to Los Angeles.

When the pair of giant tow trucks had successfully lifted Ray’s
rig back onto its tires, what was left of Driver could have been No
Man’s Land most anything . . . a deer . . . or a dog . . . anything
made of meat. Driver and the flattened remains of the cab went down
the hill on the back of a flatbed truck, bound for the state crime
lab at Glendora, where highly trained personnel could poke and prod
him to their heart’s content.

Rosen had refused to leave until every one of his agents was
accounted for and had received appropriate medical treatment. Two
shots of Novocaine and eighteen stitches had put his lip back
together.

Corso sat on the running board of Kenny’s truck, which,
interestingly enough, had been the only vehicle still in running
condition when the smoke had cleared.

“I don’t see what you so damn glum about Ray Ray. It was like
Rambo, man,” Kenny said. “This one badass dude come in here and
just fucked everybody up. And you . . .” He shook his friend’s
shoulder with his big hand. “. . . you single-handedly put an end
to his reign of terror.”

Ray Lofton looked dubious. “I seen ’em, Kenny. He had some
kinda rifle in one hand. He had one foot out the door.” He shook
his head. “I ain’t never . . . you know . . . hurt anybody before
. . . you know what I mean. I never figured . . .” Ray began to
weep. Kenny took him in his arms.

Rosen strode over to Corso. “I’ve got a car,” he said. “You
headed for L.A.?” Corso thought it over. If he hadn’t been so
tired, he’d have laughed. A week of madness. A trail of dead bodies
from Arizona to California, leaving untold lives changed forever.
National news coverage. Murder, mayhem, kidnapping, you name it . . .
and somehow it all boiled down to same old question. Whether what
everybody said was true. Whether victories were only worth savoring,
defeats only worth weathering, if you had somebody to share it with.
Whether, like the old song said:
in the
end the love you
get is equal to the love you give.
Or whether, as he liked to
think, some strand of nobility could only be found in solitude. As if
silence were required for serious thought and the only true joys were
self-generated. The older he got, the more of a statistical anomaly
he became. To him . . . the best moments in life were silent, like
sitting alone in the cool grass.

“So?” Rosen said.

“Seattle,” he said after a minute’s hesitation. “I’ve
got a boat to look after.”

“It was awful,” Heidi said. “That Harry Gibbs shot my papa
right there in our front room. Just walked up to him and shot him in
the head.” Tears began to leak from her big blue eyes.

“He drug me off and raped me over and over. Kept at me day and
night, like some kinda animal.” She stopped to collect herself.

“Kept me locked up. Kept me tied to him all the time. I didn’t
have nothin to do with any of them killings. That was all Harry. I’da
tried to stop him, he’da killed me for sure.” She pointed at the
back of the room, where a phalanx of uniformed police officers stood.
“I can’t imagine why the police don’t believe me. Why they
think I must have . . .”

Her recitation was interrupted when the door directly behind her
chair opened and a large middle-aged blond woman entered the room.
She threw her briefcase onto the table, then leaned over and
whispered in Heidi’s ear. Heidi nodded.

The woman looked the assembled media over with an expression of
thinly disguised disgust. “My name is Lisa McClendon,”

she said. “I have been retained by the Women’s Domestic
Violence Commission to act as Ms. Spearbeck’s attorney until her
permanent representation has an opportunity to arrive. Ms. G.M. Ford
Spearbeck will neither be answering any further questions nor holding
future press conferences until such time as Mr. Cochrane arrives from
Los Angeles.”

“He was sooo nice on the phone,” Heidi cooed.

“That’s all,” McClendon said.

Heidi waved good-bye.

About the Author
G.M. FORD is the author of four previous, widely praised
Frank Corso novels,
Fury, Black River, A Blind Eye,
and
Red
Tide,
as well as six highly acclaimed mysteries featuring
Seattle private investigator Leo Waterman. A former creative writing
teacher in western Washington, Ford lives in Seattle and is currently
working on his next Frank Corso novel. To receive notice of author
events and new books by G.M. Ford, sign up at www.authortracker.com.

Also by
G.M.
Ford
The Frank Corso Series
Fury Black River A Blind Eye
Red Tide
The Leo Waterman Series
Who in Hell Is Wanda
Fuca?

Cast in Stone The Bum’s Rush Slow Burn Last Ditch The Deader
the Better
Credits
Jacket design by Gina R. Binkley Jacket photograph by Frits
Berends/ Picture Arts/ Nonstock
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and
dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be
construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

NO MAN’S LAND. Copyright © 2005 by G.M. Ford. All rights
reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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