No Man's Land (4 page)

Ten minutes ago, Wally had been
sitting on the bench in front of his locker scraping the last of the
chicken gravy from the plastic plate with a crust of bread. Some of
the guys hadn’t eaten at all. Nerves, Wally guessed. Being held
hostage affected some guys that way. As for Wally, way he saw it, a
meal was a meal. The locker room had been crowded. The takeover had
happened right at shift change, when there weren’t more than two
dozen officers walking the cellblocks. Everybody else was either
coming or going. The guys on duty had been rounded up and stuck in
the locker room with both shifts. The duty sergeant had run the
roster for both shifts and, lo and behold, nobody was missing. The
announcement sent a shiver of hope through the hundred or so
corrections officers. Maybe they were all going to come through this.
Maybe the inmates were going to go through the standard list of
demands, then it would be over and they could all get back to their
lives. Maybe.

When the door was flung open and a
half dozen inmates armed with everything from Mac 10s to a machete
strode into the room silence settled like a mantle. Spoons stopped in
midair, mouths hung open as a pair of Bikers grabbed Wally by the
elbows and lifted him from the bench. Had Wally the slightest notion
that he was about to join his namesake on Aunt Betty’s dining room
wall, he surely would not have gone so quietly.

“Thanks, Iris,” Romero said. He
snapped the cell phone shut. Keeping one eye glued to the screen, he
had begun to repeat the information for the benefit of the others
crammed into the interior of the CNN van when the chatter of
automatic weapon fire suddenly filled the air. He watched in horror
as a withering salvo of fire drove the kneeling figure face-first
onto the ground. Watched the body twitch for a few seconds as the
river of fire continued, and watched still as the firing stopped and
the body grew still.

“Son of a bitch,” somebody said.

Silence filled the air around them
like molten metal. Seemed like there was nothing to say. A moment
later, a pair of inmates came loping out of the shadows, grabbed the
fallen guard by the ankles and dragged him back inside. The powerful
microphone picked up the
click click click
as the victim’s
teeth chattered across the asphalt even after he disappeared from
view. Still no one spoke.

At the back end of the arch, Driver
looked down at the guard’s carcass. At Kehoe holding the rifle in
his arms as if it were a baby. “Put him with the others,” Driver
said. So far, they had nineteen dead. Guys who’d finally had the
chance to settle old scores. Guys like Harry Ferris, who’d spent
the past eleven years as the wife of a con known only as the Butcher.
Ferris repaid the Butcher for his sexual favors by emptying a whole
clip into him, wounding two other cons in the process. Things like
that were going on all over the joint. Driver could relate. He
remembered his sixth day in Walla Walla. Almost seven years ago.
Remembered Kehoe’s warning and how he’d stayed in his bunk that
day. Literally hid under the covers like a woman, until the voice
came.

“Let’s go.”

A pair of guards stood in the
corridor. They took him by the elbows and marched him down two
flights of stairs, through two checkpoints and two metal detectors,
before depositing him in the custodial staff locker room.

Driver had tried to stammer out a
question. “What’s . . . I don’t . . .”

“Orientation,” the fat guy said.

“Yeah . . . orientation,” the
other guy chuckled. “You’re gonna get your horizons expanded.”
The door snapped shut. Driver could hear the bald one yapping as they
walked away. “His horizons expanded . . . that’s choice, man . .
. horizons expanded.”

And then it was silent. Driver looked
around. Gray steel lockers lined the walls. Each locker was fastened
by an identical combination lock. White number on black dials. A worn
wooden bench ran down the center of the room, its once gleaming
finish nearly washed away, leaving irregular islands of shine adrift
on a sea of dull wood.

His attention slid toward the sound
of running water in the next room. He sat down on the bench and began
to listen intently, hearing each drop rhythmically followed by
another, numbering them in his mind as they fell. After a few
moments, his ears began to clear, as if he had come down from a
mountaintop. Beneath the persistent plopping he was able to hear the
drops surrendering themselves, gathering in the grouted joints as
trickles before running down the drain. He closed his eyes and
followed the water down the grated hole. He saw himself swimming
alone in the damp blackness, using his hands to pull himself around
the metal corners, diving through subterranean culverts, sliding
through languid cataracts, until finally following the expanding cone
of light toward the smell of the sea and the cries of shorebirds.
When he opened his eyes on that afternoon nearly eight years before,
two Mexicans were standing in front of him, their perfect blue shirts
buttoned only at the collar, washboard bellies bare. The one on the
right wore a red bandana over his shaved head. He had something
tattooed on his chest in old English letters. The one on the left had
his hair pulled tight by a net, its nylon web gathered in the center
of his forehead like a fearful third eye. Bandana looked to his left
and whispered. Driver reached for his right shoe.

Bandana spoke. “No no, man. You
gotta wait till we leave.”

The Mexicans were elbowing each
other, cracking up at what they saw.

“Look at that thing,” said
Hairnet. “You got to put that thing away,
cholo
. Got to put
it away.”

“
Madre de Dios,”
said the
other.

Hairnet covered his mouth and looked
away just in time to see Driver fitting the dowel through the hole in
the toothbrush handle. He’d leaned over and whispered in his
buddy’s ear. They both watched as Driver folded his arms across his
chest, his hands out of sight beneath his arms.

Kurtz was totally hairless. The lack
of eyebrows made the blue doll eyes seem loose on his face. He was
nearly as wide as he was tall, and his doughy white flesh filled the
room with the smell of camphor and stale sweat. His massive belly
would have hidden a normal cock. As it was, the fat fingers on his
right hand flexed as they stroked an erect appendage that looked more
like a pipe fitting than a penis.

He had a curious, high-pitched voice.
“Hands and knees,” he said.

When Driver failed to move, Kurtz
started shuffling his way. As he drew near, Kurtz suddenly raised
both arms to shoulder level.

“Gonna have to choke you down some,
Mr. Navy.”

At the last moment, Driver brought
his right hand out from beneath his arm and pistoned it toward Kurtz,
who did what he always did when somebody threw a punch at him. He
ducked his huge bald head and waited for the sound of broken bones to
tell him the fun was about to begin in earnest.

The plastic point of the toothbrush
had been no match for Kurtz’s bald dome. The shaft bent on impact,
numbing Driver’s arm, sending the point skidding over the sweaty
surface, plowing a bloody trench across the skull until it slid down
the side of his face, in search of softer flesh. The highly honed
point finally found ingress in Kurtz’s right cheek, entering his
mouth at a forty-five-degree angle, skewering his tongue and pinning
it to the soft tissue of his lower jaw.

Kurtz went mad, throwing himself at
Driver, butting him in the face as he drove him into the wall hard
enough to break three of Driver’s ribs.

At his resentencing hearing, Driver
had been told he’d stabbed Kurtz another dozen times, including
once through each eye. Not only that, but he’d supposedly stabbed
one of the officers who’d tried to break it up. All of which had
been news to Driver. He didn’t remember anything past the point
when Kurtz butted him back into the shower wall.

After fourteen days in the hospital,
followed by sixty days of close confinement, he’d been summarily
shipped to Meza Azul. Right next to Cutter Kehoe again. Old home week
until they moved Driver to the punishment cell. And now, here they
were.

“Hey,” Cutter Kehoe yelled.

Driver pulled his eyes from the dead
guard being dragged across the asphalt. He blinked several times and
looked around.

“Don’t be getting loopy on us
now, Captainman. Got a lotta boys inside countin’ on you to lead
’em to the promised land.”

“Most of these boys are already in
the promised land.”

“How long you figure we got before
they come for us?”

“Less than twenty-four hours. They
won’t let it go on for longer than that. It’s bad for morale.”

Kehoe bent his head toward the fallen
guard. “They ain’t gonna let that one go.” He shook his head.
“Bulls gonna kill my ass for sure, Captainman. They’ll find
somethin’ . . . some reason why I got to die.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Driver said.

The words stopped Kehoe in his
tracks. He had a half smile on his face as he ambled over and stood
toe-to-toe with Driver.

“You got somethin going?”

“Just an idea,” Driver said.

“And what kinda idea might that
be?”

“One that might get us the hell out
of here before the army arrives.”

“You don’t say.”

“It’s a long shot.”

“Always is.”

“You do what I told you with them
drivers?”

“I had somebody take care of it.”
Kehoe eyed him. “Why?”

“Let the linen supply driver go.”

Kehoe opened his mouth, but Driver
cut him off. “First, take everything out of the truck. Then hand
him his keys and stick him behind the wheel. Give me a call when
you’ve got him ready, and I’ll open the front gate.”

He looked away from the wavering
water and wondered why he only imagined her in the mornings.
Something about the flat water of dawn always brought Meg’s face to
mind, as if the first silver sheen of the day was forever devoted to
her smile. He pulled on the wet line, bringing the float over the
rail and down onto his feet. Her childlike printing encircled the
white plastic: SALTHEART, Seattle Wa. 206-933-0881. He kept at it,
his breath steaming from his lips in the cold morning air as he
formed a circle of line around the bucket at his feet. When he looked
back, she was still there, laughing now, floating on the shiny
surface of the water like a mercury apparition. Corso shook his head
and returned to the task at hand, hauling hard on the bright yellow
line, taking up the slack until he felt the crab trap come loose from
the bottom. He used his long arms to hand over hand the trap to the
surface.

That’s when he saw them coming.
Working their way from cove to cove, checking every creek and estuary
deep enough for a dinghy. A pair of those little Safeboat
twenty-seven-footers they made over in Port Orchard. Homeland
Security Boats. Coast Guard’s newest toy, an aluminum-hulled,
unsinkable boat, pro-No Man’s Land pelled by a pair of Yamaha 225s.
Stable as hell at sixty knots. Rumor had it they’d ordered seven
hundred of them at a hundred eighty-five grand a pop.

Corso pulled the crab pot into the
dinghy, careful to keep the collection of slithering crabs and
dripping metal out of his lap. The six captive Dungeness crabs had
gnawed the turkey leg down to blue-tinged bone. One by one he checked
the crabs. Four female, two male. Careful to grab them from the rear,
where their pincers wouldn’t reach, he threw the females over the
side and dropped the males into the white plastic bucket in front of
the steering podium.

The sky and the water were slate gray
and slack. The surface was smooth as glass; here and there patches of
fog slid along the surface like ghost ships. To the northeast, he
could barely make out the Wescott Bay Oyster Company at the far end
of the bay. He’d been buying a couple of dozen a day for the past
week. Throwing them on the barbecue until they cracked open, then
washing them down with cocktail sauce and a frosty Heineken. He shot
a glance at the Coast Guard boat; just as he figured, they were
headed his way. He heaved a sigh and picked up the crab bucket.

He’d been moored in Garrison Bay
for a week. Other than emptying his crab pots and making his daily
pilgrimage for oysters, all he’d done was write, sleep and eat.
Crab omelets for breakfast, crab quesadillas for lunch and crab cakes
and oysters for dinner.

Settling back into the seat, he eased
the throttle forward. The prop pulled the stern down into the water
for a moment, then, as Corso fed it more gas, began to lift the
inflatable up onto plane. Corso pushed the throttle lever all the way
forward and aimed the nose at
Saltheart
, floating, barely
visible through the morning haze a half a mile away on the east side
of Garrison Bay, just offshore of the English Camp.

During the summer months, Garrison
Bay would have been thick with pleasure boats, but on this rainy
November morning, with the kiddies back in school and the temperature
in the middle thirties,
Saltheart
had the moorage to herself.
By the time he was halfway up the bay, the Coast Guard boat was
running parallel to him, its bright orange paint job skipping along
the gray water about twenty yards to port. A crew member stepped out
on deck. He brought the red bullhorn up in front of his red face and
rested it on his red life jacket. The electronic voice, shattered the
stillness of the morning. “Cut your engine back and pull
alongside.”

Corso shook his head and pointed
forward, toward
Saltheart
sitting at anchor a quarter mile
away. The Coast Guard repeated the order. Corso repeated the gesture.

The crew member ducked back inside
the cabin for further orders. By the time they sorted out what to do
next, Corso had pulled the dinghy parallel to the swim step, tied off
and killed the engine.