The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (16 page)

The cold air whipped his jumpsuit into ferocious waves and whirling crests all over his arms, his shins, his trunk. The diesel and aluminium smell of the C-130 Hercules cabin suddenly seemed as comforting as a home-cooked meal. 1,200 feet below him, the landscape was tiny and distant and lethal.

He stomped a foot on the metal belly. In his mind he had visions of the squad member who had made the leap only to have the static line tangle and trap him on the exterior skin of the plane. His comrade had been “towed” for several minutes and banged about, mercilessly pinned between the rushing air and the hull, with only the snarled line holding him, very uncertainly, to the plane. The soldiers had to first keep him tethered, then battle against the 100 mph windspeed pushing the young man backwards. When he was finally hauled inside he was bruised, battered and lucky to be alive. That one had left the unit – and the army – shortly thereafter.

William Coss was remembering that incident as he hovered at the edge of the open hatch for his own first jump. 1,200 feet was such a long, long way to fall, but such a short distance for him to get safely away from the plane, orient himself, have the chute fully blossom and find the emergency cord if it didn’t. If all went well, it was just twenty seconds until thudding to earth; twenty seconds isn’t long to get it all right.

William’s heart was racing. He felt sick to his stomach. Images of his squadmate trapped underneath the fuselage, the tangled line, the struggle to pull him in, the broken body, passed through his mind. The tiny landmarks below were so far away, the time to get there so short.

He swung his legs over and dropped.

“You got people yelling at you and everything else, you never know what will happen when you come out of that plane: you could be towed, your chute won’t open, all sorts of things and you’re so low to the ground you don’t have a lot of time to react,” the
thirty-two-year-old
Arizonan says. “I smacked the door and fell out backwards once. I had too much weight. The air flow pushed me back into the plane and wouldn’t let me fall out. It knocks the breath out of you. I hit it pretty hard. I was nervous every time I jumped, then once you’re out of the airplane all those feelings go away and then you’re just amazed at everything: you go into a different world.”

A US Army paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne in North Carolina, William Coss eventually made upwards of 400 jumps, but his heart raced every time and he never forgot the sight of the helpless soldier bouncing against the fuselage in the wake of four Allison turboprops throwing out over 18,000 shaft horsepower.

And Coss never forgot how to think when too much open space becomes your enemy and death is coming at you fast.

In the northern corner of Iraq there is a region that is home to one of the oldest civilizations known to history: Assyria. The giant stone monuments with the rigid beards are familiar all over the world and the name figures prominently in Bible stories. In 2 Kings 17, the king of Assyria “carried Israel away into Assyria”. No wonder Jonah fled when God commanded him to preach to the Assyrian city of Ninevah and ended up in the belly of the whale for three days instead.

From Ishtar worship and other forms of paganism, Assyrians were amongst the first of the ancient ethnic groups to adopt the new religion of Christianity. This left them as a minority in Mesopotamia as Islam took over the region in the Middle Ages, on down to today’s vivid conflicts. Some Assyrians fleeing the various troubles that plagued the region have collected in one or two small towns in California. In Modesto – the same small town famed for the Laci Peterson murder in 2002 and the recent Chandra Levy case – they have slowly built their own churches and amassed a social life centred on their heritage: the flavours of anise and cardamom, yoghurty soups and lamb stews, the Syriac or Aramaic language, early paradigms of Christianity, women dancing in a circle to the music of the long-necked tambura and the rhetoric of a diaspora. The Mesopotamian politics emanating from California grew so heated that the FBI in 1990 foiled a plot by Saddam Hussein to assassinate a leader of the Assyrian-Modesto community.

But, as so many immigrant communities have discovered, the struggles of the first generation and the passion for homeland lose voltage for the sons born to good fortunes. American-born in 1977, Ramsen Dadesho, nephew of the man Saddam Hussein had ordered assassinated, gained a reputation in Modesto as a high-flying rich man’s son with a taste for the fast life and a family who used their power to get him out of trouble. He married within the community, but the marriage failed and a bitter custody battle pitted his ex-wife against his powerful family. Ramsen had the dark, good looks of his ancient bloodline, but at five foot seven inches did not cut an
intimidating
figure in person.

Everyone in the Assyrian clan in Modesto seemed to know
everybody
else and there was a lot of pressure on the generation coming of age in the 1990s and 2000s to marry within the community. It would not seem unusual then, that after his failed marriage Ramsen Dadesho would one day date another Assyrian girl, Sharokena Koshaba, who had already had a romance with one of his
Assyrian-American
friends.

That friend was Rami Merza. Rami was cherished by a family of five brothers and two sisters and he was the youngest. His father had died before he was born. A strapping fellow of six foot three with a handsome face and flashing smile, Rami found himself to be a very popular character in his community.

Rami and Ramsen grew up going to the same parties and the same churches and the same high school.

By 2009, Ramsen Dadesho was living with Sharokena in Modesto. He had no job, but he always seemed to have money. His battles with his ex-wife, involving their young daughter, sent sparks flying in the Assyrian social circles. Sharokena figured prominently in the gossip.

On the other hand, Rami Merza had left the Assyrian enclave in Modesto and was living hundreds of miles away in Mesa, Arizona. Mesa is a suburb of Phoenix. Rami had been working at a Honda dealership but, in a clash with the manager, Rami got fired. With no job and few Arizona friends, Rami had a lot of time on his hands to travel back to Modesto. He often did so, making the ten-to
twelve-hour
drive in a silver Honda. The centre of gravity of his life was still there, in the Assyrian-American community and the small town atmosphere. When in Modesto, he had his mother, brothers and sisters to fuss over him. And there was the vibrant Assyrian haven for socializing.

Both Rami and Ramsen liked flashy cars and nightclubs and cash.

In March 2009, twenty-nine-year-old Rami was visiting Modesto and palling around with thirty-two-year-old Ramsen. As the weekend of 20 March approached, Rami and Ramsen left California together. They drove back to Arizona in Rami’s silver Honda.

The players were now in place: the remnants of the ancient culture of Assyria, carefully fostered in California, were about to collide with the very modern 82nd Airborne, via a dark and deserted Scottsdale parking lot.

By Sunday night, 22 March, the two childhood friends were clubbing in Scottsdale. At 11.30 p.m. that night, Rami called a friend and asked for directions.

William Coss was working in Scottsdale that night, a cool evening with temperatures around 60° Fahrenheit, the skies clear, the winds calm and the air bone dry.

At 11 p.m. the thirty-two-year-old former paratrooper had pulled into a sprawling shopping centre of free-standing buildings, small strip malls and giant open spaces. He had dropped off the 101 freeway north–south, and turned on to an east–west running street named Raintree. From Raintree, he turned north into the interior of the development. He drove his white pickup truck, with its Eco company logo emblazoned on its sides, to the eastern perimeter where a small strip mall sat with its rear nestled up against the frontage road of the southbound 101 freeway.

He parked the truck directly in front of the doors of Paradise Bakery. The acres and acres of paved parking lot stretching before the cafe were vacant. Immediately to the north, across a small private side road, was another little strip mall, anchored by a Pearle Vision Center. Stucco and lumber enclosures, discreetly masking dumpsters, dotted the Pearle Vision Center terrain.

Will had parked with his nose out so he’d have easy access to the back of his truck as he went in and out of the restaurant. Wearing his Eco uniform, he gathered up his materials, turned to the
west-facing
front doors and let himself in.

He turned on all the lights and began to spray.

About twenty minutes later, William had finished with the interior of the eatery. He stepped outside for a cigarette before starting his work on the outside grounds. He noticed another car was now there. It would be impossible not to notice the vehicle as it was so close to his own. It was a silver Honda Accord Coupe only six spaces away from his truck and not only were the headlights on but the engine was running and both the passenger and the driver’s doors were wide open.

Two men were there, one in the driver’s seat of the Honda and the other standing beside it. Will figured the men had seen the lights on in the Paradise Bakery and had assumed it was open. They were probably figuring out what to do next once they realized there was only a service truck parked at the otherwise locked front doors. William had retrieved his cigarettes from the cabin of his truck: now he walked around to the back to start pouring chemicals. The man at the driver’s wheel in the Honda was quiet. The car’s passenger was talking on a cell phone, carried in his left hand, and walking about.

The man with the phone crossed the short distance between the two vehicles and approached Will.

“I thought he was going to ask me for cigarettes or directions. He was within two feet of me. He just stared at me for about ten minutes and nothing was said and he kinda walked away so I just went back to doing my thing,” Coss recalls. He measured, he poured. Just when he was screwing the lid back on a bottle of
chemicals
, he heard it.

Gunfire.

“Oooooh, yes,” Coss draws in a long breath when asked if he recognized the sound for what it was, not fireworks or a car muffler. “I was only twelve to fifteen feet away. I knew somebody else was in the car so I knew exactly what had happened: somebody got shot.”

Who was it?

“I sidestepped my vehicle and I looked over the top and I saw him with the gun walking away from the car … and I saw the person who was still in the car, too.”

The one with the gun was the one who had been staring Will down, eye to eye, just moments before. He still had the cell phone in his left hand, but Will immediately spotted the silver barrel, gleaming in the moonlight, in his right.

The former paratrooper in that moment knew two things: he had heard no arguments between the two men so this had to be both a cold-blooded and a reckless act; and the man with the gun knew full well that he, Will, was just a few feet away.

Adding these two facts together, Will knew he would be next.

It was now past 11.30 at night. Other than himself, the man at the wheel and the one with the gun in his hand, the terrain was desolate.

The 82nd Airborne training came back to Will. It had taught him, he says, to be calm in “live-fire” situations.

“Not having a weapon to protect myself and definitely wishing I had one I thought, okay, what do you do next? Protect yourself: it’s part of your training. Get away.

“I was airborne so I was always jumping out of airplanes and you gotta have quick reactions and think on your feet or you’re dead.”

Will had few options. To the west was wide-open parking lot, acres of it. Although the expansive shopping centre was carefully landscaped, befitting its Scottsdale address, it was still a desert locale. The plants were austere. There were a few spidery mesquite trees, narrow branches dusted with feathery green that was more air than substance; otherwise, there were purple sage bushes,
meticulously
groomed into cylinders, low to the ground, with
fingernail-size
silver leaves dotted with small pink purple blossoms. The development was also quite new – the few plants were still immature and small. There was very little to break up the panorama of the parking lot. He would be a clear shot at any angle.

The Paradise Bakery formed the northern tip of the little strip mall. The interior side road separated it from the Pearle Vision Center strip mall, forming a right angle or broken “L”. But that little side road was wide for a pedestrian – Cass would not only be a clear shot through there but he’d be trapped by the “L”.

To the south, just a couple of car lengths away, was the man with gun.

William thought quickly and came up with an immediate target destination. Around the back of the Paradise Bakery was a little bit of forgotten space between the strip mall and the 101 freeway frontage. He could hide there for a moment. He ran around the northern corner of the Paradise Bakery and headed east. He ducked past an electrical transformer and scooted behind the back wall of the building.

But he could not stay there long. If the man with the gun followed the same path – a space traversed in one or two seconds … he’d be cornered worse than ever as the strip mall building widened out and closed the territory to the freeway.

He needed to increase the distance between himself and that silver gun.

As he was running to the hiding place, William had used the
electronic
devices in his hands. With one hand, he pushed the button to remotely lock the doors on his truck. With the other, he flipped open his cell phone: but he did not dial because he was too close to his pursuer. Will wanted to use the darkness to his advantage. A lit cell phone would reveal his position.

Will organized his thoughts before he placed the call. He had to leave the shelter of the Paradise Bakery and cross the open space across the broken “L” to the next strip of buildings. “I slipped around back through the buildings then I came back around front so I could observe what he was doing. I did not want to end up in the same spot as him because I wasn’t watching him. But I also did not want him to see my cell phone all lit up.”