“Okay. Just curious.” True smiled at Ariel. “I’m going to go for a walk. Not far. You know I get a little anxious.”
Then he turned away from his band, and he walked toward the front door and the road that led south.
TWENTY-NINE.
He had dust on his wingtips. It was puffing up with every stride. Small stones grated underfoot. Then he caught sight of a second shadow on the ground, coming up behind him, rapidly closing the distance.
When the shadow got in step with True’s, Nomad said, “Are you fucking crazy?”
True’s gun was out, held in the right hand down at his side. He kept walking briskly toward the snakespine curve, the sun hot on the right side of his face, his back and his shoulder. Nomad kept up.
“You probably need to go back,” True said.
“You think he’s out there? You think he followed us and he’s sitting out there waiting? If that’s so, what good is it going to do to let him see you? You think you’re going to walk right up to him, ask him to surrender to the FBI, and then it’s hero time? Oh, yeah! Make me laugh, man. He’ll blow your fucking head off before you can—”
True abruptly stopped and turned on him. “I’ve told you to stop that cursing,” he said, his eyes intense. “You don’t need that to communicate. It’s low, and you are not low. Get yourself out of the gutter, how about it?”
They stared at each other for a few seconds, mano-a-mano.
Then True started walking south again, and Nomad lost a step but caught up.
“How’s it going to help us if you get shot?” was the next question. “If you get killed, what are we supposed to do?”
“I’m just going to take a look. Very cautiously. I’m going to turkey-peek around that curve.”
“Okay, fine, but if he sees you before you see him—and from what you say about him, that’s what’s going to happen—he’ll put you down, reload and come after us. He might not know your face, but he’ll know you’re with the band. Gun in your hand…he’ll figure it out. Maybe he followed us from the club last night and he parked close enough to watch the motel. Maybe he saw the Yukon leave, and he’s figured that out too. Or maybe—maybe—he’s not sitting out there at all. But I wouldn’t want to walk around that curve and find out, because those fu…those bullets can run a lot faster than me.”
True kept going. Nomad said urgently, “How about asking Gherosimini to drive his truck out and scout for us? If he sees anybody waiting, he can get to a phone. Call for help.”
“If Pett’s there, he’s going to figure he has us in a prime position. I don’t think he’ll let anyone through. Would you like to be responsible for that man’s death?”
“The way this is heading, we won’t live much longer to be responsible for anything. Anyfuckingthing,” Nomad said, with gritty emphasis.
“This was a big mistake,” said True. “Coming here. A big, big mistake.”
“You want to tell that to Terry? Hold it.” Nomad caught at True’s white polo shirt and stopped his progress. The sun was fierce. Sweat sparkled on True’s forehead and Nomad felt it on his neck and the back of his Army-green T-shirt. “Don’t go any further. I’m asking you. Please will you not go any further?”
“John, I have to do my job.”
“Your job, Mr. Manager Man, is to get us through.” Nomad got his face right up into True’s. “Whatever it is. Keeping the van going, finding a place to sleep, a place for us to wash our clothes. Making sure nobody gets food poisoning, or if they have to see a doctor on the road you work that out too. Doing the best you can with a fucked-up sound system, or club owners who just don’t give a shit. You tell us we did really well when we all know we sucked, but we’ll do it better the next time. You get us through, man. The day-to-day grind. That’s your job. Because you signed on here as much a manager as you did an FBI gun.”
True wore a pained expression. He kept his eyes down. “John—”
“I’m not finished,” Nomad asserted. “Maybe your gung-ho hero boy is around that curve. Maybe he’s not. I hope to God he’s not. You want to save him because he’s sacrificed himself for a cause, because he’s seen the hard battles that took so much out of him. Something you say we’ve never done. Are you sure we haven’t? Are you sure we’ve never fought for a cause worth dying for?”
“And what would that be? To make music?”
Nomad shook his head. “To be heard,” he said.
They stood together without speaking, their shadows on the earth, the snakespine curve on one side and on the other rocks that echoed the thunder of a storm about to break.
“Get us through,” Nomad told him.
True looked toward the curve. Maybe Pett wasn’t there. If he was…
“I’ll try,” True said. “But if he’s set up with his rifle and he’s ready, he can kill somebody today. Maybe more than one. Even with the tinted glass. We can’t get a lot of speed out of that van, not with the trailer on it. Not much more speed even with it unhooked. He might go for the driver first, or for the tires. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“I hear.”
“Will you tell the others that, or do you want me to?”
“We don’t want Gherosimini involved. He’ll think he has to do something to help, and he’ll either get himself killed or slow us down. I’m planning on driving as fast as I can out of here. Everybody else needs to get small, as much as they can. That’s not much of a plan, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” True said. He retreated from the curve, regarding it with a watchful eye, and Nomad did the same. Then at a distance they turned around and walked back to the house, the black wingtips and the black Chucks stirring up dust in equal measures.
When they got to the studio, Terry was playing Procul Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’ on the Vox Continental, and Nomad thought that beautiful song had never sounded so amazing. It brought tears to his eyes, watching Terry put his soul into it. Gherosimini was standing a few paces away, eyes closed, feeling the love.
True beckoned Berke and Ariel over to him, and he began talking to them in a very quiet and serious voice.
After it was done, Nomad saw Ariel nod. She lifted her chin up like a fighter, daring fate. Berke walked away a few feet and put one hand against the wall; she stayed like that for a minute, her face downcast, and then Ariel put an arm around her shoulders and Berke nodded too.
Terry kept playing. Nomad saw True check his wristwatch. Thirty minutes had gone past. True bent down, because one of his shoes must’ve come untied. Then the other’s laces needed some attention too.
Terry finished the song, one of the greatest ever written for the keyboard. He blinked, as if emerging from shadow into sun. He looked around at True and asked if it was time to go, and True said it was, but first he needed to speak to him in the front room. They left the studio, and Gherosimini turned off the central switch, and all the voices went back to sleep.
Outside, as Stereo eyed the Scumbucket and readied himself for the hated sound of the engine, they wished Gherosimini well. Ariel told him she hoped he finished Ground Zero, and he said again that it was a work-in-progress. He asked them if they wanted any smokes for the road, and True had never been so tempted in his life but he said no thanks. They got into the van: True behind the wheel, Terry in the passenger seat, Ariel behind him and Nomad on the other side, with Berke in the back. Nobody spoke about the arrangement; it just happened. They would go out the same way they came in.
The engine fired, Stereo barked, Gherosimini waved, and True drove ahead to a place where he could back the trailer up and turn them around. Stereo kept barking and Gherosimini waved again—no, a salute this time—as they passed by. The dust welled up. Gherosimini and his dog were lost from view. True put his gun in his lap. He said, “All this may be for nothing. He may not be there, okay? But when I come out of that curve, I’m going to have my foot to the floor.” He was already gaining speed. The traile
r groaned. “I want everybody small. Down on the floorboard. Tuck your elbows in and get your knees up. Hell, get your heads up your butts if you can.”
“Kinky,” said Berke, but her voice trembled.
“Thank you,” Terry said, as they entered the curve.
“For what?” True asked. The engine was roaring, as much as it could. The Scumbucket vibrated and the trailer slewed.
“For giving me time,” came the answer.
True was fighting the wheel. The trailer pulled at the van and wanted to go sideslipping off into the rocks, but he held it on the edge.
They came out of the curve.
Jeremy Pett was not there.
Ariel started to lift her head. True said sharply, “Everybody stay down!” The Scumbucket’s speedometer needle gave up the ghost and started flipping back and forth across the numbers like a runaway metronome. Banners of dust flew back beneath the wheels. They went into another curve and then up a rise from the bottom of a gully. Loose rocks clattered against the Scumbucket’s sides. True kept the speed up, as something in the engine began to emit a high-pitched whine.
They crossed the rough divide between dirt road and cracked asphalt, a jolt that made the van shudder and the trailer wag like Stereo’s tail. Then they were coming around a sharp bend, and True didn’t know if he could hold the van on it at this speed, so he tapped the brake just a fraction, just enough to keep them from flying off into the rocks, and as they whipped around the bend there was the abandoned gas station with its antique pumps and parked at an angle blocking the road in front of it a white car.
A Honda, True thought as he clenched his teeth, determined in the next onrushing second to jerk the wheel to the left and get by that car even if he scraped both vehicles down to the smoking metal.
Bastard stole himself an Accord.
A bullet came through the windshield.
It made a hollow pop as it pierced the glass, and a second pop as it continued through Nomad’s window. With that, True realized Pett was on the right, maybe among the remains of the houses. He heard the front right tire blow, and then the Scumbucket pitched down on that side like a lamed horse and True lost control of the wheel.
They ran up over shale and rubble and crashed into the gas pumps, which sheared away in red whirlwinds of rust. Something metal caught up under the van’s belly and seized it, and the engine screamed like a voice in agony. Another bullet shattered Terry’s window and sent fragments of glass flying over him at True. The Scumbucket dragged itself to a halt, throwing sparks from beneath.
“Stay down! Stay down!” True shouted. He thrust his arm over Terry’s glass-cut scalp and fired two shots at the ruins and the rocks, just to let the sergeant know he was packing. But exactly where the sergeant was, he couldn’t tell, and he thought that by the time his eyes found Jeremy Pett he would be dead.
Berke, the tough girl, was gasping for breath. Nomad called out, “Berke? You okay?” but she didn’t answer. A bullet came through Ariel’s window, making a neat round hole.
True feared Pett was going to pick them to pieces. He felt blood trickling from a glass cut over his right eye. They had to get out of here. Get inside the building. Most of the front of it was wide open to the world. The interior was shadowy, but he could make out a tangle of stone rubble and collapsed roof beams. Make Pett come to him, so he could use the .38 at close range.
Some plan, he thought. And the idea of taking Pett alive, and getting him help…
“Listen up!” he shouted. “We’re going to—”
He paused as a streak of heat zipped past his mouth and put a hole through his window that spread out a spider’s web of silver cracks. He heard the whine of the ricochet off the building’s stones. He slid down in his seat.
“We’re going to get inside there!” he continued. They had a distance of about fourteen feet from the van to the building. “I’ll get out first and cover you! Everybody’s going to have to slide through my door! Fast as you can!” The other option was for them to go out the door on the right side, which would put them directly in Pett’s sights. “Wait for me to tell you to move! Got it?” He burned a few seconds getting his nerves in order, and then his next-best plan went up in smoke because he couldn’t get the driver’s door open. The handle had no tension; the cable was broken. A knifeblade of panic twisted in him. This was the moment every man responsible for human life dreaded. He had to do something, and do it fast.
“John! Watch your eyes!” True put two more bullet holes through the large window on Nomad’s side, and then Nomad got the idea and used both feet to kick the rest of the tinted glass out. True slid down again, opened his bag for more ammo and reloaded four chambers. He had another box of bullets, so he was okay there. “Terry, you stay where you are! I’m shooting over your head! Everybody else out! Go!”
As they scrambled out as best they could, True got off five shots. Pett would know what kind of pistol he had, from the sound. It wasn’t going to put the fear in him, but it might keep his head down. Might.
True reloaded. He heard Pett’s rifle fire, but where the slug went he didn’t know. Shooting into the building, maybe. Shooting at the Band That Will Not Die. This time, they might.
“Terry! You okay, buddy?”
“Yeah. I think.” His voice was shaking. “I’m cut up a little bit.”
“Me too. I want you to crawl between the seats and get out. I’ll cover you. Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Go!”
Terry crawled back and pushed himself through the window. True began firing through the passenger side, three shots at a ghost. Terry tumbled to the ground like a laundry bag. As he stood up to run for shelter, he was hit in the upper back on the right side and he gave a cry, almost of nothing more urgent than surprise, as he went down.
He is where he needs to be. He is where he has been coming to. He has arrived, and today will belong to him. Gunny is with him in the rocks, close by his shoulder. His rifle is warm and it smells good. He is very glad that their van didn’t hit his car, because he needs it to get to Mexico. His journey will begin after this is ended. Like they say…today is the first day of the rest of your life.
It has been a challenging hunt. Tracking them from city to city, driving past the clubs, marking where they stay, and being very careful not to let those men in the Yukons get a good look at him. He has not been trained for nothing. He knows his business, and he is a prince of his profession. A hero. The Bronze Star says so, and so does Mr. Salazar.
Gunny thinks very highly of him too.
Jeremy wears his Triple-T Truck Stop ball cap. He has taken his sunglasses off, the better to acquire his targets through the scope. The sunglasses had belonged to Grandmother America. They didn’t look like an old lady’s sunglasses, they were pretty cool. In the Accord’s locked glovebox he’d found a hundred and sixty dollars in a bank withdrawal envelope. Why did they call it a ‘glovebox’? Just wondering; it had been on his mind during the long drive from Tucson to San Diego. Gunny had occupied the backseat on part of that drive, but he had no opinion.
Now, Jeremy sees that they’ve gotten out of the van into that building. He feels a pressure here, because even though this place is a perfect shooting gallery—except for that van being in the way—somebody may come along at any minute and that would not be pretty. So he does feel a pressure. He felt that same pressure when he saw the van and the trailer go off the highway and he figured he’d better drive on a distance since the van was just sitting there, he didn’t want to spook them, but then the next chance to turn around had been fifteen fucking miles west because a trooper got behind him and to cross the sandy median would have made him visible.
So here they are. He has just shifted his position a dozen yards, and it paid off because the different angle gave him a clear shot at the guy with the skinned head. He thinks that was a good shot, right through a lung. He’s waiting for the man with the .38 pistol to get out
. Okay… okay…here he comes, out the window the others shimmied through. And now he’s leaning over trying to help the guy on the ground. The pistol in his right hand. Little piece of shit.
Jeremy sights and fires, just to let that man know what he thinks of the pistol, and he sees the man’s right elbow explode and the pistol drop from the shot-stunned fingers.
Bite that, motherfucker, Jeremy thinks.
Oh, here comes the long-hair. The lead singer. Running out of the building. Jeremy wants to know if that dude, that fucking Nomad, thinks he’s walking on a street under a burning sun. If he thinks that his blood is red, white, and blue.
“Hope they bury you where the grass is green,” Jeremy says to the image in his scope. His finger is on the trigger.
Nomad has emerged from the building to help the man with the shattered elbow, whose arm is out of the action, Jackson. Now they both try to help the skinhead. Terry, that’s his name. Spitzenfucken or something. Terry is up on his knees. They are trying to get him on his feet. Now, look at this: here comes the hippie chick to help, and the drummer girl stands at the edge of sun and shadow for a few seconds and then she comes out too, and Jeremy can hear their voices drifting toward him, telling each other to hurry.
He has a shot right on Nomad’s head. Right between the eyes.
Gunny tells him to hit the hippie first. Gunny has gotten very troubled about that girl, though he won’t say exactly why. He says hit her now, stupid!
Jeremy has a shot, but he hesitates.
Say what you will, those people are not Blue Falcons.
They’ve almost gotten Terry standing.
Jeremy shifts his aim and sends another bullet into Terry’s back, and as Terry falls on his belly again and the others are frozen in shock Jeremy resights on the hippie chick’s head but the drummer girl has her by the arm and is dragging her toward the building, and—shit, that bitch must be strong, because she’s picking the hippie up and running with her the last few feet.
Then Nomad gets his head under the man’s broken arm and drags his ass into the building too, and Jeremy fires twice more into the shadows that have covered them.