Fangs Out (25 page)

A drunk member of my team told me that night that Echevarria, who assigned our missions, had been bedding my wife while sending me overseas, sometimes for weeks at a time. Granted, I’d given her every reason to find comfort in the arms of another man; nobody would ever pin a merit badge on me for marital fidelity while I was away—and even when I was home, I admit I was a distant presence emotionally, my head still in the field. All I had left to share with her were jittery nerves and lingering, combat-induced anger. But still . . .

I stopped drinking after that.

The sound of an approaching car derricked me from Memory Lane. I turned to see a faded gold Oldsmobile Cutlass lurch off the highway and onto the tarmac, toward the plane, streaming a thin contrail of oily smoke. The driver was about twenty-five, shirtless and skinny.

“How goes it?” He waved pleasantly as the car pulled up beside me. A pair of dice showing snake eyes was tattooed on his left deltoid. He was wearing dark wraparound sunglasses.

“Just living the dream.”

“Saw you land,” he said, shoving his transmission into park and stepping out. “We don’t get too many planes coming in here. Usually they just keep right on flying up the valley, all the way to Mammoth. Why land here unless you got engine trouble or something, right?”

“We were running low on gas.”

“Well, there’s no gas here, that’s for sure.” He was missing two lower front teeth.

Tell me something I don’t know.

He gestured with his thumb to a young woman slouched in the front passenger seat of his car, smoking a Marlboro red.

“Yeah, me and her, we live down the road, ’bout a mile thatta way.”

She was as scrawny as he was. Her hair was long and unwashed and zigzagged down the middle. Nasty-looking skin blemishes ravaged what had once been a pretty face. If the Crystal Meth Manufacturing Association of California was looking for poster kids, these two were it.

“Nice airplane,” he said, gazing at the Cherokee. “How much you think something like this sells for?”

“Hard to say. A lot depends on the radios, how much time there is on the engine.”

He glided his hand along the wing. “Yeah, I was gonna be a pilot once. I don’t know, man. Life, ya know?”

“I do indeed.”

He snapped his fingers as though hit by a great idea. “Hey, you know what? There’s a gas pump at the Independence Airport, just up the valley. Tell ya what, we could drive you up there. Got a couple jerry cans in the trunk. Fill ’em up, drive you back, get you on your way.”

“We sure would certainly appreciate that, young man,” said Dutch Holland, done with his business behind the hangar and walking toward us. He dug into the front pocket of his trousers and pulled out a fat roll of cash. “Be happy to pay you for your trouble.”

The driver stared at the wad the way a hungry man stares at a ham sandwich as Holland peeled off a couple of twenties.

“Awful nice of you, Mister,” he said as he stuffed the bills in the back pocket of his jeans. “Isn’t that awful nice of the gentleman, Jodi?”

Jodi flicked the butt of her cigarette out the window and tried to smile.

“I’m . . . Mike, by the way,” her boyfriend said, hesitating for a split second, like he first had to come up with the name.

“Pleasure. I’m Dutch Holland. This is Mr. Logan.”

We shook hands. Mike’s palm was as slimy as a mackerel.

“Well,” Mike said, holding the left rear door open for Holland, “let’s get ’er done.”

Holland seemed to suspect nothing as he eased into the backseat of the Olds. I suspected plenty. “Mike” was way too eager to help us. Either he was an Eagle Scout, or he was up to no good. My money was on the latter.

There’s a given in escape and evasion tactics. The odds of surviving a kidnapping decline radically the second you set foot inside the kidnapper’s vehicle. Better to resist any abduction attempt, forced or coerced, on open ground, where you still have a fighting chance. I wasn’t too worried about whether I could incapacitate Mike and his stringy girlfriend. Even armed, neither struck me as much of a threat. But there’s that weevil that lodges at the base of your throat when you don’t know what’s waiting for you up ahead. It’s the same feeling you get just before you touch down in a hot landing zone, or when you kick a door, not knowing who’s waiting on the other side, and with what. The unknown. You never get used to it. You just learn to put it aside.

We needed fuel.

I climbed into the back of the Olds with Dutch Holland.

T
HE HIGHWAY
was empty. Jodi sucked on her cigarette, staring straight ahead in heavy-lidded, narcotic-addled silence.

“So where’d you guys fly in from?” Mike looked up in the rearview mirror with his sunglasses on as the speedometer pushed past seventy-five.

“San Diego,” Holland said.

“Nice. They got those big whales down there,” Mike said. “Always wanted to see those whales.”

I rolled down the window to vent Marlboro smoke and asked Mike what he did for a living.

“Me? Uh, construction. Framing, mostly. Yeah, it was pretty slow around here for awhile but things are starting to pick up. I’ve been working pretty steady lately.”

He was lying. The local construction trade may well have been on the upswing, but Mike was no part of it, not with callous-free palms like his.

We passed Manzanar, where thousands of Japanese-American citizens were forced to relocate during World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Long gone were the guard towers and barbed wire fences. Little beyond concrete foundations remained of the camp’s tar paper barracks. That and the lingering air of injustice. Dutch Holland appeared to notice none of it.

“We’re looking for my buddy Al’s cabin,” he said, squinting at the landscape whizzing by, trying to get his bearings. “It’s just up the road, to the west, into those hills a little, I think. He’s got his own airstrip.”

Mike was quiet. Then he said, “I know exactly where that is. Just up the road, into the hills. We can cruise over there right now if you want.”

Holland brightened. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all. It’s on the way.” Mike glanced over at his girlfriend. “Isn’t it, darlin’?”

Jodi stared straight ahead.

I knew one thing. Wherever Mike was taking us, it wasn’t to see Al Demaerschalk.

There was a turnoff just south of the town of Independence. Mike hooked a left and headed west. The terrain rose quickly from the valley floor as we pushed higher into what soon became pine-dappled foothills.

Holland peeled off his glasses, polished them on a trouser cuff, and slipped them back on, peering out the windows. “This doesn’t look very familiar to me at all. You sure Al’s cabin is up here?”

“Just a little further,” Mike said, his jaw set.

The pavement soon gave way to a rutted dirt road. Dust swirled behind us. We bounced over a cattle crossing guard doing fifty, suspension and tires chattering across the metal grate like machine-gun fire. Mike eased off the car’s accelerator as we approached a metal mailbox mounted to a weathered four-by-four leaning precariously into the road. To our right was another road that led perpendicularly up a short draw, so overhung by a thatch of tangled vines as to be all but unnoticeable. Mike made the turn.

“I’m sorry,” Holland said, “but this is definitely not the way to Al’s place.”

No kidding, Dutch.

The top of the draw gave way to a collection of junked vehicles, an unpainted Quonset hut, and a dilapidated, freestanding mobile home from which two long-haired men, both the approximate age of our driver, emerged on the run. The shorter and heavier of the two sported a scruffy beard and a pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun. The other man toted an AK-47.

Mike jammed on the brakes. He reached under his seat, then jumped out, waving a cheap .25-caliber pistol and yelling, “Get out of the car!” as the two men from the trailer converged on us with their weapons at the ready.

Holland looked left and right, confused. “Where are we?”

“In deep guano,” I said, stepping out with my hands up.

The odor of ammonia wafted in the dry, hot air from the direction of the Quonset hut. Somebody was cooking a batch of crystal meth.

“Who’re these jokers?” the guy with the shotgun demanded. He was wearing flip-flops, cargo shorts, and a John Deere baseball cap, backwards.

“Dude, they’re Fort fuckin’ Knox,” Mike said. He pulled open Dutch Holland’s door. “Get outta the car, Gramps. I mean it. Now!”

“You heard him,” Jodi said from the front seat, almost like she was bored. “Get out.”

Dutch got out.

“I don’t understand,” he said, confused.

“It’s gonna be OK, Dutch.”

“I saw ’em land, down in Fair Vista,” Mike was telling the others. “Check this out.” He jammed his hand into Holland’s front pocket, holding up the cash roll like it was a scalp. “Plus they got their own airplane. Is that chill or what?”

“They got their own plane?” said the man with the AK-47. He wore a “Jugs, Not Drugs” T-shirt.

“Real nice one, too,” Mike said.

“That means people must’ve seen ’em come in, you moron! They probably got tracked on radar or something. What the hell were you thinking, bringing ’em up here? Seriously, dude, I’d like to know.”

“I thought . . .” Mike stopped to ponder the question. “I thought, you know, we could, like, I dunno, jack ’em, or somethin’. Take their plane. Whatever.”

“Then what, shoot ’em?”

Mike looked down at the ground like he hadn’t really planned that far ahead, then shrugged. “I guess. I dunno.”

The guy wearing the backward John Deere cap smacked him on the side of the head.

“Just so you know,” I said, “I’m an employee of the United States government. I work for one of those alphabet agencies you’ve no doubt heard about, and I just happened to be on a mission with my distinguished colleague here when your friend ‘Mike’ offered us a lift. Now, you probably want to know what kind of a mission I’m on, and I
could
tell you, but then I’d have to, well, I think you know . . .”

Jodi turned to Mike and asked, “Have to
what?”

“Kill us,” Mike said, rolling his eyes.

I went on. “One thing I
can
tell you, because most foreign intelligence services hostile to the United States already are aware of these things, is that I’ve been implanted with a microchip, which is standard procedure for operators in the field, by the way. My chip transmits a discrete transponder code. And that code,” I said, unfurling a finger skyward, “goes directly to an NROL-25 satellite in geostationary orbit, programmed to monitor my every movement. The National Reconnaissance Office is actually watching you right now. Everybody say cheese.”

They all craned their necks and gaped as if to see the aforementioned recon bird in orbit. Even Jodi looked up.

“So here’s the deal, kids: my colleague and I will borrow Mike’s car, and we will go about our mission here in the beautiful Owens Valley. After we’ve completed our mission, we’ll drop the car back at the Fair Vista Airport, where you can pick it up tomorrow at your convenience.”

The guy with the shotgun scratched his chin, pondering my offer. “What about the cops?” He gestured toward the hut.

“You mean am I going to tell them about your little chemistry project? Not as long as Mike here gives my colleague back all the money he stole from him and if you young gentlemen promise to consider contacting the Betty Ford Center.”

Shotgun man thought about it, then said, “OK.”

Mike returned Holland’s cash. “Sorry, mister.”

The old man struggled to come up with an appropriate response. “Just try to keep your nose clean,” he said finally. “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

I climbed in behind the wheel of the Olds. Dutch got in on the passenger side. The last thing I saw driving away was Jodi lighting another cigarette and the guy with the AK punching Mike in the face.

“W
HAT THE
heck was that awful smell back there?” Dutch Holland said, glancing back through the rear window.

“Drugs.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Bad drugs.”

The old man was quiet for a minute as we drove along the dirt road.