High Desert Barbecue (6 page)

“
Well, that was my idea. That’s how he and I met.”

“
I know. Let’s not share that story with too many people.”

S
cott hadn’t picked a policeman randomly, but he hadn’t really planned the caper either. He’d been driving east along Route 66, on his way to pick up some things for Lani, his then-new girlfriend, when he was pulled over for speeding. Traffic was light after work hours, and his foot had probably been a little heavy on the gas pedal with nothing but open road ahead, so he’d bit his tongue when the officer walked up to his car window.

B
ut he hadn’t been able to keep a slight grimace from tightening his lips, and that grimace set off a five-minute lecture about proper civilian decorum toward officers of the law.

S
till smarting from that tongue-lashing an hour later, Scott spotted the same cop getting out of his patrol car on a residential street. Without really thinking, he pulled his pocketknife from his jeans—a semi-custom monster with a curved 5 1/2-inch blade and a push-button locking mechanism—crossed the street after a careful look in all directions, and stuck the blade deep into the rubber of the left front tire.

“
Need a hand?”

S
cott looked up to meet the cheerful eyes of a long-haired, middle-aged man toting an enormous backpack. Unless something had gone terribly wrong with the police department’s uniform budget, this wasn’t a cop.

“
Sure. Pick a tire.”

A
fterward, they’d gone for a drink.

B
ut that was then. Now, the arrival of the lunch order briefly interrupted the couple’s conversation. Digging in to his meal, Scott paused with a full fork half way to his mouth.

“
You don’t have to like Rollo, but don’t hate him because you think I’m going to join his barbarian tribe. You’re stuck with me.”

L
ani stood to lean across the table and kissed Scott on the lips, jarring his hand in the process. They both laughed as his first sample of lunch landed in his lap.

“
I don’t consider it ‘stuck,’” she said. “I’m happy we’re together. You have good qualities—a few, anyway.”

Chapter 11

R
ollo was at Scott’s house when he heard a nearly word-for-word broadcast of Van Kamp’s press release about a new wildfire during a newsbreak on the local classic rock radio station. He was sitting grumpily on Scott’s sofa, nursing a beer and a grudge—partially because his music tastes were now archaic enough to be considered “classic.” He was afraid to venture back into town after the barroom near-brawl and the subsequent warning he’d received from his host.

F
lagstaff was clogged with refugees from Williams. The refugees were at loose ends, wandering the streets, passing time in the bars and looking for somebody to blame for the charcoal pit that now occupied the one-time site of “the gateway to the Grand Canyon.”

T
he Forest Service claimed that a vagrant set the fire that destroyed Williams. Much to his disgust, Rollo, who thought of himself as a throwback to the bold days of Bill Williams and other early mountain men, found himself fitting the official description of the suspect.

S
o on Scott’s sofa Rollo slumped, his plaid shirt unbuttoned halfway to his navel, revealing a puff of graying hair and a slight paunch. He sank deeper into depression while the J. Geils Band’s
Centerfold
thumped from the stereo speakers.

C
hrist, I’m horny, he thought.

T
wo minutes later, he barged into Scott’s office.

“
There’s beer in the fridge,” Scott said upon the rushed arrival of his friend. He didn’t even look up. Scott was seated at his desk with his nose buried in his checkbook and a legal pad covered with numbers and scratch marks under his right hand. A stack of paperback books, hemmed in by the last fax sent to Scott’s former employers and a lightweight rain jacket reduced to the size of a small submarine sandwich within a tightly stuffed small nylon bag, teetered on the desk’s edge. Sitting atop a collection of Terry Southern’s dope-and madness-fueled essays, Claire Wolfe’s
101 Things To Do ‘til The Revolution
capped the stack, pinned in place by the .45-caliber paperweight.

“
Don’t clean me out,” Scott continued. “There’s not much more on the way.”

A
gitated, Rollo barked. “No, that’s not it.”

“
Well, what then?”

“
According to the radio news, there’s a new fire on the west side of town.”

S
cott looked up from his financial labors.

“
That sucks,” he said.

“
You don’t get it,” answered Rollo, growing even more agitated. “If those khaki—”

“
Khaki-shirted bastards?” Scott interrupted.

R
ollo ignored him.

“
If they can set a fire to burn out Williams, why wouldn’t they do the same thing to Flagstaff?”

S
cott leaned back in his swiveling office chair, testing its hinges and posing a challenge to gravity. He ran the fingers of his right hand through the tightly cropped stubble atop his head.

“
Because, maybe they didn’t do it to Williams.” he said. “At least, not deliberately. I mean, accidentally burning a town to the ground during an office cook-out is like the Forest Service. A carefully executed nefarious scheme really isn’t.”

S
tretched tight over clenched teeth, Rollo’s thin lips turned white. He crossed his arms over his chest and huffed and snorted through his nose.

S
cott sighed.

“
All right, what do you want to do?”

W
ithin half an hour, Rollo, Scott and an impressive assortment of backpacking gear were loaded into the stolen Chevy Blazer.

“
Where did you get that license plate,” Scott asked.

“
Off a truck in the City Hall parking lot. I figure anybody spending much time in that building is up to no good.”

“
It’s a nice touch. It complements the new primer finish you slapped over the government-issue puke color.”

T
hrust into a holster and firmly fastened with a Velcro strap to a backpack hipbelt, Scott’s large-caliber paperweight added its reassuring mass to the equipment list.

U
pon Scott’s insistence, they invited Lani to join the expedition.

“
You’re crazy,” she told them. “Why would I want to go barging with you into an area the Forest Service sealed off. Isn’t that illegal?”

“
A misdemeanor, at least,” Scott answered. “But school is out, you’re bored, and I’ll be there. Don’t you want to keep me out of trouble.”

“
Maybe.”

“
Bring your backpacking gear.”

“
What? Why?”

“
Just in case.”

B
efore Lani formally consented, Champ had accepted his unspoken invitation. He sat at Scott’s feet, tail wagging and eyes wide, doggie backpack firmly clenched between his teeth. He knew when adventure was afoot.

Chapter 12

H
ad he known of Scott’s assessment of his employer’s scheming abilities, Jason might have grudgingly agreed. Assigned to start a fire in the forest near Flagstaff that would threaten to turn the city into a 63-square-mile weenie roast, he’d gathered his eager gang of rangers and volunteers, loaded two Forest Service trucks with personnel and gear, and headed out of town.

“
Where are the drip torches?” Terry asked from behind one of the parked trucks along dusty, unpaved Forest Road 538. The warm vanilla smell of ponderosa pine trees brushed across the group, carried on a breeze that blew toward the San Francisco peaks. The mountains—really the shattered remnants of a huge, long-ago erupted volcano—towered above the treetops. The small city of Flagstaff, invisible from this perspective, nestled in assumed security at the base of promontories supposedly retired from the excesses of their explosive youth.

A
side from the sweet odor of the trees, the air rustled crystal-clear through branches and dry grass, untainted by dust or, more importantly, smoke.

F
ire-resistant nomex coat draped over one arm, shaggy brown hair poking out from under his red hardhat, Terry hoped to correct that lack of taint.

B
ut that would be hard to do without the proper equipment.

“
Drip torches?” Jason asked, stalling for time. Then he gave it up. “Shit, we forgot the drip torches.”

S
tanding side-by-side like crewcut bookends, compact Sig pistols dangling from their hips, Ray and Tim adopted simultaneous looks of disgust. Jason ignored them. He was less successful at brushing off Samantha’s look of blank-faced confusion.

“
All right, everybody back in the trucks.”

“
Back in the trucks,” Tim repeated in disbelief. “Why?”

“
We’re going back to town for our equipment.”

A
nd back they drove along FR538 toward FR231, which took a straight run past the arboretum, gained a layer of pavement and a name—Woody Mountain Road—and, after many miles eventually ran headlong into Route 66 on the west side of Flagstaff. But Jason grew more nervous the more ground disappeared beneath his truck’s wheels. Fire had been announced to the good people of Flagstaff, but fire was nowhere to be seen. The sky was entirely too clear to herald any sort of impending disaster.

E
ven before FR538 met FR231, Jason stood on his brakes and brought his truck to a sliding halt amidst a cloud of dust that flowed in through open windows and had his passengers coughing and gasping for breath. He jumped from the truck and ran back to the trailing vehicle.

“
What
?” screamed Tim, his face flushed and his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. A little high-strung at the best of times, the frustrated policer of campsites and sightseeing tours was clearly running out of patience.

“
Um … we’re short on time, so I figure we should head back to the site and improvise.”

“
Improvise, fucking
improvise
,” Tim fumed. Trapped in the vehicle with the fulminating ranger, Bob, Rena and Terry seemed to shrink in their seats.

T
he mini-convoy made an abrupt U-turn, and headed back along the forest road, leaving a plume of dust rising into the air.

Chapter 13

A
s dirt roads go, Woody Mountain Road is pretty well maintained—at least for the first few miles. The road is wide and relatively smooth. Curves are fairly gentle and the washboard and rock found further down the road is rare. This makes the road past the arboretum, then through ranch land and into national forest a tempting one to drive at high speed.

“
Slow down,” Lani said.

“
Why?” Rollo asked. He was fiddling with the radio while, perfunctorily, keeping an eye on the road. To his disgust, he discovered that the radio didn’t even deliver static, let alone music. He gave up on the tuning knob in time to give the steering wheel a vigorous spin and whiz by a pine tree with no less (and little more) than two fingernail-breadths to spare.

“
Fucking radio,” Rollo said. “You pick up a new car, you expect everything to work.”

S
itting rigidly in the shotgun seat, right hand pressed stiffly against the dash, Scott grunted. “You did get the car at a substantial discount,” he added.

“
Because,” Lani broke in, demanding attention for her concern, “you almost killed us, and we don’t know where we’re going or what we’re looking for.”

R
ollo sighed.

“
Well, there is that.”