No Man's Land (10 page)

He looked from Kehoe to Corso and back. “It’s now or never,
fellas. You’re either coming along or you’re staying behind.
What’ll it be?”

“Seems like all I get to choose is how I want to die.”

“Must be your day for life-and-death dilemmas, Frank.”

“You’re out of your fuckin’ mind,” Corso said. The glint
in Driver’s eye told Corso his assessment just might be correct.
Kehoe was already in the suit, using the attached gloves to get the
hood up, then fiddling with the mask and breathing apparatus Driver
shrugged and began to help Kehoe with his breathing mask. “You’re
a grown man, Corso. Make up your mind.”

As an answer, Corso sat on the cold ground and stuffed his feet
into the coveralls.

“For a guy who had no intention of getting me into this mess,
it’s amazing how you came up with one of these suits to fit me.”

Driver ignored him. Instead, he pushed a button and spoke into the
wireless phone.

He said, “Roscoe.”

“Yeah,” came the reply.

“Bring that last driver down to his truck.”

Paul Lovantano had never seen a sight so beautiful as that great
big Texaco star on the side of his DESERT DISTRIBUTING rig, sitting
there between the buildings, like a big silver liner just waiting to
fly.

“Keys are in it,” the big con said before kicking out the hook
and slamming the door behind himself.

Unable to believe his good fortune, Paul looked around. The yard
was empty. The sky above was the color of rolled steel and devoid of
stars. The area along the side of the cellblock was ankle deep in
broken glass. He moved slowly, as if expecting to be struck down by
some unseen hand at any moment. He’d covered half the distance to
the rig when several faraway pops ricocheted along the night air and
suddenly the sky was alive with flares, arching their way high into
the blackness, bathing the ground below in a quivering red light. As
far as he was concerned, whatever was going on with the flares didn’t
bode well. Some instinct told him to get out immediately, while the
getting was good. He broke into a run, covering the remaining twenty
yards with the speed of a halfback, grabbing the door handle,
launching himself up onto the step and into the familiar confines of
the cab.

Took him a full minute to get it running, then he was on his way.
Sliding off the clutch harder and faster than he ever had before,
feeling the wheels chatter on the concrete in the seconds before the
rig got rolling. Spinning the wheel hand over hand as he brushed the
front bumper along the far wall, making sure the tandem tanker had
room to clear the turn, holding his breath as she swung around to
face the front gate, hitting second gear, winding it up on his way
across the yard toward the way out. Two-thirds of the way across the
yard the gate began to slide open. The smile on Paul Lovantano’s
face didn’t begin to fade until he saw the armored vehicle motor
across the entrance. Half a dozen soldiers rode in back like fleas on
a dog, rifles raised, pointed at the windshield of the truck. Paul
used one hand to downshift the truck and another to wave surrender
out the window as he eased the big rig to a halt in the mouth of the
gate. Just be his luck to get this far only to take one in the head
from some nervous kid with an itchy trigger finger.

A sergeant hopped up onto the step and brought a black army-issue
forty-five caliber automatic to bear on Paul’s right ear.

“Out” was all he said.

Paul left the rig running and popped the handle. As he began to
slide across the seat, he heard the passenger side spring open and
looked over his shoulder just in time to see another soldier step up
into the other side of the cab.

He kept his hands high in the air as he hopped out onto the
tarmac. The barrel of the automatic ground into the soft flesh of his
ear, as somebody patted him down hard, came away with his wallet and
flipped it open. Paul wanted to speak, to tell them who he was and
how he wanted to get the hell out of here, but couldn’t manage to
spit it out.

The gun barrel left Paul’s ear as the sergeant perused his ID
and slammed the wallet against Paul’s chest.

“Take it,” he said.

Paul brought one hand down and grabbed the wallet, pressed it hard
against his breastbone for a moment, then used the other to return it
to his pants pocket.

He watched in silence as a soldier climbed on top of the rear
tanker, popped the bolt on the hatch and peered inside. “Full,”
he reported to the sergeant, who nodded and motioned him forward. The
soldier had just gotten to his feet and was making his way forward
across the top of the cars when suddenly . . . out of nowhere . . .
all hell broke loose.

Corso sat with his back against the front of the tank. He worked
at keeping his breathing shallow, trying to pull as little air
through the filter as possible. He was freezing. Chilled to the bone
by the pool of diesel fuel that reached nearly to his armpits, he
looked to his left, toward Kehoe, who was covered nearly to his neck
and beginning to shiver.

Wasn’t until he swiveled his head back around that he saw Driver
was up and moving, bent at the waist and sliding along with great
deliberation. He held a phone in one gloved hand as he slid his feet
carefully across the bottom of the truck until he was directly
beneath the partially open hatch.

In slow motion, Driver pushed the phone’s antennae out into the
open air. As Driver pushed the first button, the keyboard lit up
green. Corso winced and pulled his hands into knots. Before his brain
could begin to process the possibilities, however, the earth gave a
sudden violent shake, then a second, and a roar before a shout from
outside worked its way inside the tank. Driver was on his way back
toward Corso and Kehoe when the truck’s engine raced and they began
to move. The fuel sloshed back and forth in the tanker, at one point
completely covering his clear plastic face panel. Corso closed his
eyes and tried not to breathe.

• • • Paul Lovantano watched the soldier get to his feet and
begin to walk along the top of the rear tanker, then suddenly throw
his hands out for balance, wobble once and fall headfirst toward the
pavement below. Paul’s exhausted mind had just begun to register
the fall and the fact that the front hatch was ajar when he
experienced what he would later describe as “one of those lightning
things.” One of those moments when the air seems to stand still as
the nostrils twitch at the acrid odor of cordite, in the seconds
before the sky is ripped apart by sudden thunder. In this case,
however, it wasn’t thunder. Or lightning or any other natural
phenomenon. It was the administration building trying to take off
like a rocket ship. Paul watched openmouthed as a bright blue flame
lifted the brick building completely from its foundations. Within two
seconds, the building had divided in two. One half was sinking in
upon itself, falling back toward a roaring pit of fire, no longer
blue, but orange and smoky as it poked its dirty fingers higher and
higher into the sky. The other half of the building was airborne,
blown upward and outward by the force of the blast, tracing fiery
fingers across the night sky in all directions.

The sergeant pushed Paul toward the open door of his rig.

“Go. Go,” he shouted. “Get that damn thing out of here.”

They put her on the roof. Up there with a microphone and a
Japanese camera operator who had mastered the art of shooting her
upper torso while, at the same time, looking up her skirt. The
original plan had been to tape a lead-in for the takeover segment.
The idea was to get her high enough off the ground so they could
shoot out over the top of everybody else, leaving only Melanie and
Meza Azul in the frame, creating the illusion that they were the only
people on the job.

As was often the case, what had seemed like a nice low-key,
low-tech idea had turned out to be a nightmare. First of all,
Melanie’s lead-ins and promos nearly always began with her striding
confidently onto the set looking for all the world as if she’d just
slammed the cell door on yet another lawbreaker. On the motor home’s
roof, however, she was forced to stand absolutely still. Not only was
there a danger of inadvertently stepping off the roof and falling the
eight or so feet to the ground, but the sheet metal beneath her feet
rumbled ominously with even the hint of movement.

“Let’s try it again,” Marty Wells shouted from below.
Melanie adjusted the microphone on her lapel, heaved a sigh G.M. Ford
and nodded at Yushi the cameraman, signaling she was ready to start.
Before she could begin her recitation, however, a series of loud pops
suddenly filled the air. Melanie turned away from the camera in time
to see several arcs of light speeding up into the sky. Wasn’t until
they reached the apex of their flight and burst into flame that she
realized they were flares.

As the balls of orange light began their slow descent back to
earth, Melanie Harris turned back toward the camera and rolled her
wrist quickly over itself. The red light on the front of the camera
appeared as Yushi began to shoot.

“
This is Melanie Harris for
American Manhunt
.”
She
swept an arm across the sky. “
We are coming to you tonight from
Musket,
Arizona. From outside the front gates of the Meza Azul
Correctional Facility, where for the past eighteen hours, a prison
riot has
put the facility in the hands of the inmates and put
at risk the lives
of more than a hundred and sixty prison
personnel who are
presently being held hostage by some of the
most dangerous criminals in the United States.”

Melanie sneaked a quick peek down at Marty Wells, who was smiling
for all he was worth and bobbing his head up and down like a
bobblehead doll. “
As we speak, the tense standoff seems to
be reaching a new stage as National Guard units prepare to storm
the prison.”

At that moment, another, deeper growl reached her ears. She turned
in time to see a Texaco tanker truck come rolling out from behind the
building, elbowing around the sharp corner like some kind of
segmented beetle. “
What we would seem to have here,
ladies
and gentlemen, is the release of yet another tradesman.”
As the
prison’s gate began to slide out of the way, she looked into the
camera with an intense gaze. “
All day long, for reasons known
only to themselves, the inmates have been releasing those delivery
drivers who were unlucky enough to have been trapped inside
when the riot began.”

She half turned back to the prison yard, where the soldiers had
parked an armored vehicle across the mouth of the gate; the Texaco
truck was pulling to a halt as the flares found their way back to
earth and extinguished themselves.

“
As has been the case all day, authorities are conducting a
thorough search of the vehicle, both underneath and up above.”
Although Yushi’s upward angle prevented him from taping
anything on the ground, Melanie was confident that the ground unit
was getting the shots of the driver being dragged from the cab of his
truck. “
Here comes the driver,”
she intoned. “
They’re
checking him out.”
A moment of silence followed. She watched as
the driver lowered his hands. “
The authorities seem to be
satisfied
about the driver and are now checking out the truck
itself.”
Again she assumed the other unit was getting the
shots. “
As you can
see . . . ,”
she began.

Later reviews of both the video-and audiotapes would reveal the
basement windows of the Louis Carver Administration Building
imploding as the impending gas explosion sought sufficient oxygen for
the conflagration to follow. A second later, a great
whoosh
roared
through the surrounding air as an inferno of bright blue flame took
the building in its grip and tore it free of its foundations, lifting
the entire structure a full foot in the air before opening its hand
and allowing those parts of the building not reduced to flying rubble
to settle back into the cauldron of flame. The blast wave took but a
second and a half to cross the yard. Next thing Melanie Harris knew,
she had been knocked from her feet, thrown facedown on the roof of
the motor home by the sheer power of the explosion.

A heaviness in her feet and ankles told her that the lower third
of her body was hanging over the edge of the roof. She scuttled
forward like a crab, using her knees and elbows to propel her to
safety. The hail of dirt and bricks and glass had just begun when
Melanie rose unsteadily to her feet. Across the roof, Yushi sat
openmouthed, breathing hard, staring dumbly down at his upturned
palms. Half a brick bounced off the roof with a
boom.
Yushi
looked up. A single rivulet of blood had escaped his right nostril,
crossed his lips and now dripped from his chin.

“Roll it,” Melanie shouted his way.

He dusted his palms on his sides and put his eye to the
viewfinder.

“
You’ve seen it for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. A
massive explosion has rocked . . . no, rocked can’t be the word . .
.
has . . . an explosion has totally destroyed . . .”
Another substantial piece of debris shook the motor home,
obliterating whatever Melanie said next. By the time the camera
stopped bouncing up and down, she had regained her poise and had once
again become . . . “
Melanie Harris broadcasting live from
Musket, Arizona, for
American Manhunt
.”
At ground
level, the technicians had the camera rolling again.

“
The National Guard is going in,”
she chanted. “
The
first two armored vehicles are moving quickly across the prison yard.
And
then another pair and another.”