No Man's Land (11 page)

A wall of soot and flame rose from the carcass of the
administration building, nearly obscuring the cellblocks. Sirens
approached in the distance. A loudspeaker blared orders but Melanie
could not make them out. She watched in stunned silence as the lead
pair of Strykers came to a stop about forty yards in front of the
cellblocks. Melanie let the pictures speak for themselves, a trick
she’d picked up from sports announcers. The lead Strykers began to
rake the building with heavy machine-gun fire. Above the roar of the
flames and the clatter of the machinery, shouts could be heard from
within the cellblocks in the moment before the Strykers’ back
hatches began to rise in unison and the soldiers hidden within began
to step out onto the ground and sprint toward the building. Melanie
had the odd thought that the troop carriers were a lot like the story
of the Trojan horse in the way they discharged their hidden cargoes.
Next thing she knew, she was talking.

“
The assault has begun in earnest, ladies and gentlemen. The
armored vehicles are now deploying their troops. As we speak, the
first soldiers have breached one of the lower doors and have
entered the prison.”
She hesitated. The prison yard was full of
double-timing soldiers, trotting along, using the armored vehicles
for cover as they hurried their way across the debris-strewn
pavement. Melanie felt the blood rising in her cheeks, almost as if
she were down there with a rifle She rolled her wrist at Yushi again.

“
This is real-time action from
American Manhunt
.
Melanie
Harris coming to you today from Musket, Arizona, where
. . .”

“Damage?” Dallin Asuega sputtered. “What damage? We’re not
talking about damage here, for christsakes. We’re talking about the
whole damn building being . . .” He searched for a word, then
forced himself to say it. “. . . gone. Twenty-three million dollars
and it’s gone. Vaporized, then burnt to a cinder.” He threw a
hand in the direction of the prison. “Probably another twenty
million or so damage to the cellblocks.” He paused, as if overcome
by his own words. “And that’s just structurally. God only knows
what kind of damage has been incurred to the interior.”

Asuega threw a quick glance at the TV monitor. CNN must have hired
a helicopter. The sound of the rotors could be heard above the
voice-over. “ Clop clop clop
. . . high above Meza Azul
Correctional Facility, where units of the Arizona and Nevada
National Guards . . .”

“Turn that damn thing off,” Asuega demanded.

Iris Cruz lifted an eyebrow, as if to ask Warden Elias Romero if
she should comply with the directive. Like most men, Elias liked to
think of himself as inscrutable, but she could read him like a lunch
menu. He was in a full sweat. Almost as bad as when No Man’s Land
she pressed him hard about dumping his wife. He was trying to figure
how all of this was gonna come down on him. Typical. He met her eyes
briefly, then an almost imperceptible movement of his head told her
to turn off the volume but leave the picture in place.

From a thousand feet above the prison yard, the picture showed a
trio of fire trucks pouring high-pressure cannons of water at the
smoldering pile of debris that had once been the Louis Carver
Administration Building. The camera panned out, revealing row after
row of prisoners lying belly down in the yard, arms handcuffed behind
them with those white plastic cinch strips. Stark naked . . . every
one of them, all of them with their faces turned to the side and
their butts pointing up at the sky. Didn’t matter that she’d
turned down the volume. The closedcaption function took over and the
words appeared on the screen anyway. It was all Iris Cruz could do
not to laugh. Apparently, Mr. Asuega felt differently. His face was
turning the color of an eggplant as he watched the flickering images
dance across the screen. It was as if they were hypnotized. Standing
around with their mouths open reading the little white words as they
popped up on the screen. Iris didn’t bother to try reading. The
words always came too fast for her anyway. She brought the back of
her hand to her mouth to hide her mirth. And then the blue shirts
appeared, coming out in twos from the doors, with their hands waving
high in the air like children at play. Rows of soldiers, guns at the
ready, trotted alongside the blue shirts, prodding them forward,
forming a nearly solid line between the blue shirts and the naked
prisoners.

“They rescued the hostages,” said Elias Romero.

“Thank God,” somebody whispered.

“How many?” another voice asked.

“Why have they got their hands up?” Asuega asked. “It makes
them look like they’ve done something wrong.” He pointed at the
screen, where the camera had panned back far enough to show the
blue-clad men and women being lined up against the fence. Hands on
the chain link. Feet spread out behind like the cops are always
making people do. Asuega was incensed “Look. What are they doing?
Why are they lining them up like that?”

Nobody answered. They stood there in the sun-washed room watching
the little box with the picture of the guards coming out of the
cellblocks two by two like calves out of a chute, then lined up
against the fence. The line seemed to go on forever, until finally
the color changed to white.

“Kitchen crew,” somebody said.

And then gray. “Maintenance and Sanitation,” Romero offered.
His big round face split with a smile. “Looks like they got most of
them,” he said hopefully. When he closed his eyes and allowed a
silent prayer to find his lips, for a moment Iris liked him again.
She got over it as soon as he started to talk “We better start
making phone calls,” he said. “We don’t want anybody finding
out about their loved ones from the television.”

A hum of agreement rolled around the room.

“Iris . . . ,” he started. She was about to cross the room and
whisper in his ear. Tell him that they couldn’t be calling anybody
at home because they were all out there on the access road, behind
the barricades and the soldiers, waiting to find out what had
happened to their loved ones; but she never got that far because the
door banged open.

Colonel Williams had a black smudge on one cheek and a bloody
knuckle on his left hand. He threw his leather gloves into his helmet
and stuffed the helmet under his arm. His thick sandy hair was soaked
with sweat. He gave the room a curt nod, sending several drops of
sweat cascading from the tip of his nose. He ran a sleeve across his
face, caught himself and stopped. “I need personnel files,” he
announced. “Anything official with a photograph.”

Asuega stepped forward. He pointed at the TV. “What’s this?”

“That’s
my
men doing
your
job,” Williams said.
“Case you haven’t noticed, we got your hostages back for you.”

“How many?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.” He turned his gaze
to Elias Romero. “The files?”

Romero shrugged resignedly. “They were kept in the admin
building.” He pointed at the TV set and shrugged again. Williams
gave a short bark of a laugh, as if to say “wouldn’t you know
it.” Before he could decide what to do next, Asuega stepped right
up in his face.

“Why are our personnel being treated like common criminals?”

“Because some of them probably are,” the colonel answered.

“I’ve just rescued twenty more people than supposedly were
missing, and I’m betting some of them are convicts. Ergo, nobody’s
going anywhere until I’m damned well sure everybody’s who they
say they are.”

“I can get shift commanders down here,” Elias Romero
volunteered. “I can get Human Resources to help out.” He nodded
Iris’s way. “My assistant, Ms. Cruz, and I know most of the
staff. We could—”

“Get it rolling,” the colonel said. “We can do the IDs from
the other side of the fence. Soon as we’re sure who we’ve got we
can process them out and get them home to their families.”

He turned his attention toward Dallin Asuega. The television image
had reverted to the streams of water being directed toward the fiery
remains of the admin building. The image seemed to jog the colonel’s
memory.

“Mr. . . .” He paused again. This time with a glint in his
eye.

“Asuega.”

“Mr. Asuega. I relayed your contention to the fire chief.”

“What contention was that?”

“The contention that my men must somehow have been responsible
for the destruction of your building.”

“And?”

“And he wishes me to inform you that the building was destroyed
as a result of a natural gas explosion combined with significant
amounts of an undetermined accelerant, quite possibly diesel fuel.”

Asuega unhinged his jaw to speak, but the colonel beat him to it.
“I believe his exact words were ‘thousands of gallons.’ ” He
paused for effect. “He said you should call his office if you have
any questions.”

Whatever Asuega had to say, he kept to himself.

Numb to the bone, barely able to flex his fingers, Corso leaned
back against the front of the tanker with his eyes closed so that he
wouldn’t see the waves of diesel fuel sloshing back and forth
inside the tanker.

Seemed like they’d been inside for hours when the truck drew to
a halt for the fourth time. Then started again, drove a short
distance and stopped again. Ten seconds later the diesel shut down
and everything went silent.

Driver switched on his flashlight. Held up a “take it easy”

hand. They waited. Seemed like days before Driver crawled over to
the hatch, reached up with a gloved hand and pushed it all the way
open, careful not to let it bang. The purple rays of the overhead
lights glimmered on the wavering pool of fuel as Driver maneuvered
one shoulder and then the other out into the night air. The sound of
dripping diesel fuel ricocheted through the tank as he thrust himself
up and out of sight.

Unable to force himself to his feet, Corso crawled forward on his
knees. By the time he reached the hatch, Kehoe had come around and
was trying to push him out of the way. Corso mustered the last of his
strength, shook off Kehoe’s clutching hands G.M. Ford and got to
his feet. He got one shoulder out on his own. Driver pulled him the
rest of the way out.

They were parked inside a fenced truck yard. A dozen mercury vapor
lights showered the area with artificial luminescence. Forty yards
away, a red neon sign in the window of a dilapidated white shack
blinked OFFICE over and over into the night. On the roof, clumsy
six-foot letters spelled DESERT DISTRIBUTING. The erratic light of a
television set bounced around the interior of the building.

The diesel fuel had left Corso slick and slippery. He had to lie
flat on his belly and hang on with both hands to avoid sliding over
the side. He watched as Kehoe was birthed from the belly of the
beast, one awkward movement at a time.

Again, they waited. Again it seemed like hours before Driver was
satisfied they hadn’t been seen, before he got to his hands and
knees and began to crawl along the top of the tanker, moving slowly
toward the rear, bridging the gap between the tanks, until finally he
was all the way at the rear of the rig, where a stainlesssteel ladder
was welded to the back of the tank. No more than a foot separated
their plastic face shields as Corso lay on his belly and watched
Driver reverse himself and climb down onto the ground.

Then Corso and finally Kehoe descended, until the trio stood
together at the rear of the truck. Took the better part of five
minutes for them to free one another from the suits. Despite their
best efforts, a trickle of diesel fuel here and a few drops there
found their way up sleeves and down necks.

Driver retrieved the pile of gear from the ground, clutching it
against his chest with one hand. He nodded toward the flickering
light coming from the office. “See who’s in there,” he said to
Kehoe. “Find out what he’s driving. It’ll be best if we have
the keys.”

Kehoe put his hand in his pocket and disappeared into the darkness
along the far side of the truck. “Lace your fingers together,”
Driver said. “Give me a boost.”

Corso did as he was told. “That lunatic is gonna murder
whoever’s in there,” Corso whispered through clenched teeth.
Driver raised one foot into Corso’s proffered hands. “Makes him
feel better about himself,” Driver said with a grunt. “Makes him
feel superior.” Driver wiggled. “Higher,” he said. Corso put
all his frustration into it, lifting Driver high enough so he could
put one foot on Corso’s shoulder. Took Driver half a minute to
stuff the gear down the hatch, into the tank and jump to the ground.
As if on cue, a shriek poured out of the office . . . then a second,
followed quickly by a low, gargling moan, plaintive and resigned, the
kind of noise a person makes only once. Corso felt his throat
constrict. “I don’t want any part of this,”

he said. He cut the night air with the side of his hand. “I’m
done. I’m bailing out.”

Driver threw an arm around Corso’s shoulder. The gesture seemed
almost fraternal until Corso noticed the black automatic in Driver’s
hand. He rubbed the front sight gently across Corso’s cheek. “I
think you better stick around for a while, Frank,” Driver said with
a sigh. “We’ve got a couple of days head start. I’ve got things
I need to do, so I’d really hate to see anything get in the way of
that.” Corso opened his mouth to speak, but Driver cut him off.

“I know. I know,” he said. “You’ll lie low until they
figure out we’re gone.” The barrel caressed Corso’s cheek
again, rubbing back and forth. “I trust you, Frank. I really do.
You tell me you’re not going to compromise our position . . . I
believe you.” Again he tilted his head toward the office. “. . .
but my friend Kehoe there . . . he’s a most untrusting fellow, and
I just can’t see him wanting a loose end like you floating around,
if you know what I mean.”