Savior (12 page)

Ricky handed Coppinger the phone and watched him go out the door.

He was alone in the room for several minutes, absorbing the silence on
his floor of the dorm. The other people in the dorm seemed to be a visiting delegation of South Koreans. Coppinger said they had been taken out to dinner. The base was somewhere in Florida. He’d had no idea. And Coppinger lived off base. There were posters that said things like GOD WILL JUDGE OUR ENEMIES. . .WE'LL ARRANGE THE MEETING over a picture of some kind of hellhound with bared fangs. Ricky found it depressing to look at and now wanted badly to get out of there, knowing how close he was to home. He had a sudden need to get the tablet. He didn't know where it was, but the last place he'd seen it was the command center. If they felt he was slick enough to get into the Canadian oil refinery where the
Santos Muertos
had their laboratory, then he could probably get in to the command center on the base and get the tablet without getting caught. It was worth a try. He picked himself up off the bed, dumped the clothes out of the Wal-Mart bag, and stuffed the bag in the pocket of his jeans.

The base was built around several artificial ponds lined with palm trees and walkways. Jogging military men and women wound their way along the paths in the twilight. Ricky slipped by them without arousing any notice. He approached the main building,
which from outside appeared to be a low-slung concrete bulk surrounded by long black, bulletproof windows extending from below grade to a few feet above ground. Walking along the pathway by it, Ricky noticed the soldier at the metal door and the lights inside just visible through the tinted glass. He walked around the corner and about twenty feet out of eye line and cut across the grass until he reached the wall. He jumped down into the gravel-lined well that surrounded the building and counted the innumerable cigarette butts dumped down there. On his stomach, he waited a long time, maybe twenty minutes, as it grew noticeably darker. He listened to the fragments of conversations as joggers ran by.

Yeah, that cat
-scratch fever got chronic.

He just wants to say you're fired.

Their voices faded into the distance along with their rhythmic footfalls. Ricky thought of his father in a prison a thousand miles away. Harken Oil Sands. Sounded dismal and far-off. Who built a secret laboratory beneath an oil refinery? If Al were here they would laugh at the preposterousness of it together. The thought of his father's sardonic dismissiveness, usually stronger in times of stress, gave him an energy lift. It was dark. He crawled forward and around the building, peeking his head up to see where the soldier was. He was not in sight. He must have gone in the building. This was a good sign. Ricky hunched over and ran the last few yards to the wall where the ditch ended and scratched up the embankment on all fours. He got up next to the door, and it took an effort to keep from looking around. As he put his hands on the square metal knob to push, it swung open of its own accord, and he found himself facing a group of Korean naval officers, laughing and talking to each other and their American counterparts coming up behind. Ricky held the door open for them.

Looks like they're having fun, he said to the two Americans. They grinned back at him. Then he slipped inside and let the door sweep shut on its own.

The light inside was the timeless orange tone of dimmed tracking lights reflecting off the wood-paneled ceiling. Ricky walked purposefully along, hugging the wall to remain in shadow as much as possible. There were people still manning about half of the rows of computer terminals, talking among themselves, chatting, picking up pointers about the movements of the country's enemies. He passed several doors of offices and tried to remember which office could have been the one where the Mayan expert had sat him down to ask him questions about the tablet. He'd been unable to say very much to her other than recount the details of his meeting and befriending Coconut Juan to the point where he let them have the tablet, despite his misgivings about it getting into the wrong hands. Ricky was sure it was now in the wrong hands. Knowing what he knew, he thought it was best to keep the tablet's secrets out of circulation altogether until perhaps humanity had evolved a better way of coping with differences in ideology. Right now nobody knew for certain what was going on. Some people, his father for instance, believed there was some kind of transcendent good that was forever battling with the forces of evil and neither side was ever making much headway until the final hour when Jesus would ride in on the cloud horses and burn away all the chaff.

One door had a plaque designating it as the SOJOC Conference Room. He thought that could have been it. The door opened and he slipped inside.

The lights came on automatically. Motion sensors. There were probably closed circuit cameras firing, recording the image of a fuzzy young man in a hoodie. He thought that he had perhaps a couple of minutes before the world came tumbling down. There it was—on a table next to the podium on the small, raised stage. Calmly, Ricky walked up to the table, picked up the tablet, and looked at the old, reclining, helmeted god with the unsmiling face and the strange symbols aligned underneath and around it. He put the tablet in the Wal-Mart bag. Then he walked out of the command center and to the West Gate. The MP on duty nodded at him as he went out the pedestrian path. Cars drove by slowly in the Florida night, ignorant of the dangerous terrorist act he'd just committed. He calmed himself, and into his head popped some lines of something Al liked to quote from Longfellow:

He has left the village and mounted the steep,

And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,

Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides. . .

Eleven
—Viva Zapata's

Hector drove the east-west county roads from Tampa, using the GPS mounted between them on the Mazda’s dash. Ricky recognized the trailer parks and the ad for a law firm that had been on the road around Lakeland for at least a decade. The last time he’d been here must have been three years ago when he and his mother went to Busch Gardens on the eighth grade class trip and had taken this way on the drive back.

Several cars swerved wildly on the two lanes, but Hector maneuvered expertly and calmly while he talked.

Must be people coming back from the Indian casino, he said. You ever been hunting, Ricky?

No. My Dad and I used to go fishing
.

I'll take you fishing in the spring for bonefish down in the Keys.
That's some fishing. Surf casting. I just got to get me some decent reels. I have a cousin. Timmy Dyer, in Gulfport Louisiana. One of the best sports fishermen in the country. You ever see SFTV?

No.

He was on that show with Earl Frazier catching redfish in Venice, Louisiana. Caught a thirty-five pounder on television. A real beauty.

What kind of boat did he catch it with?

Boat? You talking boat? He’s got a twenty-foot Bay Ranger, with twin-mounted 300-horse Evinrudes. Mint condition. Loves that thing with his life. We go out and catch a mess of fish with that boat.

Yeah.

Fishing and hunting's God's way of making sure men stay men, Ricky, don't you agree? Keep you tuned and focused to the important things in life. I know you want some success in your life, am I right?

Yeah.

What are you thinking in terms a career?

I don't know. Maybe a lawyer.

A lawyer? You couldn't pay me enough money to be a lawyer.

Yeah. Maybe a journalist.

Now that's something. Some of those journalist boys got their heads screwed on right.

The night streamed by outside in a cloudless torpor while Ricky listened to Coppinger talk. H
e wanted to remember the way Coppinger's hands shifted on the steering wheel, to listen for the stress in his voice that would come from noticing that he wasn't really listening. But then he realized that Hector didn't notice anything. He just kept driving and talking. When they got to Plymouth Beach, Ricky directed Coppinger down a cul de sac and told him to wait. He popped out of the car and walked twenty feet down a driveway and then jogged around the house, down a ditch and up to the back of a middle school parking lot. Then he jogged across Palisade Parkway thronged with nighttime traffic from Cape Canaveral and across the railroad tracks to Route 31. He checked the cell phone Coppinger had given him for the time and then tossed it into the stand of scrub pines next to a Mobil station.

Zapata's was between a dry-cleaners and a nail care salon. It had Christmas lights in the window all year round and a cartoon image of a Mexican bandido with a huge moustache on the door along with an ad for Corona stamped on the glass. Inside, Lianne was
waiting in jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair undone, talking with Flora in the doorway to the kitchen. She could have been an off-duty waitress, and the patrons at the table noticed nothing out of the ordinary as Ricky came up and greeted the two girls. Flora's mother came out with a plate of food in one hand and two beers topped with glasses in the other. Flora grabbed the beers out of her mother's hand.

Excuse me, guys, she said.

Lianne smiled at her, turned to Ricky and sighed.

You made it.

Yeah.

What's in the bag?

Something for my mother.

She's dead, Ricky. Don't be ghoulish.

Kind of rhymes with foolish.

Lianne laughed nervously.

I need to know one thing, said Lianne.

What?

Do we have time to eat? Flora's got two plates of leftovers set up in the kitchen.

Let's do it.

They ate in the kitchen at a small table in the corner. Flora came over and asked how it was.

It's great, Flora. Thanks
.

He and Flora had been in the same English class the year before with Ms. Moody. Flora had sat in the front and had taken extensive notes. She was determined to be the first of the Lopez girls to go to college. Ricky
had been honing a different skill set. Maybe he'd join the military. But now the thought hanging out with the likes of Coppinger was making him doubt that outcome. Anybody who could talk fishing for three straight hours without a pause was either a genius or an idiot.

You coming back to school, Ricky? asked Flora.

Maybe.

Okay. She went away to serve some customers at the bar with quesadillas.

This is great. I haven't eaten since breakfast. They kept me going at meetings all afternoon. They wanted me to infiltrate this plant.

What are you talking about?

There's a war, Lianne.

Isn't there always?

My father's a prisoner. We have to get him.

Ricky. You sound crazy.

I'm not. You have to trust me. We need to get up to Canada and get him back, and I need your car.

My car wouldn't get us to Jacksonville. The tires need air and it needs an oil change. Bobby's been after me for months to do those things. He says the tires need to be rotated and it needs new brakes.

Bobby was her older sister Cora's new boyfriend. He worked as a delivery route driver for a food distributor. He was Ricky's ace in the hole. Lianne hated him.

It runs.

Yeah, it runs okay.

It's now or never. I just ditched the Navy. I've got the tablet. They'll be hunting me down and I know they don't care about my father. They'll put a bunker buster on him as soon as sneeze.

What about school?

What about it?

You don't think it's important?

Lianne, you know like sometimes you're in that situation where you've got to choose between jumping or staying put? Like where in that movie here come the flying baboons or do you trust the cloud of butterflies? If you stay still you'll get torn to shreds and if you jump you might die? It's like one of those times for me. I want you to come with me.

Why?

Because you've got more balls in your pinky than most people I know
have you-know-where.

Your pants usually.

Lianne bent to her plate and finished off the burrito with two or three deft moves with her fork. She chewed carefully and stared off into space. Then she wiped her mouth and burped softly under her breath. She was a good-looking sixteen year-old going on twenty-five. She swept her hair back out of her face with one hand and looked up at him.

Ricky, that was good. Flora's
mom makes some powerful tamales poblanos.

They stood together and Flora came over and hugged Lianne and winked at Ricky.

Good to see you again, Ricky.

Hey, see you later, Flora. Thanks.

Anytime.

Under cover of the night
, Lianne and Ricky walked the two miles to her house in a neighborhood not too far from the school. She went inside and Ricky waited by the garage door, watching a cat standing near a bougainvillea along the side of the house. The moon was a quarter crescent smudged almost at the horizon and dimmed by the spreading night lights of Orlando in the distance. Lianne came down with a backpack and the keys to her 1997 Ford Escort with its four bald tires and wobbly gearshift. She had her license since last May, and in the summer she and Ricky had driven up and down the coast looking for surfing breaks. They'd dreamed of driving to California and hitting the Malibu beach and surfing until they couldn't think any more. Back then it had been an escape vehicle; and although they were escaping now, it didn't feel the same as the dreams of California.

You drive, said Ricky. I'll take over in a couple of hours.

Ricky, I've got twenty dollars. What about gas?

We'll figure it out. Just get going. I'm going to lie down in the back seat and sleep. Head north, but avoid 95.

Gainesville?

Sounds good.

Don't think we'll make it.

We'll make it.

I left a note for Daddy.

That's good. He'll understand.

Yes, he will.

Lianne's father was a firefighter for the town of Deltona, a good-natured, heavy-set guy with a drinking problem. Her mother had left them when she was just five and was somewhere out West if she was still alive. Lianne hadn't heard from her in a couple of years. Ricky thought of the different ways people had of leaving, as if coming back was ever an option. By the time you came back, nothing was the same.

As she drove out of town, onto route 91 and then 75, which went through Ocala and the central Florida swamps, Ricky slept fitfully in the back seat. When he awoke, it was somewhere just outside of Cordele, Georgia. The night just beyond the front windshield and the gas station lights had a thicker, less expressive nature. Lianne was inside paying with the twenty, and the two gas pumps were unmanned. Ricky got out of the car and went looking for the restroom, clutching the Wal-Mart bag.

Are you going to tell me w
hat's in that bag, Ricky?

Just that i
t's for my mother.

All right. Put it here in the backpack. You drive.
We're good for another 200 miles. After that, I don't know what we're going to do.

We'll figure it out.

Ricky got behind the wheel and started the car. Lianne played with the radio, scanning for something.

You listening for your mother?

I keep thinking I'll hear her voice. She always wanted to be on the radio. She loved Waylon Jennings and Willy Nelson and Wyatt Beaudry.

Anybody with a W.

I'm serious. She's out there somewhere.

And what'll you do when you find her?

Tell her I forgive her.

That's easy.

That's right. Don't need to over think it, Ricky.

You're right. That's what my Dad always says. It's like surfing. Just watch the pattern and catch the waves.

He pointed the car forward and the road carried them into the blackest part of the night. By the side of the road, old farmhouses slept and fog rose from the bottomland fields, ploughed dry of corn.