Vertical Coffin (2004) (35 page)

We were only about a hundred yards behind him when he turned off his headlights and swerved right, heading down into a gully. Sonny whipped the wheel and followed. We raced along the sandy wash, narrowing the distance between us until we were so close the flying dirt from the truck tires stung our cheeks and filled our eyes with grit. We rounded a turn and roared past a line of trucks and old bulldozers situated to look like a stalled armored column. Each one was identified in large, white letters that read: t-62 or armored troop carrier.

Was this out here for a reason? Why had he turned off hi
s h
eadlights? Why was he leading us here? Suddenly I had a deadly premonition.

Just then, off to our right, a loud siren started blaring in the distance. I turned to see where it was coming from but couldn't locate it. Seconds later, five state-of-the-art FA-18 fighter jets dropped out of the moonlit sky, heading right at us. The Super Hornets roared down toward the column of parked trucks and bulldozers. Just as I looked up, a Maverick missile launched from under the wings of each plane. The pilots were a mile out and I doubted they could even see this little sand rail down here. Had Vincent turned off his headlights so they wouldn't see him in the low light of the quarter moon?

The air-to-ground weapons streaked toward us and five loud metal clicks sounded from above. I'd only heard this once before when I'd done cross-training with the air wing, back in the Marines.

"What's that?" Sonny screamed as we roared along.

"Detonators!" I yelled as the warheads went hot overhead.

The Mavericks vectored in over our shoulders. The first one blew an old dump truck off its axles and ten feet into the air. Little pieces of it rained down all around us. The other four hit seconds later, blowing up a bulldozer and some old trucks.

Smiley had already turned right, driving the Dodge Ram out of the gully. But Sonny and I were stuck in the middle of this night fire mission. Suddenly, five more Mavericks came streaking in. Their detonators clicked on, followed ten seconds later by huge explosions. A bulldozer on our right turned into deadly shrapnel.

I grabbed Sonny and threw him out of our speeding sand rail just as two more missiles struck, blowing up vehicles on both sides of us. We burrowed down into the sand as the four fighters screamed by low overhead, climbed into the night sky, and banked right to come around for a second pass.

"We gotta get outta here now!" I pulled Sonny up and we started running back toward the sand rail, which had come to a rolling stop twenty yards away and was miraculously still upright with the engine idling. There were destroyed garbage trucks and bulldozers blazing all around us while the strike fighters climbed, making a sweeping turn, their wings glinting in the moonlight.

"They're coming around!" I yelled. "Listen for the sound of the detonators. They click on about a hundred yards out. You can hear it happen. Means you got about five seconds to get in a hole somewhere."

Just then, I saw the Dodge nose up to the lip of the wash, fifty yards away. The door slammed, and without warning he was firing the .50-caliber at us again, pinning us down. The huge slugs whined all around, tearing holes in the night and exploding anything they hit.

The Super Hornets had completed their turn and were coming back. Smiley saw them, dove into his truck, and backed up out of range of the missile attack. It gave us a precious few seconds to get out of there.

"Let's go!" I yelled as we jumped into the bucket seats. Sonny put it in gear. We hung a right, climbing up out of the wash just as the FA-18s leveled out and started another pass. I saw more bombs light up and streak out from under the wings heading our way again, then seconds later: click, click, click, click. The detonators snapped on.

"Now!" I yelled.

Sonny and I dove out of the rail while it was still moving and started eating sand.

The trucks and vans parked in the wash exploded like a chain of fireworks, shooting sparks high into the air. We were further out of the fire zone this time, so none of the shrapnel or falling debris landed on us.

The Hornets completed their pass and climbed out again. Our sand rail was again miraculously still unscathed. It had a lo
w c
enter of gravity and wasn't prone to flipping. We raced toward it as the .50-caliber started up again, chopping loudly from a sand hill on the right.

Sonny screamed and went down in a heap. His right leg was missing from the knee down. Blown right off.

"Shit!" I stopped short and kneeled over him.

Smiley's laughter rang out from a distant hillside. The jets roared low overhead, passing over us again before they careened to the left, turning for another pass. Once they were gone, climbing to come around again, I heard Vincent yell:

"Having fun, assholes?"

I took off my belt and cinched it tightly around Sonny's thigh.

"How bad is it?" he asked, lying on his back, straining to look down at his leg.

"It's fine. Just a scratch," I told him, pushing him back down so he couldn't see.

When I had it tied off, I threw him over my shoulder and made a run for the rail. I could barely see Vincent up on the sand hill. He had the big Browning thrown across the hood of his truck and was squeezing off long bursts. The massive exploding slugs dug holes all around me as I threw Sonny into the passenger seat, and jumped behind the wheel. The FA-18s were coming in again, wingtip-to-wingtip. Five more Maverick missiles launched. Smiley backed the truck away fast, out of the line of fire.

I threw the sand rail into gear and floored it, roaring back across the desert toward Cactus City. The buildings loomed on the night horizon as we approached. I looked over my shoulder, but Smiley was nowhere behind me. I needed to get back to the SWAT truck and get a first aid kit for Sonny, then radio for help. With his leg shot off, and his arteries open, even with my belt tourniquet, he would bleed out soon and die. I headed back toward the hole in the fence.

Suddenly, off to my right, another silver dune buggy was heading right at me. Where it had come from I didn't know. The same huge rear tractor tires threw sand out behind as it closed in. The same metal mast jutted up between the seats.

A skinny man wearing a checked shirt and John Deere ball cap was at the wheel. He angled in to head me off, then pulled alongside until we were wheel to wheel, running at breakneck speed. I looked over and saw that he was driving with only one hand. The other was holding a big Army .45 pointed right at me.

He raised the muzzle and fired one shot over my head. My AR-15 was on the floor, banging around uselessly at my feet. I fought the wheel with both hands, flying along half blind at over forty miles an hour.

The man extended his arm and aimed the gun at my head. His meaning was very clear.

Stop or die.

Chapter
48

ROYAL

I had to make up my mind fast. Do I pull over for this asshole in the John Deere hat and risk Sonny's life, or keep going and pray for the best? I decided to make a run for it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the truck closing in from the right. Smiley had sped across the hard-pack that rimmed the edge of the gully, but now he was back in the soft sand. I heard the truck shift back into four-wheel drive and start growling. I knew he wouldn't be able to keep up if I just kept going.

Suddenly the black Dodge braked to a stop and the Browning started chattering. One of the bullets hit the metal mast in the front of my rail, blowing the large welded bolt away. The bullet ricocheted and metal fragments stung the side of my face. One piece blew a pretty good hole in my forearm, knocking my hand off the wheel. The rail spun right and finally shuddered to a stop.

I heard the .45 popping and looked back to see that the guy in the John Deere hat was now firing the large semiautomatic pistol at the truck. Impossible to hit at that distance with a handgun.

I pulled up the AR-15. With blood running down my arm and dripping off my fingers, I aimed at the truck and squeezed off a burst, holding the trigger down until the C-mag was dry. Then the man in the checked shirt spun his sand rail around in a circle and roared up on Sonny's side.

"Follow me," he yelled. Now we were teammates.

"My friend is wounded. He needs help!" I shouted over the roar of both sets of straight pipes.

He waved for me to follow, then floored his sand rail and sped out in front of me.

My arm was bleeding and the blood made my grip slick on the steering wheel. I fought the rough terrain. The hard suspension on the sand rail kept jerking the wheel from my grasp. The man in the John Deere hat roared ahead of me, back into Cactus City, but he never stopped. He exited the far end, then turned right and drove down into a sandy gully. I followed, wondering where the hell we were going and if he'd heard me about needing a doctor. I glanced over at Sonny. He was holding on with both hands, a ghastly expression on his face.

"Where's my leg?" he yelled across to me, the sick realization turning his expression into a mask of horror.

The man in front of us drove his dune buggy up to a large bush, then stopped, jumped out, and pulled it aside to reveal a metal drainage pipe about five feet in diameter. I could see from the tire tracks leading inside, that he'd used this before. He pulled his rail into the pipe, then motioned me to follow. I pulled in behind him. He ran past me and replaced the bush. As he passed back again he shouted, "Follow me! Stay close!" He jumped in his rail and took off before I could reply. It was suddenly pitch black and my tires were chattering across the ridged metal. I navigated by following sparks from his exhaust.

The tunnel angled slowly to the right. I found that the rail would almost steer itself inside the pipe. All I had to do was keep it from climbing the walls and flipping over. After about a quarter mile we came out the other side. There was an old wood shed next to a concrete, windowless building that was about twenty feet square. The man stopped the dune buggy and jumped out. He still had the .45 in his hand, but no longer looked like he was going to shoot me.

"Come on," he said and motioned for us to follow him.

"He's lost his lower leg," I said.

The man came back and stared at Sonny, who was now white and pasty, going into shock. Then without a word the skinny man lifted Sonny out of the rail, threw him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, and ran with him across the sand to the concrete building a short distance away. He had a padlock key and was struggling to get it out of his pocket, with Sonny still over his shoulder. He finally opened the place up and carried Sonny inside. I followed, bringing both AR-15s and our two remaining C-clips.

Once we were inside, the man put Sonny on a mat on the floor, then closed the door and threw a bolt, locking us in. With no windows, it was again pitch black.

"I can't see," I said.

"Shut up," he answered. "Ya sound like a feckin' pussy."

A match was struck and a Coleman lantern hissed, throwing a dim light into the area. I looked around. We were in some kind of old water-control building or pumping station. There were rusted pipes and valves everywhere. Off in the distance I could still hear bombs exploding.

"This here's a no-impact area, inside the gunnery range," he said. "I found it three years ago. I wait here durin' fire missions."

Then the man came over and looked at Sonny's stump. "This here boy's gonna have to be tough as stewed skunk ta get through what we gotta do. But we cain't wait, gotta fix thi
s m
ess now." He reached down and pulled a piece of Sonny's pant leg away, exposing the bloody stump.

"Don't touch him," I said. "He needs a doctor."

"We don't get this fixed up now, this Mexican won't need no doc. He'll be upstairs with Jesus. I was a medic. Vietnam. Seventy-fifth Army Rangers," he said. "I seen a lot worse than this. But we gotta triage the fecker now."

He had a deep cracker accent--Virginia, or South Carolina. He took off his hat, revealing a snow white forehead above a tan line on his weathered face. Gray hair, growing long, covered his ears. His teeth were a mess and he hadn't shaved in at least a week.

"Gimme yer shirt," he said.

I took off the SWAT vest, then removed my shirt, leaving me in a T-shirt. My forearm didn't look so bad, now that I saw it in the light. It had more or less stopped bleeding.

The man started ripping my shirt into strips. Then he took off the tourniquet belt I'd put on Sonny's thigh.

"Gonna let this bleed out a little, clean her out some," he said, and Sonny looked at his newly shot-off right leg in horror. Blood started spouting out onto the floor around us. Then the man cinched up the belt again, stemmed the flow, pulled a pint of scotch out of a backpack, and handed it to Sonny.

"Get this down," he ordered.

Sonny took a sip.

"Not like that. Give yerself a party, boy."

So Sonny started swallowing the scotch until the bottle was empty. The man crossed to one of the valves and turned it. When the water started to flow, he washed his hands, then brought the lantern closer. He knelt down, and picked up Sonny's stump in both hands.

"Whatta you gonna do?" I asked, feeling a little sick as I looked at what was left of the leg.