Bad Axe, page 20
Mary was a retired orthopedist and Joseph ran a Buick dealership over on Sand Beach Road. Nice people, plenty of money but they didn’t act like it.
Savannah backed into their driveway, facing out to Taggart Road, forty, fifty feet away, getting the truck set just right so she had a clear view back the way she’d come—the direction the blue van would have to travel as it exited the area. Judson’s shotgun was braced against the passenger door, and two of his handguns lay on the seat.
She didn’t have a plan, but she’d decided she was going to do more than take down the van’s license plate. Thorn said he’d be here by now and since he hadn’t arrived, she had no alternative but to handle this herself.
Directly across Taggart, the Lawrence family had scooped out a few acres of earth and lined the depression with plastic so their kids would have a pond to swim and fish in when they were growing up. For several summers all the kids from surrounding farms played there, until one afternoon Marco tried to drown one of the Lawrence boys. Even as kind as Mary Lawrence was, after that incident she put a stop to all contact between Savannah’s kids and her own.
Savannah sat with the truck idling, her cheeks still enflamed from Vegas’s speech, an agonizing roar in her ears.
It was true, all her daughter said. Those landmines had governed her family’s entire life. She’d been cowardly in never using them as she’d intended and even more spineless in storing them for all those years, never able to let them go. They’d poisoned every corner of her existence, poisoned her kids, infected her marriage. Those goddamn landmines were a bloodstain on her soul.
The hate she’d once harbored for the American war machine had simmered for decades until it almost flickered out, then suddenly flared to life again with Nola’s death, but this time the rage was no longer directed at the Pentagon or the nameless lawmakers who ordered the nation’s children into pointless battles, this time her hatred was directed inward.
The footlocker in the attic, that part of Vegas’s rant was true as well. Though Savannah had never admitted it openly to herself, she’d invited Nola’s contact with that trove of memories. Secretly she’d wished the girl to be so enthralled by Marty’s history that she would come to Savannah for a fuller understanding, then Savannah could flesh out the lost love who’d shaped the tragic course of her life and perhaps forge a more intimate bond with Nola.
She’d lost Marty. She’d lost Nola. She’d lost Judson, and now Vegas.
When Savannah’s phone trilled in the truck’s cup holder, she looked down at the screen, praying it was Vegas, she’d changed her mind, was coming home, willing to give Savannah another chance.
But no, it was Ray Murphy’s number. Thorn.
“We ran into some issues on the flight up,” Thorn said. “Just arrived at the airport, Engler Field, you know where that is?”
“A few miles east of here, four, five.”
“You okay? You sound strange.”
“You don’t know me. Don’t pretend you do.”
“All right.”
“I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“Give me your address, and the address where Marco is, any details about the layout of the area.”
When Savannah answered, her voice was not her own, but a ghostly replica speaking through her body, giving Thorn her address on Taggart Road, describing the three houses on the road, each one a few miles apart, a pond across from the first one, the second house, her own, and the last one, where Taggart dead-ended, that’s where Marco and Ingrid were, and the landmines. The Whitman place consisted of a two-story house, a barn, a couple of sheds, some animal pens. An empty field where long ago the Whitman’s grew corn, the remnants of a failed Christmas tree farm. And a forest west of that.
“I’m on my way,” Thorn said. “Green Ford pick-up.”
“Good-bye, Thorn.” Savannah broke the connection.
Nothing left to say, only one thing left to do, some come-from-behind justice.
The blue van was approaching, driving slow.
She put Nola’s Dodge in gear, engaged the four wheel drive and waited till the van was so close she could make out the red-haired driver, close-cropped hair, toothy smile.
She flattened the accelerator, kicking up a flurry of gravel and roared from zero to forty in a few head-snapping seconds.
The driver must have heard the rumble of the engine or caught a flash of Savannah’s approach because he swung his head around to stare at her, his eyes bulging as she aimed the chrome bull bars into the side of the panel van and rammed, skidding it sideways, where it caught the shoulder of the road, tumbled onto its side, and began to somersault down the bank toward the lip of the Lawrence’s pond, making it almost to the water’s edge before the first explosion blew apart the vehicle, then a second landmine detonated as the shattered van sank beneath the pond’s surface which muffled the next blasts and fired geysers of pond water fifty feet in the air leaving a hazy mist aloft, a cloud that must have been tainted with VX because a pair of low-flying geese veered away from the explosions, fought for altitude, but their wings failed and for a few moments they thrashed drunkenly before spiraling back to earth.
Savannah pulled forward to the shoulder of the road, slipped the shifter into neutral, revved the engine, revved it higher and higher and took a moment to plead for forgiveness from all the loved ones whose lives she’d ruined.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Marco was shoulder-deep in the mucky earth, digging a grave for the talkative little girl who was talkative no more. “I’m down here in a fucking hole, shoveling, what am I supposed to hear?”
“Sounded like an explosion.”
Marco stopped digging, back-handed the sweat from his forehead.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“It was an explosion, three or four of them.”
“Next asshole is going to dig the grave himself. This was stupid, leaving the work to me. Bad planning.”
“I’m serious, Marco. I heard something.”
“Which direction?”
“I’m not sure. It’s windy, it could‘ve been anywhere. Miles away, I don’t know.”
“Go get me a Bud Light, Ingrid.”
“Those boy scouts could’ve smashed into a tree, set those things off.”
“Jesus Christ. You’re so worried about it, get the car, drive around and see.”
“And what, drive into a cloud of VX? You trying to kill me?”
“Get the beer, would you? I got to finish this goddamn hole.”
TWENTY-SIX
F or the entire first leg of the journey, Thorn felt a knot tightening in his gut, made more acute by the unexpected headwinds that shaved a healthy chunk off their cruising speed, then an aggravating stop at a private airport north of Chattanooga where they’d arranged to be refueled, but found the fuel depot unoccupied.
Romy had to make several calls to locate the attendant, all of which tacked an additional hour on to the trip, most of that spent tracking down and rousting the twenty year old out of his one room shack a mile’s hike from the airport.
While the kid dressed, Thorn asked in the most laid-back voice he could muster, if the kid wasn’t supposed to be on-duty at the airport itself.
“Whatever,” the kid said.
“Whatever?”
“You heard me.”
Sugarman grabbed Thorn’s shoulder and steered him out of the room.
“He’s not the enemy,” Sugar said. “We’ll be there soon. Save your energy.”
Romy said, “What’re you so worked up about, Thorn?”
He shook his head, didn’t want to discuss it.
“He’s worried about Dulce,” Sugar said. “What she’s going through.”
“If she’s even still alive.”
“Look, we’re hustling as fast as we can.” Sugarman patted him on the back. “Unless you want me to call Sheffield and have him express some field agents from Detroit or wherever.”
“Leave Frank out of it. I’ll be all right.”
When the fuel tank was full, Romy gave the kid a credit card and shot Thorn a cool-it look.
Back in the Cessna, she said, “I know it’s hard for you to accept, Thorn, but as long as I’m piloting this crate, you’re outranked, and you’ll do exactly what I say at all times. This is no joke. Like the Captain on his ship. Got it?”
Thorn considered a salute, thought better of it and nodded.
“I’m sorry if I was being an asshole.”
“No ifs about it,” Romy said.
“The woman’s honest,” Sugar said. “Got to love that.”
“Now that we’re topped up,” Romy said, “I’ll push this beauty as fast as it’ll go. We should be there before lunch.”
“I was hoping for breakfast.”
“We all were.”
At eleven when they touched down in Bad Axe, the green pick-up Sugarman had rented from the local Chevy dealership was waiting on the edge of the runway. A plump white-haired lady had the paperwork ready to sign. While Sugar handled the forms, Thorn called Savannah to let her know they’d landed and were on their way. She provided some sketchy details about her location and Marco’s whereabouts, then ended the call with an abrupt and ominous good-bye.
Maybe there’d been a time when Thorn was angrier. But he couldn’t remember it. On the final leg of the flight while Sugarman dozed and Romy was locked in on the details of flying, Thorn found himself tapping a knuckle on the window, looking out through his reflection into the bleak darkness. He tapped until tapping was not enough, then he drew back his hand and clubbed the window with the side of his fist, harder and harder until Sugarman jerked awake.
“You okay, hombre?”
“Fine and dandy.”
“We’re getting there fast and we have a decent plan. Putting a hole in the fuselage isn’t going to help. Try some deep breaths.”
“Ah, yes. The universal cure-all.”
Sugarman shrugged and settled back into his seat and was soon asleep.
Thorn held himself in check but couldn’t stop the flood of images. For the next few hours he combed through his time with Dulce Mérida. From the first moment he’d seen her wedged into a storage compartment in that rundown mobile home outside Frontera and held her hand and calmed her, to the last words they’d shared as he left her in the care of Sister Kathleen. The girl’s resolute smile, her astonishment at the excess in the Tucson shopping mall, her instant affection for McDonald’s food. And swirled together with that was all Thorn had learned of Abyss and their loathing for migrants. Chasing them down like jack rabbits, capturing them, imprisoning them, using them for target practice or worse, the mass graves on the Whitman’s ranch, the macabre video of the gassed Hondurans.
For several minutes he tried taking Sugarman’s advice to ease the pressure in his chest: breathing in and out, going slow, following the breath into his lungs, holding it for a second then letting it go in an easy stream, but the technique failed. Nothing was going to smooth him out, nothing except putting his hands on Marco.
He felt every heartbeat in his throat, dry and constricted, a fire alarm clanging in his chest. He didn’t want to kill these vermin, he wanted to lock himself in a cell with the guy and gouge and rip and stomp, inflict as much agony and humiliation as he could bring about.
Which of course would solve nothing. There were countless Marcos scattered in rat holes across the globe. Their numbers seemed to be multiplying every year. Not just the fanatics who donned fatigues and camo gear and played warrior in the woods and nursed their rage, passing it on like some precious flame from one loser to another, but also Marco’s silent allies, the decent church-goers who only let their true beliefs slip in winks and nods and sly off-color jokes like a secret code spoken between other polite, god-fearing folks.
Thorn knew some of those, his neighbors in Key Largo, masquerading as virtuous and patriotic, hiding their resentments against those with the wrong accent or shade of skin or land of origin behind affable smiles, courteous manners, while their bloodstream was fouled with the same dark acid as Marco and his cohorts. Of course, these folks would never commit outright violence, but their silence, their passivity, their quiet contempt for refugees and exiles made them, at the very least, Marco’s witless accomplices.
When Thorn was a kid growing up on the island, he believed Key Largo was a tolerant paradise where locals welcomed all newcomers, including those with strange customs or foreign tongues. The Keys had always been a mecca for grifters and romantics and outcasts, Cubans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Yankees and Midwesterners, a wild assortment of misfits who shared common appetites: the saltwater life, hard liquor, a simmering carnality in the palm-shaded heat, endless stretches of sea in all directions, gaudy sunsets, and spice-scented breezes. Maybe Thorn’s memory was too rosy. Maybe the island had always been littered with the same racial animus he saw today. He wasn’t sure. Perhaps his exposure to Marco and his ilk had soured his outlook beyond repair.
Thorn watched Sugarman use the map on his phone, locating Taggart Road and choosing the best route from the airport. When he was done, Sugar retrieved the money bag from the Cessna while Bill Duffy briefed Romy on the operation of the crop duster parked on the runway. Thorn drifted over to listen to the quick, efficient exchange between the two pilots, after which both seemed satisfied with the competence of the other.
Duffy had flown the plane in from his home near Minneapolis. He was a retired Baptist pastor whose congregation had once included most of the African American community in Key Largo and Tavernier. In those years, decades ago, Duffy had wooed one of the church ladies who’d adopted Sugarman, and for the duration of that courtship the reverend was the closest thing to a father figure Sugarman had.
He was a tall lean man, unstooped by age, with the decorous manner of one who has lived a full and proper life. That he and Sugar had stayed in touch after all these years came as a surprise to Thorn, further evidence that despite his long-standing bond with Sugarman, there would always be parts of Sugar’s life story Thorn would never be privy to.
“Ah, the famous Mister Thorn,” Duffy said.
“Some say infamous.”
“So I’ve heard. Though the two are not always mutually exclusive.”
“Look, I’d like to stay and chat,” Thorn said. “Maybe we can do that later, but right now we need to get moving, sir. Thanks for your help.”
“You two are not doing anything unlawful with my plane, are you?”
“It’s a noble cause,” Sugar said. “One you’d fully approve of. We’ll give you the whole story when we get back.”
“And when will that be?”
“A few hours. If all goes as planned.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Duffy asked.
“It will,” Thorn said.
Agnes Sheeran, the car rental agent, suggested she take Mr. Duffy into Bad Axe and treat him to lunch at Rachel’s, the best local restaurant. She was sure he’d love the Philly cheese steak flatbread.
Thorn asked Sheeran to hold on a second, then Sugar, Romy and Thorn huddled near the crop duster.
“You sure you can fly this thing?”
“Pretty basic. Duffy keeps it in good shape.”
“Would it be better if Duffy flew and you were the bombardier?”
“Thorn, don’t worry, I can handle it. Might need to make a couple of passes to unload everything one-handed. But other than that, I’m fine.”
Thorn ran through the plan one more time. When he and Sugar located Marco’s place, Sugar would call to let Romy know it was time to get airborne. Then she would allow them ten more minutes before the fly-over, fifteen max.
Thorn climbed into the pickup and settled behind the wheel and Sugarman lay the money bag on the seat between them and dug out a .357 Smith.
“Is that it? Our total firepower?”
“Unless you brought something,” Sugar said.
“Actually, at this point I don’t believe I need a weapon.”
“You’re that mad?”
“Madder.”
“But you can keep that under control, right? Until we find out what’s what.”
“I can try,” Thorn said.
A half hour later, they found Taggart Road, and passed by the pond Savannah had described, noted the pretty house down a tree-lined drive.
After another mile on Taggart, Sugar said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Thorn slowed as they passed a two story wood house with a shed out back, a small barn with a powder blue pickup truck parked beside it. And on a wooden cradle east of the house was a Chinese junk maybe forty feet long with a wide beam and a boxy hull and twin masts.
“The Flying Dragon,” Sugar said. “From Bobby’s story.”
“At least some of it was true.”
Thorn pulled to the side of the road.
“What’re you doing?”
Thorn nodded toward the Flying Dragon. Stepping from the ship’s shadow, a willowy woman looked out at them. Her right hand was touching the hull. Its red and gold paint had faded and the figure of the golden dragon had been weathered for so many seasons its details had been nearly smoothed away.
Thorn got out of the pickup, walked over, Sugar hanging back a few paces.
Her long mane hung to the middle of her back, silvery white with a few tenacious strands of black. Her face was gaunt and her eyes so fatigued she seemed to be laboring to keep them open. Though Bobby Tennyson’s seductress had lost her lush radiance, and her hypnotic charm had clearly faded, Thorn saw a lingering luster in her eyes, a last trace of the mystique that caused Bobby to betray his oath and abandon his duties.
“Savannah?”
She blinked hard as though waking from a melancholy trance.
“I’m Thorn.”
“I know.”
Her hand had flattened against the sleek wood hull as if she was drawing voltage from its core.
“Marco’s down there, down the road,” she said. “At the dead end. He and the girl, Ingrid, they’ve got the landmines, selling them to people, revolutionaries or terrorists, or whatever they call themselves. But it’s not any revolution I recognize. What Marco believes, and his followers, it’s got nothing to do with me or Judson, our cause. We had ideals, we were goddamned dreamers, we hungered for a better world, fair and just, that’s all we wanted, and peaceful. We didn’t believe in some noble, utopia bullshit, but we had hope we could make a difference. We had a rotten war to stop, thousands of innocent boys being destroyed. But these people today. They’re bullies, full of spite and contempt. All they want to do is crush, mutilate, to tear down.”
