Gps, p.18
Gps, page 18
Fighting his own emotions, Jeff tried to act natural while still hanging on the man’s every word. He tried staring indifferently out onto the field, then at the scoreboard. Finally, he just hunched over in his seat, put his head in his hands and listened.
“Few weeks later, it was done and so was I, just like that. Walked out of hell still livin’. Me and ol’ Wally, but not Matty Martinot, no, not ol’ Matty. He’d bought it right there at the end. Just didn’t seem fair, but none of it was fair, you know? Me and some of the boys went over to Mallorca in Spain for a weekend before we came back home, and dammit, you never saw such a beautiful place in your life. That’s my only good memory of the whole thing, but was it ever worth it. After all we done seen over there, all the bodies, all the hurt, all the pain, it just didn’t seem like we’d ever get outta there.
“But when the sun hit my face on that beach, it was like I come out of a coma or somthin’ like that, you know? I knew I was never gonna be able to shake those thoughts from my head — that little girl and then ol’ Matty goin’ missin’ after he got shot down on his last mission. I stood out there on that beach in Spain and I ’membered what ol’ Wally said to me that day at Gunskirchen. He said to me, ‘Ervin, I ain’t seen the sun since we got here. You think God just unplugged that sun to try to hide this place from the rest of the world?’ I told him we’d all see that sun again, and we did. But ol’ Matty never did.”
All Jeff could think of was the little girl he’d seen, the one he took the picture of when he first walked out into that desert. The one for whom he’d grabbed that gun and blasted away without hesitation. The one for whom he felt he still wanted to fight.
“Now all these young men and women out here, these kids out here today, they gettin’ called. Don’t even matter what color you are no more, how old you are. They all gettin’ the same call, like we did. They ain’t no draft now, and no Hitler out there no more, that’s the truth, no more Gunskirchen or Dachau. But there’s plenty of bad people don’t like us one bit.”
The man was beginning to struggle to get the words out, choking up on them as they came and trying not to let his emotions spill over. Seemingly refusing to cry now over the horrors that occupied his late teens and early 20s, the man’s mouth continued to open and close for another moment, but the words had ceased. The men around him didn’t bother to notice.
“Granddad, you tellin’ all them old war stories again? Give these men a break!”
“Hey, hey! Daz my great grandson! Just look at that man right-cheh now!”
All the attention, Jeff’s included, suddenly steered left to a kid in desert fatigues who looked to be in his late teens standing on the steps in the aisle. It pulled the men right out of that time and those places and pains of long ago — Jeff could see it as it happened — and back into the moment of now. They came back to life at once, gushing with smiles and standing up to greet the kid who at once broke into a giant grin himself. Jeff sat in silence, watching the men trip over one another as they pulled themselves up to properly greet the kid still standing at the end of the row of stadium seats.
“Oh, don’t get up y’all. Come on now!” the kid said, embarrassed at the wave of attention flooding his way. But the men wrestled out of their seats to clap the kid on the shoulder and try to reach an arm around him, nearly sending the whole lot of them tumbling down the steps. Jeff tried not to miss a single word of the conversation, and he caught a glimpse of Zephyrs outfielder Brandon Lyles, who had been swinging a weighted bat on the other side of the foul ball screen at the backstop — the game now just minutes from starting — but who was now standing motionless. His bat was resting on his shoulder, a faint smile on his lips as he watched the same thing Jeff watched.
The kid the old men were fawning over — a couple of them using canes to hold themselves upright as they did — was immaculately dressed. The nameplate stitched across his clean, starched, tucked and ironed camouflage shirt said ARSENEAUX. The American flag patch on the shoulder was practically glowing in the hazy, setting sun. The kid’s cocoa-brown skin seemed a wonderful complement to his flawless, sand-colored uniform.
There was only one imperfection, one that was immediately apparent to Jeff but one which the old men acted as though they simply did not notice as they all gathered around him on the steps. Although the kid’s military dress was near perfect, his uniform shirt was missing its right sleeve. In fact, the shirt had clearly been altered to help accommodate this abnormality. The right sleeve was not necessary in this case because the kid wearing the shirt no longer had a right arm to put in it.
Minutes later, as the national anthem droned out of the stadium’s public address system, uniformed soldiers standing on the field presenting the flag and almost everyone in the stadium saluting it, Jeff stopped fighting back the tears and simply let them roll down his cheeks for the duration of the song. While it might have been an improper thought at this moment, Jeff wished for the very first time that he could make that GPS in his car take him back to that place, the place where his own calling might be answered.
- 27 -
The silver Lexus came skidding across a large, sandy clearing roughly a half-mile from camp early Sunday morning. Josh Simmons had always thought himself a damn good driver, and even now, when the very concept of driving a car had long since changed forever, he smiled to himself in the wake of a silky smooth, perfectly-timed arrival before checking the GPS on his windshield one last time and powering it off.
The engine still purring, he gently nudged the gas pedal and pushed the car out of the growing sunlight and into the overhang of some large firs at the end of the clearing. A flock of Monarch butterflies exploded from the trees and into the sky as he did, as if to send word of Simmons’ arrival.
Using the extreme caution he developed during his many travels here, Simmons turned off the engine and sat in the car a moment longer. Ignoring the butterflies in the air and, to some extent, in his stomach, he studied the line of trees off to his left, which opened out into the flat desert plain. In this part of the country, that plain stretched for some 45 miles into the distance before running headlong into a series of canyons and plateaus. No movement out there. To his right, he now felt certain, would be a rough path up and through the scrub and eventually into the transient camp he’d helped to set up back in late March.
He flipped open the backpack on the passenger seat, slid out the Glock 9mm from the outer pocket and made sure it was loaded. The Freemen hadn’t found this campsite yet, at least he didn’t think, but it certainly didn’t mean they wouldn’t find it today. The bastards spent their whole lives on the hunt, and there was no telling when some of their scouts might come crashing through the brush. Simmons had come to live for those opportunities to kill or be killed. It was the only addiction he’d ever suffered.
He opened the door, stepped out and pushed the gun into the waistband of his camouflage pants, and then stripped off his t-shirt and threw it into the car. Still looking and listening in every direction, he gently pushed the door closed with a click and walked around to the passenger side, his hiking boots crunching lightly in the earth below. He swung that door open carefully, slung the big pack onto his shoulder and then leaned into the door until it clicked shut.
The father of two had lived his double life long enough now to know there was no point locking the doors. If anyone other than a fellow transient found the Lexus sitting out here today — a rare day off for Simmons this time of year back home — the car would be lost to him forever and Simmons lost to his other life forever. The beautiful sedan would be gone, either torched in an FB ambush or simply stolen and stripped of all of its working parts. The loud beep of the alarm being armed would only draw attention to himself and the car anyway.
Fonseca would be waiting for him at the camp. Today, the entire division would pack up the base that had served them well for more than a month now, loading all of their supplies into pickup trucks in preparation for the big move north along the eastern edge of the mountains. It would take all day, even without any interruptions from the FB, and Simmons wished as he began looking for the path to the camp that he would find some new men waiting with the usuals when he got there. They needed more numbers.
Late Sunday night, the transients would head toward one of the former revolucion strongholds on the eastern plain, in the outskirts and ruins of Viejo Victoria. At the end of that long trek, the transients would replenish their supplies, catch their breath and revisit some of the old camps out in the remote desert looking for vehicles and other useful relics.
The revolucion jefe had reported to Paulo that the FB had already gotten mostly everything it could get from that region and moved on, a giant pack of coyotes following the scent of blood to the south. But some stragglers would definitely still be around to keep the FB’s stake in the ground in the area. The revolucion soldiers passing through there still saw plenty of action as they tried to erase the remaining FB presence and keep pushing north to reclaim the border and isolate the FB intruders in the south. The war was nothing more than a relentless shoving match.
Despite the guilt associated with his constant travel back and forth, Simmons was glad he wouldn’t be taking that ride with the boys into the wastelands outside Victoria, now undoubtedly littered with sun-dried skeletons and renegade Freemen maniacs.
Like everything else in the war, the move north out of the Xicotencatl ruins late Sunday night alone would be fraught with peril, as would the next critical leg of the journey. When they arrived in Old Victoria, if they arrived, Fonseca, his men and whichever newcomers might successfully come into the mix in the next couple of days wouldn’t be around long. On Monday night, their convoy would be starting a two-day journey west to join what had been billed as a critical training camp Wednesday in the old city.
It was there, inside Estadio Revolucion — Simmons always thought the name of the tattered baseball stadium was just too much of a coincidence, but that really was its name — that Paulo and the other transient leaders would set the sabotage plan in motion. The stadium was planted squarely in the old downtown sector of the largest remaining revolucion stronghold in the north. There, all four of the transient divisions would converge. Each man would be trained for his specific role in the mission, from the snipers to the hose men to the simple gunmen who would be charged with mowing down every FB man and visiting whore that managed to make it out of the ring of fire at the ranch.
For safety’s sake, the men from each of the divisions would split up again and go their separate ways to more remote locations after what the revolucion hoped would be two to three days of intense training and planning. As for the many newcomers Paulo expected to arrive at that day, each would be assigned to one of the four transient divisions at the stadium and then sent on to continue their training out in the desert. After that, it would be a matter of picking the perfect night and attacking.
Simmons wondered if that lunatic Delaney would be riding back with Fonseca’s crew to Victoria, where Paulo had hoped to return and seal up some of those old camps while his transient division waited for the official word to move on the hidden canyon of Destinoso. Simmons planned to return on Thursday, his next off day at home, to oversee the training in the big city and assume his own role as one of the lead snipers.
It was thrilling — despite the constantly fragile state of the revolucion — to imagine all those men coming together from across the country to begin the actual legwork toward the big hit at the Destinoso ranch. And even though Delaney was totally insane, Simmons had to agree with Fonseca that he was just the kind of guy that could help them, if he didn’t get them killed in the process.
As he walked up one final incline on the tangled jungle trail, the shirtless Simmons spied the transients already hard at work, rushing to pack things up and put them into the beds of the trucks without speaking to one another. Fonseca was standing off to the left of the campsite clearing, gazing into his handheld GPS and not seeming to sense Simmons’ tall frame walking out of the jungle brush.
But like he often did just when Simmons thought Paulo had gotten completely hypnotized by the GPS, Fonseca snapped out of it in his cool, calculating manner. This time, without even looking up from the miniature screen in his hands, he simply raised his right arm and pointed in the direction of Simmons, then a wry smile stretched across his face. Like he always did — not that anyone in the camp that morning didn’t recognize Simmons’ muscle-laced body on sight — Josh silently flashed the sign of the revolucion; he clenched his right hand into a fist, pulled it to his face and kissed it, then unfurled it into a peace sign.
Peace by force.
- 28 -
“Lemme hold that piece you got on the windshield, son. Lemme take a quick peek at dat joint.”
The man who crept up behind Jeff while he sat in the driver’s seat of the Celica with the window rolled down late Sunday night was able to do so because the man behind the wheel was in a drunken stupor, and had been every night for three weeks running now.
Jeff had been smart enough to realize — even before he left for the 6 p.m. first pitch at Zephyr Field earlier that night — he’d better take a cab to the game and then another one back home from Jacques-imo’s after hitting the town with Nifty Carlson following the game. The bench coach for the Las Vegas 51s would be facing quite a hangover for his flight back to Nevada at dawn. But when Jeff got home to the Esplanade Avenue apartment hours after the game ended, he was dumb enough — drunk enough — to start thinking about the desert, the revolucion and, well, was there any way back?
He asked himself over and over, as though an answer would just suddenly tumble out of his brain, finally making sense of the whole thing. Given the steady, unexpected development of details in his mind over such a short period of time about his experience, he figured maybe something really would just come to him.
It did. At least sort of. Amazing how some — albeit very few — great ideas and answers really do come to a person who happens to be completely gonged on booze at the time. But any intelligent thoughts that were staggering through Jeff’s brain in recent weeks were coming to a man that was either drunk or hung over all the time, so their mere delivery to his thoughts was only half the battle.
Jeff thought — as he stood swaying back and forth in front of his toilet that night, missing his target as much as he was hitting it — about the GPS abruptly displaying some sort of timer on his way home from Florida. It had said something about beginning training. There was definitely a clock of some sort, and maybe it had a meaning in terms of getting back. Regardless, it was a lingering oddity, something that seemed to reach out to Jeff and keep him thinking about it all, like the words written in the men’s room stall and on the techie message board. If the clock did have some meaning, it was tough to figure out now.
Nonetheless, Jeff had crashed down on the couch for a minute, sifting his brain and trying to recall what day that was, what time of day it had been and most important, how much time was left on the clock? It was counting down, wasn’t it? Yes, of course. If he could just remember the details, maybe he could figure out when the clock would have hit zero, and maybe, maybe...
“No way, not happening,” he’d said aloud, lifting himself back off the couch and beginning a drunken scavenger hunt around the tiny apartment. Instead of his usual trip to the rear courtyard of late, this time Jeff decided take it street-side, still awash in thoughts and possibilities.
The harder he’d tried to make something new click, the more he understood he had never come upon any new memories or ideas by trying. The images of the desert seemed to find him instead. As he tried to figure out what had happened and how it had happened, he tried to utilize the steady stream of clues and reminders that had already come his way.
The GPS he’d grabbed off the table had quite frankly become a little boring lately, Jeff thought, at least since that last long trip home from Florida. That was the night the clock popped up on the screen and everything went weird for a few minutes. There was none of that when he was here at home. Though he still took great delight in cranking up the GPS everywhere he went, it wasn’t doing anything unorthodox lately.
Maybe it only happened on long trips. Maybe there was some amount of time or mileage that had to pass before the thing started acting crazy. Maybe this other world could only be entered from that one specific place in New Mexico. Maybe all of this was nothing more than a new source of stress for the old traveling man, because maybe whatever it was, it was something that was never coming back to him, and maybe it was someplace to which he could never return. Maybe the very thought of ‘maybe’ would haunt him for the rest of his life. Maybe.
“C’mon man, I ain’t gonna do nothin’, I just wanna see it, man. I never seen nothin’ like that,” the man now leaning right in on the Celica’s driver’s side door said to Jeff, who felt helplessly pinned inside his own car. He had been dumb, alright, coming out here and sitting in the car this late at night with the GPS blinking away and asking for trouble, a worm wiggling on a hook. Jeff really was asking for it, and here it was.
Earlier, there had been the usual Bushmills shots for dessert inside the ever-popular Jacques-imo’s — everyone got one there, not just Jeff. Then they steered briefly on to the Samuel Smiths but naturally, they eventually swerved back to ‘the Old Bushman,’ as Nifty had referred to it all night. And now this.
Jeff had stumbled back down the apartment stairs with Lefty’s now half-full (half-empty) bag of cat food. He’d dumped a heavy load of it down into the green ceramic dish next to the step, set the bag back inside the door and walked out to the car. Wrestling the bag of food, a drink and the Warren GPS down the steps had been a chore, but he had managed it and then spent 20 or so minutes in the car watching the device flashing at him from above the dashboard.
