Gps, p.22
Gps, page 22
“What’s the reason then, if I might ask?” Jeff said, showing the first signs of true emotion since he’d sat down. “Why did all this happen, how the hell did I get here and what am I supposed to do now?”
“Guess who knows the answer to all those questions, Delaney?”
“It’s Jeff —”
“Guess who can tell you why and how and for what? You. What were you doing out there that morning?” Paulo now raised the M16, winked an eye shut and aimed it toward the map on the wall. “Why’d you grab this thing out of the sand, man? Why did you come back here with guns of your own?” He opened his eye and turned to Jeff, gun still raised. “Most people that come over here from the old world either run off screaming or they walk straight into a bullet. Some eventually get it, and they join the fight. But none of them just pick up machine guns and start killing. Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
Jeff again didn’t answer. He just stared at the man in front of him, waiting for him to continue. “Maybe you think I was just born into this whole thing, that maybe I didn’t get here the same way you did,” Paulo said, setting the M16 on the table with the other guns and extending his right hand across the table to Jeff. “Well I did, bro. Paulo Fonseca, Los Angeles, California.”
As Jeff sheepishly shook the now smiling man’s hand without smiling himself, a tall, muscular and very tan man in jeans, T-shirt and backward baseball cap opened the door. He looked first at Fonseca, then immediately shifted his eyes down to Jeff.
“Oh shit,” the man said. “Jesus, it’s you.” Then he tore his eyes away to Fonseca again. “Man, I need to talk to you before I go out and start.” He looked nervously back to Jeff, then to the guns splayed out on the table, then back to Paulo. He quietly walked out and pulled the door closed. Jeff remembered that man immediately as well. He was the first one Jeff had locked eyes on when he had spun around that morning in the desert and saw the men with the guns all staring at him. He saw that man first because that man had looked the most like a regular modern American man by far. He looked like someone on a reality show.
The guy was much younger than Jeff, probably had a brain more suited to this kind of life-or-death environment and most certainly had a physique more suited to it. But the man had given Jeff the first feeling since being here that there really were people like him over here, and that they actually had chosen to do this, whatever this was.
Jeff had largely credited all the empty whiskey bottles in his recycling bin, and apparently even in his car (he still wondered where exactly inside his car that empty bottle had been found, and in which drunken stupor he had actually disposed of it in said car), for the new, brazen ways he’d been acting in recent weeks. But already, he was starting to think there was more to it than just that. He’d been drinking too much for years, but he’d only been having these strange feelings and crazed dreams since he’d been to this place.
Now he wished he could muster some of that fearlessness he’d started to feel recently. He felt like he was going to need it, even if it was just enough to get him out of here and back home. But he also sensed a feeling of belonging here, a feeling that started long before his return. They already called him Delaney here, even though he hated that, and they already knew him on sight.
“Did you want me to come back?” Jeff asked. “I mean, I can see you would probably want anyone and everyone to come back, but did you specifically want me to show back up for some reason? I mean, it’s nice to think that if I’m stuck here I’ll have friends to —”
“We’re not your friends. We are your brothers. La Hermandad. If you can understand that, you’ll be much better for it. And you don’t have to stay, Delaney. It’s not prison. It’s not some abduction or anything. It’s not like anyone’s going to keep secret how we do things around here, either, so unless you’re an idiot, you’ll learn fast that you can make your magic carpet go all sorts of places. Including home.”
This was the strangest job interview in history, Jeff thought. What was he supposed to do now, say yes or no? Was he supposed to sign on the dotted line, commit to some sort of training for this big attack on the men in the SUVs like Paulo was describing? And if he did go back home, would he now have to live in fear of every Range Rover and every man on a horse?
“And yes, I did want you back, Delaney. Everyone thinks you’re crazy for obvious reasons, but if you were crazy for real, why’d you not try to shoot all of us dead when you turned around that day? I wanted you back because I thought you might come back here and live to tell about it. I need people with balls enough to believe we can win this fight.”
Jeff looked pensively up at the map again, at that blob of black pins that looked like the contents of an anthill swarming south. Then he stared at the flag to his right with the bird on it, the fist and the words. And that brought Jeff back to the ever-growing list of questions he had.
“What year is it? I mean, what time and place is this? You mean to tell me I went through all this crazy shit just to get to Mexico? That’s it?”
“There is no more Mexico, Hermano,” Paulo said. “This is hell.”
- 34 -
Jeff could not steady his shaking hands.
Withdrawal was not only making his brain miserable, it was making his body unmanageable. He stared down the face of a cliff through the scope of an antiquated Springfield sniper rifle, and all he could see was a brown blur and an occasional flash of green. Each time he tried to steady his arms, the hands at the end of them would betray him and begin shaking, skewing and smudging everything down the sheer rock face and on the sparse desert floor beyond.
It was scorching hot in the hills, which cast their shadow onto the vast, cramped and rundown old city behind him. Jeff could feel the clammy chill coming off his skin that had become constant since his arrival, and the T-shirt he’d foolishly taken off and wrapped around his head was now heavy with sweat. He’d passed the point of overheating better than an hour ago and now, as he tried with all his might to be perfectly still, he couldn’t.
Forty-five minutes had passed in the cliffs, and he still hadn’t squeezed off a shot that was even close to its target. He’d barely gotten more than a glimpse of it. Jeff had begged the guy who had walked into the office earlier that morning — Simmons was his name — to let him take a few shots without being watched. If he could just make his hands stop shaking, he knew he could parlay his uncanny success at shooting the M16 that morning a few weeks ago into shooting the Springfield. But so far since Simmons had guided him out of town and into the cliffs for training, Jeff had fired about 20 shots and none of them had come close to where he thought he was aiming. Now, he’d pretty much given up. The only thing he could do right was load the thing.
Unlike the machine gun, which in his recollections didn’t feel much different than a chainsaw in his hands as it fired, the Springfield fired with an almighty jolt. In his current condition, it would have been enough to knock him off his feet had he been forced to stand. Though his brain had been trained to crave alcohol, Jeff’s body was craving only water on this afternoon. He was actually hoping Simmons would come back now, as the canteen Jeff had been given was long since empty. He had a feeling Simmons was barely sipping out of his, whatever he was doing down there on the backside of the steep up-and-down mountain peak on the edge of the desert.
Jeff was supposed to be aiming at a Saguaro cactus jutting from an outcropping at the base of the valley. For now, the cactus was perfectly safe, its arms absurdly upturned like a suspect in the distance. Simmons had agreed to leave him for a few minutes and go back down the path after telling him for what seemed like the thousandth time, “Don’t worry about how far away it is, just aim and shoot.” Simmons told him he’d be listening for progress.
Jeff just couldn’t stop shaking. The irony of it was that, despite knowing how dangerous a drink would be out here, especially the way he was feeling, he knew that one swig of whiskey would have instantly solved his shaking problems.
He lowered the rifle and sat up, hoping to hear the steps of Simmons coming back up the path and thinking for a second that he did. He didn’t, just the wind. He looked around and had one of those sobering moments when people are reminded that their immediate surroundings are completely different from their usual surroundings, that a major change has occurred, and that it’s real.
He wanted to get over the initial shock of what he had done and where he was. The reality of it was sinking in, but slowly. He wanted to be able to fathom the fact that he had come back and chosen not to ignore the badgering GPS. Yesterday at this time, he was speeding toward Utah half-asleep, and today, he was in some sort of military training in a time that apparently hadn’t happened on earth yet. Paulo had failed to answer the question of what year it was, had acted like he hadn’t heard it. Was this the future? Did people here even know what year it was? Were any of these guys keeping track?
Where the hell was Simmons? Jeff hadn’t fired the gun in well over 20 minutes now. Surely Simmons had taken notice of this fact, hadn’t he? As he began to consider just hoofing it back down the trail to find the man who still acted quite frightened of Jeff, he suddenly recalled the map on the wall at the stadium, and that every one of those thousands of little pins stood for troops or battles or trouble of some sort. He hadn’t thought to ask Paulo which pin on the map was them, which one marked the general area in which he was now sitting. How close were they to that sea of black?
With that on his mind, Jeff began to wonder in a much less irritated and much more panicked way about where Simmons had gone. Had Jeff been abandoned up here as some sort of initiation? He picked up the rifle again and immediately wondered if it would ever feel light in his hands. He doubted it would.
Still in a sitting position, still shaking but not as bad as before, Jeff lifted the gun and gazed through the scope, trying to forget about his hands, breathe evenly and concentrate solely on seeing things in detail. He steered the gun back down toward the giant cactus momentarily, but then pulled up and began scanning the desert plain that stretched out beyond the city. He began singing The Who in his head as he contemplated just how many miles and miles he could see for up here.
It was working. His hands had almost completely stopped shaking for the moment. He was seeing in remarkable detail now, surprised such an outdated gun had such a clear scope. He aimed back down at the cactus again, and knew he was getting his first true look at it since he’d been dragged up here. He steadied the gun and rested his finger on the trigger. But as he was about to try to blast the massive, bristled organ pipe cactus to smithereens like he’d already pictured himself doing hundreds of times, he stopped.
It must have been a half hour since he’d fired a shot now, and since he’d last seen Simmons. Where was he? If they really needed men in this army, it probably wasn’t good business to abandon them on their first day was it? Jeff realized now that he didn’t know when you were allowed to fire shots at actual people out here, when you weren’t, and most importantly, who to fire them at if you did. How would anyone out here know not to shoot him?
Jeff pulled the gun up again and scanned the empty desert. As he did, he recalled Paulo saying the deserts here had history imprinted on their sand grains and soaked into the earth beneath. He said that for one reason or another, men had been compelled to travel these expanses of endless sand since the beginning of time. For all that history, there didn’t seem to be anything at all going on in this desert on this afternoon.
Jeff held that thought until the scope of the Springfield rifle — the gun he’d adopted that day when he unwittingly became a member of the sniper division in the revolucion’s transient army — went scanning past a dark figure sitting perfectly still atop a black horse in the open desert. The man’s arms were raised and he appeared to be looking through binoculars, facing the edge of the old city.
For a few seconds, as Jeff held his breath, everything stood perfectly still, including the gun in his hands. The figure in the distance now appeared in chilling detail. It made Jeff realize suddenly how detailed he might look right now to someone out there in the distance spying on him through the scope of a gun. His heart sank. His hands started shaking in uncontrollable jolts. He dropped the gun, hopped to his feet and scurried down the path with his head ducked, no idea where Simmons was or what he was doing.
It was Simmons who found Jeff, however, about 60 yards down the incline toward the city. Jeff trudged clumsily past him as Simmons clutched a high, sword-shaped shard of rock on a ridge about 10 yards off the path. Josh was studying the desert in the distance with his free hand across his brow, but seemingly looking much farther to the right of where Jeff had been spying minutes before.
“Delaney, what are you doing? Get over here!” Simmons hissed at him as he passed.
“There’s a guy out there on a horse —”
“Shut the fuck up man!” Simmons interrupted in an exaggerated whisper, shooting a nervous glance away from Jeff and back out toward the open desert below. “Where’s the rifle?”
“Man, I told you, there’s a guy out there, a guy on a horse out in the desert —”
“Where’s the fucking Springfield?” Simmons cut in again, his voice breaking into a squeal as he tried to make his frustration known as quietly as possible. After a frantic stare between the two men, both went scrambling back up the incline toward Jeff’s former training site. Simmons went chugging past him without saying a word. By the time Jeff made it, shaking and gasping, into the small clearing at the top, he saw Simmons standing with the sniper rifle raised, aimed out into the open desert.
“Don’t say a word, Delaney,” Simmons said over his shoulder in a low voice. “Just get down and be quiet.” Jeff dropped immediately to the ground, unwrapping the shirt from his head and sliding it back on, remembering the pained expression Simmons had given Jeff’s chest moments before on the trail. He didn’t get much time to ponder the magnitude of his sunburn, but it already felt bad.
“You know how to ride a horse, Delaney?” Simmons murmured, voice barely above the sound of the wind, and without taking his eye off the scope of the rifle.
“Do I know how —”
The Springfield let out a blast, the echoes of which Jeff hadn’t noticed when it was on his own shoulder, but which traveled from one side of the cliffs to the other before he could even consider what had happened. His mouth was still hanging open, his heart still thudding when Simmons coolly turned around and handed the rifle back to him before brushing past.
“Let’s go. That horse won’t last through the afternoon if we don’t go get it now,” Simmons said as he went by, backward baseball cap making him look more like a pro skateboarder than a soldier.
Although Jeff’s heart took a giant leap when Simmons fired the rifle, he found himself far more awake and alert now than he’d been since he arrived the previous night. Before again descending the path to catch Josh, he turned, raised the gun once more and scanned it across the desert. Almost at once, the scope locked on the black horse, which stood still, tail twitching, unmanned and facing the open desert. About 25 yards to the right was a lifeless heap on the desert floor.
Simmons had put another body in the sand.
- 35 -
Riley learned quickly that the only way to get used to seeing human skeletons was to see dozens of them in succession, to keep on seeing them until they became just a part of the landscape. In Darfur, they were an undeniable part of the landscape. It never actually got easy, especially seeing all the tiny ones, or the ones with gaping holes in the skulls.
She marveled at the way the people inside the camps spoke so openly about dying in a place where death was already everywhere around them, and she spent a good deal of her early days there wondering just how much torment it took to make a person so accepting of impending death.
The first skeleton Jeff Delaney ever saw that wasn’t inside a glass case of some sort was the one he saw while hiding behind a giant cactus in the desert. He was breathing in gasps when he noticed first the skull and then the entire set of bones lying across an outcropping of rocks about 15 feet in front of him. He knelt at the base of a Saguaro that rose like a tower from beneath the cliffs and cast its shadow onto the fringe of scrub between the city and the open plain.
Hair was still growing on the skull and quivered calmly in the breeze. It made Jeff consider, especially given his immediate circumstances, at what point a dead person becomes just a skeleton. The hair suggested this one was still a person not so long ago.
The reason Jeff was breathing in frightened huffs was because he’d encountered his first-ever skeleton about 30 seconds after he’d been shot at with a live bullet for the first time. Lots of bullets, in fact. Jeff felt the power and ferocity of one of them that whizzed right past his head and ricocheted off the rocks behind him. As the black horse he was supposed to come out here and steal took flight toward the waterless cauldron of desert on the horizon over Jeff’s right shoulder, the black SUV Simmons had apparently spotted from the cliffs above came into view over his left. Jeff peeked around the huge base of the cactus, trying not to lean into its needles, squinting out toward the approaching truck. Josh was again shouldering the Springfield and was now lying behind a low rock pile diagonally to the left of Jeff’s giant cactus.
As the SUV approached at about 30 miles per hour, Jeff had visions of being run down like the people he’d seen that first morning here. The three-day training camp had, at least for him, been trimmed down to a single afternoon of shooting at and missing a cactus. Now, live rounds were being sent at him, and for the moment, he was unarmed. Or was he?
No, he was not unarmed actually. He could hear Paulo’s voice ringing in his ears now, telling him, sure, take whatever guns he could carry without either shooting himself or getting shot. With that in mind, Jeff now remembered the loaded Ruger — which he spent much of the day’s hike wishing he’d left behind — lodged in the rear waistband of the khakis he’d cut off at the knees, the gun’s safety still on. He now slid the gun back out and wondered if his constant handling of the thing the last couple of weeks would make it easier to shoot. Probably not.
