The Slab (26 page)

Carter savored the taste of the steak for a moment, swallowed, and chased it with a splash of red wine. “They’ll buy,” he said. “Because even though the houses will be expensive, they’ll be the nicest, least expensive homes in America’s newest luxury enclave. Salton Estates will be transformed, and the homes up on the Slab will have the primo views, looking out over the tops of the lakefront homes, over the lake and the hills on the other side, and back onto the Chocolate Mountains behind them.”

“You’re going to put houses on the lake too?” Nick asked. “But the lake stinks. It’s nasty.”

“It is now,” Carter said. “But it won’t always be.”

“What’s going to happen to it?”

Carter cut another piece of steak, enjoying the easy way it parted before the sharp blade. “The Salton Sea has a few problems, but they all stem from one main one,” he said. “Water flows in but it doesn’t flow out. The only way the water gets out is by evaporation. And the water that’s flowing in is salty, it picks up chemicals from fertilizers used in the valley around it, and it has an abundance of life forms, most of which die in it, so it’s overly abundant with nutrients. And it’s full of shit because of the inflow from the New River, which brings untreated water in from Mexico and is the filthiest, most polluted water in the country. What we’re going to do is build some evaporation flats and, in a couple of spots, spray water out of the sea onto them. This’ll evaporate the water faster and allow us to trap the salts. We’re going to take steps to counteract the nutrients, including removing the dead fish that pile up and contribute to the problem. We can use some of the water to feed lawns, golf courses, fountains, and pools. We treat the water from the New and Alamo Rivers before it reaches the Sea—I can get the government to do that for me. Eventually, I hope to pump water out of the Salton and back down to the Gulf of Mexico, where it’ll be someone else’s problem. Once that’s underway, then the water will clean up nicely. The Salton will be America’s newest aquatic playground, with boating, fishing, skiing, swimming. Imagine if Palm Springs had a huge, natural body of water.”

“That’d be pretty cool,” Nick agreed.

“It’d be a gold mine,” Carter said.

“But it sounds pretty expensive.”

“Oh, it is,” Carter admitted. “And a substantial part of the expense will be mine. Well, mine and my partners’. But there’s an administration in Washington, finally, that understands who its friends are. And I’ve made a healthy number of campaign contributions into certain coffers. The Interior Department, I have every reason to believe, will look kindly on my attempts to single-handedly reinvigorate an unhealthy ecosystem. It’s even possible that environmental groups will kick in to help the process. A partnership between private enterprise, environmental activists, and federal government. Everybody wins.”

“Especially you.”

“Of course.” Carter laughed. “Of course me.”

“So what’s on for tomorrow?” Nick asked. “More visits to the Slab residents?”

“Tomorrow,” Carter replied, “I have something a little different in mind. We’re going to need to round up some men. Good men, who we can count on, and who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Do you think you can do that?”

“Sure,” Nick said. “I can do that.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Captain Yato wants to see you, sir.” Marcus Jenkins, Wardlaw’s aide-de-camp, was as Marine as they came. Ramrod straight, hair clipped to the shortest nubs, tall and strong and true. Wardlaw liked having him sitting in the outer office, just because he was such a good example of an American fighting man. And being African-American, he created the appearance of diversity, as well. Wardlaw had a real secretary, but he liked to dismiss her early and let Jenkins sit in her chair now and again, just to remind him who was in charge. “As soon as possible, he said. He said he had someone he wanted you to meet.”

Wardlaw had told Yato not to come back until he had prisoners. He dearly hoped that Yato hadn’t taken that as some kind of rhetorical request rather than an outright command. He must have some kind of results to report, Wardlaw thought, if he had left a message that he wanted to see me right away. If he had failed, he’d be hiding out.

“Call him. Get him in here. I’ll be in my office,” Wardlaw said. He went inside and closed the door. He was sitting behind his desk, staring out the window at his base, a shining beacon against the night sky, a few minutes later when his phone buzzed. “Yeah,” he said.

“Captain Yato to see you,” Marcus’s voice said.

“Send him in.”

The office door opened and Yato walked in. Behind him, flanked by two Marine guards, was a scrawny hippie type with dirty hair and a ragged beard, wearing a Green Party T-shirt and camo fatigue pants. He had wire-rimmed glasses and he looked scared to death.

“Sir,” Yato said. “I thought you might want to see our prisoner.”

Wardlaw was actually impressed. Yato had come through after all. “This is the guy who’s been vandalizing my gunnery area?” Wardlaw asked.

“We believe it is, sir. We picked him up in the central section of the range, in a bivouac he’d put up. Tracked him there from one of the sites, the one that said ‘Wage Peace.’”

“He offer any resistance?”

“No, sir.”

“Very well,” Wardlaw said. “Leave him here with me. I’d like to have a conversation with this boy.”

“Sir?” Yato began.

“You have a problem with that, William? I’m not afraid to be left alone in a room with a pencilnecked geek like him.”

“Yes sir.” Yato and the Marine guards left and Wardlaw walked slowly around the prisoner, examining him. Looked like the Sierra Club type, all right. Fancy hiking boots. Nice tan on his arms and neck and face, where you could see his face under all the hair and beard. Looked like the tan ended under the shirtsleeves, though. Soft looking hands.

“What’s your name, son?” he asked.

“Dieter,” the young man replied. “Dieter Holtz.”

Kid had a foreign accent.

Wardlaw hated foreign accents.

“You’re not even an American.”

“No. I am from Germany.”

“You have a visa?”

“Yes. I am here on a student visa.”

“Some of those terrorists were in the country on student visas,” Wardlaw said. He leaned back against his desk, crossed his arms. “Did you know that?”

“I have heard that.”

“Is that how it works? You come here on a student visa so you can get into our country, and then you attack it from the inside?”

“I have attacked nothing,” Dieter said.

“You’re not a terrorist?”

“No. I am not a terrorist.”

“Then what are you doing trespassing on a United States Marine Corps facility?”

“I believe in peace, environmental protection, and social justice,” Dieter said. “I was merely making a statement about my beliefs.”

“By breaking the law.”

“Yes. Which I believe is a noble tradition in the United States, yes? The Boston Tea Party? Martin Luther King? Freedom Riders?”

“You don’t have to give me a history lesson about my own country, son,” Wardlaw said. “I could give you some history of your own. World War One, we kicked your asses. World War Two, we kicked them again. Remember?”

“Yes. I am not here as a citizen of Germany. I am here as a citizen of the world, concerned about things that affect the entire world.”

“Let me get this straight,” Wardlaw said. He moved around to the front of his desk and sat down in his chair. “What we do on my bombing range affects the whole world?”

“Yes. The destruction of natural habitat affects the world. War in Central Asia affects the world. Geopolitical borders are imaginary lines on a map, not real things.”

“So by writing silly messages with rocks, you’re putting an end to war and environmental destruction? I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this idea, boy.”

Dieter remained still, in the center of the room. His evident fear had gone and he seemed composed, even calm. This just pissed Wardlaw off all the more. “My hope was to stimulate dialogue,” Dieter replied. “To encourage people to seek to understand the link between military aggression and the natural world.”

Wardlaw picked up a pencil from his desktop pencil cup and tapped it on the desk, eraser-side down. Kind of bouncing it on the rubber end. Johnny Carson had done that, and Wardlaw had always liked it when Johnny did it. Sometimes he tried it to soothe his nerves, but it never seemed to work. “Do you think you’re better than I am, son?”

“Excuse me?”

“
Better
. Superior to. In any way smarter, more informed, more ethical. A superior human being.”

This was the first question the kid didn’t have a ready answer to. He blinked several times as if that would help him arrive at one. “Not better. Possibly more informed, in some areas, as I’m sure you are more informed than I in others.”

Wardlaw caught the pencil in both hands and snapped it with a sharp, loud crack. “More informed than me?” he echoed. “Boy, I am probably double your age. I have lived a long time and seen a lot of things. I’ve fought in wars, have you done that? I’ve killed men, have you? I’ve raised children and held my wife’s hand as she died. Have you done those things?”

“I have not,” Dieter replied. The more Wardlaw raged the calmer the kid seemed. “But I have summitted eleven fourteen-thousand-foot peaks. I have held the hand of my partner as he died of AIDS-related pneumonia. I have chained myself to friends and colleagues and lain across a roadway to block the transport of nuclear waste. Have you done those things?”

So the kid was not only a Kraut but he was a queer Kraut to boot. Wardlaw felt his blood pressure rising, like steam in a pot. “Were you alone out there in my bombing range, or are there others?”

The kid looked straight ahead but didn’t answer. Wardlaw stood, coming around the desk fast and stopping right in front of him, his face inches from the German’s. “Were you alone?”

No answer.

“Are there others? Are there still people on my range?”

No answer.

“Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you’re in, boy?”

“I believe so.”

“Are there others?”

No answer.

Wardlaw lost it then. He drew back his fist and drove it into the kid’s gut as hard as he could. Dieter doubled over, blowing out his breath and grunting, and Wardlaw wrapped an arm around his neck and twisted. Dieter tried to kick, his hands flailed around ineffectually. Wardlaw kept twisting until he heard a satisfying snap and felt the kid go still.

Now he just had to deal with the problem of the kid’s body. A sudden inspiration struck him and he lifted the dead weight, hoisting it over his head, and hurled it through the glass of his window. There was a huge crash, and the body thumped onto the parade ground below, accompanied by the tinkling of a thousand shards of glass, like so many tiny bells.

Marcus Jenkins rushed into the room. “Sir?”

Wardlaw pointed at the window. “Little shit tried to escape by going through my window,” he said. He looked down as Marcus joined him by the broken glass. “Doesn’t look like he landed well. Better get him cleaned up.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Marcus said. He hurried from the office.

Wardlaw hadn’t killed a man since the Gulf War. Until just this minute, he hadn’t realized how much he missed it. He felt suddenly very relaxed. This is the best moment of my day, he thought. The very best. He brushed some glass out of his chair and sat back down, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back. If only every day could end on a high note.

***

Ken had stayed and talked to Virginia for a while, knowing that each minute he spent with her was another minute that something could be happening to her husband. She seemed to need it, though—sitting alone in their RV, she clung to Ken’s arm as if it were a lifeline, and she’d drown if she let go.

Finally, though, he persuaded her that he needed to be on his way, that if he were going to find Hal he should be out looking, not sitting in here. She understood and released him, and he walked across the Slab in the quickly gathering dark. He’d brought a flashlight and a day pack with some food and water and blankets in it. Virginia said Hal was just wearing a light blue short-sleeved shirt and some old Sansabelt slacks and his loafers—not desert survival gear by any stretch.

He was taking a risk and he knew it. Maybe he should have called out a volunteer Search and Rescue team, a bunch of off-road enthusiasts and would-be cops who’d beat the bushes looking for the old man. But he was playing a hunch here—maybe a little more than a hunch, but a hell of a lot less than a sure thing—and his hunch was that, since he and Hal Shipp had felt some kind of bizarre connection earlier in the day, some kind of bond, he’d be able to find the man on his own.

Just like those “pictures” he’d seen of somebody digging, he figured. If he concentrated hard enough on Hal, he’d be able to see where the man was. And a bunch of other yahoos racing around on ATVs and calling pseudo police code into walkie-talkies would only interfere with that process. He zipped up his jacket and tugged his Smokey hat down on his head against the night’s coming chill and went to work.

Standing in the center of the Slab, he closed his eyes and tried to summon up Hal Shipp’s face. Remembering the details of someone’s appearance, Ken knew, as opposed to the general overview, or what you tended to think of when you thought about a certain individual, was a pretty tricky job. Within a month of his own wife’s death, he had realized he could no longer even conjure a complete image of her face. He could get the details: the tiny mole near her ear, the curve of her nose, the slight tilt of her eyes that gave her an exotic air, the fullness of her lips. But he couldn't put them together in a whole that approximated the real person, and he had taken to spending hours looking at photos as if they’d keep her appearance more clear in his mind and heart.

His method was to start at the top and work down. Hal’s hair was white and wispy, thinning as a man’s of that age will do, but he still had plenty. It was an inch or so long, and he combed it back off his forehead but it never stayed there. The old man usually had a lock of it hanging down over his forehead, almost boyishly.