Swift Vengeance

44

Life is waiting.

Just before dusk, Burt and Lindsey brought back pizza from Vince’s downtown. I watched on Clevenger’s tablet as they made their first delivery to Clevenger himself, hunkered in the oleander down by the gate. Lindsey waved up at the drone she couldn’t see, though she was very clear on the HD feed. So was Zeno in his armor, seemingly aware of the heightened threat level. Clevenger stepped from the bushes, zooming in on himself and Lindsey. The camera was so powerful you could see their expressions and the moving of their lips. Lindsey laughed. Clevenger moved the controller to one hand and accepted the white pizza box.

A minute later, Burt Short’s relatively gigantic Cadillac Coupe deVille came up the drive and rolled to a stop. Out came Burt and Lindsey, bearing stacks of boxes, delivering them from casita to casita.

Later I lit a fire in the great room and sat well away from it, my FBI tactical vest on the back of a chair. The armor was lighter and covered a little more area than that issued by the San Diego sheriff’s office just a few short years ago. Clevenger’s tablet sat propped on a steamer trunk beside my chair, streaming his aerial surveillance of my home and property, eerily green in infrared.

The dark made everyone jumpy and fretful, except for Taucher, who hummed to herself contentedly as she carried Clevenger’s tablet back and forth from Salvano in the kitchen to me in the living room, where she would look from the screen to me with her brown hawk eyes, fiercely beautiful within her heavily made-up face. She said that Lark and Smith had wanted to be a part of this, but they were running You Got It surveillance, which was Salvano’s call, and Salvano knew this kind of business better than anyone. Said it a little loudly, so he could hear. Joan’s nice-girl routine was sweet and funny if you knew her.

Back and forth with the tablet.

Forth and back.

For me it was coffee and memories of a woman I loved, snippets of dreams unlived. And a growing wonder at the things we human beings do to one another.

Barn lights out at eight. House lights out at ten.

The slow crawl of hours.

If there’s a dead of night, why no dead of morning?

At 3:17 a.m., Taucher came across the room, looking down at the tablet screen. “I’d like you to come to my home and meet my people someday,” she said.

“I’d be honored, Joan.”

“Yes, I think you would be.”

I saw a pair of headlights far down on the road. Then a glimmer in her eyes when she looked up at me.

“A white Taurus just went by the gate,” she said.

Salvano came to the window beside me. We watched the car go past and disappear.

Five minutes later the Taurus approached from the opposite direction, slowed at the gate, and turned in. Pulled up to the keypad as the motion light came on and driver’s-side window went down. The driver reached out to punch the numbers and I got my first clear, high-def look at Caliphornia. He resembled his father and his sister — the trim face, slender nose, and heavy eyebrows. Younger-looking than his twenty-two years, a mass of black hair, clean shaven. Eyes bright as he watched the gate swing open. Beside him the silhouette of a woman, shrouded in a darkness that even Clevenger’s infrared camera could not fully penetrate.

Up the drive slowly, headlights off, running lights orange in the dark. I buckled on the tactical vest. We stood away from the windows and drew our weapons. I heard the creak of the floor in my upstairs office — Reggie the sniper settling in.

The car came up the drive between the house and the barn, setting off the motion lights, then continuing past their beams. In the semidarkness farthest from the house, the driver half-circled the vehicle to face back down the drive, and parked.

No movement inside that I could see. Stillness, as the seconds slid into minutes and the motion lights went off. Then the car doors opened. Ben Azmeh emerged. Taller and heavier than I had imagined. Jeans and athletic shoes and a half-zipped U.S. Air Force sweatshirt over a dark T-shirt, the hood now pulled over his head. He shut the door softly with both hands and a nudge of his hip. In the faint light from the house I saw the glimmer of a gun just above his belt buckle — easy access, up front and in the open.

Kalima came around the passenger side. Tall, trailing layers of silky fabric — a caftan or a full-length duster — billowing pants and combat boots. Hair tied back, bunched at the top and flowing behind her.

And a bundle in her arms. She looked down at it, adjusted a blanket.

I saw what looked like a small face within the bundle.

Thought of Ben’s letter to Marah: Want to marry Kalima and have us a baby!

“Oh, Christ no,” whispered Taucher.

Salvano groaned softly.

Another little squeak from the floor upstairs.

I remembered Joan’s description of the full Bakersfield video: Someone walked past that security camera thirty seconds before Caliphornia... A woman... Carrying something against her side...

Had Kenny Bryce opened his front door not only to a woman, but to a woman and her newborn?

Kalima led and Ben followed. Practiced and purposeful but not in a hurry. Silent on the concrete, touched by weak moonlight, Kalima cradling her infant, Caliphornia with his hoodie up. A young family. The future ahead. They came along the shadowed edge of the driveway, toward the house and the branching walkway that led to the patio. Caliphornia tall but swift, Kalima tall, too, striding more heavily with boots and infant.

Crouched and watching within the darkness of my living room, I saw Kalima lead the way around the house and toward the patio. When they’d gone past the window I sidled from the living room toward the kitchen. Salvano and Taucher massed behind me. Knowing my home and its dimensions, I saw that Ben and Kalima would be at our ground zero — on the patio, just under the palapa and directly in front of us — if we came through the mudroom adjacent to the kitchen approximately right...

Now.

Kalima triggered the motion lights.

I drew my weapon, pulled open the mudroom door, and followed Salvano and Taucher into the cold morning.

“FBI! Facedown on the ground!” boomed Salvano.

Salvano broke right and Taucher left. Beyond them stood Caliphornia and Kalima, frozen in the light. I dropped to a shooter’s stance, both hands on the gun and the bright red dot of my laser sight dancing center-left on Caliphornia’s chest.

Salvano again: “On the ground now!”

Kalima looked at Ben. I couldn’t read her expression — an agreement or a confirmation, maybe — and at the same time she hugged the baby closer. It cooed softly.

Caliphornia had frozen. Kalima gave us a defiant glare.

“Put the infant on the ground and step away!” yelled Taucher.

Kalima seemed to consider, her expression changing from obstinate to hopeful. She nodded and knelt and snugged the bundled blue blanket. Again the infant cooed and warbled. Kalima then set it on the ground and arranged the blanket once more, raised a pistol at Taucher and fired.

The return volley was immediate and deafening, exploding from the guns of Taucher and Salvano on either side of me, and from Reggie above me in the house, sending a cloud of gun smoke into the damp cold air. I fired once and didn’t miss. Kalima staggered back into the barbecue, but, apparently well armored, she scrambled over the blue-tiled counter and fell out-of-sight into the horseshoe-shaped island. Bullets smacked after her, tossing blue tile and brick dust into the smoking air.

Ben grabbed the baby and threw himself over the barbecue, too, back first, like a high jumper. In the sudden silence I heard the infant cooing affectionately, oblivious. Caliphornia rose and fired and ducked down again. Daniel on the barn had a bad angle and couldn’t risk big-bore fire in our direction. Then a frustrated cease-fire. In the eerie silence Caliphornia slammed home a fresh magazine and asked frantic questions in Arabic of Kalima.

“Enti kowais? Enti kowais?”

No answer.

Salvano ordered them to throw out their weapons and come out. The baby cried. Then, holding fire but brandishing the newborn at us, Caliphornia rose gracefully from behind the counter and began backing his way up the driveway toward the Taurus.

Taucher and Salvano sidled after him. I covered them from behind a palapa stanchion — a palm trunk as thick as my body. Good protection and a steady brace for shooting.

Caliphornia backpedaled hard and fast, but straight into Lindsey, charging him from the barnyard dark. She hit him at the knees and he went down, a janbiya clanging to the concrete. He rolled quickly upright, tucked the baby tight, and turned for his truck. Sniper Daniel took one shot, muzzle flashing orange from the dark.

Caliphornia’s hips shuddered and he crashed to his back, another janbiya and his phone clattering to the concrete. Still he clutched his infant close. His gun spun to a stop inches from his outstretched right hand. The baby cooed.

Lindsey rose to one knee, steadying her handgun on Caliphornia, as Taucher and Salvano took aim from behind her.

Taucher: “Hold your fire!”

Glass shattered violently behind us, from the direction of the casitas, and I understood what was happening.

In the smoke and strange eardrum-pounding silence Caliphornia’s blood snaked down the drive.

Then, as if charged by new life — or by Hector’s Captagon fighting pills — he struggled to his feet. He swayed, a torn and bloody being, the infant still in his grip. He looked at the gun on the ground, then at us. I felt mass and energy behind me, as armored Zeno flew through the air, knocked down Caliphornia as if he were made of paper, then straddled him and took the man’s head into his cavernous jaws. Held it still as the baby finally rolled free.

Lindsey screamed, “Lasialo! Lasialo!”

With a splat, Zeno dropped Caliphornia’s head to the concrete. Then gazed at Lindsey expectantly, a red pendulum of drool swinging from one side of his mouth.

“Vieni, Zeno!” ordered Lindsey, backing away from the baby but her gun still trained on Caliphornia.

Zeno obeyed.

Caliphornia lifted his head, eyes wide open and his chest rising and falling rapidly, his gun in a pool of blood beside him, his child and phone just out of reach.

Zeno had almost made it to Lindsey when he suddenly stopped and hooked back to the baby, as if he’d caught a whiff of something new and important. Stopped and sniffed at the bundled infant, pawed it once like it was an uninteresting toy, then loped back toward his master.

“Bravo regazzo! Vieni!”

The good boy came.

I watched the infant roll free of the blanket, a rosy-cheeked, big-eyed plastic doll dressed in blue PJs.

“Get away from that thing!” Taucher ordered, wrenching Lindsey away from the doll.

Three rapid shots rang from within the barbecue. Taucher buckled and collapsed. Lindsey clambered toward me in seeming slow motion, Zeno at her side. Within the stout bunker of the barbecue, Kalima was swaying unsteadily when I shot her once in the forehead and put her down forever.

I was just starting my turn toward Joan when Ben weakly raised his head again, found Lindsey in retreat, then lifted something small and dark in a bloody hand. The doll exploded and the world shut down.

Heartbeat.

Eyes

burning: smoke

palapa fronds

dark and starless sky

breath in breath out

on my back

alive.

Then: Salvano standing over the bloody rag of Caliphornia, gun still drawn and the bomb squad swarming in as bloodied Lindsey and Zeno shuffled toward me, Burt and sniper Daniel emerging from the barnyard dark, Clevenger entering the patio light with the drone control pad still in his hand and his mouth agape.

I crawled to Taucher. The bullet had caught her throat just over the top of her armor. Her blood gushed and her hawk’s eyes stared up at me and there was a trembling hush upon her, the hush of life in flight. I put my hands on either side of the gaping wound and tried carefully and scientifically to keep her blood inside her though it was not possible but I kept my fingers and thumbs pressuring purposefully and I talked to her as I had talked to Avalos in that Fallujah doorway where he had lain. I don’t remember what I said to my bleeding brother Avalos — probably something about hanging on and hanging in — and I don’t now remember what I said to Joan, though it couldn’t have been any more helpful, but I didn’t have anything more to offer than pitiful, exhausted words.

I was aware of two bomb-squad personnel in their protective suits wheeling some kind of container toward Caliphornia’s body while a third with a portable X-ray machine headed for Kalima.

Aware of Salvano on his feet.

Of casita six’s open door, two faces staring out.

Of Lindsey kneeling beside me, Zeno down beside her.

I talked to Joan earnestly. More words, a battalion of them. Her eyes shifted and her pupils constricted and I believed she could see me. Then a jolt of strength that allowed her to lift her head. Followed by a sigh and a great shuddering release. I settled her head carefully to the concrete.

Lindsey wavered over to Burt, the backs of her arms riddled by shrapnel. Zeno shook his head once like his ears were full of water but followed her, otherwise unfazed. Lindsey tilted into Burt’s outstretched arms, she a head taller than Burt but Burt bull-like and strong, his arms closing around her.

I stood. Leaned against the palapa palm trunk for balance.

Saw Salvano limping toward Kalima and the bomb-squad tech, phone to his ear.

Liz pulling gently on Lindsey’s sleeve.

Dick on his way over to me with some unreadable expression, revolver jammed in his belt, trying to step around the empty brass and bits of doll rubber and shards of blue tile scattered in the blood.