wells. The vans queued past the marina and, guided by the leader with the flashlight, pulled in slowly along the wall. The gunmen spaced themselves between the vans and on either end, setting up their ambush, stacking the rifles side by side along the wall, barrels up, stocks in the high wet grass. Abatangelo honed in on faces as the men loaded beehive rounds into the pump guns, deer rounds into the hunting rifles, then passed the jars of gasoline, the rags, the spray cans, up and down the line, setting them down with care. The parkas came on for shelter from the rain. Once the men were settled, one by one they removed handcrickets from their pockets and signaled down the line.
Abatangelo settled back on his haunches. Even if Shel was down there, he thought, inside one of the vans, the Mexicans had no intention of simply handing her over and being done with the matter. That much was obvious from the manpower and weaponry. They’d had their war council. Felix Randall and his men, if they bothered to appear, were low enough, hated enough, to take down without fearing much of a manhunt. Nobody at the Justice Department would so much as yawn. As for the locals, who cared? It actually made things simpler, tidier, if the Mexicans ran the meth trade. No more renegade biker romanticism, no more Aryan warrior myth. They could all join hands against the foreign menace. Blame immigration.
Abatangelo leaned forward again, returning his attention to the vans. The drivers remained in place, swallowed up in shadow, behind which firewalls separated the cabin and cargo areas. There’d be no telling if Shel was there, inside one of those vans, or even if she was alive, until they opened the doors and either brought her out or didn’t. He pulled away from the viewfinder again and massaged his eyes.
An intimation of the lunacy, the pointlessness of his being there, overwhelmed him. It combined with a gutting sense of loss. She’s dead, he thought. If they haven’t done it already, they’ll make it part of the show. And I’ll be here, he thought, peering through the viewfinder as she gets dragged from one of the vans, marched to the middle of the gravel road, given a little shove so the gunman can get a proper aim, then murdered.
Don’t do this, he told himself, shaking off the image.
He considered giving up the subterfuge, revealing himself and walking down, trying to barter for her. They’d kill him on the spot, he realized- drag his body into the grass and go back to waiting for Felix Randall’s men. A minor distraction. A little sidelight before the main event.
There’d be no saving her. Not here. As that sank in, the full weight of Shel’s death, already accomplished or imminent, bearing down, he thought to himself, “I’m sorry.” The words felt foolish, the sentiment wretched and small. If he’d simply had the courage to want her, like Wax said- the courage to comfort her when she came for help, be thankful for her being there, not connive some inane, scheming justice- she would very likely be safe and well. Frank might even be alive, he thought, or at least the blame for his death would lie elsewhere. He remembered Waxman, after the explosion, confiding he was afflicted with the image of a schoolbook drawing, Icarus in flames. What he left unremarked, of course, was the other half of the story- the vanity of Daedalus. His vanity and, in the end, his guilt.
He returned his eye to the viewfinder and photographed every grouping of shooters along the wall, as well as the drivers slouched down inside the vans. It might provide leverage later, he thought. Somebody with his face in a picture would add just a little more to the story to save himself. And if that didn’t end up keeping anyone alive, it would at least tell the tale.
A few of the men lit cigarettes, sheltered from sight by the wall but still cupping the ash glow with their hands and exhaling into the mud. A crack pipe made the rounds. One man, rocking on his haunches, fingered a cross hung from his neck by a leather thong. Two of the younger ones held hands and lowered their heads, praying. Rendered green and hazy by the PLI, the figures seemed strangely innocent through the lens, as though their images were mere projections- evil, mutinous projections- not their real selves. Their real selves remained elsewhere, asleep in bed, with their alibis.
The rain brought an acrid stench out of the ground, suggestive of petrol mixed with sewage. In the distance a short queue of tank cars pushed by a diesel tender rolled along the rail tracks inside the refinery perimeter; every man along the wall peered up, trying to see how close it was. Abatangelo braced himself against the incinerator wall for balance, hoping not to fall, betray his presence. His legs cramped. His feet had fallen asleep; his clothing, wet and cold, clung to his skin like cellophane. Using the noise of the train as cover, he pressed the shutter release and ran off seven frames, intending to catch the faces before they turned back toward the water.
The handcrickets started up again. Abatangelo caught the faint sound of motors approaching from beyond the marina.
Four new vans appeared, rolling quietly forward. The shooters along the wall grabbed their weapons, fingered the triggers and crouched, waiting for the signal to stand and fire.
The first three vans queued up as expected, but then the fourth shot past and spun back around, the bay door open. What followed defied comprehension at first, and then Abatangelo flashed on the article he’d read that morning, the weapon theft from the Port Chicago Weapons Station. A 7.6 mm chain gun. It opened fire from its mounting inside the van, targeting the Mexican vehicles at the level of the drivers’ shoulders, heavy rounds cutting through the metal, shattering the windshields and window glass. Using this as cover fire, a stream of men emptied from the three far vans, flattening themselves along the roadbed and opening fire with carbines.
The first Mexicans to return fire were cut down, their heads shot piecemeal in eruptions of bloody bone. One man, screaming, went down firing his shotgun into the man beside him. Another lay on his back firing rounds into the sky, sobbing. Then the Mexicans’ sheer numbers took a toll. The shotguns rained spinning darts across the road, taking out the first row of Felix’s men, and the rifles added in with scattered fire. Two of the Mexicans fired their MAC-10’s crazily, unable to control the muzzle lift and spending rounds into the air before leveling them out and taking proper aim.
The newcomers changed tactics quickly. The chain gun aimed low for the gas tanks of the sitting vans. There was no hostage to kill, no money to ruin. Each side had come to steal what the other refused to bring. The nearest of the Mexican vans exploded, blown off its wheels and caroming against the two beside it in a blur of flame and black smoke. For a moment the driver of the nearest van was visible inside the cabin, kicking at the door, then he disappeared in a billowing dark cloud.
Abatangelo covered his head with his arms as the chain gun aimed high again and rounds cut across the grass, tearing at the incinerator wall. Flecks of brick caught him in the face; he flattened, feeling for the wound. His ear was wet with blood. An explosion shook the ground, his tripod fell on top of him and when he looked up he saw a greenish-black cloud and flames engulfing a second van.
The Mexicans began heaving their jars of gasoline at the chain gun, forsaking the rags, hoping the muzzle exhaust would trigger the fumes. With the pelting of gas the chain gun finally caught fire- a small pop of flame then the ammunition went, rocking the van off the ground in the explosion, turning it thirty degrees in the road. Two men fell free. They crept along the ground screaming, flailing at themselves in an effort to put out their blazing clothes.
With the chain gun gone, a ragged cheer went up among the Mexicans, a new fervor, some men crouching to reload or claiming another gun from among the dead, others standing to pick off the unarmed men rolling afire across the gravel. A portion of the windbreak gave way like sand, chewed apart from gunfire. Acrid smoke crept low across the ground, obscuring the two sides from each other. The few vans not consumed in flame had their tires shot flat or ripped clear off their wheel rims in a smoldering shag of rubber.
Gradually the gunfire grew sporadic and men pulled back. Deserters, alone or dragging wounded friends, ran low across the grass field. Abatangelo unscrewed his camera from the tripod, turned and fired shot after shot as the men fled past the incinerator, oblivious to it and him, seeing the hurricane fence in the grassy distance beyond the lone oak tree and reaching it finally, pushing their bloody friends up the chain-link barrier and trying to pull themselves up as well. One man was left there on the sagging fence, hanging dead. On the far side the survivors hit a dead run and vanished.
Back in the gravel lane two men fired at each other point-blank, their arms and heads pulpy with blood. Beyond them the last of Felix Randall’s men, wounded, staggering, fell back, limping into the water. Firing under their own vans and using the gas tank explosions as cover, they slipped away, wading through the reeds toward the marina.
Finally sirens could be heard, coming from somewhere far off, sounding small and comical. Unspent rounds went off like firecrackers in the various fires. The road was littered with dead or those who wanted to be dead, crying out or sobbing, scattered around the charred metal husks of the vehicles spewing smoke. An odor of gasoline, cordite and methyl alcohol filled the air, mixed with the stench of smoldering rubber and vinyl and
