The sun was shouting at the land above Las Vegas in harsh tones by 4 o'clock.
Sam's shirt was soaked as he waited in his tin shed for word that the convoy
was headed into the desert from the city. "Chopper, they're on their way," the
kid at the gate announced.
Red and Amber had made one of the larger iron shells into a steel conference
room with hubcap seats welded to pipe legs, and a crushed and cubed VW on
either end supporting three Lincoln hoods that were welded together. It was
impressive by any means. A fan blew dust and cooler air around the dark room,
lit only by a couple of 100-watt bulbs on drop cords. Sam and Michelle waited.
The entourage included two jeeps and one armored troop carrier with a dozen
battle-dress soldiers all sweating like pigs. Senator Zien refused to ride
with General Platt, choosing to travel in his own jeep with his own aid. He
was certain that the general would attempt to fill his mind with preconceived
prejudges toward the desert crew, as he did before leaving the base. Zien,
like most politicians, wore a light gray suit, although he had tossed the
jacket in the back, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned the top button on his
once-crisp white shirt. He was smoldering even though the jeep was air-
conditioned. Zien's hair was prematurely graying, but cut short, although he
sported a full, closely trimmed beard. He was a biker once, after all, and
relished his riding days and the freedom they contained.
He sat up in anxious anticipation as they closed in on the encampment. He
expected nothing out of the ordinary, but the general had him thinking that a
horde of Viking maniacs inhabited the compound, raping their women daily and
torturing the kids. He had described a scene of people hanging from the gates
to ward off unwanted intruders. Zien's interest was peeked.
The entourage stopped on the other side of the mountain and Dave dialed the
compound. "Yeah?" Sam answered the phone.
"It's Dave, can I come in?"
"Sure, just leave the general in his jeep," Sam said. "I'll demonstrate why
when you get here."
"Why won't they drive me to the gate?" Dave questioned.
"I'll show you that too, can't explain right now." Sam said. Just come on
in."
Dave and his aid, Trina, departed the jeep. She was a stocky woman dressed in
a business suit and holding a massive purse with a steno pad, tape recorder,
three pairs of glasses, a portable fax machine, and a multi-colored myriad of
personal effects. They came face to face with the intense heat that Sam's
desert family was forced to endure daily. Trina immediately dripped make-up.
During the short 25-yard stroll to the gates they were both soaked in the
100-plus heat, leaving the general to fume and plot in his jeep.
As they rounded the corner the gates opened and Red walked out to meet them.
"Howdy," Red said, extending his hand. "We don't have casino air conditioning,
yet we can still ride motorcycles out here without being hassled, ticketed, or
jailed.
Dave spotted the barrage of barrels sticking through the wall and jumped. Red
dragged Dave and his aid inside and pointed out the contraption. "Jesus, you
had me going," Dave sputtered. Trina thought for a moment that she had wet her
pants.
"The best is yet to come," Red said, escorting the two officials through the
encampment. "Ya see, Mr. Zien, we live comfortably out here. We're not giving
anyone shit. We just need a couple of things and to be left alone and we both
can live in this godforsaken desert and survive.
"I'm afraid that's going to continue to be a tough one," the senator said in
a somber tone.
They passed kids playing in a makeshift school yard, women doing normal
household chores, and men working on motorcycles. Dave stopped at the garage
and reminisced with the mechanics about his bike and their problems getting
parts.
The trio entered the conference room where Michelle and Sam stood up to greet
them. "Senator," Sam said, extending his hand, "I'm Sam. This is Michelle
Boots. She recently escaped the GBS network with some interesting tapes.
"I'm all ears," Zien said, motioning to Trina. "Oh, excuse me, this is Trina,
my personal aid."
Trina skeptically shook their hands, still fumbling with the bundle in her
hand. She was 5 feet 5 inches and plump with frizzy jet black hair and narrow
ankles. She was having a tough time with her high heels in the soft sand.
Another girl from the camp entered the hollow room with slits of light
filtering in through the crushed and mangled cars and offered everyone water.
"We are aware that trust is at a premium these days, so we have arranged to
videotape these proceedings, in case you decide to alter your story in the
future," Sam said. "Is that all right with you?"
Dave immediately became uneasy, glancing to his aid and then back at Sam.
"Take it easy, Senator. We have it from good sources that you're a stand-up
guy and we respect that. Take a look at what we have, then let's talk." Sam
tried to bury his fears momentarily, then turned on the tape.
After it concluded, Sam turned off the remote and turned to the senator.
"Here's what we want. It's simple. We want to be left alone, and yet have
access to one supermarket and shopping center in the city. Other than that, we
have no reason to go to Las Vegas. We just need supplies from time to time. We
went to the Desert Inn the other night to free Michelle. I busted a guard's
nose and there was a lot of shooting going on, but we didn't shoot anyone,
although they killed one of our men - gunned him down in the parking lot."
"We don't want to hurt anyone, or hang out with them," Sam continued. "We
know what that city was built for and we have no intention of altering the
scene there. Now are there any questions I can answer for you?"
"No," the senator said, hesitating while gazing at the monitor.
Zien was dumfounded by the Beta tape revelations; even his aid was wide-eyed
and trembling in anticipation of how he would respond. Then a loud crack broke
the silence. Then another, then rapid fire.
"Shit," Sam said. "Platt may have lost it.
Red's cell phone rang. A young, terrified voice shouted in his ear. "They're
ramming the gates."
"Chopper," Red said, hanging up his phone, "they're coming in."
"I'll bet he's attacking us for the tapes. You may have become expendable,
Senator," Sam said. "Let's get the fuck out of here."
Through a series of tunnels and secret passageways, Sam lead Michelle, the
dumbfounded senator, and his aid deeper into the compound. Red and Amber
returned to the gate to ward off the attack.
*
*
*
The general waited in his vehicle until the guilt and anxiety got to him and
he couldn't stand it any longer. With the armor carrier in the front as a ram,
the dust and sand slinging vehicles charged the gate. Without a challenge they
rammed the gate firing and peeled into the compound. The kids on watch and Red
took for the hills as the armor carrier with a laser-directed .50-caliber
machine gun attached sprayed the compound. Two teenagers were cut down trying
to reach cover. The catacomb of steel structures eluded the general's party
and soon they were on foot searching the compound until they came across the
conference room and retrieved what they thought to be the incriminating tapes.
Sam pulled his group out of the back of the compound through the trunk lid of
a VW as a trap door. Around the corner of the ridge Sam had planted an old cop
Shovelhead with a sidecar for just this occasion. Leaving Michelle behind, Sam
climbed aboard the Shovel and fired it up. The senator jumped in the sidecar,
while Trina frantically attempted to jump on the back of the bike. Fearful of
raising her skirt too much, Sam told her to come around front. "Step up close
to me," he said as he drew a Buck knife from the sheath on his belt. "Spread
your legs," he ordered.
She complied with her eyes closed as Sam slit and tore her skirt up the front
and the back. "Get on!" Sam shouted. "It's more important that you get home
alive than anything gets exposed." She climbed on, the motor fired, and they
started down the mountain for the city.
Platt continued to search the compound for the senator. Amber had stashed the
kids in another container they had set up as a bomb shelter. They had been
trained to be dead silent during such an attack. When Platt heard the sound of
the motorcycle, he hollered for his men to return to their vehicles. He had
the tapes, now only one loose end remained.
Sam careened in the loose gravel and sand down the hillside toward the edge
of the city. Halfway to the bottom, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the
dust trails of two more vehicles heading in his direction. Sam had to make it
to the blacktop before them or be gunned down only to have the general portray
the community as a group of violent renegades to justify the killing of
innocent people.
Sam twisted the sweat-slick, cracked rubber grip and the Shovel responded.
The 74-inch motor was carrying an almost 200-pound senator and 125-pound aid,
along with Sam at 210, while treading on soft sand beneath its old Firestone
tires. Although Sam twisted the throttle with all he had, the combination of
weight and sand prevented any speed over 60 mph.
"Fire when ready," the general commanded to the armor carrier bounding down
the hill. The gun whirred into place and the young, recently trained recruit
cocked the weapon. The laser point danced across the desert floor following
the dust trial of the Shovelhead. The beam landed on a large 50-year-old
cactus as he pulled the trigger. The trunk of the cactus exploded, splitting
the 15-foot-high plant in half.
Sam felt the explosion and glanced to the side, witnessing the shattering
plant. He ducked as more bullets followed and tried to evade the fire by
weaving, but it only slowed his progress.
"Senator," Sam shouted over the machine gun fire and the screaming Harley-
Davidson, "where can I go?"
"I don't know," the senator screamed. "My office is downtown."
Trina was hanging on for her life. Every fiber of her being was terrified.
Sam could feel her short arms tighten against his chest.
General Platt clenched his teeth. He knew what the tapes contained and what
the senator had seen. Besides, he hated republicans, especially this one. He
wanted to control this valley and was having tremendous political success
except for one holdout, Dave Zien. This was an opportunity not to be missed,
and in a sense a suicide mission. Either he succeed in destroying the tapes
and taking out Senator Zien, or his ambitions could dissolve in the desert
sand. He only had one fragment of political bullshit in his favor. Zien was
falling out of favor even within his own political ranks. He was becoming a
rabid radical in eyes of many in his own clan.
A .50-caliber bullet tore the fender off the sidecar, throwing it to the
desert floor. The jeeps were gaining fast. There was less than a mile to go
but the old, overloaded sidecar was slowing in the softening sand and the
jeeps with 4-wheel drive and light loads were pulling up fast. There wasn't
much on the eastern edge of the city, only a few abandoned apartment houses, a
strip mall that went bust, and a dried up mobile home park. Suddenly Trina let
go with one of her arms. Sam tried to look around but couldn't see what she
was doing. Another bullet ripped his sideview mirror off the handlebars.
"Sam," Trina hollered in his ear, "take us through the trailer park, I'm
calling a press conference." The trailer park was a noted druggie hangout. But
since all the new laws were passed, it was cleansed of any illegal activities
and all who lived or would attempt to live there. Sam leaned against the swing
of the sidecar and headed for the edge of the trailer park. The news media,
specifically GBS, often used the trailer park for the backdrop of low-life
reports. Anything to do with drugs, violence, or illegal activities has the
tilted, tainted, and tarnished trailers in the background as a reminder to the
public that nothing illegal goes unpunished.
Trina shouted into the cell phone bouncing against her ear to one of the
other network bosses. "I have a breaking report for you. We'll have a press
conference in ten minutes on the edge of the Silver Dollar trailer park. Can
you make it?" There was obvious hesitation on the other end of the line. "If
you can't make it, I'm calling GBS." She waited.
"See you in ten," came the voice.
"If you don't make it, there will be dead people and no story," she shouted
and hung up.
Sam bumped over the sand onto the busted asphalt road leading into the
dilapidated park as three shells cut into a mid-50s Airstream, bursting it
burst into flames. "Where do I go?" Sam yelled over his shoulder.
"There's three parallel roads leading to the entrance," Trina shouted back as
the bumpy fragmented asphalt potholes took her sunglasses off her head,
shattering them against the pavement. "You can cut between many of the
trailers to the other roads." Sam took an abrupt right, lifting the sidecar
into the air, the freewheeling sidecar wheel overturning an overflowing
galvanized trash can. As the wheel came down, Sam shoved the right handlebar
hard and the rear wheel skidded into a left turn. For a moment the laser
sighting device could not find the speeding motorcycle, but the aggressive
non-com continued to fire, tearing into one mobile home after another, many
erupting into flames.
Sam nearly twisted the quick-throttle off the handlebars, squinting against
sand coated shades, a squealing woman at his back and the grunting senator to
his right. The first jeep bounced onto the pavement. The officer at the wheel
spotted the motorcycle skid marks and the overturned trash can and turned
right immediately, then tried to break and jog around the trash can on his
right. The speeding jeep kicked up on two wheels, catching its roof on the
corner of the tattered canopy of an adjacent motor home, and pulling the jeep
onto its side. It slammed into the cheaply built corrugated mobile home,
entering the master bedroom and taking the king sized bed out the back wall,
where the two came to rest. The general's jeep was close behind. Avoiding the
fate of the first jeep, it veered onto the front lawn of the collapsed home,
through the rusting barbecue set, throwing crushed lawn furniture into the
front yard canopy of the next home, before coming to a stop. Spinning tires,
they reversed direction and tore between the next two trailers to the street
beyond.
Over the top of the another tin dwelling, Trina spotted the news van's
antenna and shouted. "There, over there," she said, in tears. She was
immediately fearful that someone would see her with the slit in her business
suit.
The senator attempted to tighten his tie as they approached, just as two
rounds from the heavy caliber machine guns split a home in two. Sam had just
rounded the double-wide when it blew up, throwing flaming debris and glass
over the trio. Sam ducked as his shirt caught fire. The news van was directly
ahead. His motorcycle was on fire. He couldn't see the senator, but he had to
stop quick. The young kid under the Beta cam was already filming the
motorcycle careening directly at him. A sharply dressed female newscaster
stood beside him, mic in hand, quivering in her shoes. The motorcycle began to
skid and slide as the jeep rounded the corner.
The general's binders hit hard. "Turn around," he ordered. The young soldier
at the wheel quickly performed a perfect U-turn and headed in the opposite
direction.
Sam slid within a yard of the newscaster and stopped, his shirt smoldering,
the motorcycle tires smoking, the smell of rubber and exhaust enhancing the
heat of the day, ashes and sand drifting off the motorcycle. The senator leapt
from the sidecar and went to meet the press. Trina also jumped from the
passenger seat, attempting to conceal her revealing attire. She grabbed her
satchel and clutched it to her chest as always. Sam sat on the trusty Shovel,
panting and admiring the show. It wasn't as he thought it should be. He was
hoping for more amiable negotiations, but the general forced their hand. All
he could hope for was that public sentiment was on his desert family's side.
He prayed it would work.
"Senator, Senator, what's happened here?" a young newscaster asked, forcing
the mic into Zien's face.
"Well, I was alerted today about a serious miscarriage of justice and it was
incumbent on me to research the situation. It seems several of our government
officials will be under investigation, including the head of GBS network. I
have tapes to prove it."
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