The four men just nodded.
“New ⦠new,” one said. He was the one wearing the Chargers T-shirt. Charger Man ⦠.
“You rent it?” Cahoon asked.
“Long-term deal,” was the reply.
“Sweet,” Cahoon said, giving the huge vehicle the once-over. He wasn't aware that Greyhound actually leased its buses out to ordinary citizens, and these guys sure didn't look like Greyhound employees. Yet here it was.
“You folks from around here?” Cahoon asked.
“Reno,” was Charger Man's reply.
Cahoon brightened considerably. “Hey, that's where my kid lives,” he told them. “We're going up to see him after the show. He's a dealer at the Horseshoe Casino.”
Charger Man laughed, though the three soccer players didn't seem to be understanding the conversation.
“Yes, we dealers too,” Charger Man told Cahoon. “We big-time time wheeler-dealers.”
Cahoon laughed. These guys were funny.
“What casino are you at?” he asked them.
Suddenly all four looked frozen. “Horseshoe,” one of the soccer players blurted out.
“The Horseshoe?” Cahoon repeated. “Are you saying you work where my kid works? What are the chances?”
They all laughedâit was a helluva coincidence.
“Wheeler-dealers,” Charger Man said. “Big-time in Reno.”
But now Cahoon was getting confused. Maybe it was the beer, his thirdâor was it his fourth?âin about thirty minutes.
“You know my kid, then,” he said to them. “Larry ⦠Larry Cahoon.”
The men all laughed. “He's a wheeler-dealer,” Charger Man said again.
At that point, Cahoon thought the Mexicans, or whatever they were, might be having a bit of fun at his expense. He drained his beer and threw the can into a nearby trash barrel. The barrel was empty, so the can made a loud crash when it hit the bottom. All four men nearly jumped out of their skins.
“Enjoy the show,” Cahoon told them.
Then he walked away.
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Cahoon checked on his other neighbors, but they were still asleep. He grabbed another beer and went inside his rig, to find his wife awake, sucking on her oxygen mask, watching
The Price Is Right.
He told her about the people from the Greyhound and how he now disliked them. She was a Christian, a gentle soul who had reined him in, in a positive way, in the 40 years they'd been married.
“They're just friends you haven't met yet,” she told him.
Cahoon drained his beer, thought a bit, then boozily agreed with her. She was
always
right.
He pulled another pack of meat from the fridge and went back outside. The four men were still in position, sprawled on their lounges, but none of them seemed to be too comfortable.
Cahoon threw the meat pack on the grill and started yet another beer while turning the barbecue. Once he had four pieces done, he smothered them in Texas hot sauce, put them on a warming platter, grabbed some paper plates and some plastic knives and forks. Then once more he walked over to the four guys in front of the Greyhound.
“Peace,” he said. “Peace ⦠and barbecue.”
And there were smiles all round. Cahoon decided these guys probably weren't of Mexican extraction. Indians, maybeâfrom India, that is. But they all looked a bit undernourished.
Cahoon passed them the extra paper plates and utensils, then gave each man a serving. They looked at their plates, the pieces of barbecue drenched in sauce. This seemed new to them.
“Dig in,” Cahoon told them.
And dig in they did. At least the three soccer players did. They went full bore, obviously very hungry.
Charger Man approached his meal a little more cautiously. He carved out a large piece of charred meat, looked at it, sniffed it, then put it in his mouth. He gave it a couple chewsâbut then suddenly, violently, spit it out.
The next thing Cahoon knew, Charger Man had grabbed him and had a knife up against his throat. And it wasn't a plastic knife, either.
Cahoon screamed,
“Jesuzzz ⦠man, what are you doing!”
“What kind of meat was that?” Charger Man roared at him in near-perfect English.
Cahoon was both frightened and confused. “It's ⦠it's barbecue!” he screamed back.
He would have thought this was a huge practical joke if the man's knife weren't beginning to slice into his throat. The three soccer players were suddenly frozen again, unable to move.
“What kind of meat?” the man screamed at Cahoon again.
“It's ribs, man!” Cahoon shouted back as the man started dragging him toward the door of the bus. “Pork ribs! That's all!”
It was only because Charger Man vomited on the spot that Cahoon was able to pull away from him. At that moment two more men came off the bus. They, too, were dark-skinned and wearing Charger Man T-shirts. They grabbed their comrade's knife and literally threw him up the bus stairs, one delivering a mighty kick in his rear end for good measure. Then they turned to Cahoon. They were nervous but trying to smile.
“We're sorry,” one said in a thick accent, fighting to stay calm. “He's sick. Sick in the head. Been too far from home. Please forgive him and please keep this between us.”
Cahoon felt the slight cut on his neck. He was shaking. It had all happened so fast.
“Yeah, sure,” he said to the two Charger men, quickly walking back to his rig. “But get him some help. That guy's dangerous ⦠.”
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Captain Audette was finally able to catch a cup of coffee.
It was 10:45âwith about an hour to go before the start of the big show. He had his walkie-talkie with him now, but it didn't want to shut up. A battalion of enlisted men, assigned to assist him today, were scattered throughout the huge base. They were calling him nonstop, one every few seconds, updating him on what was going on with the crowd inflows. At the moment, everything was looking good, a troubling note for Audette as he knew when everything appeared to be going good in life that just meant something bad was right down the road. But he'd decided to give himself a moment of relief with a cup of joe. It might be the last chance he'd have for some caffeine in a while.
He was in the Volunteers Tent, right up on the flight line. This was a place where spectators could come should they need information or directions or if they got too much sun or needed any medical assistance. It was a big white shelter with a huge American flag on top, very hard to miss in the sprawl. Audette was also carrying his black briefcase with him, and at the moment he was guarding it with much fervor. Inside was a document he liked to think was almost as secret as the U.S. launch codes of the day. It was the detailed plan for the great rendezvous of escort aircraft for the veterans' plane. Times, locations, altitudesâit was all in there.
Audette sat at an empty table at the back of the tent and dumped his usual five packs of sugar into his extra-black coffee. He'd already handled a dozen minor problems since the incident at CAG 3, but at that moment he was proud of himself because of the big picture. He'd been able to keep this ThunderbirdsâBlue Angels surprise hookup thing quiet in the three months it had been percolating, this while it seemed that America and the world were falling apart. The hopes of springing it on the huge crowd would have been dashed if word had leaked out. But so far so good.
Audette had even had a hand in planning exactly how the great flyby would go off, how it would approach the field
and how the crowd would first see it. It was all timed to unfold in such a way that the spectators would immediately realize what was going on. Usually air show aerobatics were done parallel to the main runway, starting left to right as the crowd faced the action. On Audette's suggestion, the flyby would actually approach the field from the east, meaning it would pass over the crowd first. This way the throng would see the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels flying together right away. That would certainly get a rise out of the crowd! Then would come the Harriers, the F-15s and the S-2s, followed by the Stealth planes, the Raptor, and the F-35 JSF. Next would be the C-5; the monstrous airplane was due to go over the crowd at a heart-stoppingly low altitude of 1,000 feet. Following close behind would be the trio of strategic bombers, the B-52s, the B-1s, and the B-2s.
It would take about forty-five seconds for all these planes to fly by. Then as one they would go into a wide 180-degree turn and literally escort the big C-5 down to the main runway, where it would land and taxi and the veterans would come out to the cheers of thousands. Separate routines by the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angles would follow. Then they, too, would land and take their places with the other escort aircraft in static displays set up along the flight line.
It was quite a plan.
Audette drained his coffee and, only because his walkie-talkie had suddenly fallen silent, got up to refill his cup. After 90 days of hustling, day and night, and with the knowledge that today itself would be a series of little hells, it was reassuring that he could still manage to sit himself down and enjoy a second cup of sugar-overloaded
café.
For once, things were under control.
That's when John Cahoon walked into the tent.
He was bleeding from the neck, but just slightly. There was a medical aid station at the back of the tent, but after Audette watched the injured man talk to one of the volunteers he was surprised to see the woman direct him over to Audette's table.
“What the fuck is this?” the young captain groaned.
Cahoon arrived with a thump. “I want to talk to a cop,” he told Audette.
Audette put down his coffee and pulled the briefcase back to his lap.
“Why? What's the problem, sir?”
“Some guy just tried to stab me,” Cahoon said. “Back where the RVs and things are parked. He's in a big Greyhound bus. He freaked out just because I offered him and his friends some barbecue.”
At that moment, Audette's walkie-talkie burst to life. The lull in the communications with his underlings was over. Once again, they were all reporting in, fast and furious. A small fender bender near an auxiliary gate was disrupting flow into the base. There was a power failure in one of the hangars where the Blue Angels' support plane would be housed during the show. The base commander had just been spotted arriving on the scene. Plus there was a small fire in a concession stand by another main gate. Audette gulped the rest of his coffeeâthen he looked up at Cahoon again. He noted Cahoon smelled of beer, this early in the morning.
“Where did you say this took place?” Audette asked him. His “knife wound” looked no worse than a minor shaving accident. A dab of tissue would have taken care of it.
“Down at the area where the RVs are parked,” Cahoon told him. “You know, in the handicapped section ⦠.”
Audette's walkie-talkie went nuts again. Porta Potties were overflowing; more electrical outages were happening; the base fire truck was having trouble getting to the cotton candy concession fire.
He looked back at Cahoon. “SirâI'll pass this on to the police once I have a chance,” he said. “My advice to you is to go back to your rig and perhaps move away from these people to another parking space.”
Cahoon thought a moment, then turned on his heel and left, without another word.
The volunteer who'd first handled Cahoon and had overheard the conversation approached Audette.
“I'd be glad to go report this to the police,” she told the Air Force officer. “If you think it's necessary.”
Audette thought a momentâthe local Vegas cops on-site were already stretched pretty thin.
“Only when one comes by,” he finally told the volunteer, getting up to go. “That guy looks like he cut himself shavingâafter having a beer or two. And even if he is right, he said the âfight' took place in the handicapped section, right? I mean, how bad could it be?”
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There was a place on the lower part of the Nevada-Arizona border known as Stinky Valley.
This was a made-up name; it was inscribed on most maps as the West River Wash. The valley was a couple miles wide and 10 miles long. It was surrounded by mountains and high desert, unseen from the nearby AMTRAK tracks. There were no highways within a hundred miles, no houses or towns, either. Few people outside this small county even knew the place existed.
It was called an oil storage plant, but this was a misnomer. In reality it was a depository for oil, gasoline, and other refined petroleum products that for whatever reason were never used, had gone bad, had got old, or were simply not refined enough.
These troublesome liquids would be quietly brought here and dumped, no questions asked. This scar across on the otherwise pristine if barren southeast Nevada landscape was highly polluted and had been for years. Yet due to legislation pushed through by the oil companies every few years, Stinky Valley was heavily subsidized by the federal government.