Flashback

Except for the military aircraft, there was no sign yet of the anglo military as the stars began to disappear behind him to the brightening east and the birds began to make their usual pre-sunrise clatter. Back in Glen Aven and southern Ontario, Nick had caught just enough glimpses of the shooting going on in the valley to the south to be sure that it was Aryan Brotherhood paramilitary, motorcycle gangs, Vietnamese and Chinese gangs from farther west and north, Mulholland mercenaries in armored Jeeps, and thousands of rioters from South Central L.A. whose parents and grandparents might have taken part in the Florence and Normandie fun forty years earlier. Leonard had described the ancient history of those riots to his daughter, and Dara, once calling the outbursts “the beginning of the modern era,” had passed on his account to Nick.

The gangs were looting and terrorizing the last of the refugees, but Nick saw enough to know that their primary goal was to burn down everything south of the Ventura Freeway and north of the Santa Ana Freeway. They appeared to be succeeding.

Nick had brought two water bottles and as many food bars as he’d been able to stuff in his jacket pockets and he sipped and munched as he drove west. The mobs of refugees were gone by the time he approached San Marino, the occasional police or anglo military presence visible only on primary roads and the entrance to freeways. As Nick headed west paralleling California Boulevard just north of the Huntington Botanical Gardens—the upscale neighborhoods were absolutely dark, their power obviously cut, as he wound along Betty’s chosen bikepaths and side streets—he congratulated himself on getting past the worst of it and essentially being home free.

Several shots hammered the predawn grayness. Nick felt a bullet bite the back of his left calf muscle even as a second slug killed the moped’s battery-driven motor.

Nick dumped the little bike on its side and rolled toward the gutter and a line of Dumpsters there as half a dozen more shots rang out. He scrabbled on all fours into a darker alley, ran half a block knowing that he was leaving a blood trail, and then crouched behind another Dumpster to check the damage.

The bullet had taken a lot of skin and some solid flesh but no real muscle. But it hurt like hell. Nick hiked up his pant leg and tied the wound off with a clean white handkerchief. He waited in the dark, Glock in hand, hoping that it was a random shot—or that, if they wanted the moped for some reason, his assailants would call it a morning when they saw they’d destroyed the little machine.

No such luck. They stalked him for the next half hour.

There were three of them—the big, stupid-sounding guy whom Nick thought of as the Linebacker, an older, skinny guy with the rifle whom he thought of as the Quarterback since he seemed to be literally calling the shots, and a greasy-haired teenager whom he thought of as Billy because he reminded Nick of the character Billy Clanton played by the young Dennis Hopper in the 1957 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Nick hobbled south through front yards, dodging from tree to tree and wall to wall, with his three shooters following on foot. All three of them fired at him as he dodged and weaved across Orlando Road, hurtling a low fence and crashing his way into the 120 or so acres of the botanical gardens. The hunters each carried a backpack full of ammunition and seemed intent on firing it all off.

Nick had no idea what these idiots wanted of him… other than to make him dead. His best guess was that they had been playing cowboy for the duration of the Los Angeles fighting, raiding East L.A. neighborhoods at night just for the fun of killing someone. And they’d obviously gotten addicted to the killing. He had no other explanation for why they’d fired at him in quiet San Marino.

Nick had Betty bring up a map of the botanical gardens, but he’d been here about five years ago with his father-in-law, who’d had some academic business at the research library here. It was the week that Nick had brought Val out to live with Leonard. He could find his way to the library, but the historic structure was near the center of this large urban mix of forests, flower gardens, formal Japanese gardens, and meadows, and although there might be security guards at the library, Nick didn’t want to get them involved.

The shooting trio had RadioShack walkie-talkies but kept shouting back and forth to one another. This was great sport to them and they’d obviously been drinking or using drugs. It became clear that they weren’t comfortable stalking someone in these manicured woods and meadows—they’d probably spent a good part of the last week shooting people in urban settings—but then, Nick wasn’t comfortable being stalked in the woods either. He would have preferred an alley.