The Kid’s heart rate has picked up. He’s spooked but doesn’t know why. He’s almost never spooked down here. The other residents might be weird and even squalid because of the difficult living conditions and some of them are drunks like the Rabbit or high on drugs and a few of them are potential if not actual thieves but so far none of them has been violent. At least not against him. It’s violence from outsiders that you worry about. Besides, all of the residents except for the Rabbit are afraid of Iggy the best guard dog a man can have and even the Rabbit is cautious around Iggy. Not that the iguana would ever actually attack a human other than to defend himself and probably not even then but nobody except the Kid knows that for sure. The only person in danger of being attacked by a male iguana is another male iguana. And that’s in breeding season when there’s a female iguana in the neighborhood.
He reaches forward and partially unzips the front tent flap and looks out. The predawn light in the east hasn’t reached the camp yet and it’s like being in a cave out there. He grabs his headlamp and switches on its narrow beam. The light is dim. Nearly out. Batteries need replacing. Always happens when you need it. The Kid drops the pale beam of light onto Iggy, who has run his chain out to the end. The iguana’s sawtooth crest is rigid and on high alert. He follows Iggy’s stare and casts his headlamp’s useless fading yellow light in the direction of the off-ramp but it falls short. A narrow bare-dirt path starts at its base and switchbacks up the steep incline from the encampment to the guardrail and highway. It’s the only entrance and exit. Unless you arrive or leave by boat or jump into the Bay and swim from the mainland against the tidal current — where to keep from drowning you’d have to be an Olympic-level swimmer — there’s no other way in or out.
Maybe Iggy hears one of the residents sneaking home after curfew and because of his electronic anklet already caught without knowing it and scheduled for trouble or maybe jail time. Why bother to sneak in when you know they’ve already nailed you? Why not just stroll home openly?
Old habits, the Kid guesses.
He snaps off the useless light and glances back toward the path one last time and against a gray swatch of the eastern sky spots the moving silhouette of a man. The man carries what looks like a baseball bat or possibly a rifle. A weapon anyhow. He’s wearing some kind of helmet with a visor. Behind him comes a second man who also wears a helmet and carries a club or a gun. They’re big guys and they’re walking carefully in the darkness as if they aren’t familiar with the pathway down and don’t have any flashlights or don’t want to reveal their presence by using them. The Kid remembers training in the dark at Fort Drum wearing helmets fitted out with night vision and how useless they were for walking on rough unfamiliar ground and wonders if these two are using night vision.
Behind the first two come a whole bunch more big guys wearing helmets and carrying weapons. It’s some kind of raid or a military-style takedown by a platoon of cops or soldiers or a SWAT team. But why the hell would they be making a raid down here? Nobody down here deals drugs in any quantity larger than the occasional nickel bag or a few tabs of Ecstasy. No illegal aliens. No terrorists plotting the overthrow of the state. There’s nobody here but people like the Kid and the Rabbit and Larry Somerset and Paco and the Greek. Practically everyone in Calusa has known for years what kind of people live here and why and has never given a damn as long as they stay put. The newspapers write about it like it’s a leper colony. Even the TV news has covered it a few times. The only authorities who ever visit the camp are plainclothes cops and parole officers or caseworkers looking for their clients gone missing or the occasional bored state trooper dropping by to waste time looking for drugs or following up on a possible lead to some real criminal he’s investigating elsewhere. And they don’t come at night. They come during daylight hours as if even though the doctors say the disease the residents carry isn’t contagious people think it is — cops included. They’re afraid they’ll catch it if they come at night. The Kid watches the strangers in helmets gather together in a clot at the bottom of the steep incline. There are twenty to twenty-five of them. Maybe more. And here come five or six more guys but without helmets or uniforms — civilians in regular sports clothes.
As if at a signal he somehow missed the entire SWAT team or cops or soldiers or whatever charge full speed into the encampment. Their boots slap heavily against the concrete and their clubs are raised — the Kid sees now they’re uniformed cops carrying batons not guns — ready to bust somebody’s bones while the half-dozen civilians stand back and watch from the sidelines like they’re embedded reporters. When the raiders reach the tents and shanties they break into teams of two and three and go to work kicking over the flimsy huts and yanking down the tarps and as the residents stumble befuddled and terrified out from under the wreckage of their collapsed shelters the cops bellow at them—Get the fuck outa here! Move move move! Get your shit, get the fuck out outa here! — and call them names—Motherfucking pervs! Faggots! Kid-fuckers! The frightened residents cover their heads with their arms and try vainly to dodge the riot sticks but it’s no good and the cops club their shoulders and backs and skulls and whack them across the face. Blood spurts from noses and mouths and ears. People howl in pain.
The Kid sees a pair of cops lurching toward his tent. He grabs his backpack and unzips the rear flap of the tent from inside and ducks out and escapes into the darkness just beyond when he flashes on Iggy and turns back. The cops have already grabbed onto the front end of his tent and are yanking it down when one of them sees Iggy on his chain stalking steadily toward him fearless and on the attack with his mouth open and his long forked tongue flicking the air.
Holy shit! What the fuck’s that? the first cop says.
The second cop pauses in the destruction of the Kid’s tent. He takes a look at the iguana and his eyes widen. It’s a goddam lizard! Shoot it! Shoot the fucking thing!
We got orders to keep our guns holstered.
Unless physically threatened, man!
While the cops argue the Kid’s roommate wearing only his baggy boxer shorts and T-shirt and black socks like an old-time European porn actor escapes from under the collapsed tent through the open flap at the back the same way the Kid got out. He scrambles on his hands and knees into the relative safety of darkness and comes up on the Kid.
Good God, what’s happening? What are they doing?
The first cop has his revolver out and aims it down at Iggy who keeps on coming toward the second cop.
I call that threatening. That’s physically threatening, man! Shoot the goddam thing! Shoot it!
Too much fucking paperwork. It’s on a chain anyhow.
The Kid hears the sickening crack of a club against bone and he glances in that direction and sees the Rabbit go down, then slowly get back up and stagger off, dragging his right leg as if the thigh bone is fractured. Most of the rest flee into the darkness running and stumbling past the embedded reporters or whatever they are gathered at the bottom of the incline. Those who can do it scramble up the pathway to the Causeway and hop over the guardrail and run down the highway. The few residents who refuse to run or like the Rabbit are unable to run are herded together and shoved into a group off to the side close to the civilians where they’re guarded by a pair of cops with flashlights and guns while the Kid and Larry Somerset watch unseen from the edge of darkness.