“Jesus Christ!” Nomad hollered.
“Hey, man!” Terry said, righting himself after his seatbelt had nearly cut him in half. It was a pain, wearing these seatbelts, but with an FBI agent at the wheel, what were you gonna do? “I thought you could drive!”
“Sorry.” True checked the sideview mirrors. Thank God, he was leaving no accidents in his wake. The driver of the red SUV dropped back, turned on the blinker and merged smoothly into the left-hand lane a few vehicles behind the Scumbucket.
“That was different,” Berke said. “I used to have a drum kit back in that fucking trailer instead of shit and splinters.”
“It’ll be all right,” he told her. He felt such animosity from her, he couldn’t resist saying, “It would’ve been busted up if it hadn’t been repacked.”
“Repacked?” Terry asked; it had also gone through his mind that his keyboards, even in their hard cases, weren’t up to that kind of rock-and-rolling.
“I had everything repacked by experts,” True said, feeling a little superior. “They filled in the empty spaces with styrofoam cubes and put color-key labels on everything.”
“Color-key labels?” Berke leaned forward as far as her sealtbelt would let her. “What for?”
“There’s a diagram taped to the inside of the trailer. It shows how everything should be packed, according to the colors.” When no one spoke for a time, True said, “More efficient this way.”
“Yeah, well, George had a system.” Berke wasn’t ready to let it go. This guy with his pressed khaki trousers and his dark burgundy-colored polo shirt and his white sidewalls and fucking control-freak attitude was starting to crawl up her butt. “He just knew where everything went. He didn’t need…like…an agency full of government flunkies figuring out what color label ought to be stuck on my snare.”
“I’m sure he did a great job.” True’s voice was cool; he was somewhere else now, though, concentrating on the task ahead.
“He was one of us,” Berke said, and let the obvious rest of it hang out there. No further comment came from the government man. She leaned back and closed her eyes to escape the moment and recharge her batteries. There would be a huge sunshade awning up over the stage, she’d been told, but hot was hot and drumming made its own heat. Fuck it, she’d be ready; she always was.
“If your boys had seen that move,” Nomad said to True, “they might take your Good Driver’s badge away. That wasn’t them crashed in that ditch back there, was it?”
“No.” His ‘boys’, dressed the part of Stone Church music fans, were in two vehicles ahead of them and two vehicles behind. Another team of ‘boys’ had gone to the site early this morning to get everything organized, and more ‘boys’ were at this moment setting up on their stations. True had had an interesting meeting with his site coordinator yesterday, when True had said he needed metal detectors in operation between what they called the ‘Midway’ and the entrance to the ‘Amphitheater’.
Metal detectors, sir? The site coordinator was thirty-two years old, an ex-SWAT guy and a big fan of a band called Green Day, which True had never heard of. Sir…do you realize how many times those detectors are going to go off with this crowd? It’ll be a constant buzz. And…begging your pardon, sir, but some of these people are going to be carrying metal in places you’d rather not know about. Male and female both.
True had taken it upon himself to find on the Internet some examples of what was being talked about, and when he was looking at a picture of a split cock with metal rings dangling from both halves his wife had happened to come up behind him in the study and spilled his nightly Ovaltine all over the carpet.
So much for the metal detectors. The undercover guys were going to have to eyeball the crowd, but it was unlikely Pett would try to get in close for a shot. The rifle was his instrument, and long range his protection. The biggest responsiblity would be with the tac teams surrounding the venue. But to this point, everything had been going as planned. Pett’s picture, his tag number and a description of his dark blue pickup truck had been on the local news and on CNN and Fox. Last night Nancy Grace had put up the information before every commercial break; she was a bulldog about such things and could be counted on to help. On the other hand, the media was always hungry for hot stories and the sniper story had lost some of its heat, being knocked off centerstage by new developments about the missing little girl in Florida and the fourth rape by the so-called Duct Tape Rapist in Los Angeles.
The local TV stations had been helpful in promoting Stone Church. They’d been running the frenzied, quick-cut video ads that Garth Brickenfield had paid for, and also getting in on the newcasts mention that The Five—you’ll remember they’re the rock band that’s been struck twice in sniper attacks both in Arizona and Texas—would be playing there for one show at three o’clock on Thursday afternoon. Promoter Garth Brickenfield assures us that of course security will be tight and every precaution will be taken. Brickenfield had insisted on that last bit, and he said he didn’t give a shit if the FBI or the IRS or GWB himself had some questions about his last three years’ tax returns, he couldn’t scare off his paying customers.
Didn’t really matter, True thought. For sure Pett knew security would be tight. Would he see it as a challenge? A way to show what he could do, now that he was back in the arena?
Time would tell.
By the looks of the crowd on this highway, nobody was being scared off. They’d be pouring in from the eastbound side too, coming from California. Brickenfield’s promotional efforts—on TV, radio, and newspapers—covered the entire southwest and half of the left coast, and the website was slick and professional but the band pictures were nearly as disturbing as the image of the cock with two half-heads. In True’s day, bands had wanted their faces to be seen; they didn’t want to wear over their heads executioner’s masks, wire cages and coiled things that looked like French sex toys.
The first band started up at noon. Stone Church went until midnight Sunday with bands playing around the clock. He’d gone over the roster, but he didn’t know any of the names: Triumph Of The Dark, Skullsplitter, FTW, The Black Dahlias, Rat Scab, Monster Ripper, Anus And Candy, The Descenders, Mjöllnir, The Bleeding Brains, The Luciferians, Dear Mother’s Blood, Fist Deep, Dreams Of Sharp Teeth, The Sick Crabs, The Slain, and on and on.
He recalled thinking how weird Adam and the Ants seemed back at the beginning of New Wave. Now they were as quaint as the sound of the Mitch Miller records his own father used to listen to after dinner.
The question was…what was coming next, to give these current bands the scent of moldy age? His tac leader had called them ‘death-thrash bands’. True remembered what John Charles had said to Roger Chester: The only reason they want us there is because of the death thing.
Garth Brickenfield had not gotten where he was by being dumb. Or being caught napping in an easy chair. He knew what his paying audience would pay to see. Those other bands might thrash all they wanted to about death…but The Five had seen it up close, in its bloody truth.
They were going to be real celebrities at this shindig.
“Jeremy Pett,” Terry began, and then he let that sit for a few seconds. “He might have headed to Mexico. Right?”
“Maybe,” True answered, watching the road and all the vehicles in front of him. He was dreading that traffic on the two-lane. “Like I told you, it depends on what’s in his head.”