Savages

agrees.

177
     
    They sit in a stolen Volvo station wagon half a mile from the grow house back out in Ortega country.
    Yes, a Volvo station wagon.
    “A Volvo?” Ben asked when Chon came back with the work car. “Seriously?”
    “These things are tanks.”
    They handle for shit, but they crash beautifully.
    So they sit in the Volvo and watch the BC van go in and then wait for the transaction to be completed and for the van to come back. There’s only one road in so they know that the van will come back the same way, loaded with a shipment of primo Ultra.
    “Your seat belt buckled?” Chon asks when they hear the van coming.
    “Tray table locked and seat in an upright position.”
    “Ramming speed.”
    Because everyone loves
Animal House.
    They hit the van at a diagonal angle in the front right quarter panel. Chon is out of the driver’s seat before the car even stops. He shows thestartled van driver the shotgun and jerks him out of the seat. Ben gets the drop on the rider. The driver is flat on the ground, Chon starts to get in and then—
    Shit doesn’t happen slo-mo the way it does in the movies.
    It happens so freaking fast.
    Sick fast:
    Chon is hopping into the driver’s seat when—
    The shot goes off
    So loud
    The rest happens in silence, well,
    Not
silence
, there’s this weird sound of rushing water in Ben’s ears as—
    Chon spins and tumbles backward and Ben—
    —screams, then
    Starts shooting into the back of the van, and—
    —the van door slides open and this guy tumbles out, bullet holes all over him as
    Chon straightens up and fires the shotgun—
    —and this guy slams back against the van like a crash-test dummy.
    Chon pulls the body aside, gets behind the wheel.
    Ben jumps in and they head down the road.

178
     
    Ben flips out.
    “Easy,” Chon says. “Steady.”
    “I killed someone!”
    “And thank fucking God,” Chon says.
    The first shot had just missed him. The second would have killed him if Ben hadn’t opened fire. He looks over at Ben, tears pouring down his cheeks, his face twisted in pain.
    Brings it back.
    The first time.
    Popping that particular cherry.
    No time for guilt then.
    AQ all over the fucking place. Sniper fire coming from everywhere. Buddies going down to the
zip-zip
of bullets. Chon, flat on the ground, forced himself to look up, find a target, fire.
    You killed one, pup? Kill more.
    Now he tells Ben, “Chill.”
    “I can’t.”
    “What did you think it was going to be, Ben?”
    And don’t you know it’s going to get worse?

179
     
    Focus, focus, Ben demands of himself.
    Focus on saving O.
    With one of theirs killed, the BC will feel obligated to Do Something About It and they might do it to O if they suspect our involvement in the robbery.
    Gotta give them someone else.
    It’s too bad, the dope is mid–six figures but they have to dump it. Dump the dope and their guilt onto Somebody Else.
    It’s ugly, it’s wrong, and—
    They drive the van to Dana Point.
    DP is a funky old surf town that has retained some of its funk. It used to be famous among surfers as “Killer Dana” for a big wave that crashed right onto the point of Dana Point. But then they built the harbor and the marina and fucked up the wave. All that’s left of Killer Dana is an eponymous—
    —good word, Chon has postulated that
    Alcoholics Anonymous is also
    Alcoholics Eponymous—
    —surf shop that maintains the legend, anyway.
    Dana Point also has a small but distinct barrio with a small but growing gang problem. Ben has it in mind to give the small but growing gang problem a bigger problem. Chon pulls the van into the barrio, finds a nice little cul-de-sac, and leaves it there.
    He and Ben walk.

180
     
    On the walk Ben conducts an internal Socratic self- cross-examination.
    You took a human life.
    Yes, but in self-defense.
    Not really, you were robbing him, he was the one defending himself.
    Actually, he was robbing me first.
    So two wrongs make a right?
    Of course they don’t, but when he pulled the gun he left me no choice.
    Certainly he did. Would it not have been the moral choice to allow him to kill you instead of committing a murder yourself?
    I guess, but I just reacted.
    Exactly. You didn’t think.
    There wasn’t time to think. Only react.
    But you put yourself in that situation. You committed a robbery, you carried a gun. Those were choices.
    He would have killed me.
    Now you are merely repeating yourself.
    He would have killed my friends.
    So you were