Chapter 14: Authority

Mack Crandall wore mirrored sunglasses inside his own trailer, and that was the first thing I learned about the Line.

It was Saturday afternoon, November 7, at mile marker 49 on the Tamiami Trail.

Behind me the Everglades ran flat and yellow to the horizon.

In front of me sat a double-wide with a flagpole and a laminated sign.

THE SUNSHINE READY GUARD, TAMIAMI TRAIL LINE. QUIET HOURS 10 P.M. TO 6 A.M. NO OPEN FLAME IN COMMON AREAS.

The Ledger had told me about the gate on Friday night, and it had told me three things I did not like.

[Gate: Tamiami Trail, mile marker 49. Class II. Anchor: Claw. Opens Saturday, 6:00 a.m.]

[Inside: Class II x 8, plus Anchor. Night push: from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.]

[Break: four days after opening.]

Doral had one Class II, and the Bay had four.

This one had eight, on a stretch of road where the Guard had fired more rounds than anywhere in the state.

Crandall told me so himself, at his desk, with a three-ring binder labeled BYLAWS at his elbow.

He was fifty-eight, heavy, with a white mustache and a camouflage jacket with a patch on the shoulder.

He had been a first sergeant in the National Guard for twenty-six years and the president of a gated community in Naples for nine.

On Gun Day he had been on the Trail because the airboat dock there was the last breach in Florida to close.

He had not trusted a hole that closed late, so he had camped beside it.

A hundred and forty men had come to camp with him.

"Six hundred thousand rounds on Gun Day," he said, flat. "I have the receipts."

"Yes, sir," I said.

"And they tell me I have a child with a computer who wants to put his name on my men."

He did not take the sunglasses off.

I stood on the carpet with my backpack and the three-color strategy guide and two cups of Abuela's coffee that she had sent for him.

He accepted the coffee, which was a good sign, and he put it down without drinking it, which was not.

Behind me were my eight Deputies: Yosi, the electrician, his two gym guys and four Gate Watch men who had said yes on a Thursday.

I had Deputized none of them yet.

"Chief," I said. "A Class II does not take a bullet except at one place on its body. I can show your men the place."

"My men have put forty thousand rounds into that oval since breakfast."

"I know."

"Every one of those rounds had a man's name behind it," he said. "His own."

"No, sir," I said. "That's the problem. That's what it means that nobody signed."

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