He paused for a moment, and could think of nothing else. He finished with, “For the time, that is all,” and flicked off the set.
He sat there for a moment, thinking out further plans, then came to his feet and left. He didn’t see Nadine Paskov on his way out, which was all right with him. She was possibly embarrassed after having promised to put out for him if he’d let her ride in his car, and then having him turn her down. He hated to have someone as nervous as she in the convoy. Fear is contagious. They needed to keep their cool, especially if they actually did run into grief.
He walked over to Al Castro’s house and found his deputy talking to Luke Robertson, standing in front of Al’s mobile home. They cut short their conversation at his approach. He gave them a quick rundown on his plans and they nodded agreement.
Bat said to Al Castro, “I’m going to let you take my usual place in the column. I’ll precede the town by about two kilometers. We’ll be tuned into each other all the time. You do the same as everyone else, that is, let Pamela drive and you have your Gyro-jet pistol ready in your hand. Keep in continual touch with both me and Luke, here. Luke, you bring up the rear. Have young Tom Benton riding with you. My phone and Al’s will be continually open to you; we’ll be on a three-way hookup.”
They were both nodding.
He bit his heavy lower lip and hesitated before adding, “Boys, once we’re under way, ignore anything from Mr. Armanruder or anybody else on the executive committee, until we get to the Pan American Highway. Once we’re underway, we’re in command.”
Al said, his voice slightly hesitant, “Have you checked this out with Armanruder?”
“No.”
Luke Robertson said, “And don’t. But we’re not in command, Bat, you are.”
“Yeah,” Al said.
“Okay,” Bat said. “There is no democracy when you’re in combat. If anything happens to me, you take over, Al.”
He gave them the information about their leaving at first dawn and told them to spread the word. They took off immediately on the task.
Bat turned and headed for the camper of Ferd Zogbaum. However, on the way he passed the mobile home of Diana Sward, and found Ferd there idly talking with the feminine artist who was cleaning paint brushes.
They gave him the standard friendly greeting and he explained the plans for the following morning to them.
Di said, “Look, if you can round up some kid or woman who can drive my electro-steamer, I’ll help ride shotgun on this convoy, Bat. I’ve got a deer rifle.”
“You can shoot?”
“Friend,” she said. “I told you I was the daughter of a Grafin. A German aristocrat is trained to ride and shoot as well as balance a teacup, the pinky correctly arched. I’ll lay you two to one I can zero-in on a bull’s eye just as well as you can, military training or not.”
“No bet,” Bat said. “I’ll take your word for it. I suggest that when we take off in the morning you station yourself behind some home such as Jim Blake’s. I have a sneaking suspicion that even if Jim has a gun he couldn’t hit the side of a barn from inside.”
Bat turned to Ferd and said, “Ferd, you’re cool when the bets are all down. I’d like you to take second place in the column behind Al Castro. If they hit us…”
Ferd said, “I don’t have a gun, Bat.”
“Oh.” Bat Hardin rubbed the side of his face. “Well, there are a lot of homes in New Woodstock with more than one. Some of our people are hunting buffs. Seek one out and…”
Ferd Zogbaum, looking into his face, said, “I can’t carry a gun, Bat.”
Bat scowled lack of understanding. He had seen Ferd Zogbaum in action the night before and couldn’t have done better in the clutch himself.
“How do you mean?”
Ferd Zogbaum’s lips were white. “I’m not allowed to carry a gun.”
Bat looked at him in amazement.
Ferd said, “I’m a felon, Bat.”
XIII
“A what?” Diana Sward blurted.
He looked at her emptily. “I’m a paroled convict, Diana.”
The three of them held a long silence.
Finally, Bat said, uncomfortably, “Well, nevertheless, this is an emergency. There are women and children involved. You’re a good man. We need you.”
Ferd sucked in air and made a face. “You don’t understand. I can’t carry a gun. You see, I’ve got a bug planted in my skull.”
That made no sense to either Di or Bat.
Ferd said doggedly, “I mean an electronic bug. Everything I say is monitored. If I have a gun, or if I get into violence, I get a splitting headache and have to report immediately to my parole officer#longdash#by TV phone, of course.”
“Holy smokes,” Bat said in protest.
“It’s better than being in a prison cell, Bat. There have been recent changes in penology that a lot of people don’t know about. Today, most convicted… criminals aren’t kept in prison. Even lifers, such as myself.”
“Life?” Di said.
“Yes, I’m a three-time loser, Di. For the rest of my life I’ll carry this bug. If I have a gun in my possession, or if I participate in violence, my head aches unbearably until I report. They have a continual fix on me, always know exactly where I am. They don’t even care if I leave the country. If they wanted, they could drop me in my tracks, any place in the world. But at least I can carry on a reasonably normal life. It’s not like the old days, when you had to spend your time in a jail cell. Of course, if I wish to do certain things, take a job, or get married, for instance, I have to report in. Then my parole officer decides if I can do it or not. A woman is warned that I am a felon, a boss is also so informed.” He added wryly, “Few woman wish to marry a felon, and few bosses want one to work for him. However, we’re eligible for NIT.”
Bat said, uncomfortably, “What are you… well, what were you sentenced for, Ferd?”
Ferd, his lips white again, said, “Are you asking me as a police officer?”
“Don’t be an ass,” Di said.
Bat said, “Of course not, primarily as a friend.”
“You have to ask me as a police officer, so I can explain later to my parole officer.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
Ferd sucked in air. This was hard for him. “Everything I say is monitored. If I use certain words, the computers report it to my parole office and I have to have an explanation.”
Bat Hardin shook his head in disbelief but said, “All right, I ask you as a police officer.”
Ferd said, as though apologetically, “It’s like I told you, I’m under twenty-four-hour a day monitoring of everything I say. If I use terms like guns, robbery, fight, revolution, oh, scores of different terms that apply to crime of any sort, then my parole officer is notified and the complete conversation is then played back to him. And I have to explain. If I can’t explain, too often, then it’s either more brain surgery or back to prison for me.”
“All right,” Bat said. “As town police officer, I ask, what were you given life for, Ferd?”
“Conspiracy to commit subversive acts against the government.”
They both ogled him.
He shrugged. “You asked me. I told you. Shortly, I’ll get my headache and have to report to my parole officer. They caught me three times. I was easy to catch. Anybody’s easy to catch these days when you can’t exist without a credit card and when the computer data banks know everything about you that there is to know.”
Diana Sward was looking at him strangely. “At least all this helps my ego. I’ve been wondering why, no matter how provocative I try to be, you haven’t made the slightest effort to get into my pants. I thought my girlish charms must be fading.”
He looked at her emptily. “Don’t think I’m not susceptible. But how would you like to have a lover, every word of which he said was being listened to by a computer, or a parole officer, or two? Can you imagine these characters sitting around, some afternoon when thi
ngs are slack, playing back some of the conversations that are put on the magnetic tapes? A love scene? The things a man says to a woman in bed?”
He clasped his hands suddenly to his head. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered in agony. “I’ll have to go.”
They stared after him as he stumbled away.
“Good grief,” Di blurted.
Bat said, “I’d think it’d almost be better to be in a cell.”
“Oh, Bat,” she said. “The poor sonofabitch.”
Bat said in disgust, “Subversion! In this day and age? What possible chance could there be of overthrowing the government when every slob in the country is getting a free ride with his NIT? Not one person in twenty is dissatisfied with Meritocracy.”
She viewed him from the side of her eyes. “I wonder.”
As usual in the privacy of the camp ground, Diana Sward was both barefooted and topless. Her clothing bill must have been truly minimal; she seldom wore more than a pair of men’s denim pants, cut short. Now, she knocked at the door of the camper before her.
It opened and a wan Ferd Zogbaum said, “Oh, hi Diana. Come on in.” He stepped back to allow her entry.
She looked about the small, neat interior and shook her head. “All you bachelors are the same. Neat as goddamned pins. Bat’s trailer is disgusting; it’s so much cleaner than mine.”
“Partly military training,” Ferd said. “They teach you to be neat in the military, or you get the works. Sit down, Di. Could I get you a drink?”
She said, still standing, hipshot, “In a minute. Did you make your report?”
He took her in, almost as though suspiciously, “Well, yes, I did.”
“No more headache?”
“No,” he told her. “No more headache. The report was accepted. I was able to use the words that they monitor me on since I was talking to a police officer.”
“Listen,” she said deliberately. “When they monitor your conversations, do they hear what the other person says as well? What I mean is, are they picking up what I’m saying now?”
“No, of course not. Only what I say. They only hear one half of the conversation.”
“All right. If you say nothing more than yes and no, then they don’t give a damn?”
“Of course not. At first it’s difficult, but after a while you learn to avoid saying words that are taboo.”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
She stepped closer to him and put her arms around his neck and pressed her fabulous breasts against his chest. “Don’t say anything except yes or no to me. And how do you get the bed out in this camper?”
XIV
In the very first flush of dawn, Bat Hardin took off his police car. He wasn’t pulling his mobile home. He had left it for Ferd Zogbaum to draw behind his camper. It would slow Ferd down but he’d be able to manage.
Bat and his deputies had been lining the town up for the past two hours and it was as ready to roll as it would ever be. There had been a great buzz of excitement but for some reason everybody had tended to speak in whispers.
He had both Al Castro and Luke Robertson on his car phone; the screen split so that both of their faces could be there at once.
He passed Linares. The town was dead at this hour of the morning. When he was two kilometers along the road he looked at Al Castro and said, “Okay, Al, let the town roll.”
Al Castro yawned mightily and murmured, “Here we come.”
They had agreed to attempt to keep at a one hundred kilometer an hour clip, if possible, and Bat Hardin remained at that speed. Light was coming on fast now and his head was continually in motion, peering to the right of the road, to the left, continually checking his rear vision mirrors.
He kept in continual communication with Al Castro and Luke Robertson, checking their speeds. Everything was going fine. All during the night, the town’s mechanics had worked on the engines of any electro-steamers that were suspect of possible breakdown. Thus far, all was tight, no stragglers.
At almost the exact spot where he had been halted the morning before, he came to a sudden halt. Leaning nonchalantly against a lone mesquite tree by the side of the road was the one they had called José. He seemed to be alone, nor was there any cover in the immediate vicinity which might have held others.
Bat said into the phone screen, “Al.”
“Yeah.”
“Slow down to about twenty-five. One of the clowns who picked me up yesterday is here.”
“Okay.”
His Gyro-jet carbine, which fired the exact same 9mm rocket shell as the pistol which had been appropriated yesterday, was on the seat beside him but he left it there. The other had no weapon#longdash#in hand, at least.
Bat got out of the car and approached. José stood erect and looked at him scornfully.
“So, gringo, you didn’t bother to listen to our warning.”
Bat said, “Some did. About a hundred of our mobile homes turned back to return to Texas.”
“It isn’t enough,” the other told him. “This is your last warning, gringo. Turn back now and return to the States or what will happen is your own fault.”
Bat shook his head. “We’ve made our decision. We have permission of the Mexican authorities to enter and travel through Mexico.” He added, “As you know, there are women and children and elderly people in this town.”
“We did not ask them to come to our country,” the other said flatly. “They too contribute to the corruption that you gringos bring wherever you go.”
Bat Hardin, in a quick flow of motion, stepped closer and drove his left fist into the other’s stomach. José, his eyes popping in agony, folded forward and Bat slugged him brutally in the jaw. The Mexican collapsed onto the ground. Bat reached down and frisked him. The other was out cold.
Bat Hardin grunted satisfaction as he retrieved the Gyro-jet pistol which had been taken from him the previous morning. He stuck it into his belt and returned to his car.
He said into the car phone screen, “Okay, Al, back to full speed. Ignore the seeming corpse at the side of the road, if he’s still there when you go by. He’s just unconscious. Ran into my fist by accident.”
“Fun and games,” Al said.
Bat said to Luke, even as he got his car under way, “Everybody still keeping up?”
“Seem to be,” Luke said.
They rolled on past the tiny town of Iturbide, also still asleep, only one or two sleepily shuffling locals on the streets, going about the duties of those whose work demands early rising.
Bat was doubly alert now and unconsciously chewing away at his lip. He said to Al and Luke, “That fellow I slugged knew that we were coming.”
Luke said, “How could he have, Bat?”
“Somebody told him.”
There was no answer to that.
They were getting out of the mountains now, and Bat Hardin felt moderately happier. He hadn’t liked being caught in the canyons, mountain crags to both sides that could have sheltered snipers. For that matter, an enemy knowledgeable about dynamite could have, with a comparatively small charge, set off an avalanche that might have buried a score of homes. And he might have done it in such a manner that the police would have had their work cut out finding evidence that the landslide had not been an act of God.
However, they left the mountains behind them and shortly passed still another small hamlet, Puerto Pastores. By now, the morning was more advanced and a score of Mexicans stood watching New Woodstock go by. Evidently, mobile towns were more of a novelty on this by-road than they were on the larger highways.
It was only forty-five kilometers to San Roberto and Bat realized that they were going to make it to the Pan American Highway without difficulty. If there was going to be an attack, it would already have taken place. The best spots for an ambush were all behind them. Don Caesar’s vigilantes simply hadn’t materialized.
It had been a bluff. A well-acted bluff, but a bluff. However, Bat still didn’t like it.
Something didn’t quite ring true. He had no doubt about the sincerity of Don Caesar, José and the others. They desperately wished to end the flood of mobile towns that were inundating their country. But what possibly could have been accomplished by the phony threat? Of course, a hundred homes had turned back but that wasn’t a drop in the bucket. The vigilantes had accomplished nothing to end the flow of more than twenty towns and cities a day coming over the border.
He put it from his mind.
Shortly, they came to the end of Route E-60 and entered the wide Pan American Highway at the town of San Roberto. Without halting, Bat Hardin turned left and headed south. He had, thus far, continued to remain a full two kilometers before the convoy but now he dropped speed until Al Castro caught up with him.
Bat said into the phone screen, “Okay, we can relax a bit now. However, still no stragglers. I want to put as much distance as possible between us and Linares.”
“Righto,” Al said, “The precautions didn’t hurt us any.” He yawned. “I didn’t really expect anything to happen anyway. We have something like four hundred men with guns in this town. You’d need a small army to take us.”
Bat flicked Al and Luke off his phone screen and dialed a road map of this vicinity and checked it. The Pan American Highway at this point wasn’t automated so they’d have to remain on manual controls. That was all right with him.
He flicked the map off and said, “New Woodstock, Dean Armanruder.”
Armanruder’s face faded in. He was evidently sitting next to Nadine Paskov in his swank electro-steamer which drew one section of his mobile mansion. Bat knew that usually Manuel Chauvez drove the other section and that his wife, Concha, drove the smaller mobile home which was the living quarters of the two servants.
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