He’d take it off the highway, probably into heavy woods or brush. He’d probably chain it to a tree.
And anyone driving past in the darkness, no matter how closely they were watching out for such a vehicle, would have been unable to lay eyes on it.
Had he already passed them by? Were they headed back to Atlanta, for whatever reason only they understood? And had they been sleeping in the woods just off the highway when Dave came whizzing by in his Explorer, absolutely clueless they were there?
Had Dave passed within a couple hundred yards of his daughter and not even known it?
And worse, was the gap between Dave and his prey growing larger by the day instead of smaller?
These were the questions tormenting Dave as he put mile after mile beneath his bike’s tires.
He definitely needed something to reassure him. To tell him he’d made the right decision. To tell him he was getting closer to Beth.
He’d made a point to pause occasionally for several days now to ask every traveler he encountered about the unsightly modified pickup truck.
He had to believe that if anyone had seen it, such a contraption surely would have made an impression. A lasting impression, for how often did one witness such a ridiculous spectacle?
He’d been hoping against hope that one of the travelers would say, “Yeah! I saw such a pickup. An old man and an old woman, with a sweet little girl. Pulled by a couple of horses, yes siree. Just a couple of days ago. Stay on this course and you’ll catch them tomorrow or the next day for sure.”
But thus far he’d gotten a lot of shrugs and a lot of people who said, “Sorry. I’d definitely remember seeing something like that.”
There were a couple of bright spots. It wasn’t all gloom and doom.
One was a group of motorcyclists; a church group of weekend bikers who’d decided that a mere blackout wasn’t going to deter them from spending time on the road together.
They’d made a successful switch from motorcycles to bicycles, and were making their way to Birmingham, Alabama, spreading good will and the word of God along the way.
When they heard Dave’s tale and the predicament Beth was in, they offered their help.
“We’re headed east and will be for quite some time. We average twenty to twenty five miles a day. We’ll be switching to Interstate 20 when it starts in Texas, and will stay there until we get to Birmingham.
“If your kidnappers are indeed headed to Atlanta they will almost certainly take the same highway. And we will almost certainly overtake them.
“If we catch them we will rescue your daughter. We will capture your kidnappers and turn them in to the local sheriff. We’ll make a sign and post it on the side of the highway for you. It’ll tell you which sheriff’s office to go to to get your little girl back.”
“You’d do all that for me?”
“We’re all God’s children Dave. Of course we’d do that for you.”
Another bright spot was a young family… a couple in their twenties with two little boys.
They were afoot, pushing two baby carriages full of belongings and provisions.
“We’ve decided to use this opportunity to do some traveling. There wasn’t much else to do in Los Angeles. So we’re on the open road, and going to travel it until we get too tired to go on. Then we’ll resettle wherever we are.”
The couple shared with Dave some valuable insight.
“We camped in a highway commune for four months before heading north. The commune was a few miles this side of Los Angeles. We spent our days hanging out next to the highway. And we’re positive the people you’re looking for didn’t get that far. If they had we’d have seen them for sure.”
Dave was relieved that they hadn’t gone into Los Angeles. If they had gone into the sprawling city it might have been impossible to find them.
That meant they went to ground somewhere short of LA. Within the next hundred and twenty miles or so.
And that meant he was close.
Of course, there were all kinds of implications to the revelation.
They’d left the I-15 at some point. Probably to go to some small town in the area.
But which one?
And was it before him or already behind him?
The previous December, while Dave was waiting out the brutal cold temperatures of a frigid winter, he spent a lot of time visiting with Frank and Eva Woodard. He had some very long conversations with Frank about a variety of things.
Policemen always have the best stories to tell. And homicide detectives have the best of the best.
Frank had been a homicide detective for many years. First for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, then the San Antonio Police Department.
He was a highly decorated and highly respected officer at both agencies.
Dave had asked him once what a homicide detective’s most valuable tool was.
He expected Frank to answer his instinct, or training, or reasoning skills.
He was surprised when Frank said, “dumb luck.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. Most cases aren’t solved because of superior police work. Most cases are solved because the detective gets a lucky break. Somebody just happens along at the right time to get a good look at the suspect. The killer leaves his cell phone at the scene. Or he confides to a friend who just happens to have his own case pending and needs something to make a deal with.
“The most successful detectives, the ones who solve the most cases, are the ones who get the breaks.”
Dave was at wit’s end.
He needed a break.
And he got one.
Chapter 53
The sky darkening around him, an exhausted Dave decided to stop for the night. The ground here was relatively flat, the wind wasn’t swirling around like it was the night before, and he was exhausted enough to be guaranteed a good night’s sleep.
He almost pulled his bike to a stop. Almost spread out his tiny tarp.
Almost spent another night sleeping on the desert floor.
Then he saw, perhaps a mile ahead, an abandoned tractor trailer.
It was too far to tell whether the tractor had a sleeper cab.
Most of them did these days, but not all.
He was tired from riding all day. But he was even more tired of sleeping on the hard ground.
He figured what the hell.
He could make it one more mile, for crying out loud.
The worst that could happen was he’d sprint to the truck to beat the dying sun, only to find there was no sleeper.
He’d have no bunk to sleep in.
But he didn’t have a bunk now, so he’d be no worse off.
And he’d be a mile closer to Beth.
And having a bunk for the night would go a long way in improving his disposition.
So he went for it.
He took a deep breath and rolled off again, picking up speed and trying his best to race the wind.
And by doing so he gave himself the break he was so desperately looking for.
If he’d bedded down in the desert he never would have seen the sign, on the side of the highway just before he got to the truck.
The sign which brought him screeching to a halt.
The sign which read:
ADELANTO – 6 MILES
It took him a moment to register.
And then it all made sense to him.
Little Beth was eight years old. She was still getting used to the whole enunciation thing. She mispronounced words on a regular basis.
And she talked fast for a youngster. Her mother used to say she talked like a New Yorker with a greased tongue.
It was easy to misunderstand something Beth said. And that was especially true of a stranger who wasn’t used to hearing her speak.
Atlanta.
Adelanto.
They did sound somewhat alike.
Dave smiled for the first time in days.
It felt so good.
**********
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ALONE, Part 7: Payback
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ALONE, Part 8: A Tearful Reunion
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The time had finally come. There was nothing else to be done, nothing else to be said.
At just after ten they broke camp and set out.
They traveled due east through the heavy forest, staying low to the ground and holding their weapons at the ready.
After a mile or so they crossed the road and headed due north for a bit, then worked their way west again.
Scarface Manson was already at the dozer.
It was already idling, and his men were fascinated by it. It was the first vehicle they’d seen running in well over a year.
It wasn’t that they doubted Manson when he said he could get it running. It was just that… well, it was just a joy to behold.
It gave them the sense there was hope for the world to return to normal someday after all.
Whatever normal meant.
Manson was in the engine well adjusting the air mixture. He needed for the big machine to creep on its own, up a steep hill, without hesitating or bogging down or dying.
Satisfied, he crawled out and closed and hooked the compartment door.
“Let’s go,” he commanded.
Parker, sitting in the driver’s seat, shifted the Cat into the first forward gear. He took his foot off the creeper clutch and the bulldozer lurched forward.
It would never break any land speed records, crawling along at about a mile an hour or so.
But it would get the job done.
A full five minutes later the dozer broke into the open.
Parker aimed it directly at the pillbox on the other side of the clearing, perhaps three hundred yards away.
Scarface, hunkered down on the half-inch thick track cover which served as a fender, yelled out instructions to his men.
“Okay, one last time. The blade extends eighteen inches farther than the sides of the dozer. As long as you stay low and walk behind the machine they can’t see you. Any shots they fire will hit the blade and be deflected.
“Stay in the tracks. Walk where the Cat walks. If you don’t walk directly behind the tracks you may step on a mine. And it’ll ruin your whole day.”
From within the pillbox, the sentries knew their goose was cooked. They fired shots at the dozer, but couldn’t see any of the men behind it. They could see the driver’s seat, but it was now unoccupied.
Parker was now on the track cover directly behind his boss.
The dozer was on a collision course with the pillbox and was chewing up the ground beneath it at an alarming rate.
Most people think a mine is a mine is a mine. But Manson and Parker knew better.
Anti-personnel mines are intended to maim their victims, not to kill them outright. A wounded man requires many more resources to evacuate and treat than a dead man.
For that reason, anti-personnel mines aren’t powerful enough to disable a tank.
And that’s okay. Because that’s not what they were designed for.
As the dozer got within a hundred feet of the pillbox it started its ascent up the hill.
The sentries desperately tried to disable it by spraying rifle fire into the operator’s controls. Their hope was a lucky shot could knock it out of drive mode, and maybe cause some damage to the transmission.
It was really the only option they had. The huge hardened steel blade laughed at their bullets, and provided impenetrable cover not only for the attackers, but for the vehicle’s engine as well.
Karen, sitting at a small table watching the monitors, sensed the carnage about to take place and cried.
Everyone else was screaming and cursing.
Sarah held Lindsey and prayed.
The first of the anti-personnel mines exploded beneath the track of the huge vehicle.
The track scoffed at it.
A second mine went off beneath the other track.
The big Cat kept moving.
The men behind the earth mover felt almost invincible.
As long as they walked in the ground already crushed by the tracks.
Slowly, together, as a single unit, they all lumbered up the hill.
The sentries continued to fire wildly, even knowing their bullets were being wasted.
It seemed all they could do.
The blade finally struck the heavily-fortified concrete of the pillbox and the big Cat came to a complete stop.
At a faster speed, the dozer would have likely taken out the concrete and left behind a trail of crumbled pieces.
But not on an uphill grade, and not at one mile an hour.
There was a momentary impasse.
A casual observer might have breathed a sigh of relief. Might have gotten the sense the people in the pillbox had been spared.
But that was hardly the case.
The dozer had done its job. Now it was on to the second step of their plan.
Dynamite fuse was very hard to find. Most all explosives were detonated electronically now, using blasting caps.
But Scarface Manson was old school.
The dynamite had cost him a pretty penny. The fuses another one.
But they worked as promised.
Manson lit the fuse on the first stick, then quickly exposed himself around the side of the blade.
It was only for a split second.
He caught the sentries off guard. They simply didn’t see him in time to line up a shot.
What they saw instead was a lighted stick of dynamite flying through the firing port of their bunker.
It was the last thing they saw.
A second later the sentries were dead, their bodies horribly mutilated. Their blood covered the walls on the inside of the pillbox.
They simply never had a chance.
But instant death wasn’t good enough for an insane man.
Joe “Scarface” Manson felt a need to assault their bodies even more.
A second stick of dynamite came flying through the firing port.
“Just to be sure,” Manson yelled to his men.
It was classic overkill by a man who’d never taken a life until a few days before.
Now, once he’d decided he liked killing, he couldn’t get enough.
Inside the bunker itself the two blasts were deafening.
All fell silent.
They knew the end was near.
*************************
ALONE, Part 8: A Tearful Reunion
will be available worldwide on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in October, 2017
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Please enjoy this preview of
Darrell Maloney’s new series
The Yellowstone Event, Book 1:
FIRE IN THE SKY
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“Come on! What do you have to lose?” she cried gleefully as she dragged Tony by his arm through the midway.
“Um… how about ten bucks?”
“I’ll give you a kiss.”
“I’d rather keep the ten bucks.”
“Excuse me, mister?”
He stopped and held her, then laughed.
“I’ll tell you what. You give me just one good reason why I should throw away good money on a fortune teller. If you can give me just one good reason, I’ll give in to your silly demands. But it’ll still cost you a kiss.”
“And what if I don’t have a good reason? What if I’m just a silly girl who wants to find out once and for all whether you’ve been telling me the truth about marrying me someday?”
“Oh, so that’s what this is all about. You’re gonna make me pay ten of my hard-earned dollars just to hear some old gypsy fortune teller say what I’ve been telling you all along? That hurts. It really does.”
“What hurts?”
“It hurts that you don’t trust
me. That you’d believe some crazy old fortune teller but you won’t believe me.”
“The fortune teller has nothing to gain by lying to me.”
“And I do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Maybe? Just what the heck does that mean, maybe?”
“It just means that you’ve been trying very hard to get to third base with me lately. And you wouldn’t be the first guy who promised marriage to get the honeymoon first. That’s all.”
Tony smiled.
“Third base? Heck, baby. I don’t want third base. I want a home run.”
The smile left her face, replaced by something akin to a little girl’s pout.
“You’re not helping your case any.”
He brushed the long brown hair from her face and kissed her on the tip of the nose. Then square on the lips.
“What if she’s a fraud? Most of them are, you know. They just say whatever pops into their minds. They can no more tell the future than you or I can.”
“I’ll be able to tell if she’s a fraud. If she is, I’ll let you off the hook. But if she’s genuine, I’ll know that too.”
“Oh, so now you’re an expert on gypsy frauds?”
Her smile returned and she coyly replied, “Maybe.”
“Oh, geez,” he said as he stomped toward the purple tent. “The things I do to make you happy…”
“I know, honey. That’s why I love you so very much.”
She wasn’t quite what he expected, when she sat them at the table. For one thing, she looked… normal. She wasn’t the hideous witch he’d expected to find. She didn’t have hair growing from weird warts on her nose and huge silver hoop earrings. There weren’t bats flying around her head and the smell of cheap incense permeating everything in the tent.
She looked as normal as Tony and Hannah.
That sealed it in Tony’s mind. That proved she was a fraud. She didn’t even know enough to dress the part of a cartoonish gypsy. She didn’t even put out that much effort. How much effort would she put into reading Hannah’s emotions and verifying that yes, this guy sitting next to her was truly her one and only?
Payback: Alone: Book 7 Page 17