They exchanged a long look. “That’s a point,” O’Gara admitted. “You know how we got to it, of course. We decided on guards, then we decided on a fresh detail going south from Omaha, and now we’re stuck with four clowns who’ll be riding to Omaha for no real purpose.”
“Why not bump them?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They’re up, they know the drill, they’ve been issued guns and ammo.” A snort. “The army way. If we drop them now we’ll get static from the Bald Windbag, you can bet on it. Don’t tell those boys, but they’re along for the ride because it’s easier than dropping them at this point.”
I worked at it a little, but I didn’t want to push it too hard. The boys with the M-14s were the one element we hadn’t counted on in our original calculations, and even with our modifications since then I couldn’t discount them as a major source of trouble. Still, there was a limit to the amount of static I could raise over them. You don’t win men’s confidence by telling them to take the bullets out of their guns. Sooner or later they start wondering what your angle might be.
It had been worth a try, like riding with them or in the truck. But I hadn’t expected it to work, and it hadn’t, and the status remained quo.
By now Sprague’s truck should have arrived on the scene. By now George was supposed to be in position, ready to put the ball in play.
If not-
Every once in a while the Army does something on time. It happens just often enough so that the possibility can never entirely be ruled out. This was one of those times. After a lot of backing and maneuvering in the yard, the four trucks lined up facing the main gate. I went to my car and started the engine, and I pulled into position and let the motor idle with the choke about halfway out. Phil Bourke pulled their Ford up alongside me. O’Gara was running around outside like a football coach, shouting last-minute instructions to the drivers.
He hurried back, called something to me that was lost in a sudden gust of wind. Then he was inside his car.
I looked at my watch. At 6:30, right on the dot, the lead truck lurched forward and passed through the gate.
And I heard O’Gara talking in the car beside me. “Camelback Leader to Control,” he was saying. “Camelback Leader to Control. We’re going where it’s warm, you poor suffering bastards. Six hundred thirty hours, six three zero and away we go—”
A radio. He was talking on a radio.
We hadn’t figured on a radio.
THIRTEEN
MY CAR CLEARED the main gate a dozen or so yards behind Bourke and O’Gara’s Ford. I dropped a little farther to the rear, reached inside my coat and took out the Magnum. I put it on the seat beside me.
The snow had let up again, but it hardly mattered. There was a steady wind blowing across from the southwest, driving loose snow across the windshield. I was wearing gloves, thin leather driving gloves, and my hands kept a tight grip on the steering wheel.
A radio. We hadn’t allowed for radio contact because there was no point in it. Evidently Bourke and O’Gara were in touch with someone at Fort Joshua Tree, and how long could that contact be maintained? Maybe fifty miles? Not even that in bad weather, I guessed, so where was the percentage in setting it up in the first place? I decided it sounded like an idea Gen. Baldwin Winden would have come up with, and they must have decided it couldn’t hurt to humor the old bastard.
The hell it couldn’t. I had planned on developing car trouble, running my own bus off the road and giving them a honk for help. When they came back to give a hand, I could take them out of the play.
But forget all that. If they saw me in distress they might stop, or they might get on the squawker and call back to the base for assistance, figuring I could catch up with them later. Once they did that, a car or two would set out after us from Joshua Tree.
No good.
There was a bad moment. All I could think was that we were rolling closer and closer to the intercept point, with the odometer ticking off tenths of a mile, and Plan A of Step One was washed out, and I had to come up with a new wrinkle, and my mind was frozen. I took both hands off the steering wheel and made fists of them, pounding idiotically at the wheel. The car swerved and brought me out of it, and I fought my way out of a skid and stayed on the road.
I leaned on the gas pedal a fraction, closing the gap between my car and the Ford in front of me. My right hand dropped to the Magnum. A slug in one of their rear tires would do it, I decided. It would take them off the road, and they might not realize it was a gunshot that had done it, might read it as a blowout, and the truck up in front might not pay any attention to their disability, and—
I held the heavy gun in my lap. I was maybe twenty-five yards behind Bourke and O’Gara, and I could cut that in half if I wanted. I might be able to plink a tire at that range-if it was standing still, if I had a sandbag to brace my arm on, if I had checked out the Magnum and knew whether it threw high or low, right or left, and if there was no wind blowing.
As things stood, I’d be lucky to hit their car, let alone their tire.
I put the gun back on the seat. I checked the odometer. We were a hot mile and seven-tenths from the last access road before the intercept point. Their car had to be stopped as soon as possible after it crossed that intersection.
I moved to within twenty yards of them. The motorcade was holding a steady speed of forty-two miles an hour, good time for that sort of road. My eyes flitted from the car ahead to the odometer to the landmarks at the side of the road.
We reached the last access road. About fifty yards down, on the right, I saw George’s Chrysler parked at the side of the road. His lights flashed twice as I crossed the intersection. All systems were go, everything was in motion.
I leaned on the horn and put the accelerator pedal on the floor.
The car shot forward, came up hard on the Ford ahead. I swung around to the left, pulled up almost even with them. Bourke was motioning for me to fall back in line. I had trouble keeping my hand off the gun beside me, but instead I held onto the wheel with my left hand and leaned across the seat toward him, pointing frantically at the rear of his car.
“Your tire!” I yelled.
He put a cupped hand to his ear. I pointed again and yelled in slow motion so that he could read my lips. Then I dropped my hand to grip the gun. If he didn’t stop now—
The Ford slowed, pulled to the side of the road. I braked to a stop alongside it. I leaned across the seat, rolled down the window.
“Your left rear wheel,” I said. “It’s coming off.”
“Something wrong with the tire?”
“No, the wheel.” I had my hand wrapped around the Magnum now, holding it out of sight. “It’s wobbling like a three-day drunk. It just started a few minutes ago and it looks as though it’ll come off any minute.”
O’Gara was out of the car, motioning at the truck ahead to keep on going. I don’t think they even knew he’d stopped. Bourke picked up the radio and called in, trying to raise Control. I got out of the car on the driver’s side, wedged the Magnum into the shoulder rig. I walked around the car with O’Gara to look at the wheel.
“Those idiots at Motor Pool were supposed to go over her top to bottom,” he said.
“They must have left some bolts loose.”
“Damned fools.”
Bourke popped out on his side and came around. “They’re sending a truck,” he said.
“You called in?”
“Right. They’re sending a repair crew. I suppose we’ll catch them but this is crazy.”
I put my hand inside my coat. O’Gara was bending over the wheel, his hands gripping the snow tire. Bourke stood alongside him. He was saying something about it having been a good thing that I noticed the trouble right away. I was trying not to listen to him, or to think of anything at all.
O’Gara never knew what happened. I drew the gun and fired in one liquid motion and the bullet entered his head alongside the left ear. I swung the gun around to Bourke. He was frozen. His fa
ce didn’t even register changes of expression, and I felt that I could have held the pose for ten minutes and he never would have moved.
A moot point. The sound of the first shot was still echoing in the empty air when I squeezed the trigger a second time. It was easier than shooting out a tire on a moving car. He was a stationary target just five feet away from me, and the big slug tore half his head off.
Seconds later I was on their radio. I raised the pitch of my voice and came as close as I could to O’Gara’s Boston inflection. “Camelback Leader to Control,” I snapped. “Camelback Leader to Control. Hold that truck. Repeat, hold that truck. False alarm, snow on the wheel. Repeat, false alarm, hold the truck. Confirmation, please—”
The truck had already been ordered out. They called the main gate in time and the sentry caught it and ordered it back.
I left my own car in the road and drove on ahead in the Army Ford.
It took less than a minute to catch the rest of the convoy. They were lined up in the road with their engines off like circus elephants waiting for their cue. I passed the four of them on the left and pulled to a stop at the barricade.
A good job. Sprague’s truck, a huge gray van with his name on the side, was stretched diagonally across the road. Alongside it was a convertible that looked as though it had collided with the van. There was actually nothing much wrong with the convertible. George had stolen it earlier, and some of Sprague’s men had helped him kick in its fenders and turn it over onto its side.
I got out of the Ford. A few soldiers were milling around the overturned car waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The rest remained in the cabs of their trucks. The four guards in the Amarillo truck were nowhere in sight. I walked down the line.
“Everybody out,” I called. “On the double, everybody out!”
The cab emptied. The soldiers left their guns in the cabs and piled out yawning. Someone asked what had happened to the other officers, and I said they had run into mechanical trouble down the road.
“Where the hell is everybody?” I demanded. “Somebody drove this car, some idiot must have been in the truck—”
A few soldiers went to check. “No one here, sir.”
“Ambulance must have picked them up,” I said. “And then they left this mess for us.”
A soldier suggested he might be able to get the trucks around the car and van on the left. I glared at him. “Through that snow, soldier? Are you serious?”
“I think there’s room, sir.”
“Remember what you’re carrying, soldier. It’s bad enough to be on a road like this. With this sort of cargo, you can damned well bet we stay on the road.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. Yes, sir, you damned fool of an officer is what he meant. But he wouldn’t give it voice in a million years. Major John NMI Walker might be dead, but his uniform still commanded respect.
“We have to move the car,” I said. “Then we can get the truck started and run it off the road. Where are the four boys from the Amarillo truck?”
“They refused to leave their post sir.”
“Tell ’em to get the hell out here!”
Two men mumbled together. One, a PFC, spoke up.
“They said they were under orders to remain at their post, sir.”
I scanned the road to the rear. George was approaching in my car. By now the detour signs were all posted, the road sealed in front of us and to our rear. I started for the Amarillo truck. Would they refuse to obey a direct order?
They might, I decided. And they might tip, and I might have four M-14s pointed at me.
“Well, those are their orders,” I said, reconsidering. “How many of us are there? Eight of you men, is that right? Maybe we can do it without them. You, Corporal, get on that side, and—”
I posted them around the convertible, then slipped around it myself so that I was standing by the rear of the van.
“Everybody get a grip,” I said. “We’ll try to put her right side up so she can roll. Lift on three.”
I knocked sharply on the back of the van. A bolt snicked back.
“One. Two.”
The tailgate of the van dropped.
“And freeze,” I said. “Not a sound. Nobody move.”
They looked up, shocked. They saw me with the Magnum in my fist, and, behind me, Sprague and his boys, guns in their hands, piling out of the back of the van.
“That’s right,” I said. “You boys just hold onto the car, you won’t get in trouble that way.” To Sprague I said, “Good work, citizen. Keep them covered, no talk and no shooting. It’s not over yet.”
I headed back toward the Amarillo truck. I stopped on the way when George pulled up next to me. I told him about the crew with the M-14s. He nodded shortly, followed me to the truck.
There was a peephole in the back of the truck. It was at eye-level if you happened to be standing inside the truck. I was on the ground, so it was a couple of feet over my head. I stood too close to the truck to be seen and ordered the men out.
“We were told not to move, sir. No matter what.”
“This is Major Walker talking,” I said. “We’ve run into an overturned car and we need more men to get it out of the way.”
“We were told—”
My stupid mistake; I was an officer reasoning with an enlisted man. That wasn’t according to book. I said, “Who am I talking to, soldier?”
“Sergeant Lewis Flint, sir.”
“Sergeant Flint, I order you to pile out on the double. That’s a direct order, Sergeant.”
There was a moment of silence. I glanced over at the convertible. The eight soldiers were in place. Sprague and his men had them well covered.
Then Flint said, “Sir, begging your pardon, sir, but we were instructed to disregard all future orders until arrival in Omaha. Begging your pardon, sir—”
I started to say something but George had a hand on my arm. I turned to him. He had a tin can in his hand. It was about five inches long and an inch in diameter and looked like a container for butane lighter fuel. He whispered to me to give him a hand up.
I locked my hands. He put one foot in the stirrups, hopped up, caught hold of the peephole with one hand. With the other hand he held the can to the opening. There was a hiss for ten seconds, a couple of muffled coughs, then silence.
He hopped down, shoved the can into a pocket. “We open that truck last,” he said. “Leave the doors closed for the next ten minutes, then open ’em and get out of the way. Let it air for another ten minutes before anybody goes in to unload.”
“What was it?”
“A kind of nerve gas. Lightning in closed quarters, but it disperses rapidly in open air.”
“I didn’t know you had anything like that.”
He grinned. “I’m full of surprises. That was nice shooting back there. I was afraid you might be rusty, but that was pinpoint plinking. How come the change in procedure?”
“I told him about their radio. “We’d better keep it moving,” he said. “They may have been scheduled to call in periodically. I love your man Sprague, incidentally.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I kept it vague. As far as he’s concerned, you’re in command. I’m an errand boy. So I didn’t want to get in your way.”
“Fine.”
We stopped at George’s car. He had the Thompson assembled on the back seat. He brought it out, and we went on to where the patriots were guarding the soldiers. I said, “Mr. Sprague, citizens. You’ve met my colleague, Mr. Gunderson?”
They had.
“Good. The operation’s running smoothly but time is short. Mr. Gunderson will take charge of our prisoners.” George waved the Thompson at them and marched them off to the rear. “They won’t be hurt,” I told Sprague. “They’re good American boys. It’s not their fault that they’re dupes, pawns in a leftist conspiracy. We’ll have to put them out of action for a few hours. We already used gas to knock out four guards. It will wear off before too long, but f
or the time being they’re dead to the world.”
Sprague grunted. His four helpers were all considerably younger than he, tall rangy men in their middle and late twenties. They wore dungarees and heavy soled boots and jackets with sheepskin linings. One of them went in for sideburns in a big way. Otherwise they were clean-cut types.
“Let’s get with it,” I said. “Time’s short.”
Sprague got into the cab of his van. He started the engine, put the huge truck in reverse and eased the upset convertible off the road and into a drift of snow. One of his helpers got into the lead army truck and maneuvered it carefully around, positioning it back to back with the van. He dropped both tailgates, and the rest of the men swung into action, lifting the heavy crates one by one, carrying them out of the truck and across the tailgate bridge and stacking them in the van. I looked at my watch. It was 7:06.
When I looked again it was 7:19 and I was opening the back of the Amarillo truck. I dropped the tailgate and got the hell out of the way, my hand over my face. There are dozens of different kinds of nerve gases and they all work in different ways. Some hit the respiratory system and kill you if you breathe them in. Others work through the skin; one drop on the back of the hand is enough to put you away. I didn’t know what kind this was or how it worked or how long it remained effective, so I got out of the way fast.
At 7:30 I climbed into the truck. The M-14s I had worried about lay on the floor. They had never been fired. The men who would have fired them were also on the floor of the truck, their arms and legs at grotesque angles. Their faces were blue, which meant that the gas had probably been one of the respiratory types. I couldn’t imagine anyone believing that they were only sleeping, so I carried them one at a time out of the truck and over to the side of the road. I stripped off their field jackets. They would never feel the cold, and Sprague’s men would need them later on.
I went back to the truck for the M-14s. I scooped up the four automatic rifles. The M-14 was a weapon I knew well, and for all the bitching we had done about it, there were plenty of combat situations where nothing else could come close. There was a newer weapon in use overseas now, and the scuttlebutt had it that they jammed in action. We had said the same thing about the M-14 at first, I remembered.
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