Yellow dust coated the russet tarp and lay deep in its folds. And Randolph, as automatically as any law enforcement officer, noticed the, license plate as they drove by, and was more interested in it.
Once ahead, he found himself still thinking about that license plate. For one thing, it was a Sonora plate. For another, its numbers were S 6-65-67. He said them to himself again, in Spanish, In either language, they were a mouthful of sibilants. Ending in seven.
He was abruptly wide awake. He sat up straighter, startling Burkett, who was dozing. Burkett said, “Bee sting?”
“We’ve got to stop that truck.”
“What for?”
“Did you see the license?”
“With my eyes closed?” Randolph repeated it slowly. Burkett looked at him sharply.
Randolph said, “We assumed Gomez was shot from the train. We overlooked the fact that the train was backed up to the fence. The shot could have come from Mexico. I heard a truck starting up immediately after the sound of the shot. It could have been this one—”
“How?”
“It could have rolled east out of Santo Tomas along the fence. Then there is a locked gate south of San Manuel, but the Border Patrol is always finding the lock cut. The Papagos don’t like to have to come clear to Santo Tomas to cross the border if they happen to want to go south in a hurry.”
Randolph’s eagerness reached Burkett. He said, “To any sane man, it sounds like a straw. But at this point I’m grasping for them. We can try.”
So Randolph chose a site a hundred yards from the Santo Tomas junction to set up his road block. It was on a little knoll. They got out, two determined men, and waited for the oncoming truck in the freshness of this quiet morning.
Their shadows lay long in the dust behind them. Here in the road, Randolph thought, may lie the destiny of a city. Of a country. Or of the world.
The roaring sound of the truck’s exhaust preceded it. As it lurched through chuckholes like an awkward elephant, great gouts of yellow dust were splashed up and over it. It came on and on, and when it stopped, the radiator was right up against Randolph’s vehicle.
The only occupant of the cab was a skinny man with an olive complexion and shiny black hair and busy dark eyes. He wore black coveralls, and resembled a ghoul in work clothes.
“Suarez?” Randolph said. The man fit Gomez’ description.
Burkett acted as though he knew exactly what he was going to do. He jerked open the truck door and covered the driver with his shiny, short-barrelled revolver.
The only thing was — the driver knew what he was going to do, too. He held in his hand the kind of push-button used by bed patients in hospitals. Two thin wires extended from it back into the truck.
He spoke English, not so poorly that he couldn’t be clearly understood.
“I am Suarez,” he said proudly.
“Put the gun at my feet.”
When Burkett hesitated, he lifted his hand high, so they could see his thumb quivering a fraction of an inch above the push button.
“Now!” he commanded.
There on the yellow ribbon of San Manuel road through the green mesquite country, all time stood still.
To Randolph, who was eight feet behind and to the left of Burkett, unarmed, came the sound of the slow wind sobbing through the trees, carrying up from Mexico the warmth and perfume of hundreds of miles of sun-soaked earth, oak knolls, and pine canyons. The whirling columns of dust devils danced sedately in the blue distances.
From the Santo Tomas road there came the faint sound of a passing automobile engine. It was only a whimper, but it served to remind Randolph that he and Burkett were not alone with this madman.
A world full of people could feel, in one way or another, the result of whatever action took place here on this lonesome southern desert. A global war could conceivably be started. Or stopped.
A sense of destiny welled strongly in Randolph. So must it have been with Burkett.
The burning question in Burkett was whether to call this man’s bluff, gambling that he would not commit suicide in order to kill them; whether to shoot him, gambling that the bullet would reach him before he could energize the bomb; or whether, by capitulating, to gamble that greater forces could surround and stop the truck before it left this vast, sparsely populated, desert country where it could do little damage even if it did explode.
Burkett took the last alternative. Even as he bent to lay the gun at Suarez’ feet, Randolph’s lips were forming the words for a great shout: “Shoot him Burkett!”
For by Randolph’s calculations, only Burkett, Randolph, and Suarez knew that the bomb actually existed in this truck. Therefore it was mandatory for Suarez to eliminate them.
In the space of time that it took Burkett to realize his mistake and belatedly reach for the gun, Suarez scooped it up and shot him. Burkett fell against the truck and then slumped, into the dust.
Randolph had begun his move even when Burkett was reaching for the gun. The revolver blasted its bits of blinding, burning powder into his face. The bullet struck into the top of his shoulder, emerged under the scapula, and hammered him to the ground.
Falling partly across Burkett, shocked and numb, he lay wholly still. Blood streamed warm into his clothes, dripped into the yellow dust to mingle with Burkett’s. Faintly, as through deafness, he heard the sound of his car’s engine. It labored, and its wheels spun deeper in sand as it was driven off the road and out of sight, no doubt, and finally the engine died altogether. Then there was a long time of nothing, then he sensed that Suarez was studying him, and he held his breath.
Then strong wiry hands grasped his wrists and pulled him through the dust, to be unceremoniously dumped at the base of a mesquite beyond the edge of the road. These things seemed to be happening to someone else, while he himself huddled in a dingy corner and nursed his pain. Instinctively, he did nothing to show the hurrying Suarez that he still lived. His breathing slowed and almost stopped.
A heavy weight held him pinned. The truck’s idling engine roared. Randolph heard the crunching if its heavy wheels in the road, the open-mouthed bark of its exhaust. He got hands under his chest and pushed mightily, the pain in his shoulder like a streak of fire. Strength within him surprised him; he was also surprised that the weight on him had been Burkett’s body, which now slid off and lay limp, mouth and eyes half-opened.
A few yards away, glimpsed through the close leaves of the mesquites, the truck moved slowly on as it passed through the low range of gears.
Randolph took a few stumbling steps forward. In motion, despite the pain in his shoulder, he could feel better. And he could run.
He could not see well. He set a dogged course through the mesquite. It took him along the base of a triangle formed by the two roads. His vision, impaired by powder burns, was not adequate to show him the catclaw and prickly pear through which he was running. Cactus speared him, forming a diversionary pain for that which already seared his shoulder.
He ran, head down and panting, falling and getting up again, as he had never run before. He felt his compressed lungs reach for air, but they did it without his volition. He knew vaguely that if he could keep going, could move fast enough, he could reach the Santo Tomas road when the truck was making the angle of the triangle.
It was the longest football field he had ever had to run. It was like running its full length through all eleven men of the opposition, plus at least half of the substitutes from the bench. And the roaring in his ears became the cheering of the crowd, on its feet now and urging him on as the white H of the goal posts loomed before him.