“Who was he?”
“His name was Frenchy Short. He was CIA all the way. A cowboy. On my second tour I was detached TDY to lead recon teams in liaison with the Agency up near Cambodia. The Frenchman was hanging around; it was an outfit called SOG, Studies and Observation Groups. Lots of very nasty boys. Frenchy had a little war going on in Cambodia with some mercenary Chinese called the Nung and a marine officer named Chardy as the XO. Frenchy thought he was Lawrence of Cambodia. He was one of those goddamned screwball showboat guys, the rules didn’t apply to him, he was bigger than the rules, he was bigger than the service or the Agency. Hell, he was bigger than the fucking war. He just happened to work for us, but he’d have worked for anybody. It was the work he loved, not no cause. The point is, I put out the question earlier: who could put together the kind of operation fast and on the fly that connected the criminal world, Jimmy Pye, a well-planned robbery, a daring escape, and brought it all off with my father getting whacked as the end result and nobody knowing any better? Well, maybe two or three men in the world. One of them being Frenchy Short. That was his goddamned specialty. And there’s one other thing.”
“Yeah?”
“When I DEROSed out of SOG and headed back to the world, Frenchy drew me aside and asked me to ship him five hundred rounds of civilian ammunition.”
“I don’t—”
“He carried a Colt automatic in a tanker’s shoulder holster over his tiger suit. I just assumed it was a .45, same as mine. No, it was a .38 Super. He told me how he loved the .38 Super, it had so much less recoil than a .45 for the same killing power, plus extra rounds in the mag. He called it a pro’s gun.”
“Jesus,” said Russ.
“It’s more than—”
But Bob stopped.
A plane. That was it. The sound of an airplane engine, steady, not increasing in speed, just low enough and far enough away, almost a fly’s buzz.
“Go on,” said Russ.
“Just shut up,” Bob said.
“What is—”
“Don’t look around, don’t speed up, don’t slow down, you just stay very calm now,” Bob said.
He himself didn’t look around. Instead, he closed his eyes and listened, trying hard to isolate the airplane engine from the roar of the truck, the buffeting of the wind, the vibrations of the road. In time, he had it.
Very slowly he turned his head, yawning languidly as he went along.
Off a mile on the right, a white twin-engine job, maybe a Cessna. Those babies went 240 miles per hour. Either there was a terrific headwind howling out of the east, or the pilot was hovering right at the stall speed to stay roughly parallel and in the same speed zone with the truck.
“It’s more than coincidence,” Bob said, “that you got the one man in America there who could do such a thing and that he’s a great believer in the .38 Super, just what Jimmy was shooting. I smell Frenchy all over it. I think Frenchy threw it together, real smart, very fast, a fucking Agency home run the whole way. Not for the Agency, maybe, but for someone else. Someone powerful, that I guarantee you.”
He glanced quickly out the window. The plane was turning lazily away.
“Yeah, well—it’s okay? I mean, you tensed up there, now you’re relaxed. Everything’s okay, right?”
“Oh, every goddamn thing’s just superfine,” said Bob, yawning again, “except of course we are about to git ambushed.”
“Air to Alpha and Baker,” said Red, holding steady at 2,500 feet, running east, loafing again, dangerously near stall.
“Alpha here,” came a voice.
“What about Baker?”
“Oh, yeah, uh, I’m here too. I figured he said he was here, you’d know I was here.”
“Forget figuring. Tell me exactly what I ask you. Got that?”
“Yes sir,” said Baker contritely.
“Okay, I want you in pursuit. He’s about four miles ahead of you, traveling around fifty miles an hour. No Smokeys, no other traffic on the road. You go into maximum pursuit. But I am watching you, and on my signal you drop down to fifty-five. I don’t want him seeing you move superfast, do you read?”
“Yes sir.”
“Then step on it, goddammit.”
“Yes sir.”
“You hang steady there, Mike and Charlie. No need you racing anywhere, they are coming to you. I see intercept in about four minutes. I’m going to let Alpha and Baker close in, then I’ll bring you and Baker into play, Mike. You read?”
“Yes sir.”
He looked back along the road and out of the distance watched as two large sedans roared along the highway at over a hundred miles an hour, trailing dust and closing fast with the much slower moving truck.
“Oh, I smell blood. I smell the kill. It’s looking very good. Alpha, I see you and your buddy closing. You just keep closing, you’re getting close, okay now, slow way down. Mike, you and Charlie now, okay, you start moving out, nice gentle pace, about fifty-five, we are two minutes away, I got you both in play.”
Someone inadvertently held a mike button down and Red heard strange things over the radio—some harsh tense scraping and what sounded like someone systematically turning a television set on and off. Then he realized: that was the dry breathing of men about to go into a shooting war and they were cocking and locking their weapons for it.
Words poured out of Russ as if he’d lost control of them, and he could not control their tone: they sounded high, tinny, almost girlish.
“Should we stop?” he moaned. “Should we pull off and call the police? Is there a turnoff? Should we—”
“You just sit tight, don’t speed up, don’t slow down. We got two cars behind us. I bet we got some traffic ahead of us. And we got a plane off on the right coordinating it. We are about to get bounced and bounced hard.”
Russ saw Bob shimmy in the seat, but he could tell he was reaching to get something behind the seat without disturbing his upright profile. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw two cars appear from behind a bend in the road.
“Here’s the first and only rule,” said Bob steadily. “Cover, not concealment. I want you out of the truck with the front wheel well and the engine block between you and them. Their rounds will tear right through the truck and get to you otherwise.”
Russ’s mind became a cascade of silvery bubbles; he fought to breathe. His heart weighed a ton and was banging out of control. There was no air.
“I can’t do it,” he said. “I’m so scared.”
“You’ll be all right,” Bob said calmly. “We’re in better shape than you think. They have men and they think they have surprise, but we’ve got the edge. The way out of this is the way out of any scrape: we hit ’em so hard so fast with so much stuff they wish they chose another line of work.”
Ahead, one and then a second vehicle emerged from the shimmery mirage. The first was another pickup, black and beat-up, and behind it, keeping a steady rate fifty yards behind, another sedan. Russ checked the rearview: the two cars were drawing closer, but not speeding wildly. He made out four big profiles, sitting rigidly in the lead car.
“Don’t stare at ’em, boy,” said Bob, as he overcame the last impediment and got free what he was pulling at. In his peripheral vision Russ saw that it was the Ruger Mini-14 and the paper bag. He pulled something compact from the bag; Russ realized it was the short .45 automatic, which he quickly stuffed into his belt on his right side, behind his kidney. He groped for something else.
Russ looked up. The truck drew nearer. It was less than a quarter of a mile away. It would be on them in seconds now.
“Where is it?” demanded Bob of himself harshly, fear large and raspy in his voice as he clawed through the bag. His fear terrified Russ more powerfully than the approaching vehicles.