"Hey, uh, wait a minute—I mean—"
"Don't sweat it, pard, I know how to fix the things. I save a good five grand a year doing my own work." The hood went up, and the trucker looked inside, reached to shake a few hoses, then felt the fuel-line connectors. "Okay, they're all right." Next he looked at the line to the injectors. One nut was a little loose, but that was just the lock, and he twisted that back in place. There wasn't anything unusual. He bent down again to look underneath. "Nothin' drippin'. Damn," he concluded, standing back up. Next he checked the wind. Maybe the smell was coming from… no. He could smell breakfast cooking in the restaurant, his next stop of the day. The smell was coming from right here… something else, too, not just diesel, now that he thought about it.
"What's the problem, Coots?" another driver asked, walking over.
"Smell that?" And both men stood there, sniffing the air like woodchucks.
"Somebody got a bad tank?"
"Not that I can see." The first one looked at Holbrook. "Look, I don't want to be unneighborly, but I'm an owner-operator, and I get nervous about my rig, y'know? Would you mind moving your truck over there? And I'd have somebody give the engine a look, okay?"
"Hey, sure, no problem, don't mind a bit." Holbrook remounted his truck, started it, and drove it slowly off, turning to park in a fairly vacant part of the lot. The other two watched him do it. "The goddamned smell went away, didn't it, Coots?"
"That is a sick truck."
"Fuck 'im. About time for the news. Come on." The other driver waved. "Whoa!" they heard on entering the restaurant. The TV was tuned to CNN. The scene looked like something from the special-effects department of a major studio. Nothing like that ever was real. But this was.
"Colonel, what happened last night?"
"Well, Barry, the enemy came in on us twice. The first time," Eddington explained, holding a cigar in his extended hand, "we sat on that ridge back there. The second time, we were advancing, and so were they, and we met right about here…" The camera turned to show two tanks heading up the road, past where the colonel was giving his lecture.
"I bet those fuckers are fun to drive," Coots said. "I bet they're fun to shoot." The scene changed again. The reporter's familiar, handsome face was covered with dust, with the bags of exhaustion under his eyes.
"This is Tom Donner, with the press team assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. How can I describe the night we had? I've been riding with this Bradley crew, and our vehicle and the rest of B-Troop have gone through—Idon't know how many of the enemy in the past twelve hours. It was War of the Worlds in Saudi Arabia last night, and we were the Martians. "The UIR forces—the ones we faced were a mix of Iraqis and Iranians—fought back, or tried to, but nothing they did…"
"Shit, wish they'd've sent my unit," a highway patrolman said, taking his usual seat for his beginning-of-watch coffee. He'd gotten to know some of the drivers.
"Smoky, you have those in the Ohio Guard?" Coots asked.
"Yeah, my unit's armored cavalry. Those boys from Carolina had a big night. Jesus." The cop shook his head, and in the mirror noticed a man walking in from the parking lot.
"Enemy forces are in full flight now. You've just had a report from the National Guard force that defeated two complete armored divisions—"
"That many! Wow," the cop observed, sipping his coffee.
"— the Blackhorse has annihilated another. It was like watching a movie. It was like watching a football game between the NFL and the Pop Warner League."
"Welcome to the bigs, you bastards," Coots told the TV screen.
"Hey, is that your cement truck?" the cop asked, turning.
"Yes, sir," Holbrook answered, stopping on the way to join his friend for breakfast.
"Make sure it don't blow the hell up on you," Coots said, not turning his head.
"What the hell is a cement truck from Montana doing here?" the cop asked lightly. "Huh?" he added to Coots.
"He's got some kinda fuel problem. We asked him to move the rig. Thanks, by the way," he added. "Don't mean to be unneighborly, buddy."
"It's all right. I'll have it checked for sure."
"Why all the way from Montana?" the cop inquired again.
"Well, uh, we bought it there, and bringing it east for our business, y'know?"
"Hmmm." Attention returned to the TV.
"Yes, they were coming south, and we drove right into them!" a Kuwaiti officer was telling another reporter now. He patted the gun tube of his tank with the affection he might have shown a prize stallion, a little man who'd grown about a foot in the last day or so, along with his country.
"Any word on when we can get back to work, Smoky?" Coots asked the cop. The highway patrolman shook his head. "You know as much as I do. When I leave here, I go up to the line to play roadblock some more."
"Yeah, all that good ticket money you're losin', Smoky Bear!" a driver commented with a chuckle.
"I didn't notice the tags. Why the hell drive a cement truck in from Montana?" Coots wondered. Those guys just didn't fit in.
"Maybe he got it cheap," the cop thought, finishing his coffee. "I don't have anything on the sheet about a hot one. Damn, I wonder if anyone ever stole one of those?"
"Not that I heard of—zap!" Coots said. The current shot was of smart bombs. "At least it can't hurt much."
"Y'all have a good one," the cop said on the way out. He entered his Chevy patrol car and headed back to the highway, then decided to give the cement truck a look. Might as well run the tag, he thought. Maybe it was hot. Then he smelled it, too, and to the cop it wasn't the diesel… ammonia…? It was a smell he'd always associated with ice cream, having once worked a summer in a plant which made it… and also with the smell of propellant in his National Guard cavalry unit. His curiosity aroused, he drove back to the cafe. "Excuse me, gentlemen, is that your truck parked over on the edge?"
"Yeah, why?" Brown asked. "We do something wrong?"
It was his hands that betrayed him. The cop saw them twitch. Something was definitely not right.
"Would you gentlemen come with me, please?"
"Wait a minute, what's the beef here?"
"No beef. I just want to know what that smell is. Fair enough?"
"We're going to have it looked at."
"You're going to have it looked at right now, gentlemen." He gestured. "If you would, please?" The cop followed them out, got back into his car, and drove behind them as they walked to the truck. They were talking back and forth. Something just wasn't right. His fellow highway cops were not terribly busy at the moment, and on instinct he called another car for backup, and told his headquarters to run the truck tag. That done, he got out and looked up at the truck again.
"You want to turn it over?"
"Okay, sure." Brown got in and cranked the engine which was noisy enough.
"What is going on here?" the cop asked Holbrook. "Could I see some identification, please?"
"Hey, I don't understand what the beef is."
"No beef, sir, but I do want to see your ID." Pete Holbrook pulled out his wallet as another police car arrived. Brown saw it, too, looked down to see Holbrook's wallet in his hand, and the cop's hand on the butt of his pistol. It was just the way cops stood, but Brown didn't think of that. Neither Mountain Man had a gun handy. They had them in their room, but hadn't thought to carry them to breakfast. The policeman took Pete's driver's license, then walked back to his car, lifting the microphone—
"The tag is clean, not in the computer as hot," the lady at the station informed him.
"Thank you." He tossed the mike back inside and walked back to Peter Holbrook, twirling the license in his hand—Brown saw a cop with his friend, another cop, they'd just talked on the radio—