“Put them on foot,” Jellison said. “Get the New Brotherhood on foot. Ruin those roads. That buys us a day, maybe more, right there.”
“And how long do I stay out?” Harvey asked. He was having trouble with his breathing, and hiding it. You need time to psych yourself up, he thought; that, or zero time to get scared.
Jellison laughed. “I can’t order you to go sit there until they kill you. Maybe I would if I thought you’d do it… Never mind. Just let Deke’s people get past you, then come home — and take as long getting here as you can. Unless you’ve got a better idea?”
Harvey shook his head. He’d already tried to think of a better idea.
“You’ll do it?” Hardy barked the question, as if trying to catch Harvey in a lie.
It was irritating as hell, and Harvey barked back. “Yah.”
“Good man,” Hardy said. “Eileen, have the message relayed to Deke. Operation Scorched Earth is on.”
Task Force Randall, a dozen boys, the oldest seventeen; two teen-age girls; Harvey Randall; and Marie Vance.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Harvey demanded.
She shrugged. “They don’t need a cook just now.” She was dressed for hiking: boots, hat with earmuffs, and several layers of clothing topped by a jacket that was all pockets. She carried a scope-sighted rifle. “I’ve done some varmint hunting. I can drive. You know that.”
Harvey looked at the rest of his command and tried not to show dismay. He knew only a few of them. Tommy Tallifsen, seventeen, would be his other leader. He couldn’t imagine what Marie’s status would be. “Tommy, you drive the pickup.”
“Okay, Mr. Randall. Barbara Ann will come with me. If that’s all right.” He indicated a girl who didn’t look more than fifteen.
“It’s all right,” Harvey said. “Okay, everybody get in.” He went back up onto the porch. “Jesus, Al, they’re just kids.”
Hardy looked at him, mildly disappointed, mildly disgusted. You’re messing u p my patterns. Or, Don’t make waves. “They’re what we’ve got. Look, they’re farm kids. They know how to shoot, and most of them have worked with dynamite before. They know these hills pretty well, too. Don’t put them down.”
Harvey shook his head.
“And,” said Hardy, “they’ll die just as dead if the New Brotherhood breaks through. Marie too. You too. Me too. Hell, you’re not going out to fight!”
“Not with just four guns, we’re not.”
“These are the guns we can spare. These are the people we can spare. Just get out there and work. You’re wasting time.”
Harvey nodded and turned away. Maybe farm kids were different. It would he nice to believe… because he had seen too many city boys, older than these, in Vietnam; kids just out of training camp, who didn’t know how to fight, and they were scared all the time. Harvey had done a series on them, but it had never been cleared by the Army.
He told himself: We aren’t going out to fight. Maybe it will be all right. Maybe.
They stopped in town and loaded supplies into the truck, and onto the carrier on top of the TravelAIl. Dynamite. Chain saws. Gasoline. Picks and shovels. Fifty gallons of used crankcase oil, a bitch to move. When it was all loaded, Harvey let Marie drive. He sat in the second seat to let one of the local boys sit up front with the map. They drove down the highway, out of the valley.
Harvey tried to get the boys talking, to get to know them, but they didn’t volunteer much. They’d answer questions, politely, but they sat wrapped in their own thoughts. After a time Harvey leaned back in his seat and tried to rest. But that reminded him gruesomely of the last time Marie had driven the TravelAII, and he jerked upright.
They were leaving the valley. It made Harvey feel naked, vulnerable. He and Mark and Joanna and Marie had gone through too much getting there. He wondered what the boys thought. And the girl, Marylou, he couldn’t remember her last name. Her father was the town pharmacist, but she’d never been interested in the store. She seemed interested in the boy she sat with. Harvey remembered his name was Bill, and Bill and Marylou had both managed some kind of state scholarship to UC Santa Cruz. The others thought them odd, that they’d want to go so far away to college.
Marie drove up the ridge that led out of the valley. Harvey had never been here before. Up on top of the ridge were moving lights: Chief Hartman’s people digging in, still working at midnight despite the cold blowing wind. The roadblock below the ridge had only one guard huddled in the small shelter. They passed it and were out of the valley.
He saw it and felt it: They had entered the universal chaos left by Hammerfall. It was scary out here. Harvey held himself very still, so that he wouldn’t shout at Marie to turn the TravelAII and break for safety. He wondered if the others felt the same way. Better not to ask. Let us all feel that nobody else is scared. and that way nobody will run. They drove on in unnatural silence.
The road was washed out in places, but vehicles had made paths around the broken pavement. Harvey noted places where the road could easily be blocked; he pointed them out to the others in the car. He couldn’t see much through the intermittent sleet and the thick dark out there. The map showed they were in another valley, with a series of ridges to the south much lower than those surrounding the Stronghold.
This would be the battleground. Below lay a branch of the Tule River, the main line of defense for the Stronghold. Beyond was territory Hardy wouldn’t even attempt to hold. In a few days, perhaps only hours, the valley they were now driving through would be a killing ground, a place of battle.
Harvey tried to imagine it. Noise, incessant noise: the stutter of machine guns, a crackle of rifle fire, dynamite bombs, mortars; and through it all the screams of the wounded and dying. There wouldn’t be any helicopters and field hospitals here. In Vietnam the wounded were often in hospitals faster than they’d have been if they’d been civilians at home in an auto accident. Here they’d have to take their chances.
They? Not they. Me, Harvey thought. Who was it that said “A rational army would run away”? Somebody. But run to where?
The Sierra. Run to Gordie and Andy. Go find your son. A man’s duty is to his children… Stop it! Act like a man, he told himself.
Does acting like a man mean to sit calmly while they drive you where you’ll be killed?
Yes. Sometimes. This time. Think about something else. Maureen. Have I got a chance? That wasn’t a satisfying line of thought either. He wondered why he was so concerned about Maureen. He hardly knew her. They’d spent an afternoon together here, a lifetime ago, and then they’d made love; and three times since, furtively. Not much to build a life around. Was he interested in her because she was a promise of safety, power, influence? He didn’t think so, he was certain there was more, but objectively he couldn’t find reasons. Fidelity? Fidelity to the woman he’d had an adulterous relationship with; in a way a kind of fidelity to Loretta. That wasn’t getting him anywhere.
There were a few lights visible through the gloom; farmhouses in the battleground, places not abandoned yet. They weren’t Harvey’s concern. Their occupants were supposed to know already. They drove on in silence until they came to the south fork of the Tule River. They crossed it, and now there was no turning back. They were beyond the Stronghold’s defenses, beyond any help. Harvey felt the tension in the car, and felt strangely comforted by it. Everyone was afraid, but they weren’t saying it.
They turned south and went over a ridge to the valley beyond. The ground seemed even and smooth on both sides of the road. Harvey stopped and planted homemade mines: jars of nails and broken glass over dynamite and percussion caps; shotgun shells pointed upward and buried just above a board pierced by a nail.