Harvey had already crimped fuse onto the cap. He handed her the stick and she thrust it into the hole, then shoveled dirt and rock onto it.
“That’s enough!” Harvey screamed. “Let’s get out of here!” They were on the far side of a low hill and couldn’t see the advancing enemy, but Harvey didn’t think they would be far behind.
“Not yet,” Marie said. “Something I have to do first.” She walked toward the hilltop.
“Come back here! I swear, I’ll leave you! Hey!”
She didn’t look back. After a moment he cursed, then followed her uphill. She was adjusting her rifle, setting the strap on her left arm. She braced herself against a rock. “Down there is where you put the oil. And the mines,” she said. “We drove right past it.”
“We had to! They were right behind us!” And it’s all so damned futile anyway. Motorcycles were coming up the road. They’d reach the ridge in a minute or two.
Marie took careful aim. Fired. “Good,” she muttered to herself. She fired again. “I’d be done quicker if you’d do some shooting too,” she said.
Harvey knew he wasn’t about to hit the oil drum set three hundred yards away. He braced his rifle on a rock and aimed at the first of the oncoming motorcycles. He fired again and again, and missed each time. But the cyclists slowed, then stopped and took cover in the ditch to wait for the infantry. Marie continued to fire, slowly, carefully. Finally she said, “That ought to do it. Let’s go… Actually, what’s the hurry? They’re stopped.” She took up her position again and waited.
Harvey clenched his fists and took a deep breath. She was right. There was no immediate danger. The oil was spilling across the road now, and the two motorcycles were going nowhere.
Another motorcycle reached the oil slick. It skidded into the ditch and the biker screamed. Marie smiled faintly. “Good idea, those pungie sticks of yours.”
Harvey looked at her in horror. Marie Vance: on the board of governors of half a dozen charities; banker’s wife, socialite, country club member; and she was grinning at the thought of a man impaled on a stick smeared with human shit to make the wounds fester…
A truck came to the oil slick and stopped; then it started forward, slowly. Marie put a bullet through its windshield. It slid forward and skidded, turning slightly sideways. The motor gunned and the wheels spun, but it did not move.
Another truck came up behind it and started around; one of the dynamite mines went off, loudly, and the truck went up in flames. Harvey felt it now: the urgent impulse to shout in triumph. Something had worked. Those weren’t people down there, scrambling to get away from the burning truck, some themselves burning; they were army ants, and the trick had worked—
They heard the plop! from in front of them, then a faint whistle. Something exploded twenty yards to their left. Another plop!
“The car! Now, dammit!” Harvey shouted.
“Yes, I think it’s time.” Marie followed. The second mortar round went off somewhere behind them. They leaped into the TravelAII and drove off laughing and shouting like children.
“Son of a bitch, it worked!” Harvey shouted. He looked over at Marie and her eyes shone with triumph to match his own. We make a great team, he thought.
“’Run away!’” cried Harvey.
Marie looked at him strangely.
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” Harvey said. “Didn’t you see it?”
“No.”
They drove on, still laughing with excitement. Inside, Harvey knew it wasn’t really much of a victory, but it was better than the rest of the day. There was no question of stopping now, not until they reached the next large barrier, which was a fork of the Tule River. That would be a formidable barrier once its bridge was blown; surely it would stop the New Brotherhood. It had to; beyond was the ridgeline that marked the entrance to the Stronghold itself. The Tule was their most important defense line.
They came around a curve and started down into the Tule Valley — and there was no bridge. It had already been blown.
Harvey drove up to the wrecked bridge and stared at the swollen river. A hundred feet wide, and deep, and swiftly flowing. “Hey!” he shouted.
Across the river, one of Hartman’s constables rose from hiding behind a log bunker. “They said you’d had it,” he called.
“What do I do now?” Harvey shouted.
“Whatever it is, do it quick,” Marie said. “They won’t be far behind us—”
“Go upstream,” the constable yelled. “We’ve got troops up there. Make sure you radio ahead that you’re coming.”
“All right.” Harvey turned the TravelAII and started up the county road toward the Tule Indian Reservation. “Get on that CB,” he told Marie. “Tell ’em the reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated.”
A mile and a half upstream the road crossed the Tule. A dozen men were working with shovels at the bridge foundations. Harvey drove up warily, but they waved him on. He drove across and stopped.
They looked like ranchers, but they were darker and did not show the effects of months without sunlight. Harvey wondered if lack of vitamin D would affect them; pale faces were evolved for life in a cold, cloudy environment.
One of the work crew left off digging and came over to the TravelAII. “Randall?”
“Yes. Look, the New Brotherhood must be right behind us—”
“We know where they are,” the man said. “Alice can see them, and we’ve got a radio. You’re supposed to go on up there onto Turtle Mountain and help her observe. Find a place where you can see the valley and still get her on the CB.”
“All right. Thanks. And we’re glad to have you on our side.”
The Indian grinned. “I see it that you’re on our side. Good luck.”
Their earlier mood of elation had vanished now. They drove on along an increasingly difficult road: mud, fallen rocks, deep ruts. Harvey put the TravelAII into four-wheel drive. As they climbed higher the entire valley came into view. To the southwest was the south fork of the Tule, and the road junction and bridge they’d just left. The fork ran northwest to the remains of Lake Success, where it joined the Tule itself.
A ridge separated the forks of the Tule; the ridge that guarded the Stronghold. From their vantage point Harvey and Marie could see the defense line of Police Chief Hartman’s troops — trenches and foxholes and log bunkers. There were less elaborate defenses thrown forward into the south fork valley; they didn’t look adequate to hold. Only the high ridgelines seemed well defended. A classic crust defense, Harvey thought; the enemy need only punch through, and there was nothing to stop them from overrunning the entire Stronghold.
At dusk it was clear what the enemy’s plan was. He brought up his trucks, dug in his troops and lit large campfires in plain sight of the Stronghold. They looked relaxed, confident, and Harvey knew they’d be working on bridges during the night. Finally dark came, and the hills were silent.
“Well, we can’t see anything more,” Harvey said. “Now we really don’t have anything to do.”
Marie moved restlessly beside him. In the dark she was only a presence, her very shape indeterminate; but Harvey grew itchingly aware that Marie Vance was only inches away, and that they were cut off from the universe until sunrise. His memory played him a dirty trick. It showed him Marie Vance some weeks before Hammerfall, as she met Harvey and Loretta at her front door. She wore emeralds and a vividly green evening gown cut nearly to the navel; her hair was set in fantastic convolutions; she smiled graciously and hugged him and welcomed them in. His mind superimposed that image on the dark blur next to him, and the silence grew really uncomfortable.