He swore under his breath. If he had lived a few minutes longer he might have reflected on the coincidence of another delay so soon after the first. But his first thought was of the heat. It became almost unbearably hot whenever he stopped completely.
The van blocked almost two-thirds of the road. There was a possibility that he could drive around. He put the truck into gear. He was about to inch forward when he saw a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked. A man was standing beside the road. Phillips swore when he saw what the man was holding. He thought, the fool. He must be crazy...
Travis squeezed the trigger on the submachine gun. The Army had spent hours teaching him that. But his aim was bad. The first bullets hammered against metal. He raised the barrel slightly. The sound the bullets made was deafeningly loud. They smashed the phony safety glass. They tore apart Phillips’ head, killing him instantly, before his brain could register the excrutiating pain.
While Travis still squeezed the trigger, White was on his feet, running headlong toward the rear of the armored car. His eyes were wide with terror. The sack was painfully heavy and it slammed against his knees. He stumbled ahead. The air was saturated with the smell of burned powder.
Stumbling, panting, White closed the distance between himself and the truck. He felt his heart beating faster. At one of the windows in the side of the truck a dark face appeared for a split second. He felt the impact of a bullet tearing through the fleshy part of his forearm. He made an incredible leap forward, sack held before him like a shield, kicking wildly with both legs until he was safely under the truck.
White lay there, pain stabbing savagely through his arm, listening. There was a sudden stillness. He raised his head and gazed along the ground. He saw Womack, framed between two long rows of tires, lying in a similar position under the big tractor.
“White!” Womack’s voice sounded choked with dust. “You hit?”
White did not answer right away. A strange lethargy prevented him from moving. He thought he heard scratching noises from inside the truck. He raised his head to listen. Blood was trickling down his arm. He felt weak and sick.
“White!” Travis was pinned behind the thin protection of the oil drums.
“Okay! Okay!” White answered impatiently. Slowly, he twisted his body, so that he was lying with his head toward the rear of the armored car. He took care of the emergency brake and the ignition cut-off. Then, gritting his teeth, he began to inch forward.
“White!” Travis’ voice was clattery. “We ain’t got all day!”
“You want to come out here and take care of it yourself?” White turned his head and spit. Just like that bastard! He cursed himself for a fool for having been talked into this part of the operation.
When he was almost directly beneath the rear bumper he took two half-inch steel bolts from his pocket and inserted them into freshly-bored holes in the truck frame. Then, with the door bolted closed, he went about the business of plugging the gun ports.
The metal bar was very ingenius. It was Travis’ idea. The two-inch metal plugs fit into a ratchet device at one end, allowing White to screw them into the gun ports while lying on his back on the ground, with only his head and arms sticking out from under the truck. Even partially exposed this way, he was perfectly safe, because the man in the truck could not fire directly down at the ground.
There was one gun port in the back, two on each side, five in all. The pain in White’s arm made the going slow. He had to stop several times. Once, while he lay there catching his breath, he heard the thud of bootheels on the metal directly above his head. Suddenly the terrible thought struck him that the man might be able to open a trap door in the floor and shoot him while he lay helplessly on his back. He ignored the pain and began to work faster.
When he finally crawled out from under the truck, Womack and Travis were waiting. The big double doors of the van were open. Travis looked at White’s shoulder and said, “Bad?”
“I don’t know. It hurts like hell.”
Womack ripped the sleeve of White’s shift and examined the wound. He said, “It’s not too serious. The bullet didn’t stay in. But you should do something to stop the bleeding.”
“Not now. Let’s get moving first.”
Without further words, Womack and Travis pulled out two heavily-constructed, steel-and-wood tire ramps from the back of the van. They were heavy and it took several minutes to get them into position. They had to be bolted to the frame of the van.
When the ramps were in position, White climbed into the front seat of the armored car. He had to move the body of the dead driver before he could get the truck into gear. He began to inch forward. Womack, standing inside the van, directed him with hand signals. In a matter of seconds, the car was inside.
White could not leave the front seat of the armored car without looking through the connecting window at the guard. It gave him a sudden chill. The guard, a surprisingly young-looking Mexican kid, was seated calmly on a seat that folded down from the wall. He was holding a sawed-off shotgun.
White looked into the man’s eyes. The expression he saw there made him clinch his teeth. It was as if the man were already dead.
While White stared, fascinated, the man raised the shotgun and fired it directly at White’s head. The sound it made was like a grenade going off. Shot rattled against the shatter-proof glass like birdseed.
Despite the pain in his arm, White threw back his head and laughed.
When he climbed down from the front seat of the armored car, the big van doors were closed, and the rig was moving.
17
From start to finish — from the instant Old Man Phillips brought the armored car to a halt to the instant Womack swung the rig onto Route 77 and began barreling west — the operation took nearly nineteen minutes. That was exactly nine minutes longer than Travis had estimated. And, in their race to get the money out of the area, nine minutes could spell the difference between success and failure.
By eleven-twenty a.m., the telephone lines between the bank, Army post and sheriff’s office had begun to overload. It was as if a bomb had landed on Mainstreet. There were frantic charges and countercharges, admonitions and threats, declarations and denials.
Then the general himself got on the phone.
“Is this the sheriff?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re in authority? I mean... this sort of thing falls under your jurisdiction?”
“Well, sir, it does until somebody tells me it don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“The FBI will take over eventually. In the meantime... I reckon I’m in charge.”
“What’s your plan of action?”
“Plan?”
“What are you doing about the armored car?”
“We’re looking for it, General.”
“Now, see here, Sheriff.” There was a tone of annoyance in the general’s voice. “A truck that size can’t simply disappear. Not in the middle of the desert. The idea is preposterous.”
“That’s the way we look at it, General.” Wibber grinned into the telephone. “We’ve set up roadblocks on every road leading out of the county. They try to drive the money out... we’ll nab ’em.”
“You are of the opinion that the vehicle is still in the county?”
“That’s right. It has to be. Even if they took the money out of the truck, they’d need a car, or another truck to carry it. You can’t stuff that kind of cash in a lunch pail or a paper sack.”
“Obviously.”
“My guess is that they’ve hidden the armored ear out in the desert someplace... it’s a big desert... waiting for things to cool down so they can smuggle the money out a little at a time.”