He slowed. A stocky man stepped out from the truck and waved a red flag. Nick remembered the construction projects he had seen in Salisbury — they used warning flags, but he could not, at the moment, recall seeing a red one. Odd, again.
He sniffed, his nostrils flaring like those of the beasts around them at the scent of the unusual that can mean danger. He slowed, squinted, watched the flagman who reminded him of someone. Who? Foster the baboon! There was no precise facial resemblance, except for high cheekbones, but the simian way he moved, the arrogance, and yet a certain uprightness with the flag. Workers handle them casually, not like pennants at a Swiss banner meet.
Nick took his foot from the brake and hit the gas.
Booty, sitting in front beside him, yelped, "Hey — see the flag, Andy?"
There wasn't enough road to miss the man, the low bluff came down on one side and the truck blocked the narrow passage. Nick aimed for him and blew a single horn blast The man waved the flag madly, then jumped aside as the wagon hurtled past, over the spot where he had stood. In the back seat the girls gasped. Booty said, in a high pitch, "Hey-y-y. Andy!"
Nick stared at the truck's cab as he went by. The driver was a burly, surly-looking type. If you picked a norm for a Rhodesian, he wouldn't be it. Pale white skin, hostility glaring from the face. Nick caught a glimpse of the man beside him as he sat up in surprise when the Volvo speeded up instead of stopping. Chinese! And although the single, out-of-focus picture in AXE's files was a poor long shot, he could be Si Kalgan.
As they raced past the sedan delivery the rear door opened and a man started to scramble out, dragging something that could be a weapon. The Volvo roared past before he could identify the item but the hand that came out of the front held a large pistol. No doubting that.
Nick's stomach went cold. There was a quarter-mile of weaving road ahead before the first dip and safety. The girls! Would they shoot?
"Get down, girls. On the floor. Now!"
Bang! They were shooting.
Bang! He praised the Volvo's carburetor, it sucked the juice and fed out power without a wobble. He thought one of those shots had hit the body but it might be his imagination or a road bump. He guessed that the man in the small truck had fired twice and then got out to steady his aim. Nick hoped fervently he was a poor marksman.
Bang!
There was a slight wider spot in the road and Nick used it to weave the car. They were really rolling now.
Bang! Fainter, but you couldn't outrun bullets. Bang!
Perhaps the bastard had used his last slug. Bang!
The Volvo whizzed over the dip like a boy racing into a lake for his first plunge of spring.
Rub-a-du-du-du. Nick gasped. The man in the back of the sedan delivery had been dragging a submachine gun. He must have fumbled it in his surprise. They were over the knoll.
The road ahead was a long, serpentine down-curve with a warning sign at the bottom. He accelerated half the way down, then hit the brake. They must be doing seventy-five but he did not change his eyes' focus to look at the meter. How fast would that delivery truck roll? If it was a good one or souped-up, they would be sitting ducks in the Volvo if it caught up. The big truck was no threat — yet.
The big truck certainly was no threat, but Nick could not know that. It was Judas' own design, with waist-high armor all round, a 460-horsepower engine, and heavy machine guns fore and aft with a full 180 degrees of fire through ports normally hidden by panels.
In its racks were submachine guns, grenades, and rifles with sniperscopes. But, like the tanks Hitler first sent into Russia, it was just too damn good for the job. It was hard to maneuver and on narrow roads couldn't average more than fifty miles an hour because the turns slowed it. The Volvo was out of sight before it moved.
The sedan delivery was another matter. It was souped-up and the driver, полу snarling at Krol beside him as they got rolling, was a hot man with horsepower. The windscreen, as the windshield was listed in local parts catalogs, had been cleverly split and hinged so that the right-hand half could be folded in for clear observation ahead — or use as a firing port Krol crouched down and opened it, holding his Machine Pistol 44 back over his shoulder temporarily, then bringing it up to the opening. He had fired a few rounds with a heavier Skoda, but switched to the 7.92 in the cramped quarters. Anyway, he prided himself on his skill with the burp gun.
They roared over the hillock in the road and down the incline on bouncing springs. All they saw of the Volvo was a cloud of dust and a vanishing shape. "Go," Krol snapped. "I'll hold fire till we close."
The driver was a tough city Croat who had named himself Bloch after joining the Germans when he was sixteen. Young or not, he had such a vicious record for persecuting his own people that he retreated with his Wehrmacht buddies all the way to Berlin. A clever one, he survived. He was a good driver and he handled the souped-up vehicle with finesse. They flashed down the grade, cornered smoothly, and gained on the Volvo on a long straightaway that led toward a line of jagged hills.
"We'll catch them," Bloch said confidently. "We've got the speed."
Nick was having the same thought — They'll catch us. He watched the sedan delivery in the rearview mirror on a long straightaway as it slid out of the turn, fishtailed a little as it straightened, and picked up speed like a big bullet. There was an experienced driver and a very good engine — against the Volvo with an experienced driver and a good standard engine. The outcome was predictable. He used every bit of skill and daring he possessed to retain every inch that separated the two cars, which was now less than a quarter-mile.
The road threaded its way through the brown-sand, mixed-green landscape, bending around bluffs, skirting dry watercourses, crossing or weaving through hills. It was no longer a modern road, although a well-graded, serviceable one. It seemed to Nick for an instant that he had been here before, and then he knew why. The terrain and the situation were a duplicate of the chase scenes he had enjoyed as a boy at the movie serials — the Saturday cliff-hangers. They were usually made in California, in countryside just like this.
He had the feel of the Volvo nicely now. He whipped it over a stone bridge and made an easy, sliding turn to the right that used every bit of road to avoid losing any more speed than absolutely necessary. Around the next turn he passed one of the microbuses. He hoped it met the sedan delivery at the bridge and delayed it.
Booty had kept the girls quiet, as Nick observed and appreciated, but now that they were out of sight of their pursuers Janet Olson opened up. "Mr. Grant! What's happened? Were they shooting at us really?"
For an instant Nick considered telling them that it was all part of the park's entertainment, like the fake holdups of the stagecoaches and railroad trains in "frontier town" amusement attractions, then thought better of it. They should know it was serious, so that they could duck or run.
"Bandits," he said, which was close enough.
"Well, I'll be damned," Ruth Crossman said without a quiver in her smooth voice. Only the expletive, which normally she would never have used, betrayed her excitement. Stout gal, Nick thought.
"Could it be part of — the revolution?" Booty asked.
"Sure," Nick said. 'It'll be popping up all over this place sooner or later, but I'm sorry for us if it's sooner."
"It was so — planned" Booty said.
"Well planned, with only a few holes. Lucky we found some."
"How did you guess they were fakes?"
"Those trucks were a little too pat. The big signs. The flag. All so methodical and logical. And did you notice how that guy handled the flag? Like he was leading a parade instead of out working on a hot day."