Janet said from the back, "They're not in sight."
"That bus may have slowed them at the bridge," Nick answered. "You'll see them on the next straightaway. There's about fifty miles of this road ahead of us and I don't look for much help. Gus and Bruce were too far behind us to know what happened."
He zipped past a jeep rolling placidly in their direction, occupied by an elderly couple. They shot through a narrow defile and emerged on a wide, barren plain ringed by hills. The floor of the small valley was smeared with abandoned coal workings, looking like the sad parts of the Colorado mine country before the foliage grew back.
"What... what will we do?" Janet asked timidly. "Keep quiet and let him drive and think," Booty ordered.
Nick was thankful for that. He had Wilhelmina and fourteen shells. The plastique and fuses were in his underbelt but that would take time and the right location and he couldn't count on either.
Several of the old mine roads offered a chance to loop and attack, but with a pistol against a quick-firer and the girls in the car, that was out. The truck had not emerged into the valley yet; they must have been slowed at the bridge. He unbuckled his belt and down-zipped his fly.
Booty quipped, with just a slight quiver in the words, "Talk about the time and place!"
Nick grinned. He hitched the flat khaki belt around, unhooked it, and pulled it free. "Take that. Booty. Look in the pockets next to the buckle. Find a flat black thing that looks like plastic."
"I've got one. What is it?"
"Explosive. We may not get a chance to use it, but let's be ready. Now go along to the pocket that doesn't have a black block in it. You'll find some pipe cleaners. Hand them to me."
She obeyed. He felt with his fingers for a "pipe cleaner" without the telltale end knob that distinguished the electrical thermo-detonators from the fuses. He selected a fuse. "Put the rest back." She did. "Take this one and feel around the edge of the block with your fingers for a little wax blob. It covers a hole if you look closely."
"Got it"
"Poke the end of this wire into the hole. Penetrate the wax. Careful, don't bend the wire or you can ruin it."
He couldn't look, the road was twisting through the old mine dumps. She said, "Got it It went in almost an inch."
"Right. There's a cap in there. The wax was to keep a chance spark from getting in. Don't smoke, girls."
They all assured him nicotine was their last thought right now.
Nick cursed the fact that they were going too fast to stop as they whizzed past a collection of weatherbeaten buildings that would have suited his purpose. They were varied in size and shape, had windows, and were reached by several gravel roads. Then they dropped into a small depression with a sag and lurch of springs, passed an evil-looking pool of yellow-green water, and shot up into more of the old mine slag heaps.
There were more buildings ahead. Nick said, "We've got to take chances. I'm going near a building. When I tell you to go, you go! Everybody got it?"
He guessed the strained, choking sounds meant yes. The reckless speed and realization were reaching their imaginations. Fifty miles of this would develop terror. He saw the truck pop into the valley, a bug moving into the unfertile, arid-looking landscape. It was about a half-mile away. He braked, jab-jab-press...
A wide side road, probably a truck exit, led off to the next group of buildings. He skidded into it and gunned the two hundred yards to the structures. The truck would have no trouble following their cloud of dust.
The first buildings were storehouses, offices, and shops.
;He supposed that in the old days the operation had to be self-contained — there were about twenty of them. He braked again on what looked like the abandoned street of a much-abused ghost town, drew up at what might have been a store. He yelled, "Come on!"
He ran to the side of the building, found a window, high-kicked in the glass, cleaning the shards from the frame as best he could.
"In!" He lifted Ruth Crossman through the opening, then the other two. "Stay down out of sight. Hide if you can find a place."
He ran back to the Volvo and drove on through the settlement, slowing as he passed rank after rank of drab cottages, undoubtedly once the quarters of the white workers. The natives would have had a compound in the bush of thatch-roofed huts. When the road started to turn he stopped, looked back. The truck had turned in off the main road and was picking up speed toward him.
He waited, wishing he had something to armor the rear seat with — and time to do it. Even a few bales of cotton or hay would make your back less itchy. When he was sure they had seen him he went on along the road that led up a winding incline toward what must have been workings; it looked like an artificial hill with a small tipple and shaft house at the top.
A broken line of rusty narrow-gauge tracks paralleled the road, crossing it several times. He reached the top of the artificial hill and grunted. The only way down was the way he had come. That was good, it would make them overconfident. They would decide they had him, but he'd go down with his shield or on it. He grinned, or thought his grimace was a grin. Thoughts like that kept you from shaking, imagining what could happen, or going cold in the belly.
He roared in a half-circle around the structures and found what he wanted, a sturdy little oblong building near the tipple. It looked lonely, ruined but solid, a windowless oblong about thirty feet long. He hoped its roof was as strong as its walls. It appeared to be of galvanized iron.
The Volvo came up on two wheels as he wrenched it around and alongside die gray wall; out of sight, stop. He jumped out, climbed to the roof of the car, and onto the building's roof, moving with as low a silhouette as a serpent. Now — if those two were only true to their training! And if there weren't more than two... There might have been another man hidden in the back but he doubted it.
He lay flat. You never broke the skyline in a spot like this or you were through. He heard the truck come onto the plateau and slow. They would be looking at the cloud of dust where it ended at the Volvo's last hard turn. He heard the truck approach and slow down. He took out a pack of matches, held the plastique ready, the fuse horizontal. Made himself feel better by squeezing Wilhelmina with his arm.
They had stopped. He guessed they were two hundred feet from the shack. He heard a door open. "Down," a voice veiled.
Ja, Nick thought, follow your pattern.
Another door opened, neither one slammed closed. These boys were precision workers. He heard the scuffle of feet on gravel, a growl that sounded like, "Flanken."
The fuses were twelve-second firers, add or subtract two depending on how neatly you lit the end. The scratch of the match sounded awfully loud. Nick lit the fuse — it would burn now even in a gale or under water — and rose to his knees.
His heart sank. His ears had betrayed him, the truck was at least three hundred feet away. Two men were moving out from it to circle the building from either side. They were intent on the corners ahead of them, but not so intent they weren't watching the skyline. He saw' the burp gun carried by the man on his left swing up. Nick changed his mind, flung the plastique at the burp gun carrier and dropped as it growled, a bitter rattle like fabric tearing. He heard a yell. Nine-ten-eleven-twelve-boom!
He had no illusions. The little bomb was powerful but with luck they d still be in action. Scuttling across the roof to a point well away from where he had just appeared, he peeked over the rim.
The man who had carried the MP 44 was down, squirming and moaning, the chunky weapon five feet ahead of him. Evidently he had tried to run to the right and the bomb had gone off behind him. He did not look badly damaged. Nick hoped he was shocked enough to stay dazed for a few minutes; the other man was his worry now. He was nowhere in sight.