Bat Hardin said, “What’s up?” not knowing whether or not the other spoke English.
“Desviacion,” the other told him in passable English.
“What you call a detour, Senor. The road is being worked upon a couple of kilometers ahead.”
The Mexican brought forth a road map from his hip pocket and traced on it with a finger. “It is not much difference in distance. You go over here toward Dolores Hidalgo and then turn south to San Miguel de Allende. Then you come out at Queretaro, here.” He shrugged. “Actually, Senor, it is a much more beautiful drive than this one, although, admittedly, the road is not so good.”
Bat shrugged too. “Okay.” he said. “A detour’s a detour and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The other turned and went back to his own car.
The mobile art colony was beginning to catch up with him. He raised Al Castro on his phone and said, “There’s a slight detour. We turn right.”
“Okay as she goes,” Al yawned. “Sure is hotter than hell today. I hate heat.” Al also hated cold, when it was cold and rain when it rained, as Bat Hardin recalled.
Bat flicked him off and proceeded.
He dialed the local road map and checked out the route of the detour. As the Mexican had said, it didn’t lengthen their trip by very much. The road, as the other had told him, wasn’t nearly as fine as the Pan American Highway, but it was adequate. There seemed to be no traffic whatsoever, which mildly surprised him. But then, of course, there weren’t nearly the number of vehicles in Mexico as there were in the States and this was a by-way.
Before reaching the historic Dolores Hidalgo which, Bat vaguely recalled, was the town where the Mexican revolution against Spain in the early 19th century had begun, the road turned south. Before him he could see lountains rising but in this vicinity, although there were some hills and rises, largely the terrain was flat and covered with cactus and mesquite. Attractive enough, in sort of a wasteland way, but not exactly an area where one would build a home.
Suddenly his screen flicked on and Luke Robertson’s face was there, his eyes were wide and wild. Bat!” he yelped. “I’m under fire and…”
The screen blanked and Luke’s face was replaced with an abstract of meaningless flashing colors.
A barrage of screaming bullets ricocheted off the armor of Bat Hardin’s converted police car. Across the fields, he could see large scurrying groups of men, rifles in hands, running and firing, converging on New Woodstock.
“Holy smokes,” he blurted.
He banged the activating switch of his car TV phone and snapped into the screen, “Mexican Highway Police. Mexican Highway Police. Emergency. Emergency!”
The screen still ran impossible colors.
He slewed the car to the left, presenting the far side to the fire from the attackers. He grabbed his portable phone from his pocket, activated it and yelled, “Mexican Highway Police! Emergency. Emergency!”
But that screen too was a meaningless melange of streaks of moving color. Bat banged out the side of his car and crouching, darted back to Al Castro’s vehicle, now immediately behind him. Al was driving, Pamela seated next to him, her pudding face a lard gray and her eyes in shock. Al was firing over her through her window with his Gyro-jet pistol, his face wild with excitement.
Bat shouted, “Al! Your car phone! Does it work?”
The magazine of his deputy’s gun was evidently now empty. Al slammed the phone on. The color was there again, otherwise nothing at all.
Bat groaned, “They’ve got some sort of a scrambler on us. Al, out over the fields! Lead the town into a complete circle. Bumper to bumper. Take off.”
“Got it,” Al Castro yelped, starting up his electro-steamer again.
Bat hustled back to his own vehicle and fetched his carbine.
Al Castro took out over the cactus-strewn fields, bumping and bouncing, his mobile home careening every which way behind him.
Jake Benton, his eyes bugging, was immediately behind Al. Bat Hardin yelled to him from the shelter of the rear of his police car.
“Follow Castro! Form a circle! Form a circle! Then get out and return the fire!”
Benton’s mobile home, careening as wildly as Al Castro’s before him, took out over the desolate field.
Sam Prager’s vehicles were next. Bat yelled, “Auxiliaries to the middle! Form a second circle. Hospital and school in the center!”
Sam nodded, gripped his wheel fiercely and was out after the others. Bat glared right and left. The attackers were largely on the minor hills and knolls and too far off for really accurate fire, although they were closing in fast. However, occasional slugs were still bouncing off the other side of his car. He winced to realize that none of the other vehicles in the town had any pretensions of being bulletproof.
The foe seemed to be in all directions and from Luke’s warning, before the phones had gone out, were in the rear of the convoy as well. Perhaps Bat had made a mistake; perhaps he should have tried to bust on through. But no. Sure as green apples, they had some sort of roadblock up ahead.
He brought his carbine to his shoulder and snapped off a shot at one of the foremost of the attackers and had the satisfaction of seeing the man drop his gun and go flat forward on his face. It was the first man Bat had fired at since the war years.
“That’ll make ’em a little less ardent,” he muttered.
He continued to yell directions as the homes went by. Out in the field, Al Castro, avoiding mesquite trees but plowing right over all but the largest cactus plants, was making his circle.
Bat fished inside the car and located a fresh clip for his Gyro-jet carbine. He fired and fired again, in between directions for the arriving electro-steamers and mobile homes.
When the hospital, one section of which was being driven by Doc Barnes himself, came up, Bat yelled, “The hospital and school to the very center. Women and kids into them! They’ve got the thickest walls, for soundproofing. Older women and kids into school and hospital!”
Doc Barnes nodded grim acceptance of that and took off after the others, his section of the hospital bobbing desperately behind.
Al Castro’s car and drawn home were beginning to come up from the rear on the tail end of the last of the New Woodstock column, but even after the circle had been drawn, with Luke Robertson’s vehicles at the very end, Al continued to circle, slowing down, getting as near bumper-to-bumper as possible. He was obviously trying to tighten to the point where it would be difficult for the attackers to get through the spaces between vehicles.
Bat Hardin snapped off two or three more rounds, then jumped back into his car and took off after them. Luke Robertson slewed to one side, to let him through. Bat drove to the center and popped out. All the auxiliaries had been drawn, as directed, in a smaller circle; within were hospital and school which a dozen men were setting up as rapidly as possible in the mounting confusion.
Bat yelled at the top of his voice, the voice he had used in combat for those too many years in the Asian war, “All with guns take positions behind your homes. All without, get shovels. Dig foxholes; throw up dirt. All with more than one gun, turn them over to your neighbors without. All women with children, into hospital or school. Lie down on the floors. All women under forty, without children, get guns or shovels. If you have no shovels, frying pans. Dig in! This is the most important thing now, dig in!”
Children were screaming, women calling and crying. Half of the town was running about in a hash of confusion. There were a score of cases of hysteria. Doc Barnes, already in efficient action, was running around giving hypos to these.
Jeff Smith came up with what was evidently a high velocity varmint rifle with a telescopic sight under his arm. He was at least calmly collected.