"Okay," Bolan said. "You better pick a state with a friendly climate, because that's where you're going until this is all over."
"I've got a girl in Atlanta. Can I at least call her, tell her I'm going'? Ask her to get my class assignments?"
Bolan laughed harshly.
"I wouldn't, Dodge. For the next few days anyway, school is definitely out."
The car hissed and steamed, smoke snorting from the seams of the hood. "Damn, what now?" Shawnee said, pulling over to the side of the road.
Bolan woke from his light nap, his eyes immediately wide awake. "Trouble?"
Shawnee gave him a disgusted look.
"Just the kind of trouble you'd expect from a car stolen from Sam Friendly's Used Car Lot."
Bolan looked at the odometer. She'd taken them another 127 miles. This state seemed endless. But Bolan knew they were close to the Florida border, just outside of Waycross, near the Okefenokee swamplands. Down the road a quarter mile from their steaming car was a sign announcing the nearby Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness Area. Bolan popped the hood and jumped back to let the steam spray into the air.
"How bad is it?" Shawnee asked.
"Can't tell yet."
"Looks like a hose."
Bolan fanned away some of the steam and leaned over the engine. There was a rip in one of the ancient radiator hoses. Bolan loosened the clamp to examine the hose.
"Not too bad," Shawnee observed. "Fixable."
"Got a knife?"
Shawnee shook her head. She patted her pockets and pulled out a fingernail clipper. "Will this do?"
Bolan frowned. "It'll have to." He sawed the split end of the hose off and refastened the clamp.
It would hold. But he was more disturbed by what else he discovered. Sam Friendly hadn't exactly gone all out on fixing up this used car. The wires were frayed and loose, the engine gritty, the hoses cracking.
"Problems," he said.
"What?"
"Looks like this engine's been driven through the swamp a few times."
"Maybe a'shiner's."
"Moonshiner's?"
"Yeah. They don't make the stuff much anymore, but they do their share of hauling booze and cigarettes up north without the tax stamps on it. Make a lot of money."
Bolan pointed to a wire leading from the distributor cap. "The steam from the busted hose finished off what was already a pretty sad spark-plug wire. It'll run, but we've got to get it to a service station."
"We passed Patterson a few miles back.
"What's ahead?"
Shawnee shrugged. "Blackshear, then Waycross."
"Okay, let's drive into Blackshear, get this fixed, then get the hell out of there."
"What if we're spotted?"
Bolan gave her a hard look. "It's a chance we'll have to take. No other choice."
Twenty minutes later they rolled into Blackshear. Bolan spotted a service station with a phone booth at the paved entrance. He told Shawnee to look for a mechanic as he slipped out of the car.
Bolan stood next to the pay phone and played with the coin-return button. As soon as the phone rang he snatched it up.
"Yeah?"
"Can't a guy even go to the damn john without getting beeped?" Brognola's voice was gruff, but Bolan could hear the relief in it. "So, I guess you're still alive."
"Most of us." He explained what had happened.
"That's it?" Brognola asked, when Bolan finished speaking. "All this over some dumpy address in Miami?"
"Apparently."
"How do you want to proceed?"
"Well, right now I have to assume both Zavlin and Demoines are after us, so we're trying to sneak past them into Florida."
"Maybe I should just send a squad to that address and arrest everyone there."
Bolan thought about it. "I don't think so. We can't be certain that what we need to know is there until we investigate. But even more important, can you guarantee no security leak to the KGB from your end?"
Brognola hesitated. When he answered his voice was low. "No, I can't."
"Then let Shawnee and me poke around first, see what we can find out. I'll call you afterward."
"I could meet you there." There it was again, that hopeful tone, ready for action.
"I've never seen anyone so anxious to get shot at."
Brognola chuckled. "Things aren't the same without Stony Man Farm. I feel a million miles away from the action now."
"Sometimes I wish I could say the same."
Brognola snorted, not buying that. "Okay, guy, get back to the business of saving the world, huh?"
"Sure, pal, as soon as the mechanic over there finishes working on the car."
"Then what?"
"Then we drive in to Waycross, which is a big enough town that I can switch cars."
"Okay. Keep in touch."
"Sure thing," Bolan said as he hung up.
Shawnee was just coming out of the rest room as he walked over to the service station.
"Can your phone pal help us?"
"Not much. Not yet."
She shrugged. "Doesn't matter. We can handle it."
"Like your attitude."
Bolan walked over to the mechanic, who was just returning to the Nova after stopping to pump gas into a dusty pickup truck. "How much longer?"
"Not much," the mechanic said. It was hard to determine his age because of the grease on his face, but Bolan figured him to be around fifty. He was stick-thin and chewed tobacco, occasionally pausing to spit some brown juice into the dirt.
"Time enough for us to grab a bite?"
The mechanic looked up at Bolan and Shawnee, then back into the engine. "Suit yourself."
Shawnee took an angry step toward the man.
"Listen here, buster," she said, her drawl becoming more pronounced the deeper into the South they drove. "We gotta get to my daddy's funeral over in Needmore in two hours. My mama needs us there to help out. Now me and Tucker here been on the road all day and we just...." Tears started to puddle in her eyes. "We just gotta make it in time to see daddy once more."
The mechanic stopped chewing his tobacco, looked Shawnee over.
"Thirty minutes, gal. Meantime you can catch a bite down the street at Rhonda's Cafe. Food ain't good, but it's hot and cheap."
Bolan placed a comforting arm around Shawnee and led her away. "Thanks," he said to the mechanic.
Shawnee sobbed quietly, glanced up, winked and returned to her sobbing.
In the cafe she ordered vegetable soup and corn bread. Then she ate part of Bolan's chicken-fried steak, mopping up his gravy with her corn bread.
"Help yourself," Bolan teased, spreading the map out on the counter. "Any suggestions?"
"We could take 23 down to Jacksonville. Or 84 to 441 and cross over near the Suwannee River."
"Pretty public either way. What about here?"
She shook her head adamantly. "No way. We don't want to even go near the Okefenokee. Anything east of Jones Creek or west of Toms Creek is swamp, infested with 'gators. We get caught in there we'd be better off dropping in on Clip Demoines and handing him a new chain saw."
"Okay. We'll go through Jacksonville, try to get lost in the traffic."
They paid, left a tip and went back to the service station. The mechanic was adding a quart of oil to a station wagon. Bolan checked the engine, paid him and he and Shawnee drove away.
20
They were still a few miles from Waycross when Bolan spotted the dusty pickup truck in his rearview mirror. "Get the guns out," he calmly told Shawnee.