A radio. We hadn’t allowed for radio contact because there was no point in it. Evidently Bourke and O’Gara were in touch with someone at Fort Joshua Tree, and how long could that contact be maintained? Maybe fifty miles? Not even that in bad weather, I guessed, so where was the percentage in setting it up in the first place? I decided it sounded like an idea Gen. Baldwin Winden would have come up with, and they must have decided it couldn’t hurt to humor the old bastard.
The hell it couldn’t. I had planned on developing car trouble, running my own bus off the road and giving them a honk for help. When they came back to give a hand, I could take them out of the play.
But forget all that. If they saw me in distress they might stop, or they might get on the squawker and call back to the base for assistance, figuring I could catch up with them later. Once they did that, a car or two would set out after us from Joshua Tree.
No good.
There was a bad moment. All I could think was that we were rolling closer and closer to the intercept point, with the odometer ticking off tenths of a mile, and Plan A of Step One was washed out, and I had to come up with a new wrinkle, and my mind was frozen. I took both hands off the steering wheel and made fists of them, pounding idiotically at the wheel. The car swerved and brought me out of it, and I fought my way out of a skid and stayed on the road.
I leaned on the gas pedal a fraction, closing the gap between my car and the Ford in front of me. My right hand dropped to the Magnum. A slug in one of their rear tires would do it, I decided. It would take them off the road, and they might not realize it was a gunshot that had done it, might read it as a blowout, and the truck up in front might not pay any attention to their disability, and—
I held the heavy gun in my lap. I was maybe twenty-five yards behind Bourke and O’Gara, and I could cut that in half if I wanted. I might be able to plink a tire at that range-if it was standing still, if I had a sandbag to brace my arm on, if I had checked out the Magnum and knew whether it threw high or low, right or left, and if there was no wind blowing.
As things stood, I’d be lucky to hit their car, let alone their tire.
I put the gun back on the seat. I checked the odometer. We were a hot mile and seven-tenths from the last access road before the intercept point. Their car had to be stopped as soon as possible after it crossed that intersection.
I moved to within twenty yards of them. The motorcade was holding a steady speed of forty-two miles an hour, good time for that sort of road. My eyes flitted from the car ahead to the odometer to the landmarks at the side of the road.
We reached the last access road. About fifty yards down, on the right, I saw George’s Chrysler parked at the side of the road. His lights flashed twice as I crossed the intersection. All systems were go, everything was in motion.
I leaned on the horn and put the accelerator pedal on the floor.
The car shot forward, came up hard on the Ford ahead. I swung around to the left, pulled up almost even with them. Bourke was motioning for me to fall back in line. I had trouble keeping my hand off the gun beside me, but instead I held onto the wheel with my left hand and leaned across the seat toward him, pointing frantically at the rear of his car.
“Your tire!” I yelled.
He put a cupped hand to his ear. I pointed again and yelled in slow motion so that he could read my lips. Then I dropped my hand to grip the gun. If he didn’t stop now—
The Ford slowed, pulled to the side of the road. I braked to a stop alongside it. I leaned across the seat, rolled down the window.
“Your left rear wheel,” I said. “It’s coming off.”
“Something wrong with the tire?”
“No, the wheel.” I had my hand wrapped around the Magnum now, holding it out of sight. “It’s wobbling like a three-day drunk. It just started a few minutes ago and it looks as though it’ll come off any minute.”
O’Gara was out of the car, motioning at the truck ahead to keep on going. I don’t think they even knew he’d stopped. Bourke picked up the radio and called in, trying to raise Control. I got out of the car on the driver’s side, wedged the Magnum into the shoulder rig. I walked around the car with O’Gara to look at the wheel.
“Those idiots at Motor Pool were supposed to go over her top to bottom,” he said.
“They must have left some bolts loose.”
“Damned fools.”
Bourke popped out on his side and came around. “They’re sending a truck,” he said.
“You called in?”
“Right. They’re sending a repair crew. I suppose we’ll catch them but this is crazy.”
I put my hand inside my coat. O’Gara was bending over the wheel, his hands gripping the snow tire. Bourke stood alongside him. He was saying something about it having been a good thing that I noticed the trouble right away. I was trying not to listen to him, or to think of anything at all.
O’Gara never knew what happened. I drew the gun and fired in one liquid motion and the bullet entered his head alongside the left ear. I swung the gun around to Bourke. He was frozen. His face didn’t even register changes of expression, and I felt that I could have held the pose for ten minutes and he never would have moved.
A moot point. The sound of the first shot was still echoing in the empty air when I squeezed the trigger a second time. It was easier than shooting out a tire on a moving car. He was a stationary target just five feet away from me, and the big slug tore half his head off.
Seconds later I was on their radio. I raised the pitch of my voice and came as close as I could to O’Gara’s Boston inflection. “Camelback Leader to Control,” I snapped. “Camelback Leader to Control. Hold that truck. Repeat, hold that truck. False alarm, snow on the wheel. Repeat, false alarm, hold the truck. Confirmation, please—”
The truck had already been ordered out. They called the main gate in time and the sentry caught it and ordered it back.
I left my own car in the road and drove on ahead in the Army Ford.
It took less than a minute to catch the rest of the convoy. They were lined up in the road with their engines off like circus elephants waiting for their cue. I passed the four of them on the left and pulled to a stop at the barricade.
A good job. Sprague’s truck, a huge gray van with his name on the side, was stretched diagonally across the road. Alongside it was a convertible that looked as though it had collided with the van. There was actually nothing much wrong with the convertible. George had stolen it earlier, and some of Sprague’s men had helped him kick in its fenders and turn it over onto its side.
I got out of the Ford. A few soldiers were milling around the overturned car waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The rest remained in the cabs of their trucks. The four guards in the Amarillo truck were nowhere in sight. I walked down the line.
“Everybody out,” I called. “On the double, everybody out!”
The cab emptied. The soldiers left their guns in the cabs and piled out yawning. Someone asked what had happened to the other officers, and I said they had run into mechanical trouble down the road.
“Where the hell is everybody?” I demanded. “Somebody drove this car, some idiot must have been in the truck—”
A few soldiers went to check. “No one here, sir.”
“Ambulance must have picked them up,” I said. “And then they left this mess for us.”
A soldier suggested he might be able to get the trucks around the car and van on the left. I glared at him. “Through that snow, soldier? Are you serious?”