"Harrisburg switching yard, Mr. B.?" Alicia repeated, looking at him and seeing a strange lost-child expression she had never seen before.
"I guess so," Buddy answered weakly.
Rayce nodded at John Little Bear, who shifted into overdrive. They passed out of Gettysburg, heading toward Harrisburg, and Buddy's strange collision course with destiny.
Chapter 49
The blue-and-white motor home arrived in Harrisburg a few minutes past noon. They pulled into the parking lot next to the rail yard without taking any precautions whatsoever.
Buddy was still in the command chair, trying to find his old Captain Kirk persona that he used in his Malibu living room before a paintball fight. He would sit in his five-hundred-dollar custom cammies explaining the rules of engagement and dividing the participants, making sure he always had the best shooters on his team. Now, as he sat behind John Little Bear, who had just shut off the engine, he didn't know exactly what to do, how to even begin to instruct them. All he could think about was the terrifying sensation he had felt when the burst of nine-millimeter slugs tore into the rented Blazer up at Vanishing Lake. As he gazed out the front window of the motor home, Buddy could see hundreds of stainless-steel tanker cars that he assumed were full of gas or oil.
"Whatta you want to do, Mr. B.?" Alicia said brightly.
"I… I don't know." Buddy uttered the unfamiliar words and looked at Rayce for help.
"I'm gonna get out an' check around," Rayce said. "You wanna give me a better description of what I'm looking for?"
"I told you, the leader's got silver-gray hair and they're all dressed like bums with F. T. R. A. tattooed on their arms. You better take one of the weapons," Buddy said.
" 'At's okay, I'll just have a look," Rayce drawled. He got out of the motor home, and Buddy watched him stand in front of the vehicle before he moved off in the general direction of the lines of silver tanker cars.
"This guy Kincaid's a motherfucker," Buddy warned. "We take no chances. It's important that I run this operation from the motor home. It'll be our C. P. We'll be on radios and I'll call the plays from here."
"Good idea," Alicia said, rolling her eyes slightly as she looked over at John Little Bear.
They sat in the motor home and waited for Rayce to return. Almost half an hour passed as Buddy paced in his plush command post. He was looking at the Brazil Nuts. John Little Bear was characteristically stoic, sitting like Geronimo, the renegade chief, his flat features betraying nothing of what might be going on inside. Billy Seal, the black stunt captain he had used on ten pictures, was calmly playing solitaire at the small table. Alicia Profit was reading a magazine. Buddy was another story altogether. He was a collection of nervous jerks, twitches, and strained expressions.
"They got Rayce. I know it!" he suddenly blurted. "He was just gonna take a look around. A look! That takes a fucking half hour? He's gone. Okay, okay… all right, they got Rayce. We're down one man. We need to organize something. Personally, I think if Rayce got scragged, we've got a police situation here. Alicia, get on the cell and scare up somebody at the Harrisburg P. D."
Alicia picked up the telephone and was dialing Information when the door jerked open and Rayce appeared in the threshold, scaring Buddy shitless. He jumped back, terrified, and whacked his hip on the motor home's low counter.
"They're here, over thirty a' them. They're on the far side of the switching yard. I first saw a group of them over by the Yard-master's office, going through the trash, getting some papers out. I followed 'em back and found the rest of the group in a gully, on the other side by the big water tower. A real scruffy buncha bohunks."
4 'They're carbon-sheet spotting,'' Buddy said, showing his knowledge of the rails gleaned during two days with Cris Cunningham.
"Carbon what?" Alicia said.
As he rubbed the sore spot on his hip, Buddy explained how the extra train line-up sheets thrown away by the Yardmaster could be used to select cars.
"One other thing, pard-you're right about these guys being armed. They got a pile of artillery. All of 'em are packin' side arms, and I must've counted at least six or seven fully automatic weapons: a coupla Uzis, some B. A. R. S., a coupla mini-fourteens…"
"You still want me to get the police on the phone?" Alicia said, holding up the cell.
Buddy nodded. "Tactically that's the right play," he whined with damn little command presence.
"Thing is, they looked like they're heading off. Soon as the guys showed up with the sheets they got from the trash, they started moving out."
"Away from the station? Away from us?" Buddy asked hopefully.
"I think so… they moved off that way." Rayce pointed out of the motor home's front window in the direction of the northeast section of the yard.
"Okay, Alicia, you get the cops on the phone. I'd better stay here and talk to 'em. John, Rayce, and Billy, you each take an automatic weapon and move out. Keep them in sight. Reconnoiter back here after we find out where they're heading."
"Sin not to disagree, but if you're calling in the law, I'd just as soon not be caught with an illegal fully automatic weapon in my hands," Rayce said.
"If you're gonna stand around acting like a pussy, then you joined the wrong team," Buddy said, finally getting some Captain Kirk into it.
"You're the one hiding in the motor home, asshole," Rayce said angrily, and suddenly the inside of the vehicle needed de-icing. Everybody was frozen in silence, waiting for Buddy to explode. A Brazil Nut never questioned the producer's testosterone level.
"Look, Rayce, I'm not fucking hiding," Buddy said in a less hostile voice, so everybody took a deep breath and relaxed slightly. "Somebody has to run this ground op, otherwise we got nothing but confusion. Don't worry about the automatic weapon. I have a gun dealer's license. I'll tell the cops we're doing pick-up shots on a film, or some fucking thing… Movie work, everybody loves the movies."
Buddy moved to the closet and broke out the Dominator, which was way too big to lug around, and neither John Little Bear, Rayce, nor Billy wanted the sniper's rifle. They had also brought an Uzi and two H amp;K Close Assault weapons. Rayce and Little Bear each took one of those; Billy grabbed the Uzi. They all tromboned the slides and checked the safeties. The motor home was filled with the sound of well-oiled weapons as they clicked and clacked inside the hot narrow space. Buddy handed each of them a headphone walkie-talkie that he always insisted his paintball team use to communicate.
"Okay, move out," Buddy ordered. "We're on Channel 18."
Rayce, Billy, and Little Bear exited the motor home and split up. The headphone units looked slightly ridiculous on them as they ran into the hot sunshine, miked up like a Japanese ski club.
"Get the cops on the phone," Buddy instructed.
Alicia, who had been listening to Buddy with the forgotten phone in her hand, started dialing again, and after going through half a dozen people, telling each one who Buddy was, she finally got a Public Affairs Officer and handed the telephone to Buddy.
"You're going to make a movie here?" the man said excitedly.
"We've got a situation at the switching yards," Buddy corrected. "There's armed hobos with weapons, and I think you need t'get some people out here fast."
"It's a movie about armed hobos?" the Public Affairs Officer said, still completely missing the point.
"Look, asshole, it's not a movie. Okay? This is real life. I have people on the ground right now, trying to contain the situation. We need police back-up."
Suddenly there was the sound of machine-gun fire and ricocheting bullets. The fusillade brought Buddy's heart up into his throat.