“Hurry up now!” he called after the boy, as the bells jingled again. Then he looked back toward his guests. “Problem we got is some of the men I got in mind ain’t hardly ever left No Town since they got here and won’t take kindly to flying, even if we had us a plane. We gonna use them, we gotta make them feel at home, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I want to use them at all,” Wareagle said.
“You can’t win this by yourself, warrior,” the Old One told him. “And you can’t afford to lose. Fact that this enemy is holing itself up at an air force base can only mean one thing.”
“Kansas is up north quite a ways,” Sheriff Loon followed somberly. “Quite a ways. Don’t know if the Blue Thunder can make it.”
“The blue what?” raised Heydan.
Loon had started to answer when a cluttering, clanking sound outside made him stop. A series of backfires like a machine-gun spray followed, and the sheriff’s face lit up with a smile.
“Here she comes now,” he said, and stood up.
Johnny and Heydan followed him to the door. The Old One stayed back in her chair.
“Yup,” Leon continued, “here she be.”
Johnny fixed his eyes on a twenty-four-passenger bus painted in what had once been a royal shade of blue. Much of it had worn down to the dull gray primer now, and there were rust patches and even gaps where the rust had eaten its way through the metal. The tires were different makes and sizes. The windshield was cracked, and plenty of the side windows were covered by boards. Rust had eaten away most of the wheel wells, as well as a hefty portion of the metal over the bus’s rear bumper. As Johnny looked on, the door jerked open with a grinding rasp that had once been an easy hiss. A toothless driver gazed down from behind the wheel and grinned with his gums.
Blue Thunder had arrived.
Blue Thunder sputtered and shook, but held fast to the road like it was afraid to let go. Hours before, while Sheriff Tyrell Loon had gathered up the men to pack it for the journey, the Old One had made the rounds of No Town with Heydan by her side to gather up a select group of women. Several looked as old as she was. Others were young enough to cart babies with them to the center of town. All of them brought beads and rattles and other implements Johnny knew were used to evoke blessings or curses depending on the manner in which they were used.
“Must be the water,” the Old One advised him. “See, I wasn’t the only one to be born in No Town with special powers. These women all born here, too, and they all got their special ways.”
Led by the Old One, the women surrounded Blue Thunder in a circle and went about their individual ceremonies. One threw stones against the old bus’s few still-whole windows. Another blew dirt down its rusted tailpipe. A third spit repeatedly on its engine, chanting between each expectoration. A few sang. Others took more accepted positions of prayer. The Old One oversaw it all, feeling her way amidst them without participating in the ritual directly.
Johnny watched from a distance. As the ritual drew to its close, he turned suddenly to his right. The Old One was standing right next to him.
“You will travel safe now, warrior. You will be delivered. And you will not fight alone. Another comes to join you.”
Wareagle’s lips quivered ever so slightly. “Blainey,” he muttered.
“I have not seen his name,” she told him. “But his pursuits now mirror yours.”
Johnny had spent part of the ride to New Orleans in the back of Blue Thunder wondering what Blaine McCracken had uncovered in Turkey that had led him to the Tau. He’d had plenty of time to study the rest of the men crowded in the old bus with him. Under the circumstances, Johnny found them to be most impressive. These were indeed men who had fought many fights in their time and would never shy from another. There was a monster of a man, called Bijou because he was as big as a movie house. There was a man who looked to be formed all of knobby bone called Pole, so thin he had to cut a new hole in his belt a foot from the last one in the row. There was a former military demolitions expert, called Smoke because he knew how to blow things up.
Some had fought for their lives just because they were black. Others had served in whatever branch of the service would have them. Married or single, young or old, their status mattered not at all. Each one had not hesitated in the slightest after being selected. For the Old One, apparently, their duty knew no bounds. And the fact that she had blessed them filled each with a certainty that they would be returning unharmed when all this was done.
Wareagle wished he could have shared their optimism.
The weapons would be waiting for them at a warehouse in New Orleans, and Tyrell Loon had already chosen a crew to do the loading. The street leading to the warehouse was narrow. Toothless Jim Jackson was forced to back up several times to manage the turn. Blue Thunder’s gears creaked and clunked but somehow held. There was a pay phone down the street, and Johnny stepped off to use it.
He called Sal Belamo’s private line. A series of clicks followed, indicating that the line was being rerouted. Johnny was ready to hang up as soon as the phone was answered if Belamo’s voice was not on the other end.
“That you again, McBalls?”
Johnny didn’t hang up.
“It’s me, Sal Belamo.”
“Hey, big fella! Your friend and mine’s been hoping you would check in. You’re not gonna believe this, but the two of you are chasing the same son-of-a-bitching thing.”
Silence.
“Hey, you surprised or what?”
“Nothing about this surprises me, Sal Belamo. Tell Blainey I’m on my way to an air force base in Kansas. Tell him what we both seek can be found on this base.”
Johnny’s gaze slid back to the shuddering shape of Blue Thunder. The last crates were being loaded. The old bus’s frame had dipped closer to the ground.
“Tell him he’d better meet me there.”
Chapter 32
“Livermore Air Force Base?” Blaine raised. He had been calling Sal Belamo every half hour or so since the end of the battle here at Nineteen to see if Wareagle had called in, knowing the big Indian was his only hope of finding where to take his search for the White Death next. Though Tovah had supplied him with the names of the rest of the original Tau, she didn’t know where they could be found or how to contact them. And at the speed things were progressing, there was no way he could rely on traditional intelligence methods to track them down.
“Straight from the big fella’s mouth, boss. Want me to call in the cavalry?”
“No, Sal. We’re keeping this private.”
“That a good idea, given what you’ve told me?”
“That’s the point. Any official types who help are gonna want to know what it is we uncovered. You can figure out the next step.”
“They’ll want it for themselves….”
“You’re learning, Sal. The White Death has to end here.”
“You mean in Kansas.”
“Yes.”
“Gonna need help from somebody, boss. And, you ask me, plenty of it.”
McCracken looked back at Tovah. “I’ll think of something.”
McCracken explained the specifics to her as soon as he was off the phone, and Tovah was all too happy to comply with his request. First, he let her choose the best commandos Nineteen had to offer to accompany him back to America for the final battle against the Tau; after the attack on the kibbutz, it wasn’t hard to find volunteers.
From there, the old woman called on her many contacts both inside and outside Israel to arrange the logistics of their journey. From Nineteen the small army would be driven to the same airstrip Melissa and McCracken had been flown into earlier in the day. A jet would be waiting with a flight plan filed for New York’s Kennedy Airport. To avoid scrutiny, it would fly under diplomatic markings.