"Cyanide, cutie. Enough cyanide to kill four or five people. They ain't never going to touch me."
Fenton glanced at Vickers. He smiled ruefully and shook his head. Eggy was from some dangerous galaxy. Fenton seemed about to say something but, before he could, the bus was shaken by the boom of a not too distant explosion. The ground shook. Everyone in the bus hit the floor. They stayed down, counting the seconds. When there were no further explosions they gingerly moved to the back of the bus and looked out the window. Where El Rancho Mars had been there was now just a column of black smoke. The smoke from the first fireball was high in the air and starting to dissipate. A fresh black cloud was roiling up to replace it from what was obviously a raging inferno. Fenton looked at Vickers with narrowed eyes.
"They blew the house? Why in hell would they do that? It doesn't make any sense."
"Maybe it was another attack."
"Immediately after we left? It seems like too much of a coincidence."
Debbie was running down the bus, yelling at the driver. "Stop, goddamn it! Stop the damn bus!" She tried to grab him but, at the same time, the guard at the front grabbed her. She tried a hip throw on him but couldn't quite bring it off in the confined space. The guard managed to kick her feet out from under her and they both crashed into the first passenger seat. Eggy suddenly shrieked and charged down the bus to help out Debbie. He started pounding on the guard with his interlocked fists. The two guards in the rear had their guns up and, for a moment, it looked like carnage was going to spread all down the length of the bus. Vickers was on his feet and shouting, facing the rear guards and waving his arms.
"Hold it! For Christ's sakes hold it!"
Parkwood and Fenton hurried to the front and dragged the snarling Eggy off the guard and then helped the guard and Debbie disentangle themselves one from the other.
"Everyone just calm down now."
Eggy reluctantly relaxed but Debbie was still furious.
"I had friends in that place!"
The front guard had retrieved his gun and was wondering who to point it at. Fenton leaned toward the driver.
"It might be a good idea if you pulled over while we sort this thing out."
The driver had a voice like a robot.
"I have orders not to stop under any circumstance."
For a moment Fenton looked as though he was going to hit him. He clearly thought better of it and turned on the front guard.
"Do you know anything about this?"
"We were warned there might be an explosion. We were supposed to stop you becoming alarmed."
Vickers looked at the two rear guards.
"Is this what they told you?"
They both nodded. "We all had the same briefing."
Debbie continued to smoulder. "Why should they blow the place up? What happened to the people?"
One of the rear guards softened just the slightest fraction.
"They told us the others would be evacuated to another destination and then the place would be destroyed as a security precaution."
Neither Debbie nor Eggy seemed convinced. They both looked around belligerently.
"Does anyone believe this crap?"
The bus lurched, and Parkwood sat down.
"We may have been the cream of the crop, but the others who remained were valuable operatives and it would make no economic sense simply to destroy them. It goes against all corporate logic to wantonly waste money. On the other hand, though, the house itself was a moderately valuable installation and it also seems a great waste if they just blew it to cover our tracks. Of course, if we knew where our tracks were going, we'd have an idea how much they might be worth covering."
"But these bastards aren't going to tell us a fucking thing."
Eggy growled at the guards. They looked a little nervous but none of them volunteered any further information. Fenton and Vickers both sat down, but Debbie still stood, clutching the overhead rail with a white-knuckled hand.
"I think we should go back and find out exactly what happened. I want to know what became of Zoe, Bobbie and Linda."
Parkwood eyed the guards. "I don't think our friends are going to let us do that."
"Screw these assholes. We can take them."
Parkwood twitched his shoulder in the faintest of shrugs.
"Sure we could take them except we'd probably lose one, if not two of us in the process and the status of those of us left could become decidedly strange."
"You're a cold son of a bitch."
"Don't you think there's enough emotion flying around here?"
Eggy hulked over Parkwood.
"So what would you do, Iceman?"
"I'm going to stick with the program. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to put us on this bus and I'm not about to get off it until I have a few more facts. Whatever happened at the house has happened and there's nothing we can do about it."
Debbie became stubborn. "You didn't have friends back there."
Parkwood's eyes froze. "If you were the professional you're supposed to be you wouldn't have had friends back there, either."
Vickers, who'd been watching intently, realized for the first time just how deadly Parkwood might be if pushed. He was what the Japanese had in mind when they made up the saying about the best killers being already dead. Eggy abruptly sat down.
"Yeah, go with the fucking program."
Debbie, now isolated, bit her lip. She pushed her way past the guards and went to the back of the bus. She sat down, staring out the rear window at the plume of smoke.
"You think I'm crazy, you should have seen my brother. He used to sit in the park and burn money until someone beat him up. Then he'd laugh in their faces. Somedays he'd go to the bank and he'd draw out a hundred in singles and then he'd go to this favorite bench that he had in the park and he'd take this big fucking radio that he had and he'd settle himself down and turn up the radio real loud so's people would notice him and then he'd start into setting fire to one bill after another. He'd do it real slow, holding each one up in the air until it was all burned up except for the last little corner that he was holding it by. He'd light them with this old fashioned Zippo that our uncle had given him. He claimed that he'd used it in Vietnam to burn gook huts."
"Your uncle was in Vietnam?"
Eggy shrugged. "I was never sure. He was my old man's oldest brother so I guess he could have been the right age. He claimed he was but I couldn't figure how he could have gone through all that and still stayed such an asshole."
Eggy's sudden burst of intimacy came out of nowhere. It was almost as much of a surprise as the blowing up of the house. They'd ridden in silence for a further two hours, bouncing and swaying along the unsurfaced desert trail when the outburst had begun without preamble or even a clearing of the throat. He talked at no one in particular, addressing the whole of the bus with the weird confidence of someone who lets go so rarely that he's certain everyone will be paying attention.
"Pretty soon, a crowd would start to gather. My brother would pretend not to notice them at first."
"What was your brother's name?"
"It don't matter." Eggy seemed to resent this second interuption. He glared around belligerently. "Anyone else got anything they want to ask?"
As one they shook their heads.
"Okay, like I was saying, first off a crowd would gather and my brother'd start by completely ignoring them. He'd just sit there burning his money, pretending it was the most normal thing in the world. Pretty soon some of the crowd would start mouthing off. They'd start making smart remarks to each other about how my brother was a mental case and ought to be locked up. If he wanted to get rid of his cash, he didn't have to burn it, he could give it to them. When my bro went on ignoring them, they got a bit bolder. They'd start coming onto him direct. 'Hey, fuck, what the fuck do you think you're doing? You insane or something? You gotta be fucking crazy.' You know what I mean? It was real slick, Oscar Wilde stuff. There was a pattern to it though, it always got physical in the end. They might make a grab for the money while it was actually burning but, usually, it would keep them mesmerized. Nine times out of ten, the violence would start when my bro reached into his pocket for a fresh bill. Some fool would grab for it, like he was rescuing the sacred dollar from the pyromaniac. My brother didn't actually resist, but he'd do his best not to let them get the bill and that always led to someone hitting him. Once the first punch had been thrown the dam was broken, all hell'd break loose. They'd be all over my brother and, because even then I wasn't going to stand by while a bunch of hysterical assholes beat on my bro, they be all over me too. Sometimes the cops would-come and we'd get beat up all over again. When you're a kid and the cops beat on you, it can really hurt. They can do it without leaving marks, too… Jesus fucking Christ! Will you look at that!"