“Before we arrive, you get in the trunk,” I said. “Me and Arnold will cut through the woods, come up on the side. We’ll have the listening equipment. When it looks and sounds right, we ease up and do it. We try not to shoot each other. We try to shoot and kill the people not on our side.”
“That’s good,” Price said. “Virgil?”
“When you’re in the trunk, I drive your car like it’s my car,” Virgil said. “The Doc will sit up front with me. We get there, I get out of the car with Poot and keep him by me so the microphone will pick up the talk, and Arnold and Hank will know what’s happening. I act friendly. I carry things as far as I can until everyone is in place. It gets time to do it, I drop down and you pop out of the trunk blazing. Arnold and Hank start shooting.”
“What happens if you get hustled inside before everyone’s in place?” Price asked.
“I can most likely kiss my ass goodbye,” Virgil said.
“Worse than that,” Price said. “You’ll fuck up the plan.”
“Question,” Arnold asked Price. “What the fuck good you gonna be in the trunk of your car? We might as well give the spare tire a gun. Who’s going to let you out? You can’t ride along holding the hatch down.”
“Come here,” Price said.
We followed him to the back of his car. He unlocked and lifted the trunk. The trunk had a twist handle on the inside. In the bed of the trunk was a small cardboard box containing several handguns, beside the box was a rifle and a shotgun.
“I had this fixed up this way for a similar escapade,” Price said. “Nobody got shot that time, but it let me sneak up where I wasn’t expected. It helped me to get a promotion in LaBorde. Locked in or not, I twist the handle, I’m out of the trunk. There’s an extra sheet of heavy metal inside the lid too, in case someone tries to shoot th?s to shorough it. It won’t stop big stuff, but it’ll keep a bee out of your bonnet. It’s got an amplifier of a sort built into it, just under the back bumper. I can hear what’s being said if anyone’s within ten or twelve feet of the car. Farther, if they’ve got a big mouth.”
“Does it do smoke screens and oil slicks?” Virgil asked.
“No,” Price said, “but I catch you just right, I can run over you with the tires.”
“Another question,” I said. “What about the Doc?”
“He knows what to do,” Price said.
Price lifted the box of handguns out of the trunk and put it on the ground. He lifted out the rifle and gave it to me. He got a snub nose. 38 Smith and Wesson revolver with a clip-on holster out of the box and gave me that too. He said, “Can you shoot?”
“I used to be able to shoot,” I said. “I haven’t shot at anything in years.”
“This afternoon,” Price said, “you come out of retirement.”
I clipped the revolver on under the tail of my shirt and turned the rifle over in my hands. It was a fairly standard varmint gun. A Marlin 30-30 with a scope. Lever action. Recoil would be minimal to nonexistent. I had killed deer with the same kind of rifle.
Price gave me some ammunition to go with it. He gave Arnold the shotgun-a 12 gauge Remington pump-a box of slugs, and a. 38 Smith and Wesson in a clip-on holster.
He got a. 45 automatic out of the box and put it in the trunk and closed the lid. He put a. 38 Smith and Wesson in his jacket pocket. He stuck a couple of. 45 clips and a handful of. 38 shells in his pocket with the. 38. The box was empty.
“Couldn’t I carry a gun in my boot or something?” Virgil asked.
“No,” Price said. “Fat Boy or Snake might want to search you. You just get low and stay there. I’ll get the extra I got to you, provided I can reach you.”
Arnold and I got in the back seat of the car. Virgil and Poot got up front. Price climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. I looked at my watch.
Three-fifteen.
· · ·
Time we were nearing Busby it was just short of four o’clock.
We picked up Doc at an abandoned filling station just outside of Busby. He had parked his car around back. He was worried about it. He whined about it. No one gave him any sympathy. He got in the back with me and Arnold.
On the other side of Busby the East Texas woods grew thick and the land was low there; you could see a lot of swampy looking areas where the water had built up from all the rain we’d been getting. Doc directed us down a narrow road that wound into the trees. Growth there was so dense with shadow and dangling moss, it seemed later than it was.
After a ways, we came to a cattle guard and a gate made of post and barbed wire strands. I got out?s. I gotand unfastened it, and Price drove through. I hooked the gate back and got in the car and we drove on.
The road ceased being a road and became a couple of red clay ruts. On either side of us was a poorly attended pasture and no cows. A lone oil well pump nodded up and down off to the right. Woods surrounded the pasture.
We entered into the thick of the trees again, and the road was very narrow and very rough and full of holes. It bounced us so hard our guts hurt. The road veered left down a steep incline. Doc said, “Don’t go that way. You can’t get back up it.”
Price stopped. “There’s no where else to go.”
Doc pointed. Off to the right, if you looked hard enough, you saw that what you thought was all woods was partly camouflage netting. Just enough to blend in with the narrow road and the trees. It hung from a high wire, and Doc got out of the car and moved it by pulling a line off to the right, like pulling a curtain cord.
Price drove through and Doc got on the other side of the netting and took hold of another wire and pulled it, restoring the camouflage. We drove on. The limbs on either side of the road brushed the car.
“About how far?” Price asked.
“Another half mile,” Doc said.
Price stopped the car. He turned and looked at Doc. Doc was sweating. He looked to be having an attack of malaria.
Price said, “You look nervous, Doc. Don’t look nervous. You’ve come to see what you like. Remember? You get nervous, you make me nervous, and I can shoot you easy as Fat Boy… All right, mighty hunters, this is where you get off.”
I picked the rifle off the floorboard, Arnold got the shotgun, and we slipped out of the car. I took a deep breath of the chill air and looked out at the woods. I loved the woods. I hadn’t been in serious woods in years, and it had taken this kind of thing to get me back.
I looked at my watch. Ten minutes until five. By the time Arnold and I got into place, and Doc drove on down to the sawmill, it would be ten or fifteen minutes after. Provided we didn’t run into problems.
Price got out slowly and unlocked the trunk of the car and climbed in. Before I closed the lid on him, he said, “Remember, you got to watch my ass.”
I closed the lid.
Virgil was out of the car. He had the earphones in his hand. I took them and slipped them on. Virgil called Poot out of the car and adjusted something on his collar. He bent close to the dog and said, “Can you hear me?”
“Me or the dog?” I said.
Virgil looked up, said, “You, smartass.”
“I can hear you.”
Virgil held the driver side door and motioned Poot back into the car. Poot jumped in the front seat.
Virgil said to Doc, “Well, come on. I’m not a doorman.”
D?lign="leoc eased out of the back seat and got up front on the passenger’s side. He looked as stiff as a corpse. Virgil got behind the wheel and rolled down his window. Poot climbed into his lap and looked out and dangled his tongue. I gave Poot a pat.
Virgil said, “Shoot true, motherfucker. I don’t like to think I’ve made my last dollar off a whiplash settlement.”
“Watch yourself,” I said.
“Yeah,” Virgil said. He rolled up the window and sat behind the wheel. Arnold and I moved into the woods.
The floor of the October woods was full of dry leaves, so we moved heel toe to minimize the sound of our walking. As we went, I moved my eyes gently over the landscape. The trees, the leaves. Watching in case we might come upon a mass of blackbirds, and startle them to flight, alerting Fat boy and Snake there was someone in the woods. It was my guess they’d know about that sort of thing.