Nancy"s eyes moved from the outside rearview mirror to the road ahead, the narrow blacktop racing at her, a straight line pointing through scrub and pasture land. On the left side of the road was a stock fence, miles of wire and posts and up ahead, finally, there it was, a side road. Higher posts marked the road. And a closed gate hung across the entrance.
There wouldn"t be time to stop and open the gate. She knew that.
There wouldn"t be time to load the Marlin. Majestyk realized that now. He put it down quickly, across the open suitcase, and picked up the shotgun again. He had to get turned around, face the tailgate.
He was moving, keeping low, on his elbows and knees-and was thrown hard against the side of the pickup box as the truck left the road and its high four-wheel-drive front end smashed through the wooden gate, exploded through it with the sound of boards splitting, ripped apart by the high metal b.u.mper.
By the time Renda"s three cars were through the gate and had come to a sudden stop, the truck was bounding across the desert pasture, making its own trail, running free where the cars couldn"t follow.
No one had to say it. The rocks and holes, steep-banked washes and scrub, would rip the underbody of an automobile, tear out the suspension. They sat staring at the dust settling and the yellow speck out there in the open sunlight-Renda in the front seat with Lundy, Kopas in back.
"There"s a road over there," Renda said finally. "They got to be headed for something."
"Taking a shortcut," Lundy said.
"There is one," Kopas said, "if I remember correctly. About a mile, county road cuts through there, goes up in the mountains."
The three cars turned in a tight circle and went out through the gate the way they had come in, the dark green Dodge leading off.
Within five miles the county blacktop began to wind and climb, making its way up into high country.
Majestyk felt better now. He had a little time to breathe and knew what he was going to do. The girl had set it up for him, given him the time. She had said he needed her and she was right. When he signaled to her and she stopped, he got out of the box and came up on her side.
"I guess there"s no way to get rid of you, is there?"
"I told you before, Vincent, you"re stuck with me."
She was the one to have along all right, but he couldn"t think about her now. He told her to hold it about thirty-five, let them catch up again. He got back into the rear end and that was the last thing he said to her for a while.
There were a few new melon cartons in the pickup bed, flat pieces of cardboard he put under him for some cushion, soften the d.a.m.n skid strips on the floor. Then he put the two suitcases at the back end of the pickup box, against the tailgate, and rested the shotgun on them. Lying belly down they were just about the right height. He reached up and pulled the latch open on one side of the tailgate. The other one would hold the gate closed until he was ready.
When he saw the three cars coming again, they were on a good stretch of road, straight and climbing, a pinyon slope rising above them on the right and a steep bank of shale and scrub that fell off to the left, dropping fifty or more feet into dense growth, dusty stands of mesquite.
Now he would have to keep down and rely on Nancy. In the window he saw her look back at him and nod. That meant they were coming up fast. He could hear the car.
Nancy was watching it in the rearview mirror-catching glimpses of the other two cars behind it-letting them come, watching the first car closely to see what it was going to do and trying to hold the truck steady on the narrow road. The car was fifty, forty feet away, crawling up on the truck, overtaking it and beginning to pull out, as if to pa.s.s. She held up two fingers in the rear window, a peace sign.
Majestyk was ready. He reached for the tailgate latch, pulled the chain off. The gate dropped, clanged open and there was the dark green Dodge charging at him, a little off to the right. At twenty feet Majestyk put his face to the shotgun, fired three times and saw the windshield explode and the car go out of control. It swerved across the road, sweeping past the tailgate, hit the bank on the right side and came back again-as the two cars behind, suddenly close, braked and fishtailed to keep from piling into the Dodge. The car veered sharply to the left, jumped the shoulder, and dived into the brush fifty feet below.
He fired twice at the second car, the Olds 98, but it was swerving to avoid hitting the bank. The shot raked its side and caught part of the third car, taking out a headlight, as the car rammed into the left rear fender of the Olds, kicked it sideways and both cars came to a hard abrupt stop.
Majestyk gave Nancy the sign, felt the pickup lurch as it shifted and took off, leaving the two cars piled up in the road.
The first thing Lundy did, he went over to the shoulder to look down at the Dodge, at the rear end of it sticking out of the brush. There was no sign of the two guys. They were probably still inside. He couldn"t see how they could be alive, but it was possible. Lundy was starting down the bank when Renda called him.
"Gene, come on." Renda was walking away from the rear of the Olds. The other car was slowly backing up. He said, "We"re okay. Let"s go."
Lundy began to say, "I was thinking we ought to-don"t you think we should take a look?"
"We"re going to get in the car, Gene, and not waste any more time. Now come on."
"They could be alive. Hurt pretty bad, caught in there."
"I don"t give a s.h.i.t what they are. We got something to do, right now, before he gets someplace and hides."
Renda didn"t say any more until they were in the car, following the road up through the pinyon, looking at side trails, openings in the trees where he could have turned off. But there wasn"t any way to tell.
"That G.o.dd.a.m.n truck of his, he can go anywhere," Renda said. "He knows this country. He told me, he comes up here hunting."
"If he knows it and we don"t," Lundy said, "it changes things."
"I don"t know, is he running or what? The son of a b.i.t.c.h."
"If he"s still on this road," Lundy said, "we"ll catch him. Otherwise I don"t know either."
There was a game trail nearby where he had sat with the Marlin across his lap and waited for deer: meat for the winter, to be stored in his twenty-five-dollar deep-freeze. He wondered if he would go hunting this fall. If the girl would still be here. If either of them would be here.
He sat with the Marlin now as he had sat before, this time looking down the slope, through the pine trees to the road, the narrow black winding line far below. The cabin was less than a mile from here. He wondered if Renda would think of it and remember how to find it. No, he wouldn"t have picked out landmarks and memorized them. He was from a world that didn"t use landmarks.
He said to the girl, "Did you ever shoot a deer?"
"I don"t think I could."
"What if you were hungry?"
"I still couldn"t."
"You eat beef."
"But I don"t have to kill it."
"All right, I"ll make you a deal. I"ll shoot it, you cook it."
"When are we going to do that, Vincent?"
"In a couple of months. We"ll have plenty of time. Sit around, drink beer, watch TV. Maybe take some trips."
"Where do you want to go?"
"I don"t care. Anyplace."
"We going to get married first?"
"Yeah, you want to?"
"I guess we might as well, Vincent. Soon as we get some time."
Looking down the slope he said, "Here come a couple of friends of ours."
They watched the two cars pa.s.s below them on the winding road.
"Now what, Vincent?"
"Now we give them a kick in the a.s.s," Majestyk said.
Renda"s three men in the second car, following the Olds, were in general agreement that riding around in the mountains was a bunch of s.h.i.t. That Frank Renda ought to take care of his own hit, if he wanted the guy so bad. That maybe they should stop on the way back-if they ever got out of this f.u.c.king place-and see about the two guys who went over the side. Though they must be dead; n.o.body had yelled for help. They were looking out the windows, up and down the slopes, but if the guy wasn"t still on the road they knew they weren"t going to find him. How could they get to him?
The one in the back seat said, "There shouldn"t be nothing to it. Wait for the right time you can set the f.u.c.king guy on fire, do it any way you want. This hurry-up s.h.i.t doesn"t make any sense."
"You know what the trouble is?" the driver said. "The guy, the farmer, he doesn"t know what he"s doing. He shouldn"t even still be around."
"That"s it," the one in the back seat said. "If he knew anything he"d know enough not to be here. It"s like some clown never been in the ring before. He"s so clumsy, does so many wrong things, you can"t hit the son of a b.i.t.c.h."
"Fighting a southpaw," the driver said. "You ever fight a southpaw?"
"You get used to that," the one in the back seat said. "I"m talking about a clown. Hayseed, doesn"t even own a cup."
"So you know where to hit him," the driver said.
"s.h.i.t, try and get to the guy."
Talking about nothing, pa.s.sing the time. The one in the back seat looked out the side window at the dun-colored slopes and rock formations. They were getting pretty high, moving along a hogback, the spine of a slope. He half turned to look out the back window and said, "Jesus!" loud enough to bring the driver"s eyes to the rearview mirror and the man next to him around on the seat.
The high front end of Majestyk"s pickup was on top of them, headlights and yellow sheetmetal framed in the back window, the guy behind the wheel looking right at them, saying something, and the girl next to him ducking down.
Majestyk pressed down on the gas, caught up and drove the high b.u.mper into the car"s rear deck. He saw the car beginning to pull away, pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor and caught the rear end again, stayed with it this time, fighting the wheel to keep the car solidly in front of him, ramming it, bulldozing it down the narrow grade, hitting a shoulder and raising dust, hanging with it, seeing sky above the car and knowing what was coming, foot pressed hard on the gas for another five seconds before he raised it and mashed it down on the brake pedal.
The car almost made the turn. It skidded sideways, power-sliding, hit the shoulder, and went through the guardrail turned onced in the air and exploded in flames five hundred feet below.
Majestyk was through the turn, saw the Olds 98 on the road three switchbacks below him, came to an abrupt stop, turned around, and headed back the way they had come, aware of the smoke now billowing up out of the canyon. He was sure Renda heard the explosion and would be coming back. So he"d go up into the pines again and work out the next step.
In the quiet of the cab he heard Nancy say, "I hope you never get mad at me, Vincent."
The Olds 98 came to a stop in the shadow of a high, seamed outcropping of rock. The shadow covered the road that continued in dimness, reaching a wall of rock and brush before bearing in a sharp curve to the right.
Lundy got the map out of the glove box and spread it open over the steering wheel. It was quiet in the car, except for the sound of Lundy straightening the map, smoothing the folds.
Renda stared straight ahead, through the windshield. We haven"t been out here an hour, he was thinking, and he"s killing us. Do you know what he"s doing? Do you see it now?
Bobby Kopas fidgeted in the back seat, looking out the window on one side and then the other, bending down to see the crest of the high rocks. It was so quiet. Sunlight up there and shade down here. Nothing moving.
"His hunting country," Renda said. "He brought us here."
"I see where we"re at," Lundy said. "The lodge is only about six, eight miles west of here, but roundabout to get to. "Less we want to go all the way back to the highway, which I don"t think is a good idea."
Renda wasn"t listening to him. He was picturing a man in work clothes and scuffed lace-up boots, a farmer, a man who lived by himself and grew melons and didn"t say much.
"He set us up," Renda said. "The farmboy knew what he was doing all the time and he set ... us ... up."
Lundy said, "What do you want to do? Go back to the lodge? I don"t see any sense in messing around here." He waited, watching Renda stare out the window. "Frank, what do you want to do?"
He didn"t know. He realized now he didn"t know anything about the man. It was like meeting him, out here, for the first time. He should have known there was someone else, another person, inside the farmer. The stunt the guy pulled with the bus and trying to take him in, make a deal. That wasn"t a farmer. He had been too anxious to get the guy and had not taken time to think about him, study him and find out who he was inside.
Lundy said, "There"s no sense sitting here."
Renda continued to stare at the wall of rock ahead of them, where the road curved, thinking of the man, trying to remember the things he had said, trying to out-think him now, before it was too late. He didn"t see the figure standing on the crest of the rocks, not at first. And when he saw him he was a shadow that moved, a dark figure silhouetted against the sky a hundred yards away, holding something, raising it.
"Get out of here!"
Renda screamed it, Lundy looked up and the rifle shot drilled through the windshield and into the seat between them with a high whining sound that was outside, far away. The second shot tore through the gla.s.s two inches from the first and Renda screamed it again, "Get out of here!"
Majestyk put four more .3030"s into the car before it got around the bend and was out of sight. He might have hit one of them but he doubted it. He should have taken a little more time on the second shot, corrected and placed it over to the left more. That"s what you get, you don"t hunt in a year you forget how your weapons act.
He walked away from the crest, back into the pines where Nancy was waiting by the truck, shaking his head as he approached her.
"Missed. Now I got to bird-dog him."
"Now?" She seemed a little surprised. "How can you catch up with him?"
"I can cross-country, he can"t."
"You"re really going after him?"
"We"re this far," he said and watched her c.o.c.k her head, then look up through the pine branches.
"I think I hear a plane," she said. "You hear it?"
He heard it. Walking back from the crest into the trees he had heard it. "You"ll see it in about a minute," he said. "Only it"s not a plane, it"s a helicopter."
Harold Ritchie had radioed ahead to cars patrolling the main roads as far as thirty miles east of Edna. They reported, during the next half hour, no sign of a yellow four-wheel-drive pickup, with or without anybody chasing it.
So he must have taken them up in the mountains, Lieutenant McAllen decided, and called the Phoenix Police for a helicopter. Get more ground covered in an hour than they could in a week.
It didn"t even take that long. McAllen and Ritchie had been cruising the highway and some of the back roads. They were at the road repair site when the chopper radioed in. There was static and the sound of the rotor beating the air, but the pilot"s voice was clear enough.
"Three-four Bravo, this is three-four Bravo. I believe we got him. Yellow pickup truck heading south, in the general direction of county road 201, just west of Santos Rim, G.o.d almighty, or else it"s a mountain goat. I thought he was on a trail, but there ain"t anything there. He"s bouncing over the rocks, flying. Heading down through a wash now like it"s a chute-the-chute. Look at that son of a b.i.t.c.h go!"
McAllen and Ritchie looked at one another. They didn"t say anything.
"On 201 now heading west," the pilot"s voice said. There was a pause. "Hey, we got something else. Looks like ... an Oldsmobile or a Buick, late model, dark blue ... about a half mile out in front of the pickup, going like h.e.l.l. Let me get down closer. This is three-four Bravo out."
Lieutenant McAllen looked up in the sunlight, toward the mountains, then at Harold Ritchie. "You don"t suppose-"
"I"d more likely suppose it than not," Ritchie said.
They heard the radio crackle and the helicopter pilot"s voice came on again.
"This is three-four Bravo. Looks like they pulled a disappearing act on us. I don"t see either one of them now. They must"ve turned off on a trail through the timber. Hang on I"ll give you some coordinates."