Carson’s adrenaline was pumping so hard he could barely form words. He swung the pistol back around to the driver, jamming its warm muzzle into his neck. Amory’s hands were still up, palms against the pickup’s roof liner as he stared forward with bulging eyes, his face lit by the truck’s interior light. “Where…are…we?” Carson panted, pushing the barrel of the 9mm hard into the medic’s neck.
“I don’t know sir, I don’t know! I’ve never been here before!”
“Liar! You knew we were coming here! Foley didn’t tell you where to turn—you knew it was an ambush!”
“I didn’t, I swear it, please don’t shoot me, I didn’t know! I swear, I thought we were going to Louisiana tonight! As God is my witness, believe me!”
“Is there really extra gas in the back? Or was that a lie too?”
“It’s true sir, it’s true! Lieutenant Colonel Foley, he gave me your list yesterday, your list and a pile of money, and I got everything, everything on it, I swear!”
“Okay, okay, now shut up. Let me think. Just let me think.” Carson slumped back in the seat, his chest heaving, his ears ringing, the pistol held on his lap. He knew he should check the bodies, check to make sure they were dead, but he didn’t dare turn his back on Amory. He had no handcuffs or flexcuffs or rope, no way to quickly secure him. He considered his immediate escape transportation options. “Are there extra gas cans in the trunk of the car?”
“I don’t know, sir, I don’t know—I just know everything from your list is in the back of this truck, I swear it is. Winter clothes, a sleeping bag, everything on your list! I drew it from supply and packed it all myself. I think those men just got to Doctor Foley and made him change the plan. This morning he told me we were going to Vicksburg—I know him, and he wasn’t lying. Not this morning.”
Maybe that was true, but it didn’t matter. They were dead. He knew he could be making a fatal error by not policing up the scene, checking the other car, checking the house trailer, checking the bodies to make sure they were well and truly dead. He could find the other pistols. He could drag the bodies into the brush at least, into the woods, to conceal them from rapid casual discovery. He could search the trailer and maybe locate some more weapons, possibly a rifle or shotgun.
But what about Sergeant Amory? He didn’t want to shoot him now. That moment had passed. Plus, Amory would know how to deal with the checkpoints. He would know what passwords and procedures were needed to get through them without drawing suspicion. Carson knew he’d probably make a mistake and give himself away if he tried to escape on his own. A colonel being driven by a sergeant would appear quite natural, and he would only have to flash his military ID as they stopped at checkpoints. Maybe not even that. What soldier would ask to see a uniformed colonel’s ID, in an official Army vehicle? Nobody in the old Army he had known.
His brain couldn’t handle the permutations, the options, the variables. Not with his bloodstream awash with adrenaline, his ears still ringing, and the snapshot memories of his deadly close-range headshots filling his mind. Each muzzle flash had left a sharp picture printed in his mind. Obviously, it had never occurred to Doctor Foley or his partners that their victim might be armed at the very moment of their double-crossing him. Not at that fateful moment, which had led to the final minute of their lives. Carson reasoned that the water-saturated pine forest surrounding the trailer would have swallowed up the sounds of their shots. Nobody would be outside to hear them anyway. His mind fixed on the thought of gunshot sounds radiating outward into the wet forest, and then it froze up, his mental gears jamming stuck. Finally he just said, “Drive.”
“What?”
“Drive. Just get us the hell out of here.”
“Yes sir.” The medic lowered his hands to the steering wheel.
“Sergeant Amory?”
“Sir?”
“Merry Christmas.”
“What?”
“We’re still alive.”
6
Carson held the doctor’s Beretta in his right hand. He guessed it still held maybe ten or so 9mm bullets in its double-stack magazine. He slid the empty Kel-Tec back into his pants pocket. Ten or twelve bullets, to make good an escape across the state of Mississippi and the Mississippi River, and then across Louisiana over to Texas.
“Sergeant Amory, do you have a map?”
“Yes sir, but I don’t need it. I know the roads.”
Carson raised his left arm to within a few inches of his face. His watch had a mini-compass the size of a nickel fastened to its strap. A tiny firefly light glowed dimly in the dark cab beneath his eyes, a green triangle pointing forward. He rolled the compass horizontally until he had some confidence in its orientation. “We’re heading north. How long until we hit a checkpoint?” Inside of the steel truck, he trusted the button compass to within maybe 45 degrees, either way. It was a rough instrument, but he didn’t want Amory to think he could fool him about their direction.
“No way to tell how long. There’s no permanent checkpoint around here, but sometimes they set up mobile checkpoints.”
“On Christmas Eve?”
“No, probably not. With the curfew, nobody’s out anyway. And nobody’s got gas to go anywhere, so why bother putting up a checkpoint? Rainy night like this is a night for staying inside, close to a fire. Close to a bottle, if you got one. Or a woman. Soldiers and civilians both.”
“You can talk your way through a checkpoint, right, Sergeant?”
“I think so…”
“You have to do better than just think so. I’ll be aiming this Beretta at your back every single second. If we get stopped—well, you’d better not blow it, that’s all I’m going to say.”
“I…I won’t sir. I won’t.”
They drove in silence for several more minutes. Then Carson asked, “What’s the bridge at Vicksburg like? What kind of security do they have on it?”
“That bridge is guarded all to hell, both sides and the river too. They check everything.”
“Did you see my ID cards?”
“What?”
“Did you check my ID cards, the ones you brought to my tent? Do they look right, are they perfect?”
“I just picked them up, that’s all. Doctor Foley, he had them made at the Personnel Support Detachment. He had to bring the XO of the base into the plan to get it done. I think that’s probably where…where it all went wrong.”
“You think that was the base XO back there, by the trailer? The executive officer of Camp Shelton?”
“I don’t know, sir, maybe. No, not maybe. Probably it was.”
“Shit, what’s an XO—a colonel?”
“Yes sir, he’d be at least a full bird colonel.”
“Who was the other man?”
“I don’t know. Another high officer, I expect.”
“Shit. Well ain’t that just great. So tell me about my ID cards. Will they stand up?” Carson knew he’d have to get rid of them fast. Once the bodies were discovered, the connection from the dead base executive officer through the Personnel Support Detachment to his bogus ID cards could be made very quickly. On the other hand, the three double-crossers had no reason to tell anyone else of their plans, and no reason to provide easily traced ID cards. If the cards were ever traced, it could only lead back to their involvement and incriminate them in the conspiracy. The conspirators would have every reason to provide clean, untraceable cards. The cards might work out…at least for a few days. He just didn’t know. But who else would know about the creation of the bogus cards? Some clerk at the personnel detachment, probably. And, of course there was Sergeant Amory…he certainly knew.
“I think they’re okay, I mean, they look right to me. They’re real, if that’s what you mean. Made on real machines from real ID card paper. That’s what Lieutenant Colonel Foley said anyway. They’re real cards, made out for a dead man, that’s what he said. Somebody who died in one of the epidemics, but without a proper death certificate or anything. Somebody real, somebody Doctor F
oley knew. He said nobody would ever know the difference.”
Carson digested that for a while. He was carrying a dead man’s ID cards…he grimaced at the thought. “So, Sergeant, if we’re the only ones out here driving tonight, and we’re driving a pickup truck, don’t you think that any checkpoint troops will think we’re civilians out after curfew?”
“They will sir, until they see the Army numbers on the truck, and our uniforms. We’re military all the way. We’re good to go. Nobody’s going to stop a colonel, sir. Nobody.”
“I’m not a colonel, Sergeant.”
“You are tonight, sir. You are tonight.”
Carson grunted and let the remark pass. After a minute he asked, “Vicksburg is on I-20, right?”
“Yes sir, Interstate 20. Jackson, Vicksburg, Shreveport, then Dallas.”
“Where’s the road map? Pass it back here.”
Carson pulled a penlight from a side pocket on his pack, and Amory handed him the map. Carson unfolded it across his lap, put on his reading glasses and studied the map for several minutes as they drove north through the drizzle. The houses they passed were barely lit, if lit at all. Long stretches were obviously without electricity. During sections of road where there was electricity, only dim lights were visible inside homes, or just flickering firelight. Christmas Eve or not, plainly there wasn’t enough power to squander on holiday lights. “Okay Sergeant, just how well do you know these Mississippi roads?”
“I’d say excellent, sir: I’ve lived here all my life. I got all around the state—I used to drive a moving truck, summers during college. Back when I was in college…”
“Good. We’re going to give I-20 and Vicksburg a pass. Maybe somebody else got the word about our route, I don’t know. If the whole thing was a setup, the whole plan might be blown. I don’t like the idea of driving right to where we might be expected. So, what’s the next bridge across the Mississippi River, above Vicksburg?”
“Above Vicksburg? I don’t rightly know, sir, probably up in Illinois somewhere.”
“What? Illinois? Don’t bullshit me, Sergeant—I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“No sir, it’s the truth! That’s why they guard that Vicksburg bridge so tight: all the bridges north of Vicksburg went down in the New Madrid quakes. Down or busted, and they’re still busted.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. So you really do have amnesia, sir? You really don’t know about the bridges?”
Carson didn’t answer him. No bridges above Vicksburg? Doctor Foley had mentioned the bridges, but the quake was more than a year ago, and the bridges were still down? That meant most of the state of Mississippi and all of Tennessee, with no bridges across the river? Then how would he get across? On a raft, like Huck Finn? His situation was growing worse. He checked his wrist compass again, with his penlight. They were heading basically northwest on a rural two-lane highway. The overhead traffic signals at the infrequent intersections were unlit, and no streetlights were working. It was black outside except for the meager light from fireplaces or lamps inside of widely dispersed clusters of homes. Carson checked the map, matching it with the road signs and the names of the small villages they passed through. They approached a four-lane divided highway that headed more east than north.
“Stop up ahead, in the gas station by the pumps.”
“Sir, they ain’t got any gas.”
“I can see that.” The station’s windows were smashed in, the store an empty shell. The other crossroad businesses were all closed and dark. They were either out of business for good, or shut tight for the nightly curfew and the Christmas holidays. The intersection was fifty yards ahead. Its unlit traffic signal faintly reflected back their headlights.
Amory pulled into the station. Their headlights caught a small billboard across the parking lot. The sign showed General Mirabeau in a khaki shirt, in front of a multiracial team of workers and farmers, all carrying tools over their shoulders. Beneath them was the slogan “We will rise together, or we will fall apart!” Grim determination was written on their faces.
“Cut the engine, Sergeant, and turn off the lights. The fuel gauge says we’ve got two-thirds of a tank left, so let’s put in a jerry can right here. I want to check how much gas we really have in the back so I can plan where to go. I’ll be right behind you—and there’d better be gas, like you said there was. You got that?”
“Oh, I got that, sir.”
“Now take out the keys and give them to me. Come on, get out, grab a can and pour it in.”
Amory did as he was told. They both stepped out, sheltered from the steadily falling rain by the wrecked gas station’s high metal roof, which extended above the pump island. Carson held the Beretta in his right hand and the penlight in his other. Amory untied the front corner of the tarp on the driver’s side. There were six jerry cans beneath the tarp, in a row across the front of the truck bed. Amory lifted out the closest metal jug, set it on the ground, and attached a spout. He poured the diesel fuel into the truck, gurgling and thumping as the can emptied, the odor pungent.
While Amory finished up, Carson became aware of a new sound. He couldn’t see very far down the four-lane road ahead—trees and the low buildings of closed businesses blocked his view—but he could clearly hear the hum and rumble of approaching engines. “Throw the can back in and fix the tarp. Come on, be quick!”
Amory tied down the rope attaching the corner of the tarp and, covered by Carson’s pistol, slid back behind the wheel and closed his door. Carson got in behind him. They both hunkered down low in their seats; the engine sounds were now audible even from inside the cab with all of its windows rolled up. Many headlights stabbed through the darkness, coming from the south, from their left. A humvee rolled past at about fifty miles an hour, blowing through the intersection without slowing down. A hundred feet behind was a five-ton military truck with a canvas roof, then a school bus painted a dark color. More vehicles came rolling on, one after the other.
“What is it, Amory? Where are they going?”
“Supply convoy, sir, I don’t know exactly where they’d be going. I’m just a medic at Camp Shelton—supply routes and convoys aren’t my thing.”
Carson put the penlight on his map, holding it close and shielding it. “That’s the way to Meridian, right?”
“That’s right, yes sir, Meridian, and then Tupelo.”
A dozen vehicles moved by at even intervals: humvees, eighteen-wheel fuel tankers, tractor-trailers, pickups, another bus, and finally a last humvee.
“Here, take the keys. Do exactly as I say, all right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Turn on the engine, but don’t turn on the lights.”
“Okay…” The warm engine came instantly to life.
“Good. Pull ahead slowly…slowly. There! That’s the last of them! That’s the tail-end Charlie. Go ahead now, swing out and get in line.”
“What? Sir?”
“You heard me, get in line, fifty yards behind the last one.”
“But…”
“Just do it!”
Amory shook his head as if in great doubt. He had a rigid grip on the wheel, almost cringing as he gently accelerated out of the gas station, leaving by the exit on the northeast-bound divided road. It had a flat, grassy median strip, but it was not a limited-access road. He slowed again when he was fifty yards behind the final vehicle, a humvee with an all-weather metal roof. After a minute, the highway made a left-hand curve and Carson said, “Now, switch on the headlights while we’re not aiming at them.”
“But they’ll know we don’t belong, they’ll…”
“No they won’t. In this rain that driver is staring straight ahead at the truck in front of him, and anybody else in there with him is either asleep or bored to death and trying to stay warm. Stragglers fall behind and catch up all the time.” Carson chuckled softly. “It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book: convoy hopping. It’s a matter of psychology. It’s the same thing that makes it so easy
to sneak onto military bases. What keeps most people from trying is pure psychological intimidation, nothing more than that. You get past that fear, and you’ve got it made.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Yep. A long, long time ago. If I told you where, you’d never believe me. Now as long as they keep driving, we’ll keep following. If the convoy stops, we’ll peel off. Let’s hope they’re going a long, long way.”
“What about the Mississippi River, going to Texas, all that?”
“Not tonight, Sergeant. We just left three dead officers back there, colonels, and if anybody else knew about the plan, that bridge is where they’ll be looking for me. We don’t know when those bodies are going to be found. Maybe not for a couple of days, or maybe they already have been. Either way, I don’t want to be trapped against the river. Not at that Vicksburg bridge, and not looking for a boat. Not if anybody alive knows that’s where I was heading. So we’re going where nobody would expect us to go.”
“Where’s that, sir?”
Carson paused, then asked, “How far is it to Tennessee?”
“Tennessee? About two hundred miles. But Tennessee’s even worse than Mississippi!”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Tennessee is practically a war zone. Tennessee is occupied by foreign troops.”
“Does the Mississippi National Guard go into Tennessee, Sergeant Amory?”
“What? Go into Tennessee? Hell no sir, no way! It’s full of foreign peacekeepers; it’s a mess. There’s fighting up there—Kentucky too.”
“Well, that’s why we’re going there. Foreign troops I can handle—but I just killed three Mississippi Guard officers. I mean, they hang counterfeiters in this state! I’ve seen it.” Carson chuckled. “If they hang counterfeiters, what do you think they’ll do for three dead colonels, shot right in their faces? You think they’re going to just let that go, let it slide? No big deal, let bygones be bygones?”
Foreign Enemies and Traitors Page 13
