Dixie Convoy

by Don Pendleton

  And, yeah, he could hear them coming now, even above the madness of that fire zone. The trailers were all belching and sizzling; the various warehouses were roaring with abandon and spreading their heat to adjacent buildings which, in turn, were joining the wild dance to oblivion. An inferno, yeah, and there would be no stopping it now until the final ember was spent.

  The mission was a complete success. It was time to disengage, to put that place behind him and leave it to the law. But something was drawing him onward, deeper into the inferno, some dumb instinct that gave no heed to numbers and tactical decisions.

  Bolan found the source of the summons in a small building deep within the complex of burning warehouses, behind a heavy wooden door implanted solidly into the corrugated metal of the building. He blew the lock away with a thundering round from the AutoMag and pushed his way inside.

  His nose knew it first, leaping to an awareness of the situation in there even before the pencil beam from his light illuminated the scene in that hell room. A guy was there—or something that had once been a guy—naked and trussed like a holiday turkey and bearing harsh evidence of the programmed indignities inflicted upon that pitiful flesh.

  Bolan steeled himself and reached into the mess in search of a life sign, hoping there would be none. There was not, and he sighed with relief, remembering from the back porch of hell why he hated the Mafia so. He found trousers draped over a chair in the corner of the room along with a wallet, a jackknife, thirty-seven cents in coins. Then he went out of there and flipped up a fresh belt of loads for the M-79, a new mission goal flailing at his nervous system, tracking surely along the line of flaming buildings until he could feel the stink of vermin sifting through his pores.

  They were inside the service garage—a defensible position no doubt under ordinary circumstances.

  At the moment, Mack Bolan was feeling a bit extraordinary.

  He went right in, demolishing the door with HE and sending fragmentation rounds ahead of the advance into the interior. One silly guy immediately lurched out of a corner and threw up his hands, screeching for quits. Bolan blew that silly guy clear through the side of the building, then turned his tumblers loose in a sweep on another guy with a chopper who was trying to dance and shoot to the same tune. It could not work, of course. A track of .45’s split the floor at Bolan’s feet—close enough, for sure—and kept on climbing up the wall as the guy ended the dance on his back, gliding in his own blood.

  Two more had apparently caught some of the frag from Bolan’s entry; they were writhing on the floor and calling for help. He sent them his greatest blessing, via the booming AutoMag, then whirled deeper into the darkness of the place in search of more.

  A pistol yelped and flamed back there in the black—from floor level, it seemed—then another, close alongside the first but lower. A grease pit, sure. Bolan freed a grenade from his ready belt, armed it, and rolled it over. He heard it hit the bottom of the pit and then the sudden cries of consternation from two scrambling hard men; but he was halfway to the door with that place already freed from his mind when the explosion came. He went on without a backward look and kept moving until he was clear of the heat zone. Then Bolan paused for a quick assessment of his situation.

  The whole place was in flames. A line of fire trucks was pounding along the access road. A smaller vehicle and two police units could be seen in the close background just behind the burning trailers.

  All of which left very little to wonder about, concerning Bolan’s “situation.”

  He’d spent the numbers foolishly, to no practical purpose whatever, and now his line of retreat was blocked. He went on to the south perimeter, blew out another section of fence, and walked toward darkness.

  It was going to be a hell of a long march to somewhere. And when those civilians back there began telling their stories to the cops, and when those cops began putting the stories together—well, yeah, maybe there wouldn’t be time enough left in Mack Bolan’s world to finish that march.

  The big-punch combo was once again slung horizontally across the back of his shoulders. He was climbing a gentle slope in light vegetation when the sirens began wailing again, distant sirens, coming in from what seemed every point of the compass. So okay, they’d put it together. And the big chase was on, the Bolan Watch had gone down—and very quickly now every cop in North Georgia would be gunning for Mack Bolan’s hide. It was a familiar pattern but no less a disturbing one. He’d shaken them before, sure, but he was a realist enough to know that he could not shake them forever. One of these days, a bullet from the same side was going to find his blood; that was certain.

  This could be the day.

  And, suddenly, it did not really matter to this wearied man in combat black. He halted, lit a cigarette, and turned back for a parting look along the back track. He’d come no more than a mile. He could no longer see the terminal site, but the skies down there were still very red.

  “To hell with it,” he muttered to the night.

  So he’d blown it all for the sake of a dead turkey. So what did any of it mean, anyway? If a guy couldn’t follow his quivers through this curious world what could he follow? So the dead had called him, and he’d responded.

  So—were the dead all that different from the living?

  Bolan smoked the cigarette to a stub, watching the redness in the sky below which a miserable wraith had summoned him to the end of his numbers. And what was it the trucker had said to him, on the radio? “The good numbers on you, sir?”

  Yeah. Wrong kind of numbers, though. The CB people referred to the numbers of a long-forgotten fraternity, the Morse telegraphers, and their highly abbreviated courtesies via the Morse wire. Best wishes, love and kisses, that sort of stuff. Bolan’s numbers were heartbeats, ticks of a mental clock that told him when it was time to hit and time to git.

  He’d been following the wrong numbers this night.

  “Hell with it,” he muttered again as he dropped the cigarette and turned once again to his route of withdrawal. He was nearing the top of the slope when a soft movement somewhere ahead froze him to his track. The moon was temporarily obscured by a passing cloud, and he was in fair cover with dogwoods and hillside shrubs grouped about him. His hand had gone instinctively to the AutoMag, and the big piece was hanging out there in combat stance before he could intellectually assess the situation. He then put the big piece back to leather, holding his ground quietly and waiting for another sound of the night. Whatever was up there at the top of that ridge would not be a legitimate target for the Executioner’s guns.

  He waited and watched, willing his eyes to pierce the darkness even while knowing that they would not. Then a dislodged stone began sliding toward him. A sharp intake of breath into laboring lungs told him that someone was up there, and close by.

  Then suddenly the moon was back and bathing that hillside with its soft light. A figure moved into full relief above Bolan, accompanied by a muffled and probably involuntary exclamation: “Good Lord!”

  That face was close and clear, a good face but aghast with its discovery, startled and frightened and triumphant all at once.

  “The mere sight of you is enough to scare a man dead,” the guy told Bolan in a calm but shaken voice.

  A vaguely familiar voice, yeah.

  Bolan quietly inquired, “Would that be the Georgia Cowboy?”

  “You got ’im,” the guy replied. “Glad I found you. You’re in bad trouble, Big B. There’s a cop in every bush. Come on, I think I can get you out of here. I left my rig up on a farm road, about two minutes from here.”

  Bolan had not moved a muscle, except those of his jaw. Now he relaxed somewhat, took a thoughtful stance, and told the guy: “You’re in bad company, cowboy—dangerous company. It could get you nothing better than a hole in the head.”

  “One good number deserves another, doesn’t it?” the guy said softly.

  “You owe me nothing,” Bolan replied.

  “Maybe I owe you more than you
realize. Are you coming or aren’t you? We haven’t much time.”

  The Bolan gaze flashed a sudden warmth. “Okay, let’s go,” he said quietly.

  The guy turned and went back up the hill. Bolan followed, without a quiver of adverse instinct.

  Curious, sure. But who could say in this curious world? Maybe he’d been following the right numbers all night after all. Or maybe sympathetic ghosts were simply restocking an infinite bag of options on this hallowed ground. Bolan shivered involuntarily and went on. A guy had to have something to believe in. Right now, this gladiator was betting on the good numbers … whatever their source.

  3: Hellbound

  The guy’s name was Grover Reynolds, age somewhere around the thirty-year mark, bright and likable—and he obviously had a story to tell but did not quite know how to get into it. As it happened, he was also something of a Civil War buff and knew this particular territory like the palm of his hand.

  Bolan himself was not a particularly talkative type, especially at a time such as this. The cab of that “naked” tractor was therefore subject to long periods of silence—which suited Bolan fine but which obviously made the other guy a bit uncomfortable. He would cover it by pointing out landmarks as they labored along the dirt tracks of the backcountry in that lights-out run to safe ground.

  “That low ridge over there. That’s where Sherman wheeled his right flank for the assault on Kennesaw.”

  “Oh. Uh-huh.”

  “I thought you’d find that interesting.”

  “I do.”

  Several silent moments later: “That’s where he started the assault. Shouldn’t have. Cost him twenty-five hundred casualties, including Fighting Dan McCook.”

  Bolan was moved to ask, “Who won the battle?”

  “Nobody, really. Johnston withdrew toward Atlanta. Sherman caught him with his pants down at the Chattahoochee, outflanked him, and crossed the river behind him. Hell, Sherman had three armies. I guess you could call it a victory for Joe Johnston just for keeping the guy out of Atlanta as long as he did. He led him a merry damned chase, tell you that. They played chess with each other all through these Georgia hills from early May through the summer. Then, hell, it was—uh, you don’t really give a damn about any of this, do you?”

  “Any other time, cowboy, yeah, I’d love to hear about it. Right now … well, right now I guess I’m wondering how you knew where to find me.”

  “Nothing mysterious about it,” the guy assured him. “Like I said, this is my home twenty. Boy and man, I’ve lived here all my life, except for a couple years in ’Nam and until I decided to get rich on the road.”

  “You don’t sound overjoyed with either experience,” Bolan commented quietly.

  “No reason to be. We lost at ’Nam, and I’ve been losing ever since. I don’t know, sometimes I wonder what it’s all about.”

  “When you find out, tell me,” Bolan muttered. “But right now, tell me how you found me.”

  “It’s so easy, I’m ashamed to tell you.” The guy chuckled. “I’d rather you think I’m a genius. But naw, I saw the Smokies tearing up the superslab to get down there, and I saw the damn fire wagons and all the hoop-te-do. I figured they’d bottle you up in that valley. So I circled around and hit the dirt track. I know this country, Big B. I put myself in your place. I knew where you’d break for. But I swear you scared a year’s growth out of me. You were a lot faster and a lot more invisible than I’d expected. Hell, I had just gotten there and was looking for a good lookout point when I walked right into your face.”

  “It was a nice piece of work,” Bolan complimented him. “Glad you’re not a cop.”

  “Used to be.”

  Bolan raised his eyebrows at that. “Yeah?”

  The Georgia Cowboy grinned and gave his passenger a cheerful wink. “Yeah. Cobb County deputy. It’s a good force.”

  “So why aren’t you still with it?”

  “Went to war,” Reynolds replied, sobering suddenly. “When I got back, I’d had a belly full of it. Went to farming for a while. Went broke, too, damn quick. I cashed out with enough to buy my first rig—halves, anyway. I’ve got a partner.”

  Bolan observed, “Won’t support two, though.”

  “Won’t support one, get right down to it. My partner is—well, Shorty’s almost a brother, we’re that close. We get along fine. We usually wheel it together, one at the pedal and the other in the bunk. Spell each other on the long hauls, you know. Make more hauls that way with the same basic investment. Did you know it costs close to five thousand a year just for road taxes and permits? Time we pay insurance and maintenance costs, we don’t see a penny of the first ten thousand. So we went to contract hauls. We—”

  “Where’s your partner now?”

  “Well, uh … I’ve been trying to get around to that.”

  “What’s so hard?”

  “I don’t want you to think that I’m trading numbers with you. You know? I mean, yeah, I’ve got this problem definitely, but it’s not why I came looking for you. Not the only reason.”

  “Okay,” Bolan said, eyeing the guy closely, “we’ve got that covered. So what’s the problem?”

  “Like I said, we usually run together. Couple times a month, each of us takes a loner—you know, to give the other some time at home. Short runs we always take alone. Well, I wasn’t supposed to have this run tonight. Shorty had this one. Hell, it was just a quickie to Savannah, and I was all set for a night at the home twenty. Then, at ten-thirty, the dispatcher calls and says the load is ready for the scales, the tractor is there, but where the hell is the driver? Nowhere, that’s where. And that’s just not like Shorty. He’s a very responsible guy. I thought at first maybe it could be this new beaver, but then I—”

  “What’s a beaver?”

  “Oh, I use the damn radio so much, I guess I—a woman, you know, a lady breaker.”

  “Sounds like a putdown,” Bolan commented.

  “It’s not meant to be. And this one really is a beaver—I mean, you know, a lady breaker.”

  It was a different world, yeah, this CB clutch. A “breaker,” Bolan understood, was a term for anyone using a CB channel.

  Reynolds was continuing the explanation and obviously still having a tough time getting into his “problem.”

  “That’s how Shorty met her in the first place. She’s, uh, a little weird, I think. College-kid type, but I guess maybe twenty-two or twenty-three years on her, flies around in a red superskate and—”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sports car, sorry. I guess it’s a Corvette. I don’t know these cars one from another. Well, she has ears on that skate, and I guess she enjoys shaking up the gear grinders on the superslab between Atlanta and Marietta. Runs back and forth, modulating with them in those bedroom tones, you know what I mean, driving the damn guys right up the walls of their cabs. And sometimes she even pulls alongside and flashes at them. You know?”

  Bolan supposed that he knew. But he asked, “Flashes what?”

  The guy grinned and shrugged. “Whatever’s handiest and inspiring, I guess. Sometimes it’s topless, sometimes bottomless. Shorty swore that she pulled up beside him once in broad daylight without a damn stitch of anything on. Can you imagine? In a convertible, with the top down?”

  “Sounds like great fun,” Bolan said. “How many trucks do you lose between Atlanta and Marietta?”

  “Don’t think there haven’t been some close calls.”

  “You were telling me about Shorty,” Bolan reminded him.

  “I still am. He comes running in one night, all in a lather. He has actually met Miss Superskate of I-75, see. Claims she followed him right into the terminal, see, and—”

  “Bluebird?”

  “Yeah, same place. We’ve been running a contract with them since last year. Hell, I didn’t know they were dirty. Well, anyway, Shorty and Miss Superskate have really been getting it on for the past few months. I mean very heavy, see. She’s been riding the bunk boards
with him on his loner hauls, and I guess he’s been riding her bunkboards during my loners. I don’t know for sure about that. Shorty clammed up on the subject of Miss Superskate right damned quick. Got very sensitive about the subject and even had a couple of brawls with our road buddies over her. You know how guys jaw about something like that.”

  “I don’t know where the hell you’re taking me, cowboy.”

  “We’ll come out above Kennesaw on Highway 41. From there, you—”

  “I was talking about your partner.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know how else to tell it. I was working it through my own mind, I guess, trying to figure something logical about tonight. It’s not like Shorty to flat not show up for a haul. I called all around for him. I even went through his stuff and found the superskate’s phone number. And that’s when the whole thing turned definitely strange, I mean definitely for sure. It’s his turn for the loner—right? He’s been taking her along as his bunkie on the loners—right? So I figured—hell, I don’t know what I figured. Except that something is screwy as hell.”

  “You, uh, are trying to tie it to what happened down there tonight.”

  “In a way, yeah. See, at first it was just a question of Shorty and the beaver. That was screwy enough. Then when you hit me with this contraband rap—well, hell, now I’m really starting to wonder.”

  “It’s the cop in you,” Bolan suggested.

  “There’s not much of that left in me,” the guy said, smiling wanly at his passenger. “Bolan … I’m worried. I’m afraid Shorty has got mixed up in that rat pack.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Does the name Sciaparelli mean anything to you?”

  Bolan raised a solemn gaze to the guy as he replied, “You bet it does. He’s the silent man behind Bluebird. How’d you know?”