by Jeff Gulvin
‘Follow that train.’
‘Can we do that?’
‘Watch me.’ Penny put the truck in first, and they bumped across the tracks and swung north. He sped up and gained on the train, and then he eased off, just keeping the relevant boxcar in sight. He scooped up his cellphone and dialled Swartz’s number in Dallas.
On the train Harrison stood still, not quite believing what he had just witnessed. His truck sitting at the railroad crossing: Jean and Matt Penny. What was Penny doing there? Something must’ve happened. He gazed the length of the train, but it bulged into a curve and he could no longer see them.
Penny kept with the train, which was not difficult. He stayed well back, though, and looked across at Jean. ‘In a funny kind of way, it makes sense.’
‘What does?’
‘Seeing JB on a train up here.’
‘Because of Wichita Falls.’
Penny nodded. ‘The weapons are stolen from all over the country. Not only are the FTRA freighting them to the militia, they’re shipping them to this central point.’
‘It must be a big operation.’
Penny nodded. ‘Didn’t that cop in Spokane say there were in excess of two thousand FTRA members?’
‘Something like that.’
‘That’s a lot of bodies, Jean. And there’s us thinking they were drug-dealers.’ His face was lined and serious.
‘D’you think they pose a real threat?’ Jean asked him.
‘The militia? They didn’t used to. But then their leaders started dying in suspicious circumstances.’ Penny shook his head. ‘Hong Kong troops running amok, just like they predicted.’
‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
‘What—Pat Robertson and his New World Order?’ Penny laughed. ‘That was a phrase coined by George Bush after the Gulf War. The Iron Curtain had just come down and that was the New World Order. No more Cold War.’ He looked at her. ‘No, Jean, I don’t believe the United Nations has deployed one hundred thousand Asian troops on US soil.’
25
BOBCAT REECE SPOKE TO the assembly gathered in Cassity, West Virginia. Over two-thirds of the population had gathered at the high school to listen to him. Vernon Jewel stood with two of his lieutenants to one side of the stage and watched the faces of his fellow citizens with a certain amount of pride. Only a few months ago, none of these people would have given Reece the time of day. That was before Billy Bob Lafitte got killed, before the deaths of Daniel Pataki and Tommy Anderson. It was before two women had been abducted in a black helicopter. Jewel watched the door as yet more people filed into the building, then he looked at his watch. Reece was halfway through his speech and still people were showing up. At last, they were finally remembering who the Constitution had been written for. He watched Reece speaking: hawkish to look at, but totally in command of his audience. Jewel, along with a number of his team, both men and women, had attended a survival school in Reece’s compound up in Montana. Reece was ex-Green Beret and it showed. His SPIKE teams were as good as any soldiering outfit Jewel had ever seen.
Reece finished speaking, took questions and then climbed down from the stage to shake hands with the throng that pushed towards him. ‘Bless you,’ he said to them. ‘God bless you all.’
When the crowd had thinned, he stepped into the fresh evening air with Jewel and looked across the concourse to where two state troopers stood by their road unit.
‘Panic-stricken,’ he said. ‘Look at them, openly watching us. We’ve got them on the run, Vern.’ He laid a hand on Jewel’s shoulder. ‘Listen, our time is coming. Our moment of history is almost upon us. Vern, I’ve been using this whistle-stop speaking tour to gauge public opinion and our rating’s as high as it’s ever been.’
Jewel lifted one eyebrow. ‘You sound like a politician, Bob. Our rating’s high because we’ve got the truth.’
‘I know that. But what I’m saying is, they didn’t know it till now. They being the people who’ve ignored us for years.’ He glanced across to where the state troopers were now back in their car and pulling out of the lot. ‘Vern, the hour is at hand, the clock is about to strike and I have a job for you to do.’
Sidetrack signalled to the others to finish their card game. Harrison stood with him by the door to the boxcar and looked towards the line of hills in the distance.’
‘We going right to the dump, Sidetrack?’ he asked. ‘Wouldn’t that be a little bit stupid?’
Sidetrack grinned then, for the first time in days, and he slapped Harrison on the shoulder. ‘That’s what I like about you, Four-String. You think.’ He pointed to the hills. ‘The man’s gonna meet us up there with his truck. We take delivery and then hide out in the arroyo waiting for the 3-17.’
‘Which takes us back east.’
Sidetrack jabbed a dirty forefinger at the dog-eared railroad map he clutched. ‘Via Fort Worth. We got a lotta trains to jump before we hit West Virginia.’ He took his phone from his jacket and tapped in a number, then he stood with his finger in one ear while it rang.
Limpet came alongside Harrison. ‘What’s happening, bro?’
‘The man is making a phone call, Limpet. Setting up the drop.’
Limpet sucked wetly on the cigarette he had rolled. ‘One hundred pounds is a lotta fucking gunpowder, man.’
‘What d’you figure we’re gonna do with it?’
Limpet shrugged. ‘Ship it to West Virginia, like the man said.’
‘And then?’
‘Who gives a fuck. Alls we do is use the network. This is our turf. It’s where we start and finish.’
‘And get paid.’
Limpet looked at him and smiled. ‘Unless we’s on probation.’
‘Kiss my ass, brother. For this, I’m getting paid.’
Limpet picked tobacco threads from his teeth. ‘Looks like you might at that,’ he said. ‘Old Sidetrack’s got you riding shotgun.’
‘You noticed, huh?’
‘Oh yeah.’ Limpet was staring at him now, one eye half-closed as always. It gave him a macabre look and you could never tell his genuine expression. ‘I guess he figures you’re meaner than I am.’
Harrison shook his head. ‘I figure this is my big test, Limpet.’ He leaned and spat. ‘I aim to come through it and then I aim to get paid.’
They jumped off the train fifty yards from the hills and a few miles east of Wichita Falls. Harrison fell awkwardly and winced, then rolled over and sat up, rubbing his ankle. He looked at the train and figured how long it would take to trundle past and expose them to the highway on the other side of the tracks. Sidetrack was looking down at him. ‘What you done?’
‘Twisted my damn ankle. Just give me a minute.’
Hooch bent down. ‘You want me to carry you, Four-String?’
‘Nope.’ Harrison eased off his boot and rubbed at his ankle. ‘Just give me a minute, is all. I’ll walk. I’ll be just fine.’
Sidetrack was watching the train, then the line of hills. ‘Come on, man. I want to be out of sight of the road.’
‘We are out of sight of the road, Sidetrack. The fucking train’s still going by.’
Sidetrack nodded to Hooch. ‘Get him up.’
Harrison waved him away and tugged his boot back on. The train was almost past and he gingerly got to his feet.
‘You wanna lean on me?’ Hooch said. Harrison shook his head and pressed his weight down on to the foot. It didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt, but he was buying precious time. ‘I’m OK. Let’s go.’
He started to hobble forward and the others strode towards the break of arroyos that led to the hills. Harrison was last and he could hear the ding-ding-ding of the track bell. He glanced over his shoulder: the train would be gone by the time they made the arroyo.
Sidetrack disappeared into the gully first, followed by Hooch and Carlsbad. Limpet glanced back and Harrison stopped, then leaned on his knees and looked behind. He could see the black Chevy way back on the highway. He stood tall then and looked at Limpet, who
disappeared into the arroyo. Harrison turned and frantically waved his arms.
Jean saw him. ‘There,’ she said, leaning out of the window. ‘Look, Matt. They’ve got off the train.’
Penny slowed the truck. He took the binoculars that Harrison kept in his glove compartment and directed them at the waving figure. ‘It’s JB, all right,’ he said. ‘He’s pointing north.’ At that moment, Harrison disappeared from view and Penny scanned the immediate horizon. ‘He must mean the hills. I can’t see anything else. God, I wish we had a tracker on him.’
He grabbed the road map and looked at what was around them. He found where they were on the highway and picked up a series of dirt roads that sportsmen used in the hunting season. He looked across at Jean and she guessed his thoughts.
‘Don’t even think about it, Matthew,’ she said. ‘I know what I’m doing. I escaped from Vietnam when I was barely twenty. I spent months at sea in a boat that should have sunk. So don’t worry about me.’
Penny smiled widely. ‘I’m not worrying about you. I’m worrying about my pension when I have to explain how you got killed on surveillance with me.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t plan to get killed. Besides, if we’re spotted, we’ll just be another necking couple in a quiet corner of the country.’
‘I’m gonna take that as a promise,’ Penny said, and pulled back on to the highway.
Harrison climbed out of the arroyo and dropped his pack in the lee of the hill. Sidetrack was at the top, with a pair of binoculars and his cellphone. Hooch was swigging water from a bottle and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Harrison motioned for him to pass it over and he took a long drink. The plastic container had warmed the water, but it still slaked his thirst.
Limpet was looking back at the railbed and gauging the distance in his mind. ‘One hundred fucking pounds,’ he said.
‘Lotta blast potential right there,’ Harrison said. ‘It’d do what they did in Oklahoma, for sure.’
‘That was a Ryder truck packed full of the damn stuff,’ Hooch said.
‘Fertiliser. You need more of it than high-grade C-4.’
‘How come you know so much about it?’
Harrison leaned an elbow on his pack. ‘I blew a lotta holes in Vietnam, Hooch. If we found a VC and couldn’t get him in a firefight, we’d come up and blow the hole.’
Hooch was tearing strips off a piece of jerky. Harrison looked up at Sidetrack framed against the skyline. It was late afternoon now and the sun was low in the west. ‘He ain’t coming till it gets dark,’ Harrison said to him.
‘Course not.’
‘You’re kinda jumpy, Sidetrack. What makes this one so different? So we’re hauling one hundred pounds of explosive. We can handle it.’
‘I told you. We’re hauling it right across the country. The word from the main man is caution. The Feds are everywhere because of this guerrilla war that’s been going on, or didn’t you notice.’ Harrison looked evenly at him. ‘I never read the papers.’ Sidetrack sat down and took a bottle of mescal from his pack. He unscrewed the lid and took a short swallow before stowing it away again. Then he stood up once more and scanned the horizon with binoculars.
Penny and Jean lay in the bunch-grass just to the south of the arroyos and saw Sidetrack on the hill. Penny was watching him through shielded binoculars to ensure there was no glare off the lens. He was wearing Harrison’s desert gilly suit and Jean was wearing his summer one, which was way too big for her. But so long as they both lay still, no one would know they were there. Penny had driven the truck into a stand of cotton woods and given their position to Swartz over the short-wave radio.
Swartz was on the ground in Wichita Falls and a number of the other agents were watching the Texas Guard base. The exact location of the munitions dump was not known by the two marines arrested in London, but the FBI had a name and a few discreet enquiries had given them a picture. Sergeant Paulie Caulfield, a.k.a. Rambo because of his attitude and alleged exploits in the field, was the lynchpin of the Wichita Falls operation. They had been watching his house ever since the call came in from Washington. Agents from the Texas special ops group had tailed him and their initial report detailed extensive ‘cleaning’ and counter-surveillance techniques. That had been passed to Swartz and the task force was exercising extreme caution. Either Caulfield always worked that way or something had recently spooked him.
Penny and Jean lay very still, watching Sidetrack on the hillside as the light faded around him. Jean stifled a little cry when Harrison suddenly poked his head out of the arroyo to join him. They lay between the rocks and the sagebrush as the sky visibly darkened, the clouds that Penny had forecast building in from the south. Sidetrack disappeared again and Penny lifted himself on one elbow. ‘I think we’re gonna get wet,’ he said.
He left her then and made his way back to the truck, where he called in their new position to Swartz. Swartz told him that they had a tracker on Caulfield’s truck and his movements were being monitored by a fixed wing. ‘We could do with a tracker in Johnny Buck’s pocketbook,’ Penny had replied, before making his way back to the lay-up point.
Harrison had not spotted Penny and Jean, but he had the feeling they were out there somewhere. Whether they were alone, he did not know, but he doubted it. His instincts told him otherwise. Whatever had happened to send Penny in search of Jean, it would be enough to send more than Matt Penny. He looked through the twilight at the crew and smiled inwardly to himself. Nobody knew who they were, Sidetrack had said. They came and went and killed just as they pleased, because nobody knew they were out there. He thought of Spinelli and the months of painstaking work he had done on his own, to build up the picture of what was happening on the railroads of America. He had cared that bodies were turning up here, there and everywhere, with bits missing to make it look like locomotive accidents. If Spinelli had not spent his own time and his own money on people like Southern Sidetrack, Harrison would not be sitting here now. He thought of Jean—her face framed in the window of his truck and the pictures of her boy with his head shattered, lying on that slab in St Charles Parish.
‘You wanna shot, Four-String?’ Limpet waved the neck of a bottle under his nose, but Harrison pushed it away. He heard a noise and lifted his head. Sidetrack, too, was listening. It was the drone of an engine in the distance.
Harrison followed Sidetrack as he scrambled up the hill and they both saw the glimmer of headlights in the distance. Sidetrack looked back at the others. ‘Get ready, you fellas,’ he said. ‘I wanna make that train.’
Penny and Jean heard the truck approaching, and Penny stood up in his gilly suit and looked back the way they had come. He turned to Jean then. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is the really dangerous part. I want you to go back to the truck.’
Jean opened her mouth to argue, but Penny lifted a finger. ‘No arguments. I need you to do it, Jean. If anything happens out here, we have to get word to Swartz. Go back to the truck and then find yourself a hiding place a little way away from it. We don’t want any third eye finding you sat in a pick-up in the middle of nowhere.’ He smiled through the darkness at her. ‘If I’m not back in two hours, you call the cavalry. OK?’
Jean bunched her lips, then nodded and moved away into the darkness. Penny watched for a moment longer, then began to pick his path towards the hill. He had spent eighteen months with Force Reconnaissance, the Marine Corps special forces, and he could move as silently at night as anyone he knew. Within a few minutes, he could hear low voices from the other side of the hill and he lay as still as the grave, the gilly suit camouflaging him completely. He knew Harrison had always kept his covert gear in his truck box, part of his work for the Louisiana special ops group. It suited Penny’s purpose now and he inched between the rocks further up the hill until the voices became intelligible. The truck was getting nearer, but not so near as to drown out the sounds of conversation. He strained to pick up words, listening for Harrison’s voice. He heard others, but not him.
‘We gonna make that train?’ somebody said.
‘We’ll make it.’
‘When’s the next one, if we don’t?’
‘We’ll make the fucking train. Alls you got to do, when the truck gets here, is load up your packs.’
‘One hundred pounds, man. That’s twenty apiece.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘OK, big guy. You can carry mine.’
Penny frowned in the darkness. The conversation stilled and he wondered what had happened. Then, steeling himself, he ventured to the top of the hill and spotted five shadows in the darkness making their way along the arroyo. Up ahead, the lights from the truck were getting brighter. He began to inch forward.
Harrison stood with Limpet, watching the approaching truck. Sidetrack had a flashlight, which he waved in an arc, and the truck slowed then, swung to their left and pulled up where the dirt road met the arroyo. They moved forward quickly now, Sidetrack urging them into action. Two men occupied the cab of the pick-up. They waited, engine running, until the five hobos took shape in the darkness and then they jumped to the ground. Harrison looked for Rambo, but did not see him. Further down the arroyo, Matt Penny was watching.
‘Let’s get it done,’ Sidetrack said. ‘Haul ass. Come on.’
The two men climbed into the back of the truck and opened a wooden crate. Harrison swung up next to them and they began to lift out small, square cartons wrapped in oiled paper. They handed them gingerly one by one to Harrison, who passed them down. Hooch, Carlsbad, Limpet and Sidetrack made space in their backpacks for the packages. Harrison stacked the final few on the flatbed of the pick-up and then placed them in his own pack.
‘Where’s Rambo at?’ he said to one of the militia men.
‘He’s got other things to do.’ The man lowered the lid on the wooden crate and snapped the catches to. He swung himself over the side and landed in the dirt. Harrison handed him his pack, then swung down after him. The man helped him get his arms through the straps, then he and his accomplice were back in the cab and spinning the wheels in the dust. Harrison had made sure he got a close look at both of them, so he could identify them later. Lying not ten feet from where he now stood, Penny had done the same.
