“Capital idea,” Red said.
I looked at Leonard and he shrugged.
I looked at Brett. “Whatever,” she said.
“Good,” Irvin said. “It’s decided. Good luck and all that.”
Bill said, “There’s some food in the pack, some blankets to put around you if you get cold. A knife. Matches. Some odds and ends. Light stuff. Don’t worry about returning it.”
Bill and Irvin started back to the plane.
Red said, “Take care of yourself, Herman. If it is you or these people, make it you. I think you and I can start our own business when you come out of this. To hell with Big Jim. We both have the experience. What do you say?”
“I say we talk later,” Herman said.
Red shook hands, hugged his brother, and went back to the plane.
Herman pulled the pack off my shoulder. “We’ll take turns with this.”
Herman started out across the wasteland.
We followed, carrying our guns.
24
We hadn’t gone very far when we heard the plane lift off. We looked back and saw it make a half circle and head south, a great shadow against the night sky, a couple of weak red lights burning.
“We won’t see them again, will we?” Brett said.
“Probably not,” I said. “We just got to do this as best we can.”
“Bill will make Irvin wait the allotted time,” Herman said.
“Your brother?” Leonard asked. “He going to make him wait?”
“Red … I can’t say,” Herman said. “Red has feelings for me when I’m present, but I suspicion out of sight out of mind to some extent.”
We walked for a long time, eventually began to notice there was more foliage. It was sparse at first, like a few pimples on a teenager’s face, then it became thick as acne, dark and full in the moonlight. Finally there were scrubby trees. We came to a slight rise, and just before topping it, I took the pack and canteen from Leonard, who had been carrying it, and we all shared water. Satisfied, we started over the rise and stopped suddenly.
Down below in a place not deep enough to be a valley, but lower than the land we had crossed, there was a very green expanse and there was a log cabin built ranch style. The logs had obviously been hauled in. There wasn’t a tree anywhere big enough to hollow out into a canoe, let alone build a house.
The cabin was brightly lit and there was a lot of activity inside. We could hear someone singing. Badly. And there was laughter and loud talk.
Off to the right of the cabin was a great pool of water and in the middle of the pool was a huge water pump under an open shed. There was a bridge that ran from the shed to the cabin. The water looked like ink in the moonlight. To the left of the cabin was a corral, and in it were horses and mules; the mules easily distinguished by their tall ears.
Further left was a huge tank, heating fuel most likely, and beyond that a satellite dish, and further left a barn like you would expect to find somewhere in Iowa. There were two jeeps parked out front.
To prevent being outlined in the moonlight, we all hit the dirt and lay on top of the rise. Leonard said, “This has to be it.”
“This is it,” Herman said. “I’ve been here. I came by plane and was driven in by jeep by a slightly different route. I remember it well. It’s kind of a country club, if what you like to do instead of golf is drink, pill, and screw. You’d be amazed how well equipped it is. Television. Movies. Horseback riding.”
“We put one of the vehicles out of commission, take the other,” Leonard said.
“What we do first,” Herman said, “is slide down there and see what’s happening. Try and locate Tillie. There’s a chance she might not even be here. If she isn’t, we slide right on back, head to the plane on foot, and they never know we’ve been here.”
“He has a point,” I said.
“I’ll snoop down there, see if I can locate Tillie,” Leonard said. “I see her, I’ll come back and report. Then you disable one of the rides, Herman, hot-wire the other. Being a former career criminal, I assume you know how to do that.”
“I can manage,” Herman said.
“Then it’s you and me, Hap,” Leonard said. “We go down there and open up a can of blazing whup ass with a lava chaser.”
“You and Hap and me,” Brett said.
“If you insist on being modern,” Leonard said. “Me and Hap and you. One thing though, I go down there and you hear gunfire, don’t think I want to do the noble thing. You know, like have you leave my ass so you can escape. You come down there with guns blazing.”
“They’ll think it’s the Battle of the Bulge,” I said.
“I’ll take the honky spreader,” Leonard said.
