“That’s good. It’ll cover our escape.”
“Escape from what?”
“The scene of the crime.”
“What crime?”
“I told you. The train wreck.”
“What’re you talking about?”
Roy didn’t answer.
They walked through knee-high grass. Close to the abandoned junkers, where a mower couldn’t reach and where Hermit Hobson had never trimmed, the grass was much higher and thicker than it was elsewhere.
The hilltop ended in a rounded point somewhat like the prow of a ship.
Roy stood on the edge of the slope and looked down. “That’s where it’ll happen.”
Eighty feet below, railroad tracks curved around the prow of the hill.
“We’ll derail it on the curve,” Roy said. He pointed to two parallel ribbons of heavy corrugated sheet metal that led from the tracks, up the slope, and over the brow of the hill. “Hobson was a real packrat. I found fifty of those six-foot long sheets in big piles of junk behind his shack. That was a hell of a piece of luck. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to set this up.”
“What’re they for?” Colin asked.
“The truck.”
“What truck?”
“Over there.”
A four-year-old, battered Ford pickup stood about thirty feet back from the slope. The corrugated strips led to it, then under it. The Ford had no tires; its rust-filmed wheels rested on the sheet metal.
Colin hunkered down beside the truck. “How’d you get the corrugated panels under there?”
“I lifted one wheel at a time with a jack I found in one of these wrecks.”
“Why go to all that trouble?”
“Because we can’t just push the truck across bare ground,” Roy said. “The wheels would dig into the earth and stop it.”
Colin looked from the truck to the brow of the hill. “Let me get this straight. Let me see if I understand. You want to push the truck along this track you’ve made, let it roll down the slope, into the side of the train.”
“Yeah.”
Colin sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Roy asked.
“Another damned game.”
“No game.”
“I guess I’m supposed to do what I did with the Sarah Callahan scheme. You want me to show you the holes in it so you’ll have an excuse to chicken out.”
“What holes?” Roy challenged.
“For one thing, a train is too damned big and heavy to be derailed by a little truck like this.”
“Not if we do it right,” Roy said. “If it’s perfectly timed, if the truck’s coming down the slope just as the train’s rounding the bend, the engineer will hit the brakes. When he tries to stop the train on a sharp curve like that, it’ll start rocking like crazy. And then when the truck hits it, it’ll roll right off the tracks.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re wrong,” Roy said. “There’s a pretty good chance it’ll happen just like I say.”
“No.”
“It’s worth a try. Even if it doesn’t derail the train, it’ll scare the hell out of them. Either way, it’ll be a popper.”
“There’s something else you haven’t thought of. This truck’s been sitting out here for a couple of years. The wheels are rusted. No matter how hard we push, they aren’t going to turn.”
“You’re wrong again,” Roy said happily. “I thought of that. There hasn’t been that much rain the past few years. They weren’t rusted really bad. I had to spend a few days working on the truck, but now the wheels will turn for us.”
For the first time, Colin noticed dark, oily stains on the wheel beside him. He reached behind it and found that it had been freshly, excessively lubricated. His hand came away with gobs of grease on it.
Roy grinned. “You see any other flaws in the plan?”
Colin wiped his hand in the grass and stood up.
Roy stood, too. “Well?”
The sun had just set. The western sky was golden.
“When do you figure to do it?” Colin asked.
Roy looked at his wristwatch. “About six or seven minutes from now.”
“There’ll be a train then?”
“Six nights a week at this time, a passenger train comes through here. I’ve done some checking. It starts in San Diego, stops in L.A., goes on to San Francisco and then Seattle before starting back: I’ve sat on the hill and watched it a lot of nights. It really moves. It’s an express.”
“You said the timing has to be perfect.”
“It will be. Or near enough.”
“But no matter how carefully you’ve planned it, you can’t expect the railroad to co-operate. I mean, trains don’t always run on time.”
“This one usually does,” Roy said confidently. “Besides, that’s not too important. All we have to do is push the truck closer to the edge, then wait until the train is almost here. When we see the locomotive coming, we’ll give the truck a little shove, tip it over the brink, and away it’ll go:”
Colin bit his lip, frowned. “I know you set this up so it can’t be done.”
“Wrong. I want to do it.”
“It’s a game. There’s a big hole in the plan, and you expect me to find it.”
“No holes.”
“I must be missing something.”
“You haven’t missed anything.”
Each of the ruined pickup’s front wheels was jammed against a wooden chock. Roy removed these braces and threw them aside.
“What’s the joke?” Colin asked.
“We’ve got to get moving.”
“There must be a joke.”
“We don’t have much time.”
Both of the truck’s doors had been removed, either by the collision or by Hermit Hobson. Roy went to the open driver’s side, reached in, and put his right hand on the steering wheel. He put his left hand on the door frame, ready to push.
“Roy, why don’t you give up? I know there’s got to be a catch.”
“Get around on the other side and help.”
Still trying to find the hole, still wondering what he had overlooked, still certain that Roy was playing an elaborate trick on him, Colin walked around the truck and stationed himself at the open passenger side.
Roy looked through the truck at him. “Put both hands on the front of the door frame and push.”
Colin did as he was told, and Roy pushed from the other side.
The truck didn’t move.
What’s the
“It’s been sitting here awhile,” Roy said. “It’s made a sort of depression for itself.”
“Ahhh,” Colin said. “And of course we’re not strong enough to push it out.”
“Sure we are,” Roy said. “Put your back into it.”
Colin strained.
“Harder!” Roy said.
It won’t come up out of its little depression, Colin thought. He knows it. That’s the way he planned it.
