“Right!” Jordy said.
“You weren’t supposed to hear that, boy.”
“I’ve heard worse.”
Ben jumped back into the truck, banged his knee on the steering wheel, said a few very ugly words, and dropped the truck into reverse, swiftly backing up a couple of hundred yards. He pulled off the road, around a slight bend in the road, and got out, walking to the rear of the truck. He took out his .30-06, slung a shell belt over his shoulder, and sighted in the blockade through the scope.
He waited for them to open the dance.
“Get the son of a bitch!” a man called, his voice faint.
“I want that fancy truck and the kid. Kill that tall bastard.”
“Scoot out of the truck and bring me that M-16, Jordy,” Ben said. “Lay it in the seat with some extra clips.”
An old Ford barged its way onto the road from behind the blockade. Ben sighted it on the driver and pulled the trigger. With no front window, the slug went true, hitting the man in the face. The Ford swapped ends in the road and slid into the ditch. A man jumped out and Ben shot him in the side, spinning the man around, jerking and cursing in pain. The man fell to the road and was still.
A second vehicle roared onto the road and Ben put two fast rounds through the windshield. The car slewed to one side and the driver fell out, a hole in his throat.
Ben ran to the camper, jerked out his rocket launcher, and cocked the hammer of the RPG. He inserted the rocket and rolled it until the grenade was locked in, mated with the U-cut. He stepped out from behind the truck, dropped to one knee, and sighted through the telescopic sight with its built-in range-finding scale. There was no wind, and the distance was three hundred and fifty meters. Ben’s first shot hit true. The 85mm rocket grenade, capable of penetrating up to thirteen inches of rolled steel armor, exploded the blockade in a burst of flames and debris and human bodies.
There was a hole in the blockade large enough to drive a tank through.
Not wanting to waste his rockets, Ben stowed the RPG and the M-16 back into the camper, along with his sniper rifle, and waited outside the truck, listening to the fading moans of the badly wounded.
Ben dropped the truck into four-wheel drive and skirted the burning, smoking ruins of the blockade. He left the carnage behind without so much as a second glance.
“Reckon why they wanted to kill you, Ben?” the boy asked.
“I don’t know, Jordy. But I just don’t like unfriendly folks.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy replied solemnly. “I picked up on that right off.”
Ben took a county road and skirted the town of Tahlequah. There had once been a university there, but Ben did not want to see the place in ruins. He had personally witnessed too many institutions of higher learning in ruin. It was depressing.
He and Jordy made camp on an eastern finger of Tenkiller Ferry Lake and fished for their supper. Jordy had never sport-fished before, but he was a fast learner. Once he got the hang of casting, he was all smiles, especially when he hooked what was at least a five-pound bass and fought him to the shore.
“Supper, Ben!” the boy yelled.
“Supper, Jordy,” Ben replied, smiling at the boy’s happiness.
And his own.
They slept that night in a deserted old fishing cabin, with Ben getting up twice in the night to add wood to the fire.
“Cold as a witch’s tit,” Jordy spoke from his sleeping bag on the floor.
“We are going to have to do something about your language, Jordy,” Ben told him. “It isn’t right for a ten- year-old to speak like you do.”
“Why?” the boy asked.
“It just isn’t.”
“OK, Ben. Whatever you say. But all the kids my age that I know talk like that.”
“Do you hear me talking like that?”
“No, sir.”
“Bear that in mind.”
“OK. Does that mean when you cuss, I can cuss?”
Ben smiled, tossing another log on the fire. The wind had picked up, howling around the old cabin. “No, it doesn’t. But I’ll try to watch my language, too. Deal?”
“Deal.”
They had just crossed Interstate 40, heading south on Highway 2 when Ben’s CB radio suddenly popped into vocal life, almost scaring the piss out of Jordy.
“Son of a bitch!” the boy yelled.
Ben fixed him with a stern look. “I’ll forgive that. This time.” He reached for the mike. “Come on,” he said to the unknown caller.
“You in the fancy pickup,” the voice said. “Pull it over and you won’t get hurt. We got you blocked front and back.”
Ben glanced at his map and cut the wheel hard to his right, heading west on a badly rutted old blacktop road. “Hang on, Jordy,” Ben told him. “And keep watch for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ben drove as fast as he dared, but had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to be fast enough to elude his unknown pursuers.
“Trucks and motorcycles comin’ up fast behind us, Ben!” Jordy called.
Eufaula Lake was looming up large in front of him, but Ben didn’t want to get caught on the long bridge with no place to run.
Ben slid onto a dirt road with a farmhouse and falling-down barn, brought the truck to a halt, and jumped out, Thompson in hand. He leveled the old submachine gun and pulled the trigger, fighting the rise of the weapon as the bolt worked at full auto.
A windshield of a truck exploded in a shower of glass and two motorcyclists were flung backward as bloody, smoking holes appeared in their jackets. The motorcycles slammed into a car and the car slewed sideways, ending in a ditch. Ben riddled the car with .45-caliber slugs, took time out to change drums, then jumped back in the truck and backed out onto the rutted road. He pulled the pin on a Firefrag grenade and tossed it under the bullet-riddled truck. Ben was a hundred yards up the road when the grenade did its work. The truck exploded, sending burning metal and parts of human bodies all over the place.
“Slocum!” Ben’s CB radio squawked. “What’s happenin’, man?”
“The son of a bitch has blocked the road on us!” the voice of who Ben guessed was Slocum yelled over the air. “Cut him off at the bridge.”
“10-4.”
“We got to hunt a hole, Jordy,” Ben said. “Hang on, boy.”
Ben chanced a quick look at the map and made up his mind. He cut off the road the first chance he got, dropped the truck into four-wheel drive, and drove for a mile straight north. He then turned back east, keeping the black smoke from the burning truck to his right. He fought the steering wheel as the pickup dug and spun through the brush-covered ground. When the smoke was at least two miles behind them, Ben cut south, both he and the boy bouncing up and down in the seats as they roared on.
“Fasten your seat belt, Jordy!” Ben yelled.
“My what?” Jordy yelled over the roaring of the engine.
“Forget it, boy. Just hang on.”
The road appeared just in front of them, but a deep ditch was between them and blacktop. Ben raced along, the road to their right until he found a place where he could try. He spun the wheel, goosed the engine, and they were across, the rear tires on rutted blacktop. Ben slipped the truck out of four-wheel drive. At the junction of Highway 2, Ben cut north, driving as fast as he dared until intersecting with Highway 266 and Interstate 40. He
