Malachai made no move. “Sir, that uniform. It don’t go with the truck.”
“They won’t see it until they stop us,” Randy said. “Then it’ll be too late. Anyway, all sorts of people are wearing all sorts of clothes. I’ll bet you’d see highwaymen in uniforms if they got their hands on them.”
“That ain’t all, sir,” Malachai said. “It’s your face. It’s white. They’re more likely to tackle a black face than a white face. They see my face they say, `Huh, here’s something soft and probably with no gun.’ So they relax. Maybe it gives us that extra second, Mister Randy.”
Randy hesitated. He had confidence in Malachai’s driving and in his judgment and courage. But it was the driver who would have to do the talking, if there was any talking, and who would have to keep his hands off the pistol. That would be the hardest thing.
The Admiral spoke, very carefully. “Now Randy, I’m not trying to outrank you. You’re the Captain. You’re in command and it’s your decision. But I think Malachai is right. Dungarees and a black face are better bait than a uniform and a white face.” Randy said, “Okay. You’re right. You drive, Malachai. You take the pistol up front. Keep it out of sight. There is only one thing to remember. When they stop us they’ll all be watching you. They don’t know we’re here. They’ll be watching you and they’ll kill you if you go for your gun. So leave your gun alone until we start shooting.”
Malachai grinned and said, “Yes, sir,” and they got in and departed. Looking through the glass in the rear door, Randy saw his wife and Helen and Dan on the porch. They were waving. Peyton was there too but she was not waving. She had her face buried in her mother’s dress.
They drove east on River Road. After a few miles Randy told Malachai to look for signs of the place where Dan Gunn had been decoyed and beaten. They found a sign. Since there was no longer any care of the roads, the grass had grown high on the shoulders and in one place it was trampled. In a ditch, nearby, they discovered slivers of broken glass. Then they found the twisted and empty frame of Dan’s glasses. The frame was useless and yet Randy picked it up and shoved it in a pocket. A lawyer’s gesture, he thought. Evidence.
They drove on, past the Sunbury home. Randy was tempted to order a stop to inquire about the children’s typhoid. Dan would want to know. He did not stop. The Sunburys were good people and he trusted them, but the truck was a secret, a military secret, and it was senseless to expose it.
River Road was clear. Nothing moved on River Road. They took the lateral north. Even though Malachai avoided the worst potholes and drove with exasperating deliberation, it was rough riding. It shook up Bill McGovern and Sam Hazzard. They were older and they would tire.
Near Pasco Creek they passed a group of inhabited shacks. Approaching them, Malachai called back, “People!”
Randy turned and looked over Malachai’s shoulder. He could see, from behind the front seat, but not be seen. He saw two children scurry indoors and at another place a bearded man crouched behind a woodpile, training a gun on the truck. He made no hostile move, but the muzzle tracked them. It was obvious that few people traveled this road and those who did were not welcome.
Randy was relieved when they turned into the better road toward Fort Repose. They were all stiff by then, for it was impossible to stand upright in the panel truck. The Admiral and Bill could sit cross-legged on the floor and view the landscape through their ports, but Randy had to half-crouch to see through the rear windows. When the truck reached higher ground, where the road was straight and they could see anything approach for nearly a mile, he told Malachai to stop. “We’ll take ten,” he said.
He threw open the back doors and got out, groaning, feeling permanently warped. He walked, waving his arms and flexing his knees. Bill McGovern shuffled down the road, humpbacked. The Admiral tried to stretch, and a joint or tendon cracked audibly. He cursed. Malachai grinned.
“Now I see why you wanted to drive!” Randy said. He looked both ways. Nothing was coming. He went back to the truck and found the thermos Lib had given him. He opened it, expecting water. It was sweetened black coffee. “Look!” he said. “Look what Lib-my wife did for us!” He knew it was the last of the jar.
There was a cup for each, but they decided to take only half a cup then, saving the rest for the tag end of evening when they might need it more.
They got back into the truck and continued the patrol, past the Hickey house, empty, door open, windows wantonly smashed. Randy noticed that the beekeeper’s car was gone. Jim Hickey, with such valuable trading goods as honey and beeswax, must have been holding gasoline. In the past month anyone who had it would have traded gas for honey. The objective of the highwaymen was probably the car and the gas, Randy deduced, rather than honey. This conclusion disheartened him. The highwaymen might be hundreds of miles from Fort Repose now.
Nearing Fort Repose-they must avoid being seen in the town-they turned off on a winding, high-crowned clay road that ran two miles to an antique covered bridge across the St. Johns. Once across the river they would turn south and shortly thereafter hit the road to San Marco.
Rattling over the clay washboard, it seemed hardly worth while to keep a watch from the back, and yet Randy did. Suddenly he saw that they were being followed. He had seen no car on the Pasco Creek Road before making the turn. They had passed no car on the clay lateral, nor any houses either. The car was simply there, following them at a respectable distance, making no effort to catch them and yet not dropping back. He recalled an abandoned citrus packing shed at the turn. It must have been concealed there. Randy called so that Malachai could clearly hear, “We’ve got company-about three hundred yards back.”
He strained his eyes through the dirty little rear windows. It was difficult to make them focus, like trying to train a gun from a bouncing jeep, and it was almost dusk. It was a late model light gray hardtop or sedan and Jim Hickey had owned such a car but all makes looked pretty much alike and it seemed half of them were either light gray or off white. He called to Malachai, “Speed up a little. See what happens.”
Malachai increased their speed to forty or forty-five. The car behind maintained its distance, exactly, as if it were tied to them. This proved nothing. This would be standard operating procedure for an honest citizen following a strange truck on a lonely, unfrequented road. He wouldn’t want to get too close, but he was probably in a hurry to get home before dark. So if the truck sped up, he would too. “Drop back to twenty,” Randy ordered.
The truck slowed. So did the car. Again, this proved nothing except caution.
Randy turned to Sam Hazzard and Bill McGovern. “This fellow behind us is either an innocent bystander or he’s herding us.”
“Herding us?” Bill said.
“Herding us into the gun of some pal up front.” They hit a smoother strip of road and Randy could see two men in the car. He thought the back was empty but he couldn’t be sure. “Two of them. Both men.”
They rode on, silently. This was entirely different from a patrol in war when you went out in fear and despite your fear, hoping you would find no trouble. His only fear was that they might miss them, exhaust their gas in futile cruising, and lose their one best chance to wipe them out. This was a personal matter and a matter of survival. It was like having a nest of coral snakes under the house. You had to go in after them and kill them or certainly one day they would kill a child or your dog. In a matter such as this, the importance of your own life diminished. So he prayed that the men behind were highwaymen.
In a minute or two he knew that they were, because the opposite end of the narrow, covered bridge was blocked. They were being herded into a cul-de-sac and the tactical situation was changed and their plan useless. There would be no field of fire from the side ports of the truck. The fight would have to be made entirely from front and rear. He said, “Keep going. “They had to drive right into it. If they stopped short of the bridge and jumped out to make their fight at a distance then the highwaymen could shoot and run. They had to get in close.
Malachai kept going.
“Sam, you and Bill take the ones in back,” Randy said. “I’ll help Malachai in front. Forget the sides.”
The Admiral and Bill crawled to the rear. Randy crouched behind Malachai’s back. He checked the carbine. It was ready. He shifted an extra clip to his shirt pocket where it would be handiest.
The block at the opposite end of the bridge was their Model-A, its boxy profile unmistakable. A man waited at each bumper. You could ram the car but you could not ram the men so this tactic would do no good. Randy recognized them from Dan’s description. The one with gorilla arms and the submachine gun stood at the front. The gun was a Thompson. The man with the bat was on the other side. He carried a holstered pistol, too, but from the way he hefted the bat, like a hitter eager to step to the plate, the bat was his weapon. Four men, then,
