Renewal 9 - Delay Tactics (5 page)

So, when Kirk sent word to Tam Rogers about what was happening, she rounded up some of her friends to see if they could offer a little assistance to their buddies in Teeny Town. Tam was no ordinary woman. She ran an entire county of tough farm men without much argument, and she did it well. She was also the only woman who had ever tempted Kirk to give up his life as the lone gunman of Teeny Town. Even in her early fifties, she cut a fine figure on horseback, which was exactly how Gary Tucker first laid eyes on her.

On the long, straight stretch of highway between Lewisburg and Shelbyville, Gary was bored to death in the lead truck. He could only count so many overgrown ruins of shabbily built tract houses before he was tempted to jump out and run alongside the slow-moving convoy. When he saw the horses ahead, he was almost relieved. Ten seconds later, he was concerned. What he thought were a few horses spread across the highway resolved into hundreds of horses and riders, stretching ahead for over a mile and out of sight. Either he was looking at an entire horse mounted army, or he was seeing the first real parade in almost forty years.

Judging by the weapons each rider carried, he decided it was an army. He waved the following truck back and told his driver to accelerate up to the trailing riders.

Tam was waiting for him in the back row of over four hundred riders, surrounded by her very capable family. When the truck pulled up behind them, she whistled to her personal guard to stop. They split neatly to either side of the road and waited for Gary’s truck to stop.

Tam held up her hand, and called to the driver. “Hey, stranger. Where you headed?”

Gary looked disgusted and leaned across his driver to answer. “Lady, just tell me where to find your boss.”

Tam shook her head and said, “Listen, Junior. To find my boss around here, you need to get on your knees and start praying. Why’d you have to start out like some kind of ignorant dumbshit?”

Gary was trying to figure out how she knew his nickname, and then guessed she was just using it because she was old. “You’re the boss?” Gary made it sound like the dumbest thing he’d ever heard.

“That’s right,” Tam replied, ignoring the whole argument. She knew it was pointless and foolish to let this ignorant child know ahead of time that he was in trouble. “So, you never answered my question. Where are you headed?”

“We’re just passing through,” Gary replied.

“On your way to?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, woman.”

“My county, my business,” Tam said flatly.

Gary was not equipped to argue with a woman. He was raised to consider women as disposable amusement, convenient servants, and occasional breeding stock. The idea that men would let one lead them was just beyond his understanding. He thought hard for a few seconds and said, “Lady, can you just move your horses off the highway for a few minutes? That’s all we need.”

“That’s not all I need, young man. I need an answer to my question. If you don’t give me one, you and your little posse are going nowhere.” Tam’s horse was responding to her agitation and began to hop from side to side. She locked her eyes on Gary’s face and watched for the smoke to pour out of his ears.

“Listen, bitch...” Gary shouted.

Tam’s voice cut through him like a cracking whip. “No, you listen. I...”

Gary’s head dipped and his hand came up with a .45 automatic. As his head came back up, he realized he was looking down the barrels of at least seven handguns. The only thing that kept it from looking like an old Western movie was the fact that no one in Tam’s family used a revolver. In fact, they were all sporting identical 9mm automatics machined in Bill Carter’s community shop.

“As I was saying, Junior, if you are dumb enough to pull that trigger, not one of you will leave this county alive. I’d start by putting that thing down.”

Gary didn’t know enough to decide if she was telling the truth, but he knew he would be dead either way. He put the gun back on the seat.

“Now I’m tired of asking, so let me answer for you. You are Gary Tucker Jr., son of the Grand Dragon, who in case you didn’t know, was coward enough to take his own life in jail. Guess he didn’t like the food.” She said, enjoying the look that washed over the asshole’s face. “You are heading to Manchester where you intend to join up with whatever Jenkins scumbags are left alive to take out Bill Carter and his people. Sound about right?”

Gary’s face turned a telltale shade of red, but he didn’t answer. He spoke quietly to his driver, who crunched the truck into reverse and sped back down the road, wrestling with the wheel to keep it on the road.

“Well, my loves, looks like they took the bait. Let’s get ready.” Tam waved her arm in the air in a circle. The milling jumble of horses formed up into perfect ranks in the space of ten seconds, with two columns in each lane.

Sure enough, she could see Gary stamping around his truck as a brief conference was held.
He sure is stupid
, she thought. Within a few minutes, the convoy began to move. The revving engines reminded Tam of little boys psyching themselves up to jump off a high bluff into the deep part of the river. The convoy split into two lanes, with the slow trucks moving over to the side as far as possible. The faster trucks accelerated ahead and slid to the center of the highway as they cleared the slow lane.
Predictable behavior for idiots
, was Tam’s gleeful thought.

By the time the truck convoy was bearing down on Tam’s people, they were doing almost sixty miles per hour. Tam stuck two fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle as her knees directed her horse to the left. The four columns of horses opened down the centerline of the highway like a giant zipper, two columns to each side. Gary was screaming with frustration. He wanted to run that bitch over and watch her splatter on his windshield. By the time the pattern became clear to him, he was yanking on the steering wheel to catch some horsemen, any horsemen off guard, but they were well off the pavement before he even got close. Then it occurred to him that his real problem was solved. They could drive right through the damn horses without any problem. He took a deep breath and calmed himself.

The high speed convoy cleared the end of the horse columns. The horses on the south side of the highway crossed to the north side before the slow trucks could catch up. The whole army of riders set out through the open fields, cutting off the corners of the highway system for their next trick. Tam did not have the pleasure of watching the result of her maneuver, but she sure liked the sound of it.

Gary was thinking about the fact that they should slow down to regroup the column when they topped the long rise. He saw the problem an instant before they hit it. The highway was covered in wet, slippery mud. He could feel the truck beginning to slide. Buried in the mud were hundreds of caltrops designed to shred tires or lame horses. Since his truck was first through the metal spikes, all four tires were punctured, abruptly taking away what little control his driver still held, and handing the truck over to brutal physics. In this, Gary was lucky. At the end of the muddy slope were three layers of concrete barriers stretching much wider than the highway. Thanks to the hard pull of one destroyed tire, Gary’s lead truck took off at a hard angle to the highway, plowed dirt from the shallow ditch, and careened up the embankment on the south side of the highway. The driver was fighting the wheel the entire way, trying to get the truck back on the road. He ran out of momentum just below the crest, and the truck rolled lazily onto its left side, spilling men and guns down the grassy slope.

Most of the other trucks were not so lucky. Gary heard the first crunches of folding metal, and was able to climb out his window in time to watch the barriers get pummeled into gravel and bent steel rod by more than twenty trucks. They did not stop crashing into each other until the cascade of brake lights reached three hundred feet back over the hill. No fully loaded truck stops that fast, but a few exceptional cases managed to peel off into the grass rather than plunging headlong into the fray. When the sounds had finally settled into hissing, pinging machinery and the pained cries of mercenary men, over seventy trucks were destroyed. Somewhere in the middle of the massive pileup, fuel began to burn. The cries rose through the register and lost all meaning as Gary watched almost five hundred men burn alive. He had one of his first introspective ideas when he realized that if there was a God, He would see the karmic balance in burning the Knights of the White God. Gary was afraid.

Chapter 9 – 7

Bill met them in the barn when Terry and Seth returned and parked Big Bertha. That was the problem with driving a huge armored truck; everyone knew you were coming.

“Did you get Mr. Cooper home safe?” Bill asked as Terry dropped out of the cab.

“Yes, sir. No problems, unless you count Jared’s wife. We talked to his mother while the wife was beating him senseless. I’d bet lunch that a square mile of Manchester has heard the story by now.” Terry gave his hands a job-well-done dusting.

“Good deal. You boys want to go upstairs and see if the fighting platforms are ready?” Bill asked.

“No thanks, Bill,” Seth said, patting his belly. “Somebody around here dragged me out without feeding me first, naming no names, of course.”

Bill chuckled and said, “Ok, Big Seth. I wouldn’t want you shriveling up.”

“Speaking of shriveling up, maybe your girlfriend made you some sausage for breakfast,” Terry said with an evil grin. “Or maybe she wants you to make her some sausage, huh?”

Seth smacked Terry in the head playfully, but a playful smack from a human bear was enough to send Terry staggering for balance. “If I had a girlfriend, I wouldn’t let you talk about her that way,” Seth said symbolically brushing lint from Terry’s shoulders before he turned and left.

Bill smiled as he watched Seth leave, and then turned back to Terry and said, “Maybe we should just have Seth and Sally fight it out to see who gets to kill you with affection.”

“Nah. Then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”

Bill led the way up the stairs. The barns were almost forty feet tall. It was a long flight across the back wall of the barn, a landing with two staircases leading upwards,  another landing, a right turn and another short flight to reach the fighting platform. Terry had been up on the matching platform on the northern barn, but it was empty at the time. Now, the platform was equipped with a sandbag wall and two heavy Gatling style machine guns on heavy black tripods. The tripods were held to the platform with half inch machine screws.

“Serious weapons...” Terry commented, wondering if he could even control one of the heavy guns in full auto.

“Yeah. We found most of them in an armory in Fayetteville. The only problem is they go through ammo like water. I hope we have enough. Seth trains these crews. He can actually shoot one of these without the tripod,” Bill said.

“He’s a hoss,” Terry said idly, and then smiled. “I still think Sally could take him in a fair fight.

“Yeah, sure. If she’s hiding a thousand feet away with that rifle of hers, maybe. Good thing they’re both on our side.”

“So, Kirk thinks the Dragons are coming tonight?” Terry asked.

“No. Kirk thinks they were leaving this morning,” Bill replied.

“Then they should be here tonight...”

“ I don’t think so. Kirk’s favorite woman is probably doing a good job of making them miserable right now.”

“Kirk’s got a woman?”

“Nobody’s ‘got’ that woman. Tam Rogers. She runs the show in Bedford County, but she is fond of Kirk, and he let her know what’s happening. I’m hoping she sees fit to come over here and help us out after she’s done with operation slowdown.”

Terry thought about Bill’s wide range of friends, and considered asking how he did it, but then Terry realized he already knew. Being nice almost always pays off.

“Well, since we’ve got some extra time, I’m going to point out that you didn’t really say much about Aggie this morning. You spent most of the time talking about Joe Miller.”

“Maybe you’ve got extra time. I need to...”

“Oh, come on, Bill. You and I both know everything is working, everyone knows their job, and you’ll just sit around and fret about what-ifs if you don’t have something to do.” Terry knew that was exactly right.

Bill did too. “Come on. Let me show you something,” he said and limped to the stairs.

Terry followed Bill through the three turns from the barn to Bill’s house. They approached from the back. Bill stopped just short of the low back deck. “What do you see?”

Terry looked at the deck. “I see four chairs, a table, and a swing... That’s the swing? The swing?”

“Yep. That’s the one. I cleaned it up and painted it, of course, but that’s the swing where I first met my wife, first kissed my wife, and rocked my children,” Bill said a bit sadly.

“You don’t have to tell me, but you never talk about any other children,” Terry said.

“No, I generally don’t. When Sally was still little, she had an older brother and an older sister. I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about what happened, but they’re both gone.”

“Ok, sorry to bring it up, Bill.”

“No problem. I tell you everything else. I’m sure someday I’ll be able to talk about it. Some things just tear a piece off, and it never grows back. ” Bill dropped into one of the white chairs around the table and added. “It’s funny how that swing is always there in the happiest and saddest moments. It’s like the rusty old thing has a piece of me always sitting there, swinging back and forth.”

“Do you mind if I try it?”

“I’ll tell you what. You can get on the soul swing if you can get Sally on it with you, and if you go inside right now and make us some of those ridiculous huge sandwiches that only men are dumb enough to eat.”

“Deal.”

Chapter 9 – 8

Sally Bean did not take it well. When she heard about what Joe was planning, she marched out the front door and disappeared for two hours. The rest of us were left with lunch on the table and a sudden loss of appetite. Dad felt bad. He said, “I really should learn to keep my mouth shut.”