Way Down on the High Lonely (23 page)
“Steve and Peggy want you out of here by morning,” Karen said.
“Tell them not to worry. I want out of here.”
“Are you going to move in with those racist pigs?”
“Oink.”
Having brought her too close, the job now was to drive her far off. Out of harm’s way.
“Do you even want to know how Shelly is?” she asked. “Do you care?”
“Not especially.
He’d known for a long time that he couldn’t have this job
and
a life. Where he’d made his mistake was in thinking he could leave the
job for
a life.
“You lied to me,” she said, the anger and hurt almost palpable in the closed cabin air.
Undercover is a he, Karen. You start by hiding who you are, and you hide it and you hide it while you become other people, and then when you want your own identity again, you can’t find it. It’s like that little treasure you store someplace to keep it safe, and a long time later you forget where you put it.
Karen, how would I tell you if I could? It’s just that you play so many characters that after awhile you don’t have one of your own. Or maybe that’s backward. Maybe I never had any character to begin with.
Anyway, he didn’t answer her, so she asked, “How long have you been with them? Just recently, or the whole time?”
“Since before I came here,” he answered, because this was a chance to push her farther away. “I’ve been convinced for a longtime now that we have to do something to preserve our white race.”
“You disgust me.”
Get this over with, Neal thought. Because if you don’t you might break down and tell her the truth. Shit, if it were an adult involved, a responsible grownup who had screwed up, I’d tell her right now. But it’s a kid. It’s a little boy who might still be alive and who has only a slim chance, and that has to be more important. If my stupid, messed-up excuse for a life means anything at all, a child has to be more important.
He turned around and said, “And you disgust me, Jew lover.”
He saw the tears come to her eyes and saw her face twist in hurt.
“I was ready to love you!” she yelled. “I was ready to love you and now I hate you! Do you understand me? I hate you!”
I understand you, Karen. “So leave,” he said.
Those blue eyes sparkled with rage. “Go to hell, Neal,” she said. Then she left.
On my way, Karen. I’m on my way.
He finished packing and started the long, cold walk to the Hansen place.
N
eal shivered in the bitter cold. As the wind bit through his denim jacket he tucked his chin a little deeper under his sheepskin collar and pulled his black cowboy hat tighter down on his head.
The sun was a pale circle in a sharp blue winter sky. Sitting on Midnight on the top of the hill, Neal felt as if he could see forever. He was sitting in a stand of piñon pine on the west slope of the Shoshones, looking down about five miles where the little mining town of Ione sat at the edge of a vast desert. He watched until he saw a flash of silver start moving up the slope toward him. He lifted his binoculars and focused on the flash.
“Here she comes,” he said to Jory.
Jory shifted nervously on his horse. He checked the big saddlebags again to make sure they were tied on tight.
Neal moved his glasses just down the slope from him, off the left side of the road on the bottom end of a switchback, where Cal and Randy waited in a camouflaged pickup with pine boughs thrown across it. Just a little above Neal, Dave, and one of the new guys were sitting in another truck, waiting for his signal.
Neal focused on the armored car again. He checked it out and then glassed the road behind it.
Nothing.
“They don’t have a follow car,” he said.
“That’s good,” Jory said. Neal could hear the tension in his voice. He hoped the boy would be all right. Then again, all he really had to do was ride his horse. Jory had been picked for that job because he was by far the best rider, about the only legitimate cowboy there except for Craig Vetter and Bill McCurdy, who sat on another horse just by.
“Arrogance,” Neal responded. “Laziness and arrogance.”
It’s going okay, Neal thought. They’d picked the spot well. The armored car would be in low gear as it chugged up the heavy grade. The switchback would keep them hidden and give them the privacy they needed. There was a big boulder on the other side of the road.
“I sure hope they don’t spot that pickup,” Jory said.
“They won’t,” Neal answered. “Remember, they’re not looking for anything. This is just the usual milk run to the little towns to pick up the checks and drop off the money. They’ll only get half-alert when they bring the stuff out of the truck. Now shut up, I need to concentrate.”
The timing on the thing was delicate, even though they’d practiced on a similar switchback a couple of dozen times. But there was no way to simulate the armored car’s exact speed or what its driver might do, and that’s what had Neal concerned. If things started to go wrong, people might use guns in place of the plan.
He was particularly worried that Cal and Randy might get hinky, believe they’d been spotted, and just start shooting. But there was nothing he could do about that, so he put it out of his head and watched the truck work its way up the slope.
He felt his chest tighten. There’d be only one shot at this thing and he had a feeling it would be his last shot at finding Cody. If the robbery went off well, Neal would be sworn in as a full-fledged Son of Seth, and as such he would be privy to all of their secrets.
So concentrate, he told himself. Do something right for a change.
The truck was getting closer. Eight minutes, maybe ten.
“Get back some,” Neal said. He maneuvered his own horse a few feet back into the pines. It wasn’t easy. He still felt about as comfortable riding a horse as he would flying an airplane. Billy and Jory eased their horses into the pines.
“How much longer?” Jory asked.
“Shut up,” Neal answered. He didn’t dare lift the binoculars again for fear the flash might spook the driver. But he could catch the glare of the armored car’s roof as it came around the switchbacks.
More like six minutes now.
“Check your loads,” he ordered.
“But we’ve already checked about—” Jory started to say.
“Do it!”
Neal pulled his Colt from its holster and flipped the cylinder open. He had five rounds loaded, leaving the chamber empty. He didn’t want anyone’s pistol going off accidentally. He slipped the revolver back into the holster.
“You think they got two men or three?” Jory asked, his voice cracking with tension.
“Will you be quiet?” asked Neal, although it was a good question. If the car was carrying a two-man crew—a driver and a guard—the job should be a breeze. If it was carrying a third man—another guard—things could get tricky. They’d gone through the options many times, but it clearly was weighing on Jory’s mind. A third man almost certainly would mean there’d be shooting. From both sides.
Three minutes, give or take, before the truck would pass Cal’s position.
“Cover up,” Neal ordered.
He pulled up the red bandanna tied around his neck and fitted it high over his nose. He pulled the brim of his hat down so it shaded his eyes, then turned to look at Jory and Billy to see if a stranger could identify them in some nightmare lineup down the road. With the bandannas on, the hats down, and the collars up, their eyes were about all that was visible. Good enough.
Neal looked down to see the car roof shine in the sun. It was just one switchback below Cal now. One more straightaway and one more curve and they’d be in the trap.
He turned to Billy and pointed up the hill. Billy kicked his horse and started to ride up to where Dave was waiting. Jory had to hold his horse back from following.
Great, Neal thought. Even the goddamn horses are nervous.
He watched the metallic flash get closer. It was almost up to Cal now.
He raised his right arm and brought it down sharply. Jory did the same thing and Billy relayed the message. Neal heard Dave’s truck start down the hill.
It’s going to go quickly now, he told himself. Keep your head. He looked across the road to the top of the boulder and whistled sharply. An answering whistle came back right away. Neal knew it would. Craig Vetter was a solid hand and the right man in that spot.
Neal watched the armored car come up the hill. Come on, baby, he thought. Keep coming … keep coming …
The armored car’s driver didn’t see the truck hidden off the side of the road, not that he was looking for it, anyway. He was idly talking sports with the guy in the passenger seat. It made the time pass. The guard in the back contributed a few ignorant comments about zone versus man defenses, but the driver decided that the guard didn’t know squat about either.
“What the hell difference does it make?” the passenger asked irritably. He sipped his coffee where he carefully had torn a crescent in the plastic cover. “The Giants can’t throw against either.”
“I dunno,” the driver answered. “If they get single coverage on man—
“Sure, if the man is Franklin Roosevelt or Ray Charles or maybe … look out!”
The driver was already looking. A lumber truck was headed straight for them. Sideways. The driver knew that the silly son of a bitch had taken the curve too wide and lost it. He knew it was going to jackknife the moment he heard the awful whine of the hydraulic brakes.
The driver slammed on his brakes.
The lumber truck jackknifed, just as the driver had expected. What he didn’t expect was that the trailer would flip and spill out its load of logs, which came bouncing and barreling straight for the armored car.
“Holy shit!” the driver yelled. “Get down!”
He and the passenger hit the floor just as one big cedar bounced over the hood and rolled into the windshield. They felt four more jarring thumps before the barrage stopped.
The passenger looked at the driver.
“Look at these slacks,” he said with disgust. They were soaked with spilled coffee.
The driver got back up in the seat and looked out to see three rifle barrels pointing out from behind the overturned trailer.
“Stay down!” he yelled to the passenger. He threw the car into reverse and started looking for a place to do a K-turn. He was one hot driver, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it to Ione going backward. He looked in the rearview mirror and knew he wasn’t going to make it to Ione at all. A big old pickup was roaring up the road in back of him. The pickup went into a controlled skid and slid sideways across the road.
I’ll give them a run for the money, anyway, he thought. He squared the armored car up on the pickup and punched the accelerator.
“You think he’s going to stop?” Randy asked Cal as the armored car bore down on their truck.
“Bail out!” Cal yelled. He grabbed Randy by the collar and hauled him out the passenger side a moment before the armored car slammed into the driver’s door. It shoved the pickup a couple of feet back but didn’t clear it out of the road. Randy reached over the side of the truck bed, grabbed the gasoline can, and ducked.
“You got ’em behind you!” the driver yelled to the guard. The guard scrambled to pick up the rifle he’d dropped in the collision.
Neal fired his pistol in the air and Craig Vetter jumped from the boulder onto the car’s roof. He landed hard, fell forward, got up quickly, and fixed the lasso in his right hand.
Cal and Randy scrambled in a crouch toward the armored car. The guard in the back stuck his rifle out the gun slit and drew a bead on Cal. Craig tossed the lasso over the gun barrel, tightened the rope, and pulled it to the left. Cal stuck his pistol in the gun slit and pointed it at the guard’s head while Randy lifted the gas can he was carrying, shoved the rubber tube through the gun slit, and poured the gas into the back of the armored car.
“I’m coming out! I’m coming out!” the guard yelled as he saw Randy strike the match.
Just like we practiced it, Neal thought. He watched the back door open and the guard step out. Cal grabbed him and put him on the ground.
“Stay there,” Cal said.
“No problem, no problem,” the guard answered. He was pissed off. This was supposed to have been an easy job.
Neal edged Midnight to the side of the road. He pulled his pistol and pointed it at the passenger door.
“Keep your damn hands off the radio! Those rifles pointed at you have jacketed rounds, so forget about your bullet-proof windshield!”
“What bullet-proof windshield?” the passenger yelled.
“Are you the boss?” Neal asked.
“The supervisor!”
“Open the cash compartment, supervisor!” Neal yelled.
The guy in the passenger seat reached under the dashboard and flipped a toggle switch. The compartment unlocked with a loud metallic click.
“Open the door and come out, supervisor!” yelled Neal.
“I have a gun! I’ll toss it first!”
“Okay!”
So far so good, Neal thought.
The door eased open and a Colt .45 dropped to the ground. Neal backed the horse up to give himself some room and pointed the gun at the door. The supervisor came out with his arms in the air. He looked at Neal on the horse and asked, “Which one are you, Butch or Sundance?”
“Get down on the ground, smart guy,” Neal ordered.
The guy grinned crookedly and let himself down slowly onto the road.
“Now you!” Neal yelled to the driver. The driver eased himself out from behind the wheel and dropped to the ground.
Craig jumped down and he and Randy went into the back of the armored car. They pulled five large white canvas bags out of the cash compartment and carried the sacks over behind the pines, where Billy, Craig, and Jory had brought the horses. They loaded the stacks of money into saddlebags.
“Hurry up!” Neal yelled.
They finished loading the horses, then walked them up through the pines and out onto the road above the lumber truck.
Neal walked over to the supervisor and gave him a little kick in the ribs. “Get up.”
