Chapter 14

Within a minute Toby caught sight of the column backing and filling on the two lane road. He automatically checked both of his rearviews as he slowed and approached the new lead vehicle.

The big, dark green dually approached him in the wrong lane, then stopped angling across road. The driver's window sported a sawed down shotgun, and an M-15 lay across the roof, both stared unblinking in his direction.

" Hello, the truck. Are you Gus Macklin?" It was difficult for Toby to keep the fear from his voice as he regarded those eyes of death.

" Who wants to know?" came a voice from the driver's window.

" I'm Tobias Melton. Josh sent me out to make sure you weren't followed to the rendezvous. And now that you don't seem to be going through Garland, I thought you might need a guide on the backroads over to US82."

" Well I'm Gus Macklin, but what assurance do I have you were sent here by the fellow you say sent you? If you know what I mean. "

" Look, Gus, I would feel a lot easier if you would get the stranger with the M-16 to point it in a slightly different direction while we palaver. I am just as gutsy as the next guy, but I've seen first hand what one of those things will do to a person and I also know how light a pull one of them has. I am back far enough that you can cover me effectively with the scatter-gun and I would rather trust you not to shoot than someone who I don't even know what they look like. "

There was a short murmured discussion between the two in the cab while, in the near distance, the big rigs continued their efforts to turn around on the narrow thoroughfare. Soon the muzzle of the M-16 rose and pointed down the road behind Toby, and he visibly relaxed as new questions came from the truck.

" What did my rig look like?"

" Gus, I don't know what you mean by using the past tense, because your rig was the one leading this caravan until you stopped to turn around. According to the description Josh gave me it has to be your wife driving it. It was her rig got busted up at the... I guess the best term would be road block although it wasn't really a road block."

" OK. Then what did her rig look like. "

" Stark white, White Daytripper, with an eleven thousand gallon two-stage tanker in stainless steel. It had a radio but no tapedeck, and you had fixed the radio well enough for it to break in the middle of a Mozart Concerto, and I quote '... and you know how much I love Mozart. ' end quote. After the wreck the cab was on its right side pointing across the road, and the tank was thrown into the air, hit once, exploded, and wrapped itself around a tree about a hundred feet from where the cab stopped. "

Gus couldn't help but chuckle as he remembered the rest of the statement Toby had quoted from, and the conversation it had been a part of. He didn't doubt this gentleman was an emissary from Josh, but decided he would give the fellow a bit more of a hard time before he let him off of the hook.

" What the hell you talking about? Who's this Mootzert character?"

Toby felt like he had swallowed a shoe, along with the socks and lower legs. He was sure Josh had made a point about relaying that particular story to him as a sure method of recognition. Now it looked as if the story had backfired. He took a long slow breath to calm himself. This person must not be the Gus Macklin he was supposed to follow in.

" You look like you just swallowed a tanker load of Exlax friend." He could no longer keep the sounds of his laughter down to a level which would not carry to Toby, and he didn't even try as his amusement broke its chains.

Toby no longer felt he had swallowed anything, rather he felt like he would happily stuff this sucker's mouth full of knuckles and anything else he could find in a hurry. He slowly started counting to thirty but halted at six when a burst of fire passed over his head. His quick turn to the left showed him a black pickup careening off the road, and sparks flew as a rifle of some kind struck the hard surface and continued to bounce and spin toward him. He spun the universal tread rear tire as he sped to safety behind the truck, and pulled Josh's XM-15 from the confusion strapped to the rack of the bike.

Bullets screamed from the pavement, and lost themselves with gut loosening thumps in the bed, and sides of the truck. The fire came from another pickup breasting the slight rise behind the black one. Toby loosed an unaimed burst toward the windshield. He could hear the roaring of the M-16, and see the resultant splatters of glass and metal as the hose above the dually's cab laced the oncoming truck with 55 grain slivers of death, but still it rolled down the rise toward them. He lowered his aim point and fired two short bursts into the road in front of the right front wheel. An explosion of rubber, and a swift right hand turn from the truck, just missed the rear of the duallie's bed, clipped off a road sign, and continued full throttle into the ditch.

A third truck topped the rise, but unlike his fellows he slammed on his brakes and screeched to a stop parallel but opposite to Gus's truck. Three figures shrouded momentarily by smoke torn from the skidding tires, leapt from the bed, to gain the protection of the two-tone Ford's body. Another jumped from the passenger's door as the driver disappeared below the window frame.

Firing started from the trucks behind Toby. He chanced a glance behind him, while reaching for another magazine. He saw the three tankers pulled out of a direct line of fire between the dually and the beat-up Ford, and three weapons blazing from the two fuel carriers on either side of the asphalt. He snapped the clip into the receiver of the XM and rose with the weapon now set for semi-auto fire. The magazine was loaded with what he called 'Goosed-NATO' rounds. He directed carefully aimed fire at the section of the cab just behind the door. When his third shot was greeted with a blossom of fire, he switched to full auto and raked the bed of the truck with a constant stream of super high-velocity metal-jacketed bullets. They ignored the thin sheets of bed-walls and poured through and into the three unseen behind. Toby stopped firing only when the slide locked back on the empty magazine. He reached for a second clip of 'screamers' while crouched behind the steel wheel rims, jammed the mag home, releasing the bolt to chamber the new shell, and stood in time to see a flame-garbed figure jerk itself from the cab and fall soundlessly to the pavement beside the truck.

The firing stopped only after all of the group behind Toby had emptied at least one extra magazine into the couched inferno. No answering shots were heard from the toasted bodies beyond. Toby, with his third thirty fed into the base of XM, pulled himself erect, slightly sickened with the fiery carnage they had wrought.

" Is anyone hurt back there?" His voice was a severely pinched version of his normal melodious baritone, but carried well none the less.

After a quick exchange on the CB, Gus replied " We've a couple of holed radiators, it looks like, and I would be willing to bet that those marks on the tanker over there aren't chocolate pudding. Jesus. I'm surprised the damn thing didn't blow."

" Damn, well it didn't. Can you plug those leaks Gus?"

" Hell, it's either plug the leaks, or stand someone on the fifth wheel with their fingers in 'em. I'm not going to leave all the fuel behind."