“What?” Still confused, Mike was now growing impatient. “L.T., we’re on our way to New York, that’s where the Augustines are, and it might be where Derek is, too—we can’t turn around!”
“Yes we can, Michael. Because what you just said is both irrelevant and untrue. It’s a hell of a time to realize it, but what did you tell us about those two vans—that they’re taking up both lanes to prevent us from dropping back.”
“Yeah?” Mike was trying carefully to follow me as he laid on more speed.
“Dropping back—or turning around…”
“Oh, fuck,” Lucas moaned, eyes on his phone as he scrolled through a map page and enlarged sections of it with his fingers. “Come on, L.T., turn around? We gotta find out who’s behind all this in New York, we have to go see that Augustine dude, and we have to find Derek!”
“Just keep looking,” I told the kid. “Roger Augustine will always be there, that lead is solid. But as for the rest of it—well, if I’m wrong, we’re going to find out very soon.”
“L.T.—” Mike tried to calm down. “We’ve already figured out that these guys are following us. They want to know where we’re going, to find out what we find out, or stop us from finding it out—”
“Got it!” Lucas shouted. “ ‘The New Baltimore Travel Center and Service Area.’ Google Maps says we’ll have to take a back route out of the place, but it’ll get us back on the Thruway going north.”
“Yeah, I know the joint,” Mike said. “Not a bad spot to lose these guys, actually—though I’d be able to do it with a lot more conviction if I knew what the fuck is going on.”
With Lucas still studying his phone, I turned to Mike and poked him with my cane again. “Trust me, Mike—we have to know what these guys actually want.”
Seeing that I was in deadly earnest, Mike nodded. “And you know how, hunh? Okay—I’ll trust you as far as New Baltimore. But then you’ve got some explaining to do, L.T.”
“If I’m right, those boys back there will do the explaining for us…”
Soon we took the off-ramp to the New Baltimore pit stop, and made for the “Service Area” at the back, which was mainly a huge truck stop. Amid the collection of tractor-trailers, it seemed at first that Mike had been able to lose what I was now almost certain were not, in fact, our “shadows”; but then we came to the small intersection with a byroad that led to the Thruway going back north, to find that our antagonists had read our movements (and confirmed my suspicions), by having sent one of their vans ahead to block the way. We halted, both Mike and Lucas plainly dumbfounded.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t. “So…” I murmured. “Not following, at all—driving.”
“Meaning what?” Mike asked grimly.
“Meaning, Michael, that they’re not trailing after us—they’re pushing us forward. They don’t want to know where we’re going—they just want to make sure we keep going and get there. This whole fucking thing—it’s a farce. They suckered us. Suckered me…” I pulled my phone out, and fumbled to find Mitch McCarron’s private cell number.
“Oh, what the fuck, what the fuck…” Lucas had heard little of what I’d said, and understood less. “You guys have got your guns, right? I mean, we’re not, like, helpless here, right?”
But just then something extraordinary, if foolhardy, happened: Mike Li got pissed off enough to start a fight. “A farce, hunh?” he said through gritted teeth. “Well, I’m not laughing…” He snatched his .38 from his ankle and called behind him, “Yeah, we’ve got our guns, Lucas.” Cracking his door open, he added, “And if these guys want to fucking shoot me in front of all these fucking truckers, then they can go ahead, but I’m not putting up with this shit anymore!”
With that he shut off the car (being still sane enough to kill our lights and make less of a target of himself) and got out, eluding my attempt to grab him. I couldn’t have held him back, anyway: Mike didn’t often get angry enough to put his life in any kind of danger, but when he did, it was usually inspired as much by concern for his colleagues as for himself—and it almost always made him into a true wild man. Holding him back at such moments was rarely possible; and he really had had enough of being harassed by these shadowy men.
“Mike, you idiot!” Lucas called. “What are you doing, get back in the damned car!”
But Mike’s words were already being directed toward the van that sat some thirty or forty feet away. He strode toward it with magnificent, foolhardy determination. “What, you fuckers?” he shouted, holding his arms up defiantly. “What the fuck do you want? This is still a free fucking country—supposedly! So all your little BCI badges and your scary-looking vans don’t mean—”
I don’t know if Mike even heard the first shot. He later said he did, but gunfire is not something he’s ever walked into so obliviously; yet when an arm appeared on the passenger side of the van holding what looked like a Glock, and then a sharp report registered within earshot of anyone in the rest area—sending the truckers who were hanging out nearby running for their rigs, and a few of them for their own handguns—Mike just kept walking and shouting, possessed by weeks of pent-up rage that was, I knew, born of Gracie Chang’s brush with death.
When the second 9mm shot nicked him in the right shoulder, however, raising a small spurt of blood that made Lucas holler in fear, Mike began returning fire wildly with his left hand. I swung my door open, drew my Colt, and started banging away at anything on the van that wouldn’t result in a loss of human life: the headlights were my first targets, and they shattered, so darkening the field of fire that I could make my way around the front of the Empress and toward my retreating partner. Next, I went for our antagonists’ grille and radiator, effectively eliminating them from any ensuing action on the Thruway. Yet the van’s occupants did not attempt to so cripple the Empress, confirming my suspicion that their main goal was to keep us moving south; south, and away from whatever their cohorts were planning to do back north.
I got to Mike fairly quickly, and, leaning more heavily than usual on my cane, told him to get his left arm around my neck from the right side.
“Nah, I’m all right, L.T.,” Mike seethed in pain. “Just get into the car, before they kill us both!”
“Forget them,” I said. Several armed truckers had by now started approaching the van, guns at the ready, making our movements easier. “I don’t think they’re actually trying to kill us—but we’ve got to get back on the road, get you patched up, and come up with a new plan. The shooting may be over, for now, but we’re still not out of this shit. What’s the next bridge back over the river, the Rip Van Winkle, right?” Mike grunted in the affirmative as I called out, “Lucas!”
“Yo!” the kid replied, with admirable guts. He was scared, all right, but he wasn’t losing it, which was good—because his next task would be his most difficult.
“You can drive, can’t you?” By now Mike and I had reached the car, and I opened the back door.
The mere mention of driving caused Lucas to leap into the front seat. “Fuck yes, I can drive!”
Mike fell into the car behind the kid as I came around the back and got in beside him. “Then do it,” I said, to which Lucas whooped and restarted the V-8. “We’ve got to head for the entry road back onto the Thruway, going south again—they won’t try to stop us.”
“Trajan, what in the holy high fuck are you doing?” Mike said, gripping his shoulder. “That kid can’t drive—he doesn’t even have a learner’s permit!”
I began tearing Mike’s shirtsleeve away to find a wound that, thankfully, had passed through his skin but only just grazed any muscle. “Really, Mike? That’s your chief concern, right now, that he doesn’t have a license?” Leaning over the front passenger seat, I opened the glove compartment and pulled out our emergency kit. “You’ve been clipped, there’s truckers ready to turn this place into a battlefield—and your worry is that he doesn’t have a God damned license?”
“My worry is that he’s going to wreck my baby,”
Mike seethed.
“Don’t you worry, Mike,” Lucas said, adjusting the rearview mirror and then putting the car in gear. “I’m a country boy, we’re born knowing how to drive!”
“Yeah, you used to be, maybe,” Mike said. “Nowadays, I’m not so sure that most—” But he was cut off when Lucas threw the car into gear and slammed on the gas, causing Mike to clutch at his wound. “That’s what I’m talking about, you little reprobate! A light touch, a light touch!”
“Whoa, I can see what you mean,” Lucas judged, awed but not overwhelmed by his position. Instead, he used the rapidly emptying parking lot by the Travel Center to weave in and out of parked cars, very smartly getting the feel for the Empress’ handling before he hit the highway. “It’s real tight, all right—let’s see what we can do to loosen her up…”
“No!” Mike shouted. “That’s exactly—ah, fuck it, we’re doomed, what am I saying…”
I grabbed a nearby bottle of water and then a flask of whiskey from the kit. As I opened the first, I hit the speaker button on my phone and laid it up on the rear deck, where the repeated sound of my attempt to reach Mitch McCarron was amplified by the window. “Okay, Mike,” I said, opening the flask. “You down some of this like a good boy.”
“What the—ow, fuck it, Trajan!” Mike said, drinking deep as I pressed some gauze tight to his wound. In a few seconds the whiskey hit home, and he sighed. “Whew. Better. Say—do I hear a phone ringing?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m trying to reach Mitch, and get our friends in the second van intercepted.”
Mike nodded. “So,” he said, “what the hell were—”
“Okay, motherfuckers!” Lucas shouted from the driver’s seat, having reached the Thruway entrance. “Grab onto something that’s bolted down, Lucas Kurtz is about to teach the rest of the people on this road why driving at night makes them nervous!”
“Aw, Jesus,” Mike groaned. “Please, L.T., don’t let him kill my car…”
I picked up my still-ringing phone, checked to see that I had dialed the right number, then grabbed some tape, fresh gauze, and a syringe of lidocaine from the satchel. I smeared the bandage with disinfectant and antibiotic gel, saying, “Okay, Li—get ready. Little pinch, as we say in the trade.” And before he could protest, I’d pumped his arm full of the lidocaine and then taped the bandage tightly to his arm, causing him to yell and then groan deeply; but before he could let loose a long stream of invective, Mitch McCarron’s voice finally came through on the speaker in my phone.
“Trajan, where the hell are you guys?” he asked.
“Exactly where you think, Mitch,” I answered. “I assume the reason it took you so long to answer is that you’re getting calls about us from several interested parties?”
“Yeah-uh,” Mitch answered, never losing his even keel. “Who the hell is shooting at who, down there, and are you all right?”
“Mike got his wing clipped,” I said. “Nothing serious—”
“Says him, Mitch!” Mike shouted. “You gonna get us some backup or what?”
“We’ve got units on the way to the service area, and Troop F’s almost there, already. I told their commander that I’ve got a personal stake in this one, so he’s cooperating. Just tell me what your position is—”
“Ah—I don’t think I’d better do that, Mitch,” I replied carefully. “You may not believe me, but I’m pretty sure that big ears may be listening to our little doings.”
“Jesus—if that’s true, then what makes you think they won’t just track your phones? You guys know there’s almost no way to stop that.”
“Almost!” Mike shouted. “And that’s all I’m saying about that.”
“We’ll be all right on that score, Mitch. As for our friends back there, I don’t know for sure, but they’re traveling in what certainly look like BCI vans.”
“My God,” Mitch answered. “I didn’t think Frank had the guts…”
“He doesn’t,” I said. “If you ask me, he’s got clearance from higher up—although, for what it’s worth, I don’t think his morons meant to hit any of us, just scare us back onto the southbound road. Mike walked himself into it, although that doesn’t make it any less crazy to open fire in a spot like that. But that’s as much as I think I’d better say for now. Just get after those vans—one’s crippled back at the station, the other one will be following us south from here. So get them off us, will you?”
“Wait, Trajan!” Mitch called. “If you can’t tell me how you’re going to, uh, proceed, can you at least tell me what this is all about?”
“Again, Mitch, no go,” I replied; then I picked up the phone, shut off the speaker, and turned to the side, keeping my voice low. “But if what I’m afraid of is in the works—well, just do me a favor, will you, and get some people over to Shiloh? This whole thing is getting real ugly, real fast.”
“Okay, Doc,” Mitch answered. “You be careful driving.”
“I’m not driving.”
“Then who the hell—”
“We’ll see you later, Mitch…”
{iii.}
Much to Lucas’ indignation, I didn’t let him drive for all that long. We never saw the second black van again; I would later find out that before it even got out of the parking lot in New Baltimore, a cruiser from Troop F intercepted its crew, although those shadowy figures refused to discuss either their identities or their orders until the arrival of their superiors, who informed the troopers that a full explanation of what had taken place was above their pay grade. Inside our car, meanwhile, once Mike had dozed off in the back, I told Lucas to pull into the breakdown lane of the Thruway, where we used several of the cushions from my usual seat to get me fixed up in the pilot’s spot, while the kid returned to his seat in the back. Our young apprentice was full of protests about the inadvisability of letting a one-legged man take the helm, but the truth was that he was pretty worn out, himself; and by the time we reached the long approach road that led through the chain stores surrounding the once-pretty little town of Catskill and then to the Rip Van Winkle Bridge that would carry us back over the Hudson to Route 23 headed east, the evening’s stress had caused him to drift off, too.
Such was just as well, being as, while I knew a lot of indirect ways to get back to Surrender from the general area of the town of Hudson to the north of the bridge’s east side, I hadn’t traveled them in a long time, and needed to focus; indeed, given the terrible thoughts of what might well be waiting for us when we got back to Shiloh, focusing became doubly important. I therefore gripped the wheel as tight as I could, keeping my eyes out for route signs and trying to remember that if we didn’t make it home as quickly as our covert course would allow, or if we were again intercepted on the way, all the reinterpreting we’d done in the car, all the vital reexaminations of the personalities and problems involved in this penultimate stage of the case, would mean nothing.
But solitude soon began to work against my sanity; and so it was just as well that, when the car went over a sharp break in the asphalt just at the point where the last of the county roads I’d navigated hit Route 7, some fifteen miles from the turnoff for Surrender, Mike was roused from his injury- and scotch-induced sleep. His head rolled from side to side for a moment, and then he began to scratch and rub at his hair and face, yawning and attempting to fully orient himself—a task that was only completed when he got a look at me.
“Jesus, L.T.,” he said quietly, his mouth and throat dry. Then he crawled into the front seat carefully, to avoid waking Lucas. “You look worse than I feel—grab that steering wheel much harder and you’ll snap it in half. What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said, hoping it sounded convincing. “Just trying to keep track of the route. It’s been a slightly complicated drive…”
“I guess so.” Mike attempted to locate some kind of moisture in his mouth and throat, and then, failing, found instead a water bottle and took a long pull. He waited a moment before proceeding, very lucidly and carefully: ?
??Come on. L.T.—give.”
“About what?”
“About what? First you figure out that those BCI guys—or whoever the hell they were—were actually pushing us toward New York, not following us there, which means that they wanted us out of Burgoyne County and certainly out of Surrender—”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I’m so fucking smart it never occurred to me that whoever’s behind this knew just how bad I wanted payback for what we went through in New York…”
“I get that,” Mike said, nodding. “So then you try to turn us around, and they start shooting, which pretty much proves they had orders from pretty high up on the food chain.”
“Safe assumption.”
“And now you’re driving like…”
“Like my life depends on it?”
“Nope,” Mike answered simply. “I’ve seen you in situations where your life depended on something. You don’t lose it like this. You ask me, you’ve bottled up just about every form of anxiety that a guy can, about something or somebody else, and it’s making you go quietly but obviously batshit.” I couldn’t find words to answer; but Mike soon resolved that dilemma. “It’s a certain person we shouldn’t mention, isn’t it?” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “Well?” he continued, lighting two smokes and giving me one. “I mean, I saw your face when we discussed her with the students last night, but—this is something new.”
I shook my head, fighting to keep the words down: “Yeah. It is. Jesus, Mike, I’ve accepted that I’ll probably never see her again, but—seeing her dead would be worse.”
“You figure the sniper went after her?” Mike said, quietly. “To tie up one loose end, and to warn us off even harder?”
“Will you shut up?” I hissed desperately. “Jesus, Mike, yes, that’s what I’m worried about; and if it happens, there’s only one spot where he’s get her—in Marcianna’s enclosure, which means Marcianna’s in danger, too…”