Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [96]
Rowdy’s pickup was bigger and had more power than Jack’s car. They’d be better off going with him, Jack decided. “Come on, Jimmy,” he said. They piled into the cab, with Jack in the middle and Jimmy next to the passenger window.
“War with who?” Jack asked.
“I dunno,” Rowdy replied. “But there’s been a bunch of shooting, and somebody told me there was a helicopter got shot down by a missile, out by the high school!”
Jack glanced at Jimmy. The story about the helicopter, outlandish as it was, was gaining credence.
“Maybe we should have guns,” he said tentatively.
Rowdy jammed on the brakes. “That’s a good idea. Are there any left at your house?”
“My mom’s got a couple extra pistols she didn’t turn in. And there’s a deer rifle my dad didn’t take with him when he split.”
Rowdy turned the pickup back toward the Bonner house. “Let’s get ’em, then. We may need some firepower.”
“Now that I think about it, I’m not sure this is a good idea. I mean, how can we fight ’em? We’re just two kids and, well, Jimmy.”
Rowdy glanced over at him and grinned. “If we’re bein’ invaded, somebody’s got to fight the sons o’bitches, dude. And it looks like we’re elected.”
Fargo Ford yawned and ground a knuckle against the corner of his right eye. He had dozed a little while Parker was driving, earlier in the night, but not enough to do much good.
They were all running on empty, with the exception of Earl Trussell. The little scientist had snored for hours while the others took turns driving across Texas. Earl was awake now and fiddling with the radio buttons while Ford drove and Parker dozed in the other corner of the cab. Rye Callahan was in the back of the pickup with the guns, his Stetson tipped down over his eyes. Mostly static came from the radio speakers, with an occasional burst of music or incomprehensible speech. Earl muttered, “Boy, you get out here in West Texas and the reception sucks.”
“That’s because of all these wide-open spaces,” Ford said.
“Well, I’m a city boy. I need music. And concrete. And there’s too much sky. I need buildings.”
“I thought you worked at that Casa del Diablo place. It’s in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and that’s one thing I didn’t like about it. That and the fact that they’re making bio-weapons to use on American citizens.”
“Yeah, that’s a bummer, all right,” Ford drawled.
They were on a state highway now, having traveled on a crazy network of farm roads and county roads, some of them unpaved, for most of the night. That had taken them away from Callahan’s ranch, though, and as far as Ford could tell, they weren’t being followed. Once again, they had slipped away from the men who wanted them dead.
It was early Sunday morning, and the sun was up behind them, painting the flat, mesquite-dotted, unprepossessing landscape with splashes of orange and gold that made it look prettier than it really was. Mountains bulked on the horizon in the distance. Ford knew those were the mountains where Casa del Diablo was located.
He drove past a sign that read HOME 10. “Almost there,” he said.
“And what are we gonna do when we get there? “ Earl asked. “We need a plan, don’t we?”
“We have a look around first to see if we can figure out if anything’s going on. If you make a plan before you have the proper intel, you’re liable to get locked into a mind-set that won’t work.”
“In other words, we improvise.”
“Exactly.”
“With our lives and the lives of God knows how many other people on the line.”
“It won’t be the first time,” Ford said.
“And it’s worked all the other times,” Parker said without opening his eyes. “If you don’t count the times we got shot and nearly killed.”
“Oh, now I feel much better,” Earl said.
“Even when we got hurt, we stopped the bad guys,” Ford pointed out.
The radio was nothing but static now. Earl turned it off, then squinted through the windshield.
“What’s that up ahead?” he asked.
Ford had already moved his foot from the gas to the brake, although he didn’t actually press down on the pedal