Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [221]
"Lucky you had that beef jerky." Hooker couldn't let it alone, not now, not ever. "You never got hungry enough. Lucky."
"Lucky? Lucky?" Alim's explosion startled Hooker. "Lucky my ass!" Alim shouted. "There was a ton of the stuff in that van, and we got maybe two pounds because of that motherfucker!" He looked out through the open doorway of the tent, toward a slim black who stood guard near the fire. "That one. That motherfuckin' Hannibal."
Hooker frowned. "That why you make him do all the work? He lose you some food?"
Alim was wild with remembered rage and pain. "Food. And liquor. Listen, we could smell it, it just about drove us crazy. You see the burns on Gay? We thought he was gonna die, and all of us got burned trying to—"
"What the fuck are you talkin' about?"
"Yeah, you don't know." Alim reached behind him to a footlocker and took out a bottle. Cheap whiskey from a drugstore. Thank God California had everything in drugstores. "We got together," Alim said. "Me and my people and some others. Back then, back when we didn't think … " He couldn't finish that sentence. "Before. All the honkies—"
Sergeant Hooker calmly leaned across the table and slapped Alim's face. Hard. Alim's hand went to his holster, but stopped. "Thanks," he said.
Hooker nodded. "Tell the story."
"The white people, the rich ones in Bel Air, about half of 'em took off. Left their places. Left 'em empty. We took in trucks, and we went through those houses … " He paused, a delighted smile playing on his lips as he thought of it. "And we were rich. That watch I gave you. And this ring." He held the cat's-eye to catch the light. "TVs, hi-fi, Persian rugs, real Persian, the kind the fences pay twenty big ones for. All kinds of fuckin' shit, Hook. We were rich."
Hooker nodded. Okay, he'd done worse. It still made him uncomfortable. Hooker had been a soldier. He could have been sent to Bel Air to shoot motherfucking looters. Crazy world.
"And we found a stash," Alim said. "Coke, hash oil, weed, nothing but the best. I took it away before my dudes could start lighting up right there."
Hooker drank whiskey. "Get it all?"
"Don't be so fuckin' smart. No, I did not get it all. I wasn't even tryin', Hook, I just wanted to make the point, if they used on the spot I'd take it off them. Hell, that was then, you know, there were cops on patrol all over—"
"Yeah."
"So it happened. The goddam Hammer. We got out, fire trails, roads, anything, we got out, headin' for Grapevine, and the truck starts wheezin'. We were out on one of the trails, tryin' to stay off the freeways, you know? So we come up on top of a rise and see this van coming behind us. Bright blue van, with four bikes, everybody with shotguns and rifles, like a stagecoach in the movies with the army ridin' escort—"
"Sure," Hooker said. He poured more whiskey. In a few minutes they'd have to talk for real, but it was nice to be dry, have a drink, not think about where they'd have to go now.
"We set it up real good," Alim said. "Got ahead of the van far enough, used a chain saw to drop a tree just as the van comes through a narrow place, and man, you should have seen it! Those bikes stopped and my studs wasn't more than five feet from 'em. Come out from the trees shootin'. Used a lot of bullets, but shit, with those pistols we had … Anyway, it was perfect. Knocked the bikes over, never touched one of the bikes at all. There's the van stopped, and the driver's got his hands on the wheel where we can see, nice and easy, and the van's not even touched, Hook, not even a scratch on that pretty blue paint.
"And did I get all that coke we found in Bel Air? No I did not. That motherfuckin' Hannibal was sniffing all along, and it was good stuff, you know, real, not the shit he used to get, but he sniffs two, three lines at a time. And those dudes are just openin' up that van, comin' out nice and easy,