Red Highway (19 page)

“Right here,” said Alex, pointing out a narrow street near the river. “The Shawnee National. Set between a flophouse and a candy store. Cathouse across the street.”

“Nice neighborhood.”

“Listen, it's better than having a gunshop next door. You never know what these rubes are gonna do when they get a whiff of that reward money. Anyway, this is the biggest bank in town, and one of the largest in Oklahoma. There's gotta be, oh, ninety, a hundred thousand in that place on any given day.”

Virgil looked doubtful. “They don't leave money like that laying around unguarded.”

“Well, that's the catch. There are six regular guards in all, four in the lobby and two in the vault. Two of them are plain-clothes. Also they got a guy stationed above the door with a tommy gun.”

“What? No tank?”

Alex ignored the sarcasm. “The guys in uniform are easy. We can get the drop on them the minute we come through the door. Plainclothesmen are easy to spot, 'cause they look like cops, and we can grab them at the same time. The guards in the vault, we got them when it opens. Simple.”

“And the guy with the chopper?”

“Window dressing. What's he gonna do, cut loose in a room full of innocent bystanders? I tell you, Virge, this is gonna be an easy hundred grand. Then we can split up and get the hell away from the heat. Mexico maybe.”

“We're gonna need more guys.”

“I know a few of the local boys. They're dependable, and they know how to follow orders. Whattaya say?”

“I don't know. Let me think about it.”

Alex straightened. “Okay, that's your privilege. But I wouldn't wait too long. Bank jobs rot just like everything else.”

The rain-soaked scene outside the window was draped in the purplish black of late evening, leaving only the water-streaked glass for Virgil to contemplate. At last he stretched mightily, arching his body and driving his long arms straight toward the ceiling. “Mexico, huh?” he said, yawning. “What do you suppose it's like down there?”

It was nearly midnight by the time the lawmen in Oklahoma City had organized themselves for the trip to Shawnee. There were three big sedans lined up at the curb in front of federal headquarters, one of them a black-and-white sheriff's patrol car, the other two unmarked government vehicles. The damp night air was alive with the clicks and rattles of over a dozen firearms as their owners made last-minute checks of their weapons in the glare of the headlights. Pump shotguns rattled beside submachine guns, the breeches of assorted automatic pistols banged and slammed, their checked grips squeaking in the tense wet fists of their handlers, bulletproof vests were hefted gruntingly into the back seats of the first two cars. When the noises of preparation had died down, William Farnum turned to Sherifff McCracken and asked him how far they had to go.

“Forty-three miles. We ought to be there in three hours.”

“Make it two,” snapped the federal agent, and ducked into the back seat of the lead car. The sheriff glared.

Five minutes later, the caravan of heavy vehicles pulled out on the first leg of its forty-three-mile journey.

“Whose car we gonna use on this job?” Virgil, his shirt collar wilted and the knot of his tie hanging in the vicinity of his breast pocket, was sitting across the map-covered table from Alex, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts at his side. The mantel clock in the living room struck one.

Alex shrugged. “The Pontiac, I guess. Your job's still at the garage, ain't it?”

“Transmission trouble,” replied Virgil. “In a brand-new car, not a hundred miles on it. How about that?”

“Yeah, Detroit's getting pretty careless. My car, then?”

The other nodded. “We'll probably need another one, too, what with more men going along.”

“No problem. We'll snatch one tomorrow.”

The radio in the living room squealed and the music changed. Hazel had tuned to another station. Kate Smith belted “Moonlight Bay” through the closed door, vibrating the loose panels.

“Say we get ninety,” Virgil proposed. “How many ways we gonna split it?”

“Five. We'll need that many to keep everyone in line. Six, with a man at the wheel.”

“Forget the man at the wheel. We'd have to have two anyway, one for each car, and we can't afford that.”

“Okay, make it five. That's eighteen thousand apiece.”

Virgil grinned. “Not a bad piece of change, for one day's work. How much we got in the kitty?”

“About eight thousand.”

“Four grand for each of us, plus eighteen from this job. That should set us up pretty good in Mexico.” Virgil put a match to yet another cigarette. “Man, them greasers is gonna get a load of some genuine rich gringos this time around. You can bet on it.”

The door opened and Hazel entered, pulling the dressing gown about her. “Virgil, it's getting late. Don't you think it's time for bed?”

“Go ahead,” said Virgil testily. “I'll be along later.”

Alex yawned. “I'm about ready for it myself.” He stretched. “How about Annie? She go to bed?”

Hazel shook her head. “No, she fell asleep on the couch. With that movie magazine on her lap. She's been reading that dumb thing over and over again since you got it for her.”

“Well, as long as it gives her something to do,” Alex said sleepily.

“And that's another thing. She hasn't lifted a finger to help with anything since we
got
here. Alex, she's driving me up the wall.”

“I'll talk to her.”

Hazel sighed shortly, dismissing the subject. “What are you two talking about?” She looked from Alex to Virgil. Virgil's eyes flickered to the map of Shawnee for an instant, then shot back to his wife. Too late. She stared at the map. “I see,” she said quietly.

“Hazel, it's not what you think.”

“How do you know what I think?”

Virgil leaned forward, encircling the map with his long arms. “This bank is the key to a fresh start. We can pick up and take off, leave the cops with egg on their big fat faces. Would you like that?”

“You mean Mexico, don't you? I heard you talking about it when I came in.”

“That's it. Mexico. No more Public Enemy Number One. No more Tri-State Terror. Just Mr. and Mrs. Warren Henry, from Oklahoma.”

“And twenty thousand dollars,” added Alex.

“Why Mexico?” Hazel asked. “Why not here?”

Virgil went limp in his chair. He put his cigarette between his lips and dragged deeply on it, then let the smoke curl out his nostrils. “Have you read a newspaper lately?”

Hazel closed her eyes and nodded. “I understand.”

“So we'll crack this one bank and skip. They tell me the border's a cinch. The guards are out looking for wetbacks coming in, not tourists heading out. Public Enemy Number One don't mean a thing to them. We're as good as clear right now.”

They stared at each other a long time, neither of them moving or saying a word. Finally, a loud comic yawn shattered the silence and Alex got to his feet. “You two can keep sizing each other up like a snake and a mongoose, for all I care. Me for bed.”

He went out and closed the door behind him, separating himself from the silent tableau within.

Twenty-six miles away, the three-car convoy hurtled and bounced along the rain-scarred road leading to Shawnee, transmissions whining dangerously. The face of the federal agent behind the wheel of the first vehicle, bathed in the eerie green glow of the dashboard lights, was tense and knotted, his eyes like slits in a Halloween mask. Farnum's cigarette glowed calmly through the darkness in the back seat.

“What about it, Chief?” someone asked. “Is this guy Ballard as tough as the papers make him out to be?”

The red glow flew to Farnum's invisible lips, brightened, then withdrew as a pall of smoke was discharged into the blackness. “He's been in business eleven years. That's tough enough, I guess.”

“I guess it really doesn't matter, with fifteen men on our side.” The voice was the driver's.

“That depends on how many Ballard has with him.”

“The landlord says there are at least two women in that house,” said the first man. The barrel of his machine gun glinted as he shifted it to his other knee. “What's the procedure with them?”

“They'll be given a chance to surrender.”

“And if they don't?”

There was no answer. Farnum stirred in his seat to look out the back window. His features were thrown into brief relief as the headlights of the following car fell on his face, then faded again when he turned back. “I hope that hick sheriff knows enough to keep his boys in line,” he said. “I don't trust that guy.”

The convoy roared on.

Chapter Nineteen

It was 2:00
A.M.
when the first car coasted to a stop three blocks from the two-story house on the edge of Shawnee. The brakes creaked. The headlights died. Behind it, the second car halted, then the third. The hissing of the rain became the only sound.

A door snicked and opened, then another and another. Guns rattled. Shoes scraped on concrete. A red glow arched through the air, came to a rest on the wet pavement, and vanished. Farnum expelled the last of his cigarette smoke. “The house is there, on the corner.” He pointed, but no one could see where he was pointing. It didn't matter, because they knew he would lead them to it. “All right, let's go.” They followed him in bulk.

The curtains were open on a ground floor window, a light showing through it. When they got close enough to make out the figure that was moving around within, Farnum put out a hand and stopped them.

“Jesus, it's him,” someone whispered.

“Shhhh!” Farnum's warning came like a pistol shot. “Where's the sheriff?”

“Here!” Sheriff McCracken pushed his way through to the front.

“Sheriff, take your men and go around the rear. We'll take up the front. When you hear gunfire, charge in shooting.”

The sheriff grunted.

The body of men split up, the uniformed deputies slogging through the drenched lawns that led toward the other side of the house on the corner. When it was silent, the federal agents move in on the lighted window.

A big spotted dog leapt up, his chain rattling, and began barking.

“That damned dog!” whispered the man at Farnum's side.

“That damned dog!” growled Virgil. He was standing near the window in his undershirt and trousers, a shoe in his hand. Hazel, who had finally managed to doze off in the bed, came awake, not because of the dog, but because of Virgil's oath. The cylindrical black oil heater in the center of the floor glowed cheerily, its yellow flame projecting a single big flower pattern through the ventilated top onto the ceiling. Virgil's converted Lugers lay peacefully on the table in front of the window.

“He'll quiet down after a while,” Hazel said sleepily. “He just wants in.”

“It's the neighbors I'm worried about. All we need's a call to the cops to tip over the bandwagon.” He threw the shoe to the floor with a thud and bent to untie the other one.

The window burst where his head had been and something thunkered into the wall opposite. Virgil hit the floor. Hazel screamed.

“This is the law!” bellowed a voice from outside. “Put your hands up, Ballard. And don't reach for those guns!”

Virgil hesitated only a second. He sprang to his feet and grasped the two Lugers, firing them even before they had cleared the table. The window fell apart before the onslaught.

The blackness in the yard was shattered in a dozen places as yellow streaks of fire erupted from the trees and bushes.

“Down! Get under the bed!” Virgil, flattened against the wall beside the splintered window frame, shouted at Hazel. She slammed to the floor in a tangle of bedsheets and rolled beneath the big fourposter. Lead was whumping into the back wall in big handfuls, loosing a shower of plaster onto the floor with each impact.

A .45 slug blasted through the front wall and clipped Virgil in his bare right shoulder. He spun past the window and collapsed on one knee, blood streaming from the wound.

“Virgil!” screamed Hazel, struggling to get out from under the bed.

“Stay back!” he grunted and shuffled around to the other side of the window. The wooden floor was spattered red.

“We got him!” A youthful federal agent began moving forward.

“Get back there!” spat Farnum. “He's not dead yet.” The last part of his statement was lost in the din of fresh fire from the bedroom. “What'd I tell you?” said the chief, and leveled a blast with his machine gun across the shattered sill.

A second-story window on the other end of the house was wrenched upward and a machine gun began hammering from the blackened aperture. Farnum shouted and pointed in that direction. Some of the agents swung their fire to the upper part of the house, but not before Sheriff McCracken's deputies had opened up with their shotguns, slamming loads of buckshot into the whitewashed boards. Lights began to blink on in windows all up and down the residential street.

Virgil was clearing a jam in one of his Lugers when he heard the deep rattle of Alex Kern's machine gun start up on the southwest side of the house. He grinned and smacked the end of the big clip with the heel of his hand. “Good old Alex.”

The room was in darkness now, Hazel having doused the bedside lamp at Virgil's command. Only the glowing design thrown across the ceiling by the oil heater remained, to cast an unreal magic-lantern effect over the whole scene of destruction.

“Virgil? Virgil, are you all right?” Hazel's voice was little more than a whisper.

The robber heaved and grunted with the effort of readjusting the magazine. At last he panted triumphantly, and, leveling the pistol with both hands, sent a new burst into the yard. “Me and Alex, we'll take 'em.”