There was no going back. There wasn’t enough room on the track for even the smallest of the four wags to reverse course, let alone turn. The drop-off at the edges of the unpaved road was precipitous. And there was nothing to stop the big wag if it tumbled over and started to roll. The RV and its occupants would be turned to scrap by the time it stopped at the bottom of the slope.
Jackson sensed its trainer’s terror, even if it didn’t understand the reason for it. Sitting between the driver’s and front passenger throne chairs, it gazed up at Crecca with black, dead eyes and began to whimper softly. Clear snot bubbled and popped at its nose holes.
“Shut that thing up, Crecca,” the Magus said, “or I’ll damn well strangle it.”
Crecca had no doubt that his boss could and would do just that. “Jackson!” he snapped at the little mutie. “Get in your bed!”
With a chastened, hangdog expression, the stickie retreated to the pile of stiff rags behind the driver’s seat.
The trio of rousties sitting on Winnebago’s bench seat gave Jackson their full attention, hands on pistol butts. The needle-toothed critter was wearing its choke collar, but it wasn’t chained up.
“Where is this blasted road going?” the Magus said. “We’re headed up over the bastard mountain! I swear I’ll cut out Azimuth’s heart if he foxed us on this.”
You’ll have to stand in line for that privilege, Steel-Eyes, Crecca thought. He’d already started to wonder if his scout had even tried to tackle this road before setting down the all-clear marker. In the back of his mind, the carny master had begun to envision a further narrowing of the already too narrow track. And somewhere up ahead, mebbe just around the next turn, a collapse of the roadway, brought on by wash water from the chem rains and the weight of Cawdor’s RV. Mebbe Cawdor and company were already down at the bottom of a ravine? Mebbe the RV was lying on top of Azimuth’s crushed Baja Bug.
That would end the chase, but leave them in a sorry fix. They’d have no way to retreat, except on foot.
Which meant the stinking Magus would have to be carried.
Crecca knew he’d have to do the nasty job himself. The Magus would demand it of him, because he knew how much touching him filled Crecca with fear and loathing.
The carny master gave the creature in the shotgun seat a quick sidelong glance. He looked away before the Magus could catch the flat, murderous expression in his eyes. Before he’d touch that hideous contraption of metal and flesh again, he vowed he’d put a .223-caliber tumbler in the back of its skull and boot it off the side of the mountain.
“Shit! Shit!” Crecca exclaimed as he negotiated a hairpin and suddenly came upon the stolen RV, turned sideways with its front wheels hanging off the road. He braked hard. “Could be an ambush!” he shouted over his shoulder to the rousties. After setting the parking brake, he reached up and deftly dropped the steel louvers that protected the Winnebago’s cab.
There was no blasterfire.
It wasn’t an ambush.
It was a blockade of the road, and it was perfect.
“What are you waiting for?” the Magus demanded of him. “Go on, clear the road. Push that damn wag over the edge.”
Crecca released the emergency brake and crawled the huge RV up the grade. There was no question of his building any real speed to bump the other wag. There wasn’t enough distance between them, and he couldn’t back up any farther because of the turn and the wags stopped behind. On top of that, the grade was too steep, and the road surface too loose to get good traction. So Crecca merely crept up and nudged the smaller wag. His front bumper bit the middle of the cargo box. The back end of the wag tipped a bit, but not the front, which was sitting on its axle. He gunned the engine and the abandoned wag moved a little, its undercarriage scraping over the sandstone bedrock. Then it stopped. The back wheels of the big wag started to spin, and its rear end swerved toward the drop-off.