It was several minutes more before the chopper came upon the road that led to Roote's last suspected location. Huge plumes of sand and dust were thrown up by the swirling rotor blades as the Apache helicopter settled on the soft shoulder to one side of the strip of baking asphalt.
"What happened there?" Remo asked.
He pointed past the pilot's shoulder out through one of the front bubbled windshields.
A sorry line of telephone poles sulked along the side of the road. Until quite recently, the nearest had apparently had an old-fashioned goose-neck light attached high atop it.
But now the metal was black and peeled back in large strips where the streetlight had exploded. What's more, the pole itself looked to have suffered in the blast. The top was cracked apart like a viciously stubbed-out cigar.
Through the haze of swirling dust, it was apparent that two more poles down the road had suffered a similar fate.
"Lightning storm," the general explained hastily. "We get them in the desert from time to time. Can be pretty nasty when they hit."
It was obvious to Remo that Chesterfield was lying. By the look of the operation he was running down here, Remo wouldn't have been surprised if the general's men had shelled the poles by mistake during mortar practice.
Truth be told, Remo wasn't that interested in an explanation. He just wanted to get this over with. "That way?" he asked, slipping off his headset.
"Follow the road. It's the first small town you hit."
Remo popped the door. "It would have helped if you'd landed a little closer," he complained.
"Any good military man will tell you surprise is half the battle, boy," Chesterfield shouted.
"Find me a good military man so I can confirm that."
Remo climbed out the helicopter and down to the desert sand, slamming the door back into place. The open expanse of desert was a welcome relief to sharing a seat with Ironbutt Chesterfield.
Inside the helicopter, Chesterfield wondered if he shouldn't warn Remo about Roote. In the moment it took the general to consider, the helicopter lifted off once more, stranding Remo on the ground.
Inwardly, Chesterfield was relieved. If it came to an inquest after Remo's charred body was discovered, he'd blame the pilot for beating a too-hasty retreat.
The matter of a scapegoat settled, General Chesterfield sat back into the gunner's seat.
The Apache tore back toward Fort Joy, leaving the lone black shape of Remo Williams to be consumed by the swirl of desert sand.
THE FIRST HOUSE on the way into town was no more than a toolshed with a half-rotted carport. A mangy dog lay in the shade of a rusted 1947 Studebaker, which sat on rocks beside the shack. Clumps of desert brush grew up around both dog and car.
Next came a pair of larger homes, sand-ravaged wooden structures roughly the size of small house trailers. They sat across from one another on the flat roadway. Tin mailboxes perched like sentries before their short, hard-packed driveways.
Remo saw no sign of any police activity whatsoever as he walked up the long stretch of highway.
Chesterfield had dumped him farther out in the desert than he had let on. It had been a five-mile trek beneath the scorching sun to the first lonely buildings.
Several times on their flight from Fort Joy, the general had expressed concern that the Apache might be heard, but it was caution taken to the extreme for him to drop Remo so far away from the AWOL private's location.
As he wandered down the road between the pair of larger houses, Remo wondered what on earth the general thought one man could do to defend against a heavily armed piece of military hardware like the Apache. He chalked the extreme caution up to Chesterfield's apparent general incompetence.
As he walked down the desolate desert road, Remo sensed eyes following him.
A dark figure was peering from behind a set of ancient gauzy curtains in the ramshackle home to his right.
Up ahead was the Last Chance Saloon. Remo ignored his audience of one as he pressed on toward the bar.
He got no more than a few more paces on the gummy road when the black shape slipped from the window. A moment later, the screen door opened at the side of the house. A short man in dungarees and a grimy, untucked T-shirt gestured frantically to Remo.
"Senor!" he rasped. Snapping his attention up the road to the bar, he dropped his voice lower. "Please!" he begged, beckoning Remo over.
Remo didn't want a detour right now, but if the desperate old man decided to hound him all the way to the bar, he might alert Roote to Remo's presence. And if the private bolted, it could extend Remo's time in this desolate town by minutes. Annoyed, Remo left the road, hurrying through tufts of brittle brush to the old man.
"What's wrong?" Remo asked once he'd reached the stranger.
"You do not want to go there," the man whispered. He had a bristly white mustache and a threeday growth of black stubble across his dark cheeks.
Remo followed his gaze to the bar. "You a friend of Bill W.?"
It was as if the man didn't hear him. "The Army has already come for him," he pleaded. "It has done no good. I see them go in hours ago. They did not come back out."
Remo looked again to the Last Chance Saloon.
From this angle, he spied a military jeep beside the battered wooden structure.
"You know who I'm looking for?"
The old man nodded desperately. "He come during the night. I see him kill Tommy. He own the bar." The man's eyes were wild with fear. "He use his hands." He threw his own hands out before him like a witch casting a spell. "He kill Tommy with his hands. I don't know why he no kill me. He want a drink, I think." He jabbed his hands in the air in a dramatic and inexplicable re-creation of the bartender's last moments alive.
Remo couldn't figure out the man's pantomime. But judging by his breath, he'd been drinking pretty steadily since his encounter with Elizu Roote.
"Relax," Remo assured him. "He's probably passed out by now. Just do me a favor and keep the yelling to a minimum the next few minutes, okay?"
He turned to go. The old man bullied in front of him.
"He is el Diablo," the man insisted, grabbing his shirt. His rheumy eyes were pleading.
"In that case, I've got a date with the devil," Remo said evenly. He pulled away from the surprisingly powerful grip.
As he headed up the road toward the saloon, the old man made a rapid sign of the cross. Afterward, he hurried back to the safety of his ramshackle home. To drink. And pray.
ROOTE'S HEAD WAS BOWED over the bar, fists clasped at his temples.
Some of his shot glass lay in fragments before him. The endless tapping had eventually grown in ferocity until the thick glass shattered beneath the metal pad of his index finger. He'd swept most of the fragments to the floor.
His charge was low. He'd been taught to recognize the signs. He felt drained. Physically and mentally.
He had loosed too much juice on the pair of MPs. The baked corpses lying on the floor of the saloon were a grisly testament to the horrible power of the force within him. He thought he had held back, but drunkenness and insanity had impaired his judgment. If there ever came a day when he finally climbed off his stool, he'd have to recharge.
An intense silence gripped the desert beyond the bar's clapboard walls. He thought he'd heard the distant sound of a helicopter more than an hour before, but it had been swallowed up in the desert wind. No matter. Even though they hadn't found him yet, they were still looking.
Only a matter of time... Recharge. Had to recharge. Sniffling, Roote lifted his head from his hands.
Only then did he see the reflection in the bottles behind the bar.
Stomach knotting, Roote whirled on his stool. He wasn't alone.
The stranger had somehow gotten inside the saloon without the creak of a single floorboard or the squeak of the half-rusted door hinges.