One of Frankland’s river patrols out looking for refugees, the same sort that had brought them to the camp in the first place.
Plans flailed through his mind. He didn’t think, in this instance, the “Brother Frankland sent me to tell you to come back to the camp” ploy was likely to work.
“Oh, hell,” Jason murmured. “It’s Magnusson.”
“The porno guy?” Nick said. He cut power as the other boat approached. Fleeing at top speed was a futile idea, and therefore reserved for the moment when everything else had failed. The other boat throttled back, then reversed briefly to check its momentum.
“Heaven-o there, Adams,” Magnusson said. “What’s going on?”
“There’s shooting in the camp,” Nick called out. “A war almost. Olson came back with friends and guns. Hilkiah was shot dead in front of the whole camp, and so was the Reverend Calhoun.” The others looked at each other in surprise. Whatever they’d been expecting to hear, this clearly wasn’t it.
“So what are you-all doing?” Magnusson said.
Nick stood straight, squared his shoulders. You are telling them, he informed himself, you aren’t asking their permission.
“We’re getting to safety,” Nick said. “We’re not armed, and there’s nothing we can do. If you’ve got weapons, you should go back to the camp and help restore order. But otherwise I advise you to stay away.”
The other two men seemed uncertain, but Magnusson returned an answer quickly.
“I don’t think you’re thinking very clearly, sir,” he said. “There’s no safety on the river. It’s dangerous, and that’s why we’re supposed to bring in anyone we find here.”
“There isn’t any warfare on the river,” Nick said. “It’s a lot safer than the camp.” He nodded as calmly as he could at Magnusson, but he felt helplessness drain the strength from his knees, and he leaned slightly against the side of the cockpit in order to support himself.
A momentary aftershock shivered the tops of the trees. Twigs and leaves rained down on the water.
“Sir,” Magnusson said, “I can’t let you out on that river, okay? Not with your family. It’s too dangerous.”
“People are dying at the camp,” Nick insisted. “You don’t believe me, you call them. You have a radio, don’t you?”
“It don’t work this far out,” one of the other men said. “Trees and water just eat up the signal, I guess.”
“I think you should come back with us, okay?” Magnusson said. “We’ll check out the situation, make certain that things are safe before we bring you into the camp.”
So here it was. Nick drew himself up, tried to summon his father’s authority.
“No,” he said. “No. We’re not going back.”
“I can’t permit you to leave, mister,” Magnusson said.
Nick narrowed his eyes. Looked at the pistol holstered on Magnusson’ hip. “What are your orders exactly?” he asked. “You supposed to shoot us or what? And what exactly gives you the authority to do that?”
And the question, Nick thought, was, Would they? Would they actually open fire?
The other two, Nick thought, probably wouldn’t. They seemed intimidated by the situation. He couldn’t see either of them raising a weapon against someone who wasn’t trying to harm them. They would look for excuses not to.
Magnusson, though, was more problematic. Magnusson was the strong-willed one, the one with the white armband that marked him as a leader. The one who wailed in front of a hundred and fifty people about the evil pornography he had sold, and how Frankland had helped him see the light.
“You’re coming back with us, okay?” Magnusson said.
“Calhoun is dead.” Nick barked out the words like his father dressing down a recruit. “Hilkiah’s dead. Other people died with them. And Reverend Frankland’s dream is dead! There’s nothing to go back to.”
Fury blazed in Magnusson’s eyes. “That’s not true!” he snapped. One hand touched the butt of his pistol. “You’re coming back!”
Nick’s heart sank. He’d played it wrong. General Ruford had given too many orders. If Nick had stayed sweet and reasonable, he might have been able to talk his way out of this.
Now it was hopeless. General Ruford had failed, and it was up to Nick to make up for the general’s failure. The only thing for Nick to do was to try to talk his way onto the other boat, then knock Magnusson down and get a gun, hold them all off at gunpoint or go down blazing… Hopeless, but it was the only thing he could think to do.
Jason looked at Nick and knew. There was that resolution in Nick’s face, that hard resolve that Jason had seen before on the river when he was trying to get to Arlette and Manon ahead of the people who had killed Gros-Papa. Nick was going to try something desperate, jump onto Magnusson and his gun maybe. Do whatever he could to save his family, and probably die.
Jason’s head whirled. He needed to do something, he knew. Something…
“No way!” he yelled. He waved his arms and jumped from the foredeck down into the cockpit. The boat rocked under him. He had wanted just to distract Magnusson, to break the thread of tension he’d seen running from Magnusson to Nick. That, and maybe give Nick a chance to come up with a plan that wasn’t based on getting himself killed
And then his eye lit on the red plastic case of the telescope, tucked behind the passenger seat. Wild inspiration seized him. He grabbed the Astroscan in both hands and held it over his head.
“This is a nuclear reactor!” he yelled. “You hit this with a bullet, and we’re all blown to bits!” There was a long, astonished silence broken only by the pounding of Jason’s heart. Magnusson’s eyes were wide and staring. Muscles worked on his unshaven jaw.
“Nick,” Jason said, still glaring at Magnusson, “let’s get this boat out of here.” Nick slowly lowered himself into the driver’s seat and pushed the throttle forward. The Johnson rumbled and the bass boat began to move.
Looking over his shoulder, Nick saw Magnusson step forward, one foot on the gunwale. Then saw one of the others put a restraining hand on his arm.
The boat rolled from the broken forest into the bright sunlight. Jason faced aft, the telescope still held over his head. Nick felt a laugh rising like a bubble through his astonishment.
“Goodbye-o!” Jason howled over the stern as he waved the Astroscan over his head. “Goodbye-o!” He turned to the others. “Who’s the genius?” he demanded. “Who’s the genius? Who’s got his own atomic bomb?” He gave a whoop.
And then Jason looked down at Nick, at the man’s trembling hands clenched on the wheel, and he felt the silent passage between them.
I was this close, he read in Nick’s face.
I know, Jason answered silently. I know how close we were.
The hunt lasted most of the morning. Frankland and his people, traveling across country in pickup trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles, in pursuit of Olson, who had his whole family piled onto one little beat-up ATV that wouldn’t go twenty miles an hour.
Olson first of all tried to make for the piney woods to the northwest of town. Frankland knew that once Olson got his family into that dense wreckage, they might well die of starvation or frustration, but would be perfectly safe as far as pursuit was concerned. So Frankland first sent a column of hunters under Sheriff Gorton zooming down the highway to get to the woods first. They succeeded, and when Olson’s ATV appeared, in a soy field south of the piney woods, he found Gorton’s people waiting, behind the cover of their vehicles with their weapons pointing across their hoods.