“You mean, where you shot Soto?” Annie asked.
Kort didn’t say anything and they watched the marshals and some highway patrolmen roll out of the parking lot in a convoy.
“Didn’t have Box,” Rosie said. She turned and looked at Annie. “Maybe you guys should unhook the car and stow the hitch.”
“I can’t believe this,” Kort moaned.
She and Annie unhooked the rental car and stuck the hitch equipment back in the RV’s cargo hold. When the car was free, Kort got behind the wheel while Annie rode shotgun. Notliterallyshotgun:literallyfully automatic M16 with two thirty-round mags, purchased new from the Mexican Army and extensively tested in the swamps east of Houston.
When they were set, Rosie drove away and began rolling the RV slowly around the suburban roads on the east side of Weatherford, never straying too far from the cluster of roads that led from the jail to I-20.
—
LUCAS, BOB, AND RAEhad just gotten up in the air when the College-Sounding Guy called Rosie and said, “They’re checking her out. They’re moving her.”
The College-Sounding Guy was now an uninvited guest in the Parker County computer system, which, he said, was wide open. “They made it easy to get into, because they got so many dumbasseswho need to get into it. Their security stuff dates to about, oh, the moon landing.”
Rosie called Annie, and Annie said to Kort, “You fuck this up, honest to God I’ll shoot you in the back of the head. I got two felonies on my card, and if I get busted for this, I’m going away forever, so it won’t make any difference if you’re the third one.”
Kort began to tear up: “You’re so fuckin’ crazy, you’re both so fuckin’ crazy...”
“Shut up and drive when I tell you.”
—
KORT AND SOTOhad had a good photo of Dora Box, so when Box was brought out of the jail, cuffed, and stuck in the back of a patrol car, they both recognized her.
“Okay, here’s a problem,” Annie said, looking at the highway patrol car. “That’s a Dodge Charger, a totally hot vehicle. If he cranks it up, you’re gonna have to jump all over the gas pedal. I don’t think he’ll do that, but he could.”
“You fuckin’ bitch, you fuckin’ bitch...”
Annie popped the passenger door, went around and got in the backseat, got comfortable, took the M16 off the floor, and touched the back of Kort’s head, just behind her right ear. “Get ready.”
The patrol car rolled out of the parking lot, and Kort, staying well back, followed.
—
THEY DIDN’T HAVEthe local knowledge to tell them how the highway patrolman would get to Fort Worth, but had guessed it wouldbe one of three alternatives: straight south to I-20, diagonally east to I-20 on East Bankhead Highway, or diagonally east on Fort Worth Highway. They’d studied all three, working out possibilities, and guessed he’d most likely take Bankhead, with the Fort Worth Highway as the second choice. The south route probably the third choice.
They were hoping for Bankhead, and when the patrol car made the right turn onto it, Annie, in the backseat, said, “Yes!” and called Rosie and said, “Bankhead, be ready.”
Rosie said, “Moving now.”
—
ROSIE WASon Allen Street, where she could get easily to either of the two most likely highways. When she got the call from Annie, she pulled the RV onto Bankhead, a block ahead of the highway patrol car, and accelerated away, six miles over the speed limit, headed for a street called Lake Forest Drive. Lake Forest had a big clump of trees north of Bankhead...
Annie saw the RV pull out ahead of them and ahead of the patrol car. They were a couple of hundred yards back, with one car between them and the cop. She said, “All right, pass now.”
Kort had stopped complaining. She was hanging on the steering wheel with both hands, arms tense as ski-lift cables. She pulled up close to the car ahead of them, then swung out, across the double-yellow no-passing stripes, and back in behind the cop car.
“Faster now,” Annie urged from the back. Kort heard her drop the window. “Faster now, faster, faster, faster...”
Kort was coming up fast, could sense the cop watching them inhis rearview mirror. She couldn’t see his eyes, but his head was turned toward it.
“Take him,” Annie shouted. She’d pulled a blue cowboy bandanna up around her face, under her sunglasses. She was wearing a long-billed fishing hat to cover her hair. “Take him, goddamnit, take him...” and she touched the back of Kort’s neck with the barrel of the gun.
Kort accelerated again, hard, pulling alongside the cop car. The cop was looking at them now, frowning, his face only six feet away, and Annie swung the machine gun out the window and blew his front tire, and as the cop car screeched off the road, she shot out the rear tire and simultaneously screamed, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”
