They left the mountains far behind them. That pleased Clara.

"So," she demanded, "are we in California now?"

"Nope," said Bonner.

"T'morrow?"

"Nope. Sister Clara, we have to cross a desert, a real set of mountains, then we'll be in the land of the Rich Man."

"I just hope it's worth all the trouble."

"I think you'll like it."

They passed through the ghostly ruins of Salt Lake City and drove out into the wilderness, skirting the edge of the Great Salt Lake. Most of it was gone now, leaving a heavy, smelly, crusty expanse of salt stretching away to the horizon. It looked like a huge patch of dirty snow.

Part of their drive was on a highway built over the lake itself. The old, cracked trestle groaned and rocked as the force made its slow progress across. The waters below them looked still and stagnant, evil and poisonous. Clara looked down at the gray-green water and told herself that you'd probably dissolve, rifle and all, in that muck.

Once they were on the far side of the lake, Bonner took them off on a detour, a sharp turn north to an old Shell station he knew that would probably have some gas left in it and nearby there was a stream that ran with water that wasn't too bad. He knew that they would have to tank up oh both commodities. The next oasis wasn't until they got to the what the riders called The City of Glass.

Bonner was glad of the detour. It gave Roy and his companions a chance to get ahead of them. It set up the chase—that was the way things were supposed to be.

WELCOME TO NEVADA, said the sign.

"What's a Nevada?" asked Clara.

"Its a state."

"Never heard of it. Who runs it?"

"I guess its part of the Hotstates," said Bonner. But he'd never seen a Devil out here.

"Don't shit me, Bonner. Hotstates is south of Chi. We been traveling straight west."

Bonner nodded. "I know it sounds strange," he said, "but I think they curve west." He had run into Devils in Arizona and New Mexico when he made his runs down to Texas'. "But I guess no one bothers with anything out here. There's nothing for Berger in this land."

Berger was the ruler of the Hotstates.

Clara stared down the arrow-straight road. Rolling away from either side of it was scrub land. A featureless plain broken only by a low hill or an outcropping of rock. "I can see that," she said.

Depending on how you looked at it, Nevada was good fighting country or bad. It made a difference, really, depending on if you were being attacked or doing the attacking. If you were on the defensive you were in pretty good shape. The roads were straight, the country low, you could see a pack of riders coming for miles. If you were one of those riders and you had some attacking to do, then you were probably going to find yourself riding straight into a lead storm.

Bonner had no intention of taking on Roy in this territory. All he wanted him to do was get through it fast.

But Roy had other plans. He took his sweating riders through the first leg of the desert, through the shattered ruins of Eiko and Winnemucca, and as he rode a plan began forming in his mind. He thought he had it pretty well figured out when he called a stop. The sun was getting higher in the sky and he knew from experience that it was best to find what shade they could and wait through the hottest hours. The machines and the men just couldn't run through the midday heat without boiling over.

He pulled off the road a couple of miles. His original riders, the men that had followed him from California in the first place—there were only a couple left now—knew exactly where they were going. It was a nice, cool place they called The Hole.

Of all the strange things Roy had seen in his travels, The Hole was one of the strangest. To get to it you had to cross through about seven twelve-foot-high barbed-wire fences. The fences were old and rusting now. It was no problem getting through the broken-down wire. Then you followed a track another half mile or so until you came to a broken-down shack that seemed to Roy never to have been a real house at all. There was nothing inside except the rusted open doors of an elevator cab, just like the one in the old office buildings of the The Bay City.

But the shack wasn't their objective. Around behind the tumbledown structure was the damnedest thing . . .

It looked like the men of the old days had built themselves a huge trap door in the desert floor. It was made of concrete and painted to match the surrounding vegetation. The hell of it was, though, that the giant doors had been thrown open and beneath that was The Hole. Half filling the space half in and half out was a pointy-nosed thing with all kinds of numbers and symbols on it. There was only one word that Roy could make out: MINUTEMAN 2.

"Looks like a giant bullet," said one of the riders.

Buggy went to the edge of the pit and peered down. "I can't see a damn thing." He took a can of gasoline from the back of his Honda and tossed a fair amount onto the side of the missile. When he figured it had dribbled far enough down the side he tossed a match onto it. The gas burned hot for a moment, flaking the paint on the side of the projectile. The three or four seconds of light showed that the bottom of the pit was blackened with smoke from an earlier and far more powerful fire.

"Damned if 1 know what went on down there."

A rider thumped the side of the cigar-shaped object with his hand. "Whaddya s'pose is in here?"

Roy shrugged his shoulders. "Dunno."

The rider wandered back to his car and got an axe. He fixed his eye on the side of the missile and struck it once or twice, denting the skin, but failing to penetrate the metal.

"Looks harmless enough."

Buggy was intrigued. "Look, maybe we can shift it. Push it back down the hole and maybe it'll break in two, we can get a look inside."

"Hey, you guys," said Roy, "this was supposed to be a rest stop. We're gonna be riding right into the night. If I was you I'd leave the thing be and take a' snooze."

"Hey, fuck you," said Buggy irritably. He started belaboring the missile with a sledgehammer, denting it severely.

"I think we oughta shove it down the hole like you said," said Buggy's partner in this particular endeavour.

They bummed a couple of crowbars from the other riders, a few of them gathering around to watch. Buggy and his buddies grunted and sweated trying to lever the thing off the edge of the silo. The huge tube had lain there so long that it seemed to be growing out of the concrete lip of the bunker. Finally, though, the thing gave a few inches and slipped a foot or so back into the the hole.

"Great," said Buggy and started clobbering the

steel shaft with his sledgehammer again.

The missile slipped again, paused and then dropped back into the silo. It bounced off the side of the concrete pit and came to a crashing halt athwart the bottom of the shaft. As it hit, the upper five feet of the cone split off, bounced a few times and came to rest on the metal steps that ran down the inside of the silo.

"Hey, awwright," said Buggy scampering down the steps. A couple of his helpers went with him. They stood around the nose cone peering at the wires and printed circuits that spilled from it.

Buggy put his face down close to it and jabbed around the inside of the thing with his long-bladed knife.

"Nuttin in there," he said, rocking the knife back and forth.

"Shit," said one of the onlookers, "all that work for nothin'." He kicked the nose cone savagely and it bounced down a few steps.

Buggy made his way back up the steps and wiped his hands. He heard the noise of the mysterious cone being dropped to the bottom of the silo. He settled behind a rock and decided that Roy was right, he should get some shut-eye.

The riders that he left in the silo decided to go a little further down the shaft to to the very bottom. There they found a steel door.

"Wonder what the hell's in here?" said one, kicking at it. The door was rusted but not fragile enough to open with a kick. One of his buddies, sitting on the nose cone watching him said, "Let's use this thing like a battering ram, ya' know." The three riders picked up the thing and took a few steps back, then ran at the door, the sharp nose of the missile aimed at the center of the steel barrier.

The first blow punched a head-sized hole in the door. The second opened it up enough for a man to put his upper body through. A rider peered in. There was nothing but a concrete corridor. They bashed another hole in the door and opened it wide. They trooped into the narrow musty-smelling room. At the end of that they found yet another steel door. "Fuckin' A," said one of the explorers. "Let's get the thing and punch this door in." The four men agreed that this was a good plan. They trooped back, picked up the nose cone, and proceeded to slam the second steel door down. They tossed the missile end to one side.

Their eyes became accustomed to the gloom. The room contained two skeletons, each slumped over tall control boards. Faded, torn green uniforms covered the bare bones.

"Now what the fuck were these guys doing down here?"

"Beats the crap out of me."

"Hey," said one. "What's the noise?"

No one spoke, ears cocked for the noise.

"What noise?"

"Sshh . . ."

"I don't hear anything."

"Yeah, listen, it's that tick-tick-tick . . ."

"Oh yeah," said one slowly. He glanced over at the two skeletons. "Maybe one of these guys is wearing a watch."

"What a moron," said one of the riders emphatically. He sat down on the thing.

Buggy would decide later that it was, without a doubt, the loudest explosion he had ever heard.

Suddenly, the silo vomited a great gust of smoke and fire, shooting debris straight up into the air. The ground beneath his body shook and shifted. The day turned black with smoke and the area under the shack suddenly collapsed, leaving a smoking crater.

A few of the riders who had been close to the edge of the silo vanished in a great gout of flame. Bikes were hurled into the sky, the thunderous boom echoed over the desert. Then the area around them started raining dirt and little stones that had been carried into the air with the head of the blast.

The silo had vanished. The concrete sides had fallen into the hole, almost filling it. The huge cement slabs smoked and the iron underpinnings showed themselves, twisted and broken like giant claws.

There was a terrible ringing in Buggy's ears. He couldn't hear anything and was blinded by the dust and the smoke that had settled on the ground. Little stones peppered his head as they fell from the sky.

Gradually the boom rolled away and Buggy struggled unsteadily to his feet and tottered around in little circles in the dust storm. Roy wandered by him with a very funny look on his face. A couple of other riders loomed up out of the mist. One had a bloody socket where his arm used to be.

"What happened to your arm, Gus?" asked Buggy.

Gus looked down at the wound that was disgorging his blood onto the shifting ground.

"Dunno," he said, "blowed off, I guess." Then he fell down.

Gus looked so comfortable that Buggy sat down also.

About an hour later, the dust had settled to reveal eight or nine riders sitting around staring into space. Buggy picked himself up and crawled over to his car. It was on its side. He put his weight against it and pushed it back onto its four wheels. It rocked back and forth on its springs. Buggy pulled a water bottle out of it and swigged. That seemed to clear his head a little. 

"Gimme some of that, friend," croaked Roy.

Buggy brought it over to him and Roy took a couple of deep gulps. It seemed to revive him quite a bit.

"Oh God," Roy moaned, "does my head hurt."

"Roy," said Buggy, "how do you suppose he arranged that?"

"Who?"

"Bonner."

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