Heroes David Hagberg (best motivational books TXT) 📖

started the motor. Eva got in. Schey flipped on the lights, pulled the hat low, and slowly headed up past the ranch house on his way out the front gate.

George Romero came out onto the porch. Eva looked up at him. Romero raised his right hand to wave at her, but then dropped it.

Schey raised his right hand and waved. Romero hesitantly waved back.

The Chevy’s engine ticked over slowly as Schey looked both ways up State Highway 44. He tried to decide which direction he should go.

Within the next fifteen to twenty minutes, perhaps sooner, the FBI reinforcements would be coming up this highway from Santa Fe in the east. If he turned that way, he would run the risk of meeting them. They’d recognize the car. But to the northwest was nothing … mountains, the tiny towns of Cuba and Counselor, and eventually the Colorado state line. If he turned that way, they would gain a couple of hours, perhaps more. But by morning, if they had not been found, planes would be put up from Kirtland Field down in Albuquerque. It would not take very long to find the small gray Chevrolet with a man and a woman.

Eva was staring wide-eyed at him. She was frightened nearly out of her mind. But she was still functioning. She hadn’t given up.

“Are they coming?” she asked.

“Not yet. But it won’t be long now,” he said. There was nothing to the north, he kept telling himself.

He put the car in gear and turned toward the east, working his way up through the gears. He reached up and twisted the rearview mirror over.

“Watch in the mirror for lights behind us,” he said.

She practically jumped out of her skin. “Are they coming that way?” she asked. She turned and looked out the rear window.

“Christ, Bobby, have they got us surrounded?”

“I don’t think so, but I want to know the moment you see anyone back there. 1 don’t want any surprises.”

“Okay,” she said after a moment. She adjusted the mirror, then sat there staring up into it, her hands folded on her lap.

At that moment Schey felt a great wave of love for her. He knew that she would follow him to hell and back if he told her to.

She’d even follow him back to Germany. But that was totally out of the question. This was not her fight. Despite her protestations to the contrary, she was an American. She had been raised by a German family, but they were all gone now. She had been a member of the Bund, but that was gone too. Everything else in her life had been American.

Eva fell silent as Schey drove. His every sense was at a raw edge. The moment he saw a light on the highway ahead of them, he was going to have to pull over to the side of the road and hide the car. But just at this moment there -weren’t very many places for him to conceal the car. The ditch at the side of the road was very shallow, the trees sparse.

He began to think ahead. There was a very definite procedure for when it was time for him to get out of the country. His contact this time was in New York City. He had two telephone numbers to call. If both of them were bad, he still had his radio.

He could try to get through. Get new instructions. But from now on he was going to have to be very careful. He was going to have to assume that all of his contacts were compromised. After all, it had been a very long time since it all had been set up by Canaris.

Nothing lasted forever.

He would still have to do something with the car tonight. It was too easily recognizable, even with the Hudson’s plates.

Besides that risk, there was the chance he might be stopped for a routine traffic matter and the bodies would be found in the trunk.

He had taken the bodies so that when the agents showed up at the ranch, they’d be slowed down, believing that the other two had successfully arrested Schey and Eva and were on their way back to Santa Fe.

Far away on the horizon to the east, Schey detected a pinpoint of light, and then it was gone. It was a car on the highway. He knew it!

He switched off the Chevy’s headlights, the road ahead plunging into darkness. Eva gasped.

“Watch to the rear!” he shouted. There was nowhere to pull off. Nowhere to hide. No trees, not even any brush.

Schey pressed down harder on the accelerator as his night vision began to improve. He caught another glimpse of the lights on the highway to the east. There were three … perhaps four, sets. It wasn’t just some farmer returning home after a night in town. They were coming after him and Eva.

Well off to the south, outlined against the ridge of a hill, Schey spotted what appeared to be an old ramshackle barn or storage shed. Even from here he could see by its outline that it was half fallen-down. He sped up, the accelerator pedal jammed to the floor, and the little car surged forward.

It was going to be very close, he figured. He’d make it to the road up to the barn before the headlights, but he didn’t know if he’d make it up the hill in time.

At length he slammed on the Chevy’s brakes as they came to a deeply rutted dirt track that led up to the building. They slid on two wheels around the corner.

The headlights of the approaching vehicles were getting uncomfortably close now. If they spotted the Chevy making its way up the hill, they’d know—or at least suspect—what was happening.

Someone would come up to investigate.

The car was bottoming out on its springs, and sweat began to pop out on Schey’s forehead. It would be too damned close. Eva was shouting something as she held on, but Schey was too busy to