was empty. He turned onto the pavement, letting the car leap forward on the smooth cement. A curve, and there they were again. Two cars across the road, two guys putting up a striped wood barrier, a third one hitching at his pants, just looking. When they saw the black car tearing around the bend they straightened up and looked. The one who had been hitching his pants up started to wave at Catell in a halfhearted way before he jumped. The other two men were already in the ditch. When the barriers flew up in splinters and Catell watched his left front fender crumple like a piece of paper, a couple of shots cracked out from behind. They didn’t hit a thing, because when the car was clear of the roadblock Catell pushed the gas pedal to the floor and shot off like a rocket.

But now he wasn’t just driving anymore. Part of his sharpness had returned, tingling through his body like a charge of electricity. Long before he heard the sirens howling after him he was looking for a way to leave the highway, to ditch the car, even to make a lone stand, no matter what.

Because nobody was going to get Tony Catell.

When the clump of woods showed up on the left, Catell slowed down enough to take a screeching turn off the road. He kept the car on the narrow lane that wound through the trees, but his attention was wandering. Sirens wailed, sometimes loud, sometimes barely audible. He was trying to figure their position, their direction, but the wooded road, winding to avoid a tree, a rock, kept throwing off his judgment. When the sirens got louder Catell had to slow down. The powerful motor was barely growling and the car dipped and swung, edging ahead, nodding its hood.

Catell started to jump at movements in the trees, started to jerk the wheel too hard. His slippery hands itched, and that faint trembling began to shake him again.

Then the sirens stopped.

They must be off the highway. Where were they? The unbearable tension ripped loose in Catell and he jammed his foot down against the floorboard. The car shot ahead with a howl, barely missing a tree. For a few seconds the straining car found its way, and then, just as Catell could see the trees thinning out in the distance, the tons of roaring power shot off the road into the crunching underbrush. For one strangling second the car kept edging along, wheels whining; then the motor choked.

Catell didn’t get out right away. He sat limp, smelling the strong odor of gasoline, breathing with a shallow movement. When he got up it was with the same dull automatism that had wrapped him for most of the trip. He got out of the car, listened, and reached into the back for the cartridge case. The weight of the thing made the handle slip out of his fingers and he had to lift it with both hands. Carrying the box in his arms, he started to jog toward the thinning trees.

The light was almost gone. The cloying night air smelled of earth and rotting matter, but Catell didn’t notice. The short distance through the woods had drained him of all strength and he could barely get his breath. Through his swimming vision he saw a light in the distance. It was steady and small, looking like all the distant lights that call to children lost in the woods.

Catell started toward the light. He stumbled and lurched across the ruts of a field, his eyes on the light and nothing else. It seemed as if hours had passed when he saw what it was. There was a farmyard and a truck, and two men were standing by the motor, their heads under the hood. Every so often the motor roared, and then they jiggled something under the hood.

Catell crept forward, the box a heavy weight in his arms. No one saw him, heard him. Not many farms in the Imperial Valley have animals. When Catell got to the back of the truck he smelled the load. Stacked high over the panels, lay a soggy mess of wilting lettuce leaves and rotting stalks.

First Catell threw his box up, then he climbed after it. When the truck pulled out of the farmyard, Catell was buried in the soft mush of decaying stuff. It was warm, soft, and vibrating quietly with the motion of the truck. Catell almost went to sleep. Or