Dream Town

Chapter 57

The first surprise was the turn the truck made before it reached Pacific Palisades.

“They’re heading north,” said Archer. He thought for a moment. “Will Rogers State Park is in that direction. Could they be going there for some reason?”

They kept following the truck, and, later, Archer cut the Buick’s lights as the truck turned down a single-lane road surrounded by woods.

“What do we do now?” he asked Dash.

“We can’t risk being seen or getting stuck heading down that road. The rain’s stopped, so make your way down on foot and see what you see. I’ll pull the car around and out of sight. I’m figuring they have to come out of there at some point.”

Archer climbed out. Dash slid into the driver’s seat and wheeled the car around and behind a slab of bushes. He cut the lights and engine and waited.

Meanwhile, Archer picked his way through the wet ground as water from the rain-laden tree canopies splashed down on him. He turned up his slicker’s collar and kept going, a flashlight his only source of illumination. His path paralleled the road leading in. He finally reached a clearing and peered around the trunk of a burly oak.

There was another truck back here, and a transfer was being made. The hooded figures were being led off the one truck and loaded onto the other. Two of the guards then closed the overhead door of the truck and secured it. One of them patted the back of the door and the truck started up.

Archer made his way back to Dash. He climbed into the Buick just as the truck with the prisoners emerged from the wood line. In a few hurried words he told Dash what he had seen.

As the truck passed by their hiding place, Dash said. “We got a choice to make. Follow that truck with the people or the other one with the crates. I opt for the crates. We got the reflective tape on that truck. It’d be too easy to lose the other.”

“Agreed.”

The second truck appeared a minute later and headed back down the way it had come. Archer and Dash followed at a discreet distance.

They got back on the main road, made the curve around Santa Monica Bay, but instead of cutting east to LA and Chinatown, the truck kept going south.

“What the hell!” exclaimed Dash. “This is really getting screwy.”

They kept following in light traffic. They passed the Venice Pier when Dash said, “Maybe they’re heading to El Segundo or Manhattan Beach, something like that.”

“Now they’re heading east,” said Archer a minute later.

The truck had indeed changed directions again and was moving inland.

Then it dawned on Archer. “They’re going to LA International.”

Sure enough, the truck did enter the airport, which even at this late hour was busy.

Archer looked around at the activity. Tugs pulled baggage cars, and multi-engine propeller planes taxied to or away from the runways now that the storm had passed. Cargo trucks zipped hither and thither to make sure the air commerce on the West Coast held up its end of the bargain.

As they drove along well back of the truck, it approached a gate and stopped. The guard spoke with the driver, there was a flash of paper, and then the guard waved him on.

“We’re not getting past that gate,” observed Dash. “And the guard didn’t even check what was in the back of the truck. I’m thinking some money has changed hands there.”

“Hold on, this is looking familiar.”

Archer parked the car and pulled out his binoculars. He hopped out and went over to a remote part of the field and peered through the fencing. The truck had stopped next to a plane. He continued to watch as the crates were off-loaded, weighed on a portable scale, and then loaded into the plane’s cargo hold. He saw the man in the truck hand another man some papers, then he and the other men climbed back into the truck.

And Archer had recognized the man who had received the papers and the cargo.

He returned to the car and climbed in. “Okay, the plane they just loaded the crates into is Bart Green’s Beechcraft.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I flew in it. And the guy who accepted the cargo just now is Green’s pilot, Steve Everett. He’s the one who flew me to Vegas.”

They watched as the truck passed through the gate and headed on into the darkness.

“Should we follow the truck?” asked Archer.

“I’d like to know where that plane is flying tonight.”

“I’m not sure how we’d find that out. It’s not a scheduled commercial flight. It’s private. We probably could find out, given time and a few palms greased.”

“Okay, we can do that later. Let’s follow the truck.”

However, the driver had now parked the truck and gone into the terminal while the other men waited in the front seat. He came out a few minutes later with some paper cups of coffee in hand, climbed back in, and set off.

As they left the airport, following the shiny stripe on the truck’s rear axle, Archer looked up and thought he could see the Beechcraft pass overhead with its shipment of dope to points unknown. But that might just have been his imagination.

They followed the truck at a steady pace.

“Maybe we’re finally going to Chinatown,” said Dash as they passed in a northeasterly direction through South Central LA, past downtown, and hooked around Union Station.

It did indeed look like they were finally venturing into Chinatown.

However, when they rounded a corner, the truck was no longer in sight.

“He must have turned down that alley,” said Dash, pointing to his left.

At that same instant, three men stepped out from that alley. And they were pointing something at the Buick.

“Hit it, Archer, it’s an ambush,” barked Dash.

Archer gunned the engine, cut the wheel, and slammed down on the gas even as the men opened fire, shattering the side and back glass of the Buick. Archer felt the crack of rounds whizzing past him; some lodged in the upholstery, others clanged off the metal inside the car. It was like he and Dash were stuck in a pinball machine and ricochets were everywhere trying to kill the two men. He piloted the Buick around a corner and kept the pedal to the floor. The car’s engine wound up high, screaming like a woman in distress.

Archer exhaled a relieved breath as he slowed down. “Damn, that was close.”

He turned to look at Dash and his lungs seized.

An unconscious Willie Dash was lying sideways in his seat with blood pouring from his back.