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Rickenbacker stands guard over the roadster while you walk back along the line of convoy vehicles looking for Mike Gorgas. Eventually you see him: he is sitting on the running board of his Mack truck, issuing specific instructions for the journey ahead to a ring of convoy drivers who have gathered around his vehicle. You wait until the circle of men have received their briefing, and then you approach Mike and report what has happened to your brakes.
‘This is real serious,’ he says, casting an anxious glance at the convoy drivers as they make their way back to their vehicles. ‘And it’s not the first time something like this has happened.’
He tells you that yesterday, shortly after you and Rickenbacker had started the fires in Arizona City, there was an incident aboard the Amcorp Landcruiser—the convoy’s largest passenger vehicle. A signal flare went off as the convoy reached the intersection with Interstate 8. It had been placed among some luggage that was strapped to the roof.
‘Luckily your diversion was so effective that the flare wasn’t seen by the Outlaws,’ says Mike, ‘but I’m beginning to smell a rat. Kate Norton goes down with food poisoning despite the fact that the food was triple-checked before we left Tucson, and now you discover that your brake cables have been cut. I think there’s someone among us who doesn’t want the colony to reach California. I don’t know for sure who it is, but I’ve got my suspicions. I found this attached to the signal flare.’ He removes a small, soot-blackened box from his jacket. ‘It’s a radio detonator. It was used to set off the flare.’ He slips the box back into his pocket and continues in a hushed voice. ‘Keep your eyes open, Cal. Once we’ve put some mileage between us and the Outlaws, I’ll get to the bottom of this, that’s a promise; but for now, you keep what I’ve said to yourself, OK?’ You nod in agreement and then make your way back to Rickenbacker and your roadster.
During your absence your partner has replaced the damaged brake lines and replenished the fluid level. He asks you what Gorgas had to say about the fact that your brakes had been sabotaged, but you evade his question by saying that he was too busy briefing the other drivers for you to be able to speak to him. Understandably, Rickenbacker is more than a little concerned that the sabotage has gone unreported, but he decides, at least for the moment, not to take it any further.
The storm clouds over Gila Bend may have dispersed, but for you they have been replaced by darker clouds of doubt and suspicion.
