'Please.'

Then I added another four-pack to our bill.

Next morning we filled the cool-box with ice, beer and cola,.

and had breakfast at the diner. The same waitress was still on duty.

'Good party?' Bel asked.

'Those guys,' clucked the waitress. 'Practically had to hose them down to get them out of here.'

It was ten o'clock and already hot when we headed out of town. One thing Sanch hadn't told us about the Trans-Am, its air conditioning wasn't a hundred percent. In the end, I turned it off and we drove with the windows down. At another service station, Bel bought some tapes, so we didn't have to put up with the radio any more. The drivers on these long two-lane stretches of Texas were kind to a fault. If you went to overtake someone, the car in front would glide into the emergency lane so you could pa.s.s without going into the other carriageway. Even lorries did it, and expected you to do the same for them. Not that many people pa.s.sed us. We cruised at between 70 and 80 and I kept an eye open; for radar cops. Every time we pa.s.sed a car or lorry, Bel would wave to it from her window.

This was the most relaxation I'd had in ages. I'd driven part of the way across the USA before, and had enjoyed it then too. As Bel said, you became your favourite film star in your own road movie. More importantly from our point of view, no one could trace your route.

Lubbock, birthplace of Buddy Holly, was a prairie sprawl with a museum dedicated to ranching. The museum boasted 252.

a large collection of types of barbed wire, plus a rifle display that took the breath away. That was all I could tell you about Lubbock. The last time I'd been here, I had failed to find a centre to the place, but that's not so surprising in American cities. Last time, I stayed in a run-down motel near the Buddy Holly statue. But after last night, I reckoned Bel would object, so we found a new-looking hotel just oil the highway and registered there.

American hotels and motels used to ask for your ID, but these days all they did was ask you to fill in a registration card. So it was easy to give fake names, fake car details and fake licence. Bel liked the room: it had Home Box Office on cable, plus in-house pay-movies. It also had a king-size bed and a telephone. I called the number one last time, then decided to head out there anyway.

'So do I get to know now?' Bel said as we got back into the Trans-Am.

'What?'

'Who you've been trying to call.'

'A guy called Jackson. Spike Jackson. You'll like him.'

Spike lived not far from Texas Tech and the Ranching Heritage Centre. He'd taken me there on my previous visit.

There was a dual carriageway, with single-storey shops along one side, and a couple of lanes off. Up one of these lanes, at the end of the line, was Spike's place. I hoped he wasn't out of the country on business. I knew he did most of his business from home.

We came off the dual carriageway and drove alongside the shops. Bel spotted a western-wear emporium, and wanted us to stop. I dropped her off and said I'd be back in five minutes, whatever happened. She disappeared through the shop door.

There were a couple of cars parked outside the two-storey house, but that didn't mean anything. Like all 'good old boys', Spike usually had a few cars hanging around. He owned at least two working cars, and sometimes bought 253.

another dud, which he'd tinker with for a while before towing it to the junk yard. I revved the Trans-Am a couple of times to let him know he had a visitor. I didn't want him nervous.

But there was no sign of life as I walked up the steps to the front door. There was a screened-in porch either side of the door, with chairs and a table and a swing-bench. Spike hadn't had the maid in recently; there were pizza boxes and beer cans everywhere. I rang the bell again, and heard someone hurtling towards the door. It flew open, and a teenage girl stood there. Before I had a chance to say anything, she waved for me to follow her, and rushed back indoors again.

'I'm about three thou off the high score!' she called. I followed her upstairs and into a bedroom. It looked like a radio shack. There were electronics everywhere. Sprawling across a makeshift table (an old door laid flat with packing- cases for legs) was a computer system.

The girl could have been anywhere between fifteen and eighteen. She was thin and leggy, her black denims like a second skin. She'd tied her thick red hair carelessly behind her head, and wore a black T-shirt advertising some rock band. She was back in front of the computer, using the joystick to fire a killing beam at alien crustaceans. Two speakers had been wired to the computer, enhancing the sound effects.

'Who are you anyway?' she asked.

'I'm a friend of Spike's.'

'Spike's not here.'

'When will he be back?' As the screen went blank and a fresh scenario came up, she took time to wipe her hands on her denims and look at me.

'What are you, Australian?'

'English.'

'Yeah? Cool.'

I was tempted to pull the plug on her game, but you could 254.

never tell with teenagers. She might draw a gun on me. I had to attract her attention somehow.

'Spike never used to like them so young.'

'Huh?'

'His girlfriends.'

She smirked. 'Not!' She had dimples and a faceful of freckles, a pale face which seldom saw the sunshine outside.

The curtains in her room were drawn closed. She'd stuck photos on them; film stars mostly. "I'm not Spike's girlfriend.'

She rolled her eyes at the thought. 'Jee-zuss!'

I sat down on her unmade bed. 'Who are you then?'

'I shouldn't have let you in, should I? I mean, you could be any-f.u.c.king-body, right? You could be a rapist, or even worse a cop.'

'I'd have to be an English cop, wouldn't I?'

'Not. I know who you are. Spike's told me about you.'

'Who am I then?'

'He calls you "Wild West".'

I smiled. This was true. She was looking at me again. 'Am I right?'

'Yes, you're right. I need to see Spike.'

'Well, he's not here. Look at that, eight million seven hundred thou.'

'The high score?'

'You bet.'

"I'm a great believer in quitting while you're ahead.'

'Uh-uh, bud.' She shook her head. 'I'm headed all the way to annihilation.'

'Where is Spike?'

'You're getting boring, man. He's on a shoot.'

'A shoot?'

'Down towards Post. It's an hour's drive.'

'Can you give me directions?'

'Sure, head south-east out of town--'

'On a piece of paper?'

255.

She smirked again. 'I'm an American teenager, we don't write.'

'I'm going to pull the plug on your little game.'

'Do that and you'll be sorry.' There was no humour in her voice, but I'd run out of patience. I found a four-way adaptor on the floor and picked it up, my hand clenched around the first cable.

'Okay, man, you win.' She hit a b.u.t.ton on the keyboard and the screen froze. 'This thing's got a sixty-second pause.'

She looked for paper, found a paperback novel, tore the back cover from it, and drew a map on the blank side. She threw the map at me and jumped back into her seat.

'Thanks for the hospitality,' I said.

'How hospitable would you be if your parents kicked you out?'

She was asking me to ask her something. My only weapon was to walk away, and that's what I did.

Back at the store, Bel had bought a pair of boots for herself. They had shiny metal tips and ornate red st.i.tching on black leather. She'd bought a new pair of denims to go with them. She almost looked like a native, which was no bad thing. Maybe that was the reason she'd bought the stuff.

Or maybe she was just trying to shed her old clothes, her English clothes. Clothes from a home she no longer wanted.

I handed her the map as we drove off. She looked at the drawing, then at what it was written on.

'"Mainframe bandits",' she read, '"are on the loose in hypers.p.a.ce, and only you can stop them, playing the role of Kurt Kobalt, Inners.p.a.ce Investigator, with your beautiful but deadly a.s.sistant Ingress".' She looked at me. 'Is that us, do you think?'

Not.'

256.

19.It wasn't that easy to find the shoot.

The map wasn't wrong in itself, but some of the roads were little more than dirt tracks, and we doubted we were ever going to end up anywhere. As a result, we lost our bottle once or twice and headed back to the main road, only to find we'd been on the right road all the time.

At last we came to a lonely spot, a wilderness of hillocks and valleys. There was no habitation for miles, yet cars and vans had gathered here. Men and women were standing around guzzling from cans. That worried me straight off: guns and alcohol - the worst marriage.

As soon as we stepped out of the car we could smell it: the air was thick with cordite. We couldn't tell if there was smoke or not, we'd kicked up so much dust along the track.

I was glad I'd bought the Trans-Am and not some anonymous j.a.panese car. These were Trans-Am people.

There were a couple more parked nearby, along with Corvette Stingrays and Mustangs and a couple of Le Barons.

Somebody yelled 'The line is hot!' and there was a sudden deafening fusillade from behind the nearest rise. Instinctively, Bel ducked, raising a knowing smile from the beer- drinkers. The sound of firing continued for fifteen seconds, then died. There were whoops and sounds of applause. A man came up to us, beer can in hand.

'It's six bucks each, buddy.' I was handing over the money when I heard an unmistakable voice.

'You old dawg, what in the h.e.l.l are you doing here?' It was Spike Jackson. He had a baseball cap on his head, turned so the shield was to the back. He took it off and ran a 257.

hand through his hair. He had thick wavy brown hair swept back to display a high prominent forehead. He wore steel- rimmed gla.s.ses, sneakers and old denims, and a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, showing rounded muscular shoulders and thick upper arms. He stopped suddenly, arched his back to the sky and threw open his arms.

This is gun heaven, man! I died and went to gun heaven.

Didn't I always used to tell you that, Wild West? That's what this country is, man.'

His audience voiced their agreement. Now he came up to us and, arms still open wide, closed them around me in a hug that lifted me off the ground.

'Wild West, man, how in the h.e.l.l are you doing?' He let me down and gave Bel a smile, touching his crotch for luck, then turned back to me. 'You old dawg, you! Come on, let's go where the action is.' He went to a stack of beer cans and pulled off a few, tossing one to me, but opening Bel's and handing it to her with a bow from the waist.

'Name's Spike Jackson, ma'am, and this one's for you.'

Bel took the beer but didn't say anything. Spike led us around to where, as he'd put it, the action was. In another clearing people milled around examining the damage the latest fusillade had done to a couple of wrecked cars, a lean- to shack, and an array of crates and bottles and cans. Fresh targets were being set up by sweating volunteers.

I knew what this was, of course. Spike had taken me to a Texan shoot before. Forty or fifty enthusiasts would gather together and fire off a range of weapons. You could spectate, or you could partic.i.p.ate. A couple of arms dealers, who supplied much of the a.r.s.enal, would then take orders. I could see the dealers. They were short and dumpy and wearing holsters under drenched armpits. The day was fiercely hot, and I half wished I'd bought a stetson; or at the 3

very least a baseball cap.

Spike never officially organised these shoots, because he

wasn't officially a gun dealer. He worked the black market, 258.

and got a lot of his stuff from Army bases throughout Texas.

He bought from overseas too, though. He just didn't do any of this legally.

'Look at this,' he told me. He had led us to where today's arms were displayed, spread on sheets of plastic on the ground. It looked like an a.r.s.enal captured from the Iraqis.

Spike had picked up a Browning anti-aircraft gun. It showed off his bronzed arm muscles. 'Something for the lady,' he said, laughing.

I laughed back, and Bel gave me a disgusted look.

'We got your Ml 6s, your AK-47s and 74s.' Spike pointed out the most interesting items. 'Look here, we even got something from Finland or Sharkland or someplace, a Varmint.'

'Valmet,' I corrected. 'The M62.'

'Whatever. We got armour-piercing ammo you wouldn't believe, man. Look here, the M39B. Use it in a handgun, it'll go through a bullet-proof vest. Get 'em while you can. Black Talon bullet here, you ever hear of it?'

'It expands on impact,' Bel said coolly, 'and has these sharp little edges.'

Spike opened his eyes and mouth wide. 'Lookee here, we got us an expert! It's the quiet ones you have to watch out for!' Then he went back to his inventory. 'It's all cute stuff, and believe me we got everything.'