As the Caddy roared toward the canyon, a barricade came into view. "They never reopened the road!" Little Rock said in alarm.
"Well, my daddy used to say," Tal said as he accelerated, "anything you can drive over is optional." The barricade went under with a slight bump.
Greenwater Canyon was rather bland compared to other sites of the southwest. The sides of the canyon were shallowly sloped, and the rocks were drab shades of gray and brown, with few features beyond the occasional cave. The only striking features were jagged lines of dark rock on the crests of the hills. "I think we just passed a petroglyph," Little Rock said.
"That's nice, but we don't have time to look at pictures," Tal said. Abruptly, he turned off the road, braked and turned off the engine.
"What are you doing?" Little Rock exclaimed. "You just said we don't have time to stop!"
"Hush," Tal hissed. "Listen." They heard the sound of motorcycles- coming from the other direction.
It took two tries to get the engine started. Tallahassee accelerated to highway speed, heedless of the pummeling to the vehicle's tough suspension. Then he veered off the road again, following a foot trail around a hill. He stopped again, this time leaving the engine running, and scrambled up the hill. From behind the scrub on a crest of the dark rock, he saw eight bikers on four-wheeled ATVs and two armed dune buggies drive by, kicking up a veritable dust storm. He chuckled as he withdrew. "They aren't looking for us, just heading for Furnace Creek," he said. "They probably won't know we were here until they see the knocked-over barricade. There's a side-loop a mile or two ahead that will get us to the other end of the track. By the time they turn around and look for us, we can be on the road to Shoshone."
"Ookaay," Little Rock said dubiously.
The side loop proved to be a narrower side canyon, with sides steep enough to really look like a canyon. Tal slowed to 25. They passed a mural of petroglyphs, white squiggles of animals, stick men and less decipherable shapes. Tal had to swerve and impulsively beeped a horn when a bighorn sheep took its time bounding out of the way. Little Rock stood up in her seat to look around through the sunroof. She relaxed, but then dropped down in sudden panic. "Tal! Tal! There's a Red Baron plane out there!"
"Huh?" he said.
"You know, the red plane with three wings! I just saw one fly over the canyon!"
"It's called a Dreidecker," Tal said patiently, "and there's no way Branson ha... ha..." In the distance, a red triplane was cruising through the sky. Tal put his foot to the gas pedal. The plane was turning and speeding up, already growing larger. He realized there was something cockeyed about how quickly it seemed to be closing in. Little Rock shrieked as the craft dropped below the level of the hills. The swooping plane filled the windshield, twin guns blazed, and he cried out at a sudden pain in his shoulder. Then, in the rear view mirror, he saw the plane, already growing smaller, waggle its wings before disappearing around a corner a hundred feet back. The pilot's head turned as if looking back.
Tal slowed almost to walking pace, as he examined a flesh wound from a BB pellet. "Little Rock, get the shotgun!" he said.
"I'm on it!" she said, pumping an Ithaca stockless 20-gauge.
The triplane shot back into view over the ridge. A miniature only in relative proportions, it had a wingspan of at least eight feet. A blast of the shotgun came too late. Little Rock took a breath and fired again. The plane rolled effortlessly out of the way, then rose steeply. As it went up, something came dropping down. Tal swerved, and the vehicle was jolted by a small but perfectly functional bomb. "Close the sunroof!" Tal shouted.
"No! Leave it open!" Little Rock answered. She fired two blasts in succession. The plane nimbly dodged the first, but the second blew away half of its top wing. The unbalanced plane made a banking turn, dropping a second bomb that bounced off the hood. She tracked ahead of it and fired her last shell. The blast tore away the undercarriage, and left blue sky showing through the bottom of the fuselage. It spiraled downward for an emergency landing, but the strain of a tight turn broke the damaged fuselage in two.
"Way to go, girl!" Tal said, taking a hand off the wheel for a high five. Then the vehicle rocked at the detonation of the bomb somewhere under the car, followed immediately by a second, greater jolt as a tire ruptured. Tal and Little Rock both screamed as the vehicle fishtailed. Tal managed to regain control in time to make a tight turn. But there was nothing he could do about an antiquated shack that appeared unexpectedly in their path.