Now I’ve passed through the high-rise obscenity that’s Houston, and I’m on US Highway 59, heading southwest through heavy rain. Earlier I spotted the anvil shapes of heavy thunderstorm clouds racing across the flat fields, and the torrential rain has been pacing me for at least twenty minutes, the flashes of lightning in the near-black clouds reminding me of those long, dark nights at FOB Healy in Afghanistan, seeing tracer rounds emerge from the nearby rocks and ravines, as the Taliban continued their daily quest to eject the newest invaders from their homeland.

As I hear the booming thunder, I try to suppress the memories of the rocket and mortar attacks, the explosive rounds dropping in and exploding while I huddled in the bomb shelter with the other noncombatants.

The traffic has been light in the past hour or so, but now it starts to thicken. I sit up and try to stretch my aching back.

Up ahead, more taillights flickering red.

I don’t like it.

I see my speed start dropping, from seventy miles per hour to sixty to fifty and now in the forties, and I really don’t like it.

What the hell is going on?

I try to peer to the side and just see the traffic slowing down even more, the taillights flickering red and then staying steady red.

The Wrangler’s speed continues to drop.

Thirty-two.

Twenty-nine.

Twenty.

Ten.

Three.

Full stop.

Damn it!

Horns around me blare, and I just squeeze the steering wheel hard, knowing honking my horn won’t do a damn thing.

But I honk it anyway.

I wait.

All right.

Maybe a traffic accident, or a jackknifed truck, or a sinkhole in the road.

Something.

Check my watch.

Five minutes have passed. That means I’m already five miles behind.

We stay stock-still.

Then the Subaru station wagon ahead of me with a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS bumper sticker moves ahead a few feet and stops.

More waiting.

I lower the driver’s-side window, stick my head out, get drenched.

All I see ahead of me are the line of cars and the red taillights.

Another five minutes slip by.

Another five miles lost.

I roll up the window, lean over to the passenger’s seat, take out my atlas and a road map of this part of Texas that I got from a service station an hour ago. There’s got to be another way out of here. With my four-wheel drive I could scoot across the grass median, get on the highway heading northeast, find a state road that will at least get me headed in the right direction.

Somebody hammers at my window.

I yelp in surprise, drop the maps, thrust my hand into my open leather bag, and grab my revolver.

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 44