Ervey watched in stunned silence from the box of the white Chevy as the Kodiak moved onto the highway shoulder and stopped behind the yellow Chrysler. He caught a glimpse of Lilo sitting stoically in the passenger's seat as the big truck rolled back momentarily to let the Chrysler pass in front. The man who had been driving it was now in control of the Kodiak. Ervey tumbled to the floor of the box before he could see more. The Chevy jerked left then right to make a u-turn behind the Kodiak. Two other trucks followed suit, and the caravan was back in formation on the highway shoulder, this time heading west. A brief idle moment passed. Ervey then heard a door on the Kodiak open and slam shut seconds later. He turned to see what was happening and was met by the cold stare of a man on the other side of the truck's back window. The man did not let Ervey gaze even a second. He shook his head and harshly commanded Ervey to look away.
"Don't look, you slobberer! Turn around and sit down in the floor of the box," he snarled.
Seeing the man held a 45-mm semiautomatic pistol in one hand and a a high-powered rifle in the other, Ervey quickly did as he was ordered.
After a few moments and a brief, inscrutable exchange of words between men at the front of the line, the caravan started moving. Less than a minute later, it stopped again, and two of the men in the cab of the truck following the white Chevy got out and walked past Ervey, rifles in their hands. Seconds later, a stranger trudged past in the opposite direction followed closely by one of the men who had just walked to the front. The stranger hopped up into the back of the pickup behind the Chevy. His escort got back into the truck, and the caravan started moving again. As soon as they passed it, a late-model Chevy Suburban fell in at the tail end of the caravan. The exercise was repeated many times, each time the caravan growing longer and the boxes in the first four pickups filling up with men.
"And no talking!" commanded the man riding shotgun in the Chevy.
The caravan never got to the front of the line of vehicles standing on the highway. Before they reached an open lane on the left, the caravan turned right through a wire gate onto a rough dirt road. When the tail vehicle seemed to clear the gate, the caravan halted briefly, as if to get organized. After some movement back and forth by men holding rifles, the few trucks that had their headlights on, turned them off and switched to their dimmer parking lights. A few seconds later, a horn honked from one of the lead trucks, and the caravan started moving again, slowly at first then faster and faster.
The pickup box bucked and wagged violently under Ervey as the Chevy sped over the rough road. A thick and fast-moving cloud of dust rose up, completely shrouding Ervey and the three other men in the box with him. To keep from being slammed against the sides of the box or bumped out of it onto the path of rest of the caravan, the four of them leaned against each other, pushing away from the sides of the box with their hands and feet like a spokes on a wagon wheel.
The ride went on a long time. With the dust and the rough ride in the box, it was not possible to note the time or discern the direction. When the ordeal had completely monotonous, the pace of the caravan slacken as it struck softer ground. A series of sharp turns followed, then a long process of slowing down, to the point where the truck barely seemed to be rolling forward until it finally came to full stop, the dust settling on them like wet cloth.
There was not much sitting after that. Without notice, an electric power generator started up and, with it, a big blinding outdoor lamp went on.
"Comrades, take your people out of the trocas and bring them to the middle!" said a man's voice over an amplifier.
The doors on all of the vehicles in the caravan seemed to open at once. The two riders in the front of Chevy came out and started banging on the sides of the box to roust out the occupants in the back.
"Up and out! Up and out! Pronto! Pronto!" the two shouted at the same time.
Ervey and his companions, unsteady from the long arduous ride, slid wobbly off the truck.
"Walk! Walk!" they were commanded.
It was impossible to see anything in the dust and the shadows of the outdoor lamp. Ervey kept moving in the direction he was being marched, not being able to focus on anything more than an arm's reach away from him. The ground was dry and loamy. As he walked, his work boots sunk so deep into the soil that dirt crept into them over their tops. A crowd of men moved along with him surrounded by barkers who pressed them to walk fast and look straight ahead.
"Look that way! Andenle! Andenle pronto!" they kept saying.
"Alto!" Wait here!" somebody finally said.
Everybody stopped. Nobody said anything for a brief while. Ervey looked around and saw that the outdoor lamp stood above him, its rays refracting through the cloud of dust that hung over him. It would take a while before those coming into the light could adjust their vision and see well enough to focus on the surroundings. It would take even longer to make sense of what was there to be seen.
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