Then I was sitting in the driver's seat. The keys were still in the ignition. Thank god for that.

Beach had her door open and was starting to climb inside, her left foot on the floorboard. Uno was about five feet away, starting a lunge for her. I could hear him grunting something that sounded like "Slope bitch" as he moved. I didn't have time to see what Spooky was doing, if he'd made it to the gun yet. As Beach's right hand reached for the oh-shit handle right above the door, I turned the key in the ignition.

The engine roared into life, and the music that had been playing when we'd stopped - Patti Smith's Horses - started up again mid-song.

Beach's hand closed around the grip.

My hand found and released the emergency brake. I shouted "Hold on!," let the clutch in, put the car into gear, and released the clutch as I pressed the accelerator all the way down.

The Passport leapt forward, the passenger door still open, Beach's hindquarters hanging outside. Uno's fingers failed to find a grip on her butt as we jackrabbited away, and now he fell face-forwards on the playa. Hard.

I rammed the Passport into 2nd and cut the wheel to the right, towards the open playa. I wanted plenty of open space for when the assholes came after us, as I was sure they would.

Beach was also sure they were going to come after us. As soon as she'd pulled herself into her seat and slammed the door - really slammed it - behind her, she'd fumbled with her seat belt and rammed the clip home into its housing, buckling herself in tightly. Then she'd angled her head forward to see behind us in her side-view mirror without changing its adjustment. She figured - rightly - that I'd need it today if we were going to get chased.

While she'd been doing this I'd been taking the Passport in a long shallow curve, in front of the Nissan's nose and then far away from it to the west, eventually turning north into the open playa. If the Nissan was going to give chase, I wasn't going to try to outrun it; I was going to try to lead it into the center of our camp. I had a few questions I wanted to ask the assholes in the truck, and I was sure that others would too. They outnumbered us now, they wouldn't if we got them into camp.

At least, I presumed they outnumbered us. I based this presumption on my belief - totally intuitive at this point - that the camouflaged 4WD held some occupants, and that those occupants were in league with Uno and Spooky. My presumption was borne out when Beach, eyes fixed on her mirror, said, "There's someone else coming out onto the playa. Where'd they come from?"

I said, "A Land Rover?"

She answered, "Yeah. It's yellow. Isn't that what we were looking for? I'm confused." She had to shout to make herself heard over the combined sound of the tires on the playa, the wind hurling itself in through our open windows, and the music.

I said, "Looks like someone else found it first." We had made about a half-mile to the north by now, the Passport pushed up to 70, riding hard in 5th gear. In my rearview I could see twin dust plumes and the blinding glare of sun on metal and glass as the Nissan and the Land Rover - now caught up to its companion - sped across the playa after us, well to the side of our own dust trail.

I asked Beach, "You OK? Sorry about taking off like that."

She said, "I don't mind. It got us away from those creeps. Thanks for waiting until I was at least halfway inside." She paused a moment before asking, "What made you peel out like that?"

I told her about my growing feeling of unease, spotting first the gun-butt and then the Land-Rover, and my brief stare-down with Uno. She said, "Well good for you, Cat. I didn't see any of that. I just knew you were acting funny about the maps so I was on the lookout."

I asked, "Didn't you at least notice the way he was staring at your tits? Didn't that tip you off some?"

She said, "He was just another creep looking at my chest. They've been doing that since I was 14." She looked back in the mirror and said, "They're gaining."

They were. Allowing for the distortions in distance that were so common on the playa, I estimated that our half-mile lead had already been cut in half.

I said, "Yeah. I'm doing 70 now."

Beach looked at me and said, "Outrun them?" There was a beseeching look on her face that said, Please, no. She'd seen a few vehicles that had rolled on the playa at high speed, and at least once she'd had to pull the limp, broken occupants out.

I said, "If we can lead them into camp, or close to it, we're OK. But they can go as fast as us - probably faster, since I think they're too inexperienced to be cautious. They'll try to outflank us and cut us off. We have to make sure that doesn't happen before we get there."

I paused, grabbed for the water-bottle - my mouth was dry as dust from shouting as much as from the excitement - drank deeply, and continued, "We have to make them keep their distance. They think we're alone out here, and that we don't know our way, and they'll probably figure that we'll just keep going until we run out of playa and we'll be trapped."

We fell silent for a moment. In my mirror, I could see the Nissan had closed to about 200 yards, the Land Rover still behind and to its left. I wondered if Beach was able to divine my thoughts; I was about to ask her to do something she wasn't going to like at all. I gradually eased my foot off the pedal and watched the speedometer needle drop to 65, then 60. I held it there. Incongruously, I consciously registered the music and had one of those weird thoughts as Patti wailed,

And the name of the band is
Twistelettes twistelletes twistelletes twistelletes

thinking that if I'd been making my own Mad Max movie where the heroes are being chased by the scumbags across the desert, this was exactly the music I'd have chosen as the soundtrack. I told myself, fucked up to be thinking that instead of how to get out of this shit, and looked in the rearview again.

Beach said, anxiously, "We're slowing. What are you doing?"

I said, "Like I said, we've got to keep them back, away from us, until we get to camp." I took my right hand off the wheel and reached inside the box between us and fumbled there for a second. I could feel Beach's eyes following every movement of every muscle on my arm. I took out her revolver and held it out to her stiff-armed, so that the leather holster pressed into her chest. I said, "Take it."

"No," she said, firmly.

"Take it, goddamit Beach, I need both hands on the wheel," I shouted. Shouted louder than I needed to above the wind and the music. We never shouted at each other.

She grabbed at the holstered revolver and thrust it muzzle-down between her thighs.

I shouted, softer this time, "They don't know we're armed. If we can scare them, they'll just try to trail us until we're boxed in. We gotta put up a fight, act desperate, like we're all alone out here. I want to trap them in our camp. I want their trucks and I want to find out what they know. Beach, you've got to at least take the gun out and wave it at them and give them a good scare."

I checked my mirrors. In the rear-view was the Land Rover, which had closed to about 50 feet and was hovering on the Passport's left rear corner; in the side-view was the Nissan pickup, which was veering closer and closer and staying about even with the Passport's back seat. As I flicked another glance in the mirror, I saw Spooky raise up out of the Nissan's passenger-side, the shotgun barrels appearing first like some weird-ass desert periscope poking above the surface. The heat of the mid-morning sun shimmered on the Nissan's hood and roof. Uno behind the wheel made abrupt, angry downward-chopping motions with his left hand, signaling us to pull over or else.

That was when I first really began to hope for some humps in the smooth playa surface- the kind that you don't see until about 10 feet before you hit them - that would cause Uno to swerve and, hopefully, flip or wreck the Nissan. I hadn't wished harm on them until I saw the shotgun come out.

I said, "Fuck. They're going to try to stop us." I sounded a lot calmer than I felt. If they closed to 10 feet, one or both of us might not have a head left.

I started to say "Get down on the floor" but was interrupted by a hollow boom and suddenly the windshield in front of me had a bunch of holes in it that weren't there before. Simultaneously, the music stopped playing, a splinter of plastic shrapnel dug into my cheek, and Beach gave a wordless gasp.

I yelled "FUCK!" and looked over at her. There was an angry red furrow running the length of her right forearm and in the dashboard before her was a tiny red-rimmed hole. I had a moment to think, thank god that that was just birdshot, before flicking my eyes back in the rearview. The Land Rover was still there, hanging on our left tail.

I looked at Beach and her eyes met mine. She was white-faced and, I thought, on the verge of sobbing. Getting shot for the first time will do that to you.

I shouted, "Make them back off, Carli," in my fear and preoccupation using her real name.

She shouted back, "I can't." Her voice was close to hysteria. I said, almost screaming this time, "Do it, Carli. He's probably reloading now." Spooky had disappeared back inside the Nissan's cab. " We can't let 'em have another shot at us. If they get a tire we're dead." I stopped, then added, "Do it. Please," with emphasis on the last word.

Beach silently looked down and slid her .38 out of its holster. Hands trembling, she swiveled out the cylinder; loaded. She undid her seat belt and swing in her seat to face out the window.

I followed the pointing line of her arm and saw past her to Spooky, who had reappeared and was leaning over the Nissan's roof, bracing his shotgun-aiming arm on it for a steady shot. I thought I saw a look of surprise - no, outright alarm - when he saw the finger of Beach's long-barreled revolver aiming in his direction. I wish I could have spared a look to see Uno's expression behind the wheel.

Then my right ear went deaf and the cabin filled with smoke as Beach emptied her revolver into the side of the Nissan. I saw a ragged line of holes appear in the body, including one in the driver's door below seat-level. The Nissan abruptly dropped behind us as if it had hit an invisible wall in the middle of the playa.

Beach fumbled in the box between us for more shells for her pistol. Her hands were shaking so badly she dropped half of them on the floor, where they immediately rolled under the seat. She reached for more and loaded all six chambers before she raised her gaze to mine and said, lips tightly compressed, "Are you happy now?" She had the look of someone whose life had changed in a split second and she was afraid of who she was going to be from now on.

My ear was ringing loudly and I could hardly hear myself say, "That did the job, all right. They've dropped back behind the Land Rover." I flicked my eyes in the rear-view for confirmation, then pointed at the dashboard CD player, now wrecked beyond repair by birdshot. I said, shakily, "Fuckers deserved it. They wasted my Patti Smith CD. How am I ever going to replace something like that these days?"