Pursuit

by Richard Unekis

  After a couple minutes of this, he picked up the phone and called a number. Then, after listening a minute, he turned back to the heavy man and said, “Your family is all right.” He then continued talking rapidly, as if trying to get his point across before the other reacted. “Do you know anybody who might have been at your house this morning—two men in a blue and white car?” George shook his head, and Franklin said into the phone: “They must be the ones. At least, they’re all we’ve got. Put the description you got from that woman on the wire. Two men in a blue and white car, make and model unknown, license unknown, one man short, heavy and dark, with black hair, wearing a guard’s uniform.”

  He glanced at the clock. It was 11:05. He headed back out to the car for the ride back to the Post.

  17

  He spun to the other transmitter and said, “All Post Seven Cars, this is Sergeant Catlin. Proceed to your duty areas and set up standard highway blockades. We will have descriptions for you by the time you can get in position. Acknowledge this message as soon as you are in position.”

  As soon as Franklin had stopped talking, the Sergeant at Post Seven had leaped to the door and bellowed at the waiting troopers: “Into your cars and head for your duty areas; we’ll dispatch you on the way.”

  Sensing a chase, and glad of a chance for action after the morning’s tension, the men piled into their cars. The precise geometry of the parked formation dissolved into the milling bedlam of a Le Mans start as the cars jockeyed for position, engines roaring, then poured out onto the highway to the accompaniment of a steady screech of rubber and pounding exhausts.

  When the last one had screamed off, the Sergeant said dryly into the transmitter, “Very cute. The next time that happens we’re going to have some suspensions. Now slow those cars down and stay within the city limits for the time being.”

  The command channel from downstate opened up, and the heavy voice he recognized as Captain Prescott’s filled the room. “Sergeant, what’s going on?”

  Quickly the Sergeant explained that they had had a “Robbery in Progress” and that the men had been dispatched out but only within the city limits. Before he could mention the Superintendent’s name, the Captain cut him off. “Get those men out and set up highway blockades; you know the standard procedure. Don’t dally around.”

  The Sergeant was trapped. He couldn’t interject the Superintendent’s name without appearing to be defying a direct order. Besides, Franklin had not in fact given him any orders not to set up a blockade.

  He hesitated a minute, then said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Any word from Lieutenant Preen in the helicopter?” said the voice.

  “No, sir,” he replied.

  “All right, get on with it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  18

  Lieutenant Preen squirmed in the bucket seat of the helicopter. With his swagger stick, he flicked a piece of dirt from one of the highly polished paratrooper boots into which his uniform trousers were bloused.

  He was annoyed. Very annoyed. Through absolutely no fault of his own he was—he glanced at his watch again—already fourteen minutes late, and they were only now approaching the subdivisions at the south edge of town.

  Drat helicopters, anyway. Imagine having to go an extra fifty miles to avoid a rainstorm! Why couldn’t they have let him use a decent, heavy aircraft that could go from one place to another in a straight line? These slow, noisy contraptions…

  His reverie was interrupted by the pilot, who took off his earphones and handed them to him. The pilot annoyed Preen. Still, he reflected, the man did seem competent enough. Only, what was he handing him these headphones for? Communications was not his job.

  With a sigh, he carefully removed his faultless uniform hat and slipped on the phones. The pilot pointed to the radio, to indicate that he had turned in the frequency of the regular State Police communications net, rather than the command frequency they normally used.

  The voice of the local dispatcher came in loud: “… consider them to be armed. Repeat. All points alert. Be on lookout for two men in blue and white car, make and model and license unknown. One man short, squat, with dark hair, in guard’s uniform. Wanted in connection with robbery of supermarket this city. Consider them to be armed. Repeat, all points alert…” The crisp voice droned on.

  Preen looked in some surprise at the pilot. But what had this to do with them? He had an inspection to make. The pilot caught his eye and, with a questioning look, glanced up, and made an upward motion with his thumb.

  “Oh,” grumbled Preen. “You want to go up and make a search. But we don’t have any authorization, the inspec—”

  It dawned on him that it just might be prudent if they did make a search. While in service, he had observed that sometimes it paid to follow the leads of these reckless types, like his pilot. They sometimes seemed to have almost a sixth sense about what their superiors wanted. Well, there weren’t any flies on him; the inspection would just have to wait.

  He motioned thumbs up, took off the phones and hung them from a peg. They hurt his ears.

  The pilot opened the throttle and the flop!—flop!—flop! of the big blades speeded up. The craft rose swiftly, straight up, giving the occupants the same sensation as going up in an express elevator.

  As they approached 5,000 feet, the machine rocked in the drafts of the thunderstorm they had just skirted. It was still approaching. Preen took the binoculars from their rack and began trying to scan the checkerboard of roads beneath them.

  In a minute they were through the turbulence, and he adjusted the glasses and began to scan in earnest; one north-south road, then one east and west, another one north and south, then another east and west. He could see nothing, except an occasional farm truck.

  Shifting, he tried another north-south road. Out near the limit of the glasses’ effectiveness, he caught a glimpse of blue. There! He adjusted the lens. It was a blue and white car. Stopped! There were two figures near its front on one side. He hesitated. Should they check it, or keep sweeping? It was a slim chance, and a nuisance, to boot.

  “Oh, well,” he sighed, “better check it.”

  He pointed. The pilot tilted the ship at an awkward angle, and they slid down a long curtain of air toward the car.

  19

  For a split second after the explosion of the tire, nothing happened. Then, the steering wheel gave a great tug in Grozzo’s hands. He was an expert driver, and at the sound of the blowout he had instinctively gripped the wheel with his whole strength. This was all that kept it from turning and pulling into a high-speed skid on the loose rock.

  The flat tire immediately began to disintegrate and pull away from the rim, causing the car to jump up and down with great sharp bounds and, at the same time, increasing the forces acting on the steering wheel. Grozzo rose to his feet, hunched over the wheel, his face contorted and arms knotted, fighting. The car slowed somewhat. Then something jammed. In spite of all he could do the steering wheel began to turn, to drag them into the skid.

  Finally, as a last resort, he jammed on the brakes, locking the wheels and sending the machine into a long slide. It went around, end for end, and finally stopped in a great cloud of dust, crosswise in the road.

  They sat for a minute, shaken. Then Grozzo climbed out. Looking at the ribboned tire, he said in a rising voice: “You goddam, dirty, lousy, sonofabitching bastard. Sonofabitch! Sonofabitch! Sonofabitch!” His curse ended in a scream. He picked up a rock and threw it against the side of the car.

  Rayder started toward him. But Grozzo had got it out of his system and was already running around to the back, throwing open the trunk lid and frantically pulling out the jack and spare tire. In a few minutes, working with sure hands, he had the car jacked up, the shredded tire removed and the spare mounted.

  Motioning Rayder into the car, he jumped in himself. The engine started readily, apparently unaffected by the wild slide. He started to turn the wheel, to get them out of their sidewise position in th
e road. The wheel wouldn’t move. He pulled harder; no result. He tried turning it the other way, and then from side to side. It was locked.

  Cursing furiously, he jumped from the car and ran around, wiggling under the front end, with the other man following and looking down at him.

  His somewhat muffled voice came out, “The sonofabitching Pitman arm is jammed by that sonofabitching wire out of that gate. That’s what ruined the tire, too.” He paused, then continued, “Look in the trunk and see if there’s a pair of pliers.”

  Rayder ran to the back and looked, then reported that there was not.

  “Jack it up. I need more room.”

  Rayder complied, then peered under. Flat on his back, Grozzo was tearing desperately with his bare hands at a tangle of barbed wire, snarled around a juncture of two metal bars. Blood streamed from his hands.

  “Hand me that lug wrench,” he said.

  Rayder crawled in himself, on hands and knees, pushing forward the wrench he had just used to lever the jack.

  “Here,” said Grozzo, pointing to a loop. Rayder began to yank, as Grozzo slid back, sopping his flowing hands against his trousers.

  “No, no,” Grozzo almost screamed. “You’ll tighten it up again. Work it easy, easy. Here!”

  He came back and started gently, but firmly, to work the wire loose, ignoring his torn hands. Blood streamed down his arms and onto the uniform shirt, already dark with perspiration.

  “Go up and move the steering wheel back and forth. Easy, like I tell you,” he said, all in a rush.

  Wordlessly the man who was usually the leader complied. He was out of his element in mechanical things. He got back in and moved the steering wheel slightly back and forth in response to the shouted instructions from below, meanwhile keeping a worried eye on the road, which they were blocking. So far, no traffic had come.

  Gradually, the wheel began to turn more freely, but unnoticed by the preoccupied men, the agitation of the front wheels was causing the car to travel on the jack. As the car slowly moved, a fraction of an inch at a time, the jack began to lean. Finally, with a soft thunk, the car rode off the jack and fell.

  Horrified, Rayder leaped from the car and peered underneath. To his amazement, Grozzo wiggled out untouched and unworried.

  “Sonofabitchin’ good thing we put that wheel back on,” Grozzo said.

  As he bent down to pick up the jack, a shadow passed over them, and a roaring, flapping sound grew rapidly louder. Looking up, they saw a bright, blue helicopter gliding down toward them from a few hundred yards away. As they stared, stupefied for a second, a figure in the cabin, peering at them with field glasses, became visible. Also the legend “STATE POLICE” as the machine turned broadside to them.

  Rayder recovered first. “Get in,” he yelled and dove for the car. He started the engine and gave a tremendous yank on the steering wheel. It moved. As the other man hit the seat, he floored the gas pedal. The car swirled in a great spout of gravel. It fishtailed somewhat as it headed down the road under full acceleration, then straightened on its course.

  In the helicopter, the Lieutenant’s pulse had quickened. “Follow him,” he yelled at the pilot. “Try to get his number.” The pilot nodded, and again opening the throttle and raising the tail to its peculiar slant, sent the bird bowling down the country road in hot pursuit.

  20

  As his first panic subsided, Rayder got hold of himself and rapidly took stock of the situation. The car was wide open, the needle on the speedometer hovering around 105. He looked around. The helicopter was about a half-mile behind and did not appear to be gaining. Maybe they could outrun it! He stood on the accelerator.

  Without taking his eyes off the road, he yelled to the man beside him, “Get on the radio and see what he’s saying.”

  Grozzo had stripped off the bloody uniform shirt and was trying to tear it with his hands. At the other’s words, he stopped and crawled into the back seat.

  He turned on the radio. While waiting for it to warm up, he sat back trying to think of some way to slow the flow of blood from his hands. He stripped off the uniform trousers and wrapped them around one hand. He reached back to the front seat for the shirt, which he wrapped around the other. He looked vaguely like some awkward boxer with huge gloves.

  Working the end of a finger and thumb loose, he twirled the radio dial to the State Police communication frequency, and turned the volume on full force so that the driver could hear over the road noise.

  Incredibly, there was only some chatter about a stolen car.

  Instinctively, unbelievingly, both men looked back for the helicopter. It was still there, about a half-mile in back of them. It was only visible part of the time above the eight-foot-high corn which grew to the edge on both sides of the road.

  “Spin the dial,” yelled Rayder. “They must be on a different frequency.”

  The stocky man nodded. He turned the knob slowly around to the stop, then back again; no result, except the static from the thunderstorm moving in from the east. He tapped the other on the shoulder and yelled, “Nothing!”

  It was incredible, and yet—

  An idea began to form in Rayder’s mind. Even though the helicopter was not transmitting, there was no guarantee that its radio was out. It might start at any minute. And they were leading it straight toward Bucola and the other car which they planned to use to get back to Chicago. The fact that the car they were in might be known to the police wasn’t too important, provided they could get to the other car unnoticed. Then they would have a fresh start. They would be unidentified once more. One of hundreds of thousands of cars on the roads.

  If only there were some way to get that damn machine off their backs. A flash of lightning startled him, and made him think of something.

  As they approached the next east-west road, exactly a mile from the last one, he eased on the brakes. He would have liked to have waited until they were right on top of the intersection, then braked heavily and taken the corner at high speed. But this was impossible on the loose gravel. He would have to accept the helicopter’s gaining on them. It wouldn’t make much difference anyway, if his plan worked.

  Tenderly, he negotiated the curve, then floored the throttle again. The car shot forward, straight east, straight toward the heavy, black clouds of the approaching thunderstorm.

  After a few minutes, rain began to spatter the windshield. Then, abruptly, they were in the dark, lightning-streaked maw of the summer thundershower. A deluge of water cascaded on them.

  Rayder slowed the car. No helicopter could live in a boiling rainstorm like this. The only trouble was, they were heading the wrong way. He slowed and stopped.

  Grozzo said, “What was that for?”

  “He can’t follow us in here,” was the reply. “We’ll sit here a few minutes, then turn around and come out the same road we went in. That’s the last thing they’ll expect.”

  He let the car sit absolutely still for several minutes in the drumming rain. After their chase, their pulses seemed to match the rhythm of the raindrops.

  “That oughta be long enough,” Rayder said abruptly.

  He turned the machine around and drove back the way they’d come.

  In the helicopter, the Lieutenant had been wildly excited by the chase. He had never been a man who remained cool in a pinch. As it had become apparent that they couldn’t catch the fleeing car, Preen had become almost frenzied.

  “They’re getting away. Go faster, faster! Don’t let them get away!” he shouted at the pilot, jumping up and down in the seat as far as the safety belt would let him.

  The pilot hadn’t replied. He had had his hands full, maneuvering the machine at full speed, following a car down a country road. He had been only seventy-five feet off the ground, and buffeted by the advance drafts of a rainstorm that was blowing up.

  To top it off, the car was out of sight part of the time behind the growing corn. But just when it began to look as if the car might be creeping away from them and the Li
eutenant’s face had begun to take on a greenish hue, the car inexplicably slowed, and then turned left.

  The pilot immediately set his skittish craft into a left turn, and since he did not have to follow a road as the car did, it was not necessary for them to reduce speed to make the turn.

  The helicopter went around in a wide arc, cutting away some of the distance between itself and the car. The Lieutenant babbled with joy. He did not look at the pilot’s darkening face.

  The pilot’s look became more and more strained as they came closer to the squall line. His trained eye detected in advance the ominous gusts, approaching in the van of the storm, as they shook trees and caused ripples, like waves, to march across the fields of corn.

  Abruptly, at the moment the car disappeared behind the curtain of rain, the pilot changed the controls. The forward rush stopped, and the steep angle at which the machine was going changed to an even keel. They hovered motionlessly.

  The Lieutenant’s jaw dropped in surprise and consternation. He glared at the pilot. “What do you mean?”

  The other man only shook his head and pointed at the line of menacing clouds. He thought it should be obvious even to the Lieutenant that they couldn’t go in there. As if for emphasis, the helicopter bobbed up and down in a downdraft.

  The Lieutenant looked around, wildly frustrated. Suddenly, his expression changed. He motioned the pilot to set the machine down in a cleared area next to the road.

  The pilot was surprised, but did as he was told. The Lieutenant’s reason for wanting to set down at this time became obscured in his own mind. Within a few days after the event, when it became necessary for him to write his report on the chase, his official story, and the one that he himself eventually came to believe, was that he had acted on a hunch, that he had “had a feeling” that the car might turn around. The simple fact was that he had had to answer a call of nature. Excitement always affected him that way.