His hesitation made the choice for him. By the time he was through analyzing, it was too late to turn, too late even to yell to the other man to hold on. Just time to grip the wheel and point it at the small rise.
As the wagon came abreast of the fill, they slammed into the side of the little culvert, still at sixty, missing the wagon by inches.
The front wheels, then the back, in rapid succession hit the one-foot lift. Even though the lift was graded, their speed made it feel like hitting a railroad tie.
The car sailed into the air and as it came back down, it was askew, the two wheels on the light side hitting first. This caused the car to slew to the right. It bounced again as it did so, depriving the driver of the ability to steer. As it came down again, it was in a full right broadside skid out of control. Then the back came around and it traded end for end.
As it spun past the still-moving tractor, the front bumper hit the tractor’s front wheel. It was just a passing swipe, but it had results: it stopped the car’s end-for-end slide, and left it, with its momentum finally running out, going straight backwards.
Also as a result of the hit, the tractor’s front wheel was slapped sideways. The machine’s forward motion tipped it over on its side. The cumbersome hay wagon rumbled straight into it, was in turn deflected sideways and tipped, dumping its load of hay squarely on the unsuspecting farmer who was just trying to scramble to his feet.
The car continued its backward slide through the gravel for perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, and came peacefully to rest in the middle of the road.
For a minute, nothing was visible in the dust cloud raised by all this, and the only sound in the sudden stillness was the radio, incongruously droning out police calls through the swirling dust.
Grozzo, still frozen to the steering wheel, let out a long breath. “Sonofabitch!” was all he could muster. Rayder, caught unprepared, had had a rough time of it. He was on the floor with the radio atop him. His eyes, for a second, blazed the kind of heat seen in an animal’s eyes when it is attacked. Then, as realization flooded his face, they resumed their normal look. His face, however, remained white and tense.
Pushing the radio aside, he struggled up and climbed out over it. He walked to the driver’s window and looked hard at Grozzo, who was staring ahead and still clutching the wheel. He reached in and gripped the other man’s sleeve, giving him a shake.
“Snap out of it,” he barked. “Try the motor and see if it’ll run.”
The dark man’s eyes came alive.
Not waiting, Rayder took a quick turn around the car. As he did so, and unnoticed by him as the dust cloud drifted off, one end of the large pile of hay down the road began to shift and heave. Presently a mound appeared. It opened, and there emerged a purple face, covered with chaff and ringed with hay. This was followed by a muscular neck and torso, and finally the whole man. The enraged farmer glared around, then saw the green car and the figure going around it. Glancing wildly about for a weapon of some kind, he saw the pitchfork which had been atop the load, lying now in the middle of the road.
With an inarticulate roar that brought Rayder’s head snapping up, the farmer pounced on the weapon. Scooping it up on the run, he came charging head down, roaring, at the car like a maddened bull.
Mouth agape, Rayder opened a back door and dove into the car. “Move,” he yelled.
Grozzo ground the starter frantically. Just as the man was bounding the last few feet to the car, the engine caught. Instantly, the shaken driver floored the gas and let out on the clutch. The car roared backwards down the road. For a time, it seemed that the farmer, like a jousting knight chasing a fleeing green dragon, would catch and spit the wildly backing, swaying automobile.
Finally, Grozzo brought it under control and was able to get it backing in a straight line without whipping from side to side. Then he was able to add speed, and the race was over.
In a last futile attempt at revenge, the thick-muscled farmer, from a dead run, gave his pitchfork a mighty heave. It hummed quivering through the air, then fell, its energy spent, harmlessly scraping the rocks in a place left vacant by the accelerating car.
The farmer, his rage subsiding, turned aside across the field toward the nearest phone.
The green car, far down the road, came to a cautious stop, made a quick turn and headed rapidly north again.
31
As if to prove that he wasn’t shaken by their experience, Grozzo defiantly ran the car back up to top speed.
Rayder, basically more sure of himself and feeling no need to prove or demonstrate his courage, let his stocky friend run on for a couple of miles, then quietly suggested they slow down “to save the tires.”
This face-saving device served its purpose. Grozzo backed off the throttle, and the car slowed to ninety.
Their speed was deceptive. Ninety was a very high speed for the road, but after the extreme speeds at which they had been going, it felt as if they had slowed almost to a crawl.
Now a peculiar mental state began to develop. Somehow it seemed to them that after coming through their narrow escape they had in some way “had their share” and that nothing more would happen to them. They felt that they had had their moment of danger and survived it; they were immune. It was irrational, but they both sensed it, and it was fully shared, although neither spoke of it.
Rayder, his hard eyes relaxed somewhat by this confidence, turned to the radio, which a few minutes before he had pushed away. Although it had come through the skid unharmed, he had, in throwing it off, pushed something that had made it stop playing.
He tugged it back onto the seat and began adjusting its knobs. In a few seconds, it came back on, clear and strong. He got it on just in time to hear the Post Seven dispatcher tell cars Ten and Eight, the two which had been going straight west of the city on Route 10, to turn south. Nothing in the dispatch or the conversation which followed gave him an inkling as to how far west of Post Seven the two cars were.
He did some rapid thinking.
They had gone straight west of Bucola for fifteen miles and turned north. At this time—he had managed to keep his count of intersections—they should be about twenty-six miles north of where they had turned. This would put them, then, about fifteen miles west of where they had pulled the caper, and four miles to the south. He absently watched the road ahead as he made his calculations.
They would, therefore, be four miles south of East-West Highway 10, the one cars Ten and Eight were on, and from which the dispatcher had turned them south.
As far as he knew, Car Five, the one which had picked up their trail at Bucola, and Car Twenty, which had been dispatched west, paralleling Car Five, had both been left behind.
He pursed his lips in a concentrated mental effort, and then started upright. Out of what looked like a solid wall of corn, about two hundred yards ahead of them, on the right, popped a small, bright-red farm pickup truck. He could see plainly as the driver, just a boy, turned to his right, away from them, and playfully gunned the engine, sending the truck around in a small skid, and raising a cloud of dust which promptly enveloped it and closed it off from view.
Grozzo, the instant he had seen it, had stomped the brake pedal. Wheels locked, the car slid on almost without slowing, the tires boiling and plowing a path futilely through the loose gravel. Almost as a reflex, he had hit the horn, as well as the brakes.
With nothing to turn it, this time the car tracked true. In a storm of flying rocks and with the horn blowing full blast, it slid straight as an arrow into the yellow dust cloud raised by the little truck.
Into it—and out again—the car skimmed past by inches. The driver of the pickup only then became aware of his peril—as the green car scrubbed wailing past him and on down the road, nose down and tail high, throwing a hail of pebbles against the little machine.
The boy’s jaw dropped open and his eyes bugged wide as he realized how closely death had brushed him. He turned the little truck into the ditch and sat, shivering
, white-faced and scared.
It was now apparent that if they continued down these blind roads at high speeds, they were sooner or later going to be wrecked.
Grozzo, who was at bottom weak, tried to conceal his weakness with bluster and defiance. As soon as they were clear again, with a snarl he slapped the car into second, then third, rapidly running it back up to a hundred.
Rayder, who had been born with a touch of ice in his soul, had never in his life given way to panic. Even at times when sweat involuntarily stood out on his forehead, he managed to grip some corner of an inner reserve. At this moment, he was not even badly threatened, but was concerned about Grozzo. He waited a few seconds, watching from the corner of his eye to see if this was just a sudden surge of nerves which would pass.
It wasn’t.
As he watched, the driver’s brown eyes danced around the road ahead. Two big muscles in his neck stood out, one against each side of his shirt. His chest heaved with quick short breaths.
When the needle on the dial had climbed to 12, Rayder said evenly, “Pull it down a little, Graz.”
The other reacted as if his courage, or even his very manhood, had been questioned. He turned hot eyes on his accuser.
“Whattya mean, pull it down. I ain’t bugged by that little slide.” He was defiant. “I ain’t slowin’ down.”
Until this moment, Rayder had been the unquestioned leader of their expedition. The stocky, bushy-haired man had followed his quiet leadership without hesitation. He had never until now asserted himself, or shown defiance. Something kindled deep in Rayder’s eyes at this challenge. He hissed, “Cool it! Now!”
Grozzo wilted. The threat suddenly confronting him now became bigger than the one which had shaken him in the first place.
His muscles relaxed. The tenseness went out of his neck. Cowed, but clear-headed again, he turned his attention to the business of getting the car back down from speed.
The thin man turned to the radio.
“Whattya think?” came the voice of the man in front.
“What?” He looked up.
“I mean, how fast?”
“Oh, sixty ought to do it.”
He turned back to the set. The dark-haired man nodded as he gently braked down.
32
The teletype in front of Superintendent Franklin was going clackety-clack-clack-clack, jumping in its mounts like an awkward, loose-jointed typewriter. He stood watching it, puffing hard on his pipe—too hard. He was sending small, fiery coals hopping up out of the bowl with each back-puff.
As he was not paying attention to the pipe, he was reacting to the information coming in: not enough cars. The two northernmost posts could only scrape up thirty-four cars. He needed forty-one. Seven short!
Still, he reflected, even if that were all they managed to get, they could be put at the most likely intersections leading through the barrier of the Tollway, leaving open the roads that were least heavily traveled or had poor connections with roads downstate.
However, he didn’t like it. He’d rather post cars at all forty-one places. For a fleeting moment, he debated calling police from the Chicago metropolitan area in on the blockade. However, he realized immediately there was no hope of getting effective cooperation for his plan of sealing off the Tollway in the scant time that was left. It would take two days to go through the chain of personalities that would be involved in something like this.
The whole state had received the broadcasts they’d put out. He had to let it go at that.
As a hedge, in case they were not able to get together enough cars to patrol all intersections on the Tollway, they would need to know which ones to omit. He picked up a phone and put in a call downstate to the statistics branch for information.
He spoke directly to the point.
“We plan to put in a blockade covering all possible intersections on the Tri-State Tollway between Roosevelt Road and the Indiana line. We may not have enough cars to cover it. In case we have to set up priorities and leave some of them unmanned, I’d like to have the traffic count for each of them. As quickly as you can, please.”
The Sergeant stuck his head in the door again, saying, “Sir, a farmer just called in. A green car answering the fugitives’ descriptions just wrecked a farm tractor and wagon, about fifteen miles west and twenty miles north of Bucola, on a country road. The car kept going.”
Franklin walked quickly out to the radio room and said, “Turn Eight and Ten back east.” Then, realizing that for the moment matters were out of his hands, he sat down to listen tensely.
33
Unknown to Rayder, Post Seven had put out its release of the farmer’s report shortly after the near-wreck with the pickup truck—one of the intervals when Rayder had not been listening to the radio. Now, a few minutes after they had slowed down, he was suddenly startled to hear a message coming in loud and clear, from a transmitter obviously no more than a few miles away.
“Post Seven, this is Car Twenty.”
“Come in.”
“I just passed the dumped hay wagon and tractor, and am proceeding north on the same road.”
Rayder stared in disbelief. That man couldn’t be more than six or seven miles behind, and on the same road! He had a sudden vision of being trapped. They were now only about four miles south of Route 10 and remained fifteen miles west of Post Seven. There were two cars just recently turned south from 10, but he didn’t know whether they were between him and the city or out beyond.
He couldn’t run toward the city. He was afraid to run up against Route 10. It was heavily traveled, and they probably would have to stop to cross it. Maybe even get tied up. The only thing he could see to do was run—west.
Just in time he yelled, “Turn left.”
The other man, whose eyes were beginning to look frightened again, braked heavily, then swung the car neatly to the left at the intersection that had come up.
“Sonofabitch,” he said softly.
“Run, goddamit,” said Rayder, “but keep your marbles this time.”
The driver punched the throttle—just a little too hard. Under the force of the engine, the back wheels broke traction and began to spin. He let off on the gas till it settled down. Then he ran it up to one hundred, the needle on 10.
This was risky as hell, Rayder reflected, and also he didn’t like running back up to speed when he’d just had a run-in with Grozzo over going fast, but he had had a sudden feeling of coming close to being trapped, and he wanted no part of that.
Besides, they were going only a hundred right now. That was a lot different than one-forty. They had been going almost this fast when they skidded by the pickup, and had not gone out of control.
However, despite his efforts to reassure himself, he knew they were taking a hell of a chance again. He looked at the dark man. That one was the bright, alert, confident driver again, now that the last crisis was past.
“Goddam him”, Rayder thought. “Goes up and down like a kite. You can’t tell how he’s going to act.”
The radio squawked into life.
“Post Seven, and Car Twenty.”
“This is Twenty, come in.”
There was a pause. The Post did not reply. The original voice went on: “This is Ten. Bill, about where are you now?”
The voice of the man identifying as Car Twenty said, “About six miles south of Route Ten.”
The other voice said, “Hank and I were on sweep about thirty miles west of the city on Route 10, when the Post dispatched us south. When your message about the wreck came over, the Post turned us east. We’re running parallel to Ten. I’m four miles south of it, and Hank’s two miles further south and a couple of miles behind. About twenty miles west, I’d say.”
“Yeah, so?”
“They oughta be close in here somewhere. Why don’t you slow down? We’re headed right toward you now. We’ll try to flush them out, like quail, with you at the end.”
“Yeah, sounds good. Shall we check the Post?”
“Okay, come on through.”
“Okay, I’m gonna open up.” His engine noise increased. “Hank?”
“Yeah, I gotcha. Me, too.”
Rayder felt a clammy feeling on his forehead. He leaned over the front seat.
“Open it up. All the way!” he said. His nostrils were pinched. “I’d rather die than go back in that crummy tank. Keep it open.”
Again the car surged up to its dizzying top speed. The sensation was like flying at a very low altitude.
The car ran evenly. There were no tremors. The engine was smooth. Apparently, it had suffered no ill effects from its spin and brush with the tractor.
A dust cloud appeared down the road, and then grew. It mushroomed as the distance between the cars telescoped like a TV zoom shot. The cars closed at a combined speed of over two hundred sixty.
For a split fraction, as they rocketed past, there was the clear image of a trooper driving, sun goggles on, Sam Browne belt flashing in the sun. The radio exploded with the excited trooper’s voice: “They just passed me; they passed me,” he shrilled. “Cut ’em off, Hank, cut ’em off.”
“Okay, I’m turning north,” came the tight-voiced reply.
“Hurry. Try to stay with ’em. I’ll try to catch up. I’m turning around, they’re going like hell,” the voice stumbled rapidly.
An instant later, the reply came in: “I turned, I’m running.”
The voice coming in was beginning to sound strained as excitement mounted:
“… north. I can see dust raising from a car going west—awful fast—must be them. They’re gonna beat me to the intersection.” After a short pause, he said, “I’ve turned west after them. They beat me to the intersection.”
The other trooper’s voice cut in: “I’ve turned around, Hank. I can’t see any dust ahead. You must be three or four miles in front of me. Can you see my dust in your mirror?”
“Goin’ too fast. Can’t see in mirror, I’m flat out. Gonna try to catch ’em. They’re about a mile ahead.”
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