Cooling off a bit, the officer slowed and let his car fall back a couple of hundred yards. Readjusting his sunglasses, he settled back in his seat like a man getting ready for a long ride. Then he reached over for his radio mike.
His voice came in very loud in the fleeing car, over the road noise, so that both driver and passenger could hear it.
“Post Seven, this is Car Eight.”
The reply was immediate, but sounded weaker than before. They had traveled some distance.
“Car Eight, this is Post Seven, we were getting worried. How are you doing?”
“Still on their tail. I put a bullet hole in the back window, but no damage I can see. Out of shells now. Can’t reload, with one hand.”
“Okay, any sign of Car Ten?”
Another voice broke in. “This is Car Ten. I can’t see a thing. Any idea where you are, Hank?”
The voice was petulant; the reply was irritating.
“I’m right here, baby, waiting for you to catch up. Better crank it up.”
The dispatcher’s voice said, “Knock it off. Car Twenty, come in.”
“This is Car Twenty. I’m heading east on Route Ten.”
“Are you making good time?”
“Well, I am when the road’s clear, but I’m running into traffic, off and on.”
“Okay, stay with it. Now listen. Peoria has two units moving down Route One Twenty-one to intersect Route Sixty-six at Lincoln. There’s a loop in Sixty-six south of Lincoln. The road these men are on runs up to but does not cross Sixty-six at the loop. It was cut off when the loop was put in. It is a dead-end road for the last mile. We’ll try to run them into it. The cars from Peoria should be there by that time. Any questions?” There were none, and he said, “Okay. Acknowledge.”
“Twenty, okay.”
“Ten, okay.”
“Eight, okay.”
“Car Eight.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Crowd ’em. Keep it up tight enough so they don’t get a chance to turn. Have they fired at you?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“That’s good, but don’t press too close. They might just be waiting for you to get close enough for a good shot.”
There was a short pause before the reply came. The voice sounded a little different. “Yes, sir.”
It was all audible in the arrowing green car, just as it was to those in conversation.
“Sonofabitch!” Grozzo’s lip curled. He half-turned. “How far back is he?”
“Two, maybe three hundred yards.”
The cars’ relative positions had not changed.
“We gotta get out of this box. Right?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“We’re gonna have to take a chance.”
Rayder became faintly annoyed. “Okay, get on with it,” he snapped. He did not like the implied question about his courage.
“Hold on.”
Grozzo lifted his hands free of the wheel, pushed in the clutch, and braked hard. All four wheels froze and slid. He kept his hands off the steering wheel, letting the car track itself. If it were perfectly balanced, he thought, it might just track straight; if not—well, that was just the chance they had to take.
It went straight as an arrow, locked wheels scrubbing, thumping and pounding over the slight corrugations in the road.
This time the driver following had no chance to slow with fancy footwork. He had to lock his wheels, too.
But this action on his part alone could not prevent a collision. It took him a second, during which his machine traveled a full two hundred feet, just to apply the brakes. Two hundred feet was about a third of the distance separating the cars.
Even after his brakes were on full, the gap continued to narrow. Since the lead car had braked first, it was decelerating at a faster rate, and would continue to do so as long as the brakes were left on, until the second caught and hit it.
As his machine slid helplessly toward the other sliding car, the trooper braced, and cursed himself for a fool for not allowing more gap, and for setting himself up so that the other man could deliberately wreck him. But Grozzo had no intention of risking a rear-end collision. He watched the dancing image—they were still going over ninety—in the mirror until it was almost on them, then, still holding in the clutch and brake, he twisted his right foot and floored the throttle.
The rugged engine, now without load, over-revved, shrieking and bucking in its mounts. When it peaked, he slid his foot off the clutch so that it popped out, simultaneously taking his foot off the brakes.
With a whipping jerk, under the blast of power he had poured into them, the back wheels broke traction and spun madly, their high-speed rubbery scream suddenly filling the car.
A geyser of rocks fountained from the rear wheels out and back, straight at the face of the surprised policeman. While the forward surge carried the leading car away from the danger of collision, the cruiser’s windshield disintegrated under a storm of flying stones striking with an impact equal to a dozen shotgun blasts.
Rayder, braced in the back seat, spun around to look as the officer threw up his hands in a last reflexive attempt to save his eyes.
Momentarily, the police cruiser continued in a straight line, then it began to veer slightly to the left. There was no corrective movement of the wheel, and the veer increased.
At this part of the road, there was no ditch, the bordering field being on a level with the running surface. The cruiser continued turning until, still at high speed, it was next to the cornfield. Abruptly it simply disappeared, swallowed up in the cornfield like a pebble dropped into water.
There was no hint as to what happened after it left the road.
The radio was silent.
Rayder leaned back in his seat and took a couple of deep breaths. Then he leaned forward and said, “Good going, Groz.” He was impressed with the driver’s skill.
The other had regained some of his self-confidence.
“The sonofabitch,” he said.
The dispatcher’s voice came back on. “Car Eight, what was all that racket?” When there was no response, the voice took on a more urgent tone. “Car Eight.” Then it said, “Car Ten, can you read me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Any sign of Eight?”
“No.”
“Keep your eyes peeled,” it said, then went on in a not very convincing tone. “Maybe his radio went out.”
“Yeah,” Rayder said, his lip curled.
He turned now from the radio. “There’s still another one somewhere behind us on this road, and one up on Route Ten about four miles north of here, heading west,” he said.
“Yeah? Well, you wanna go south a couple of miles and let ’em go by, then turn around and go north?”
“Balls on that. We’re ahead of ’em, and we’re goin’ to stay ahead. Cool it at the next corner, and go on north now. If we get across Route Ten and they don’t spot us, we can go north while that whole mess of bastards are chasing each other around Lincoln where they got that trap set.”
A sudden flicker of caution made him ask, “What do you think of the one we just dumped? Any chance he got out of that field?”
“Hell, no! That sonofabitch got corn rammed clear out his ass. He ain’t goin’ nowhere till they go in and get him.”
The car slowed and cornered, turning right at a fairly slow speed, but still sending up a spray of rocks. Rayder then maintained a close watch out the back, keeping his eye on the intersection until it was out of sight, watching that the other pursuing car didn’t pass it and see them.
Presently a stop sign in the distance indicated that they were at Route Ten.
“Shall I stop?” the driver asked.
“Yes, that’s a busy road. It won’t prove anything getting killed,” Rayder said.
With all the prudence of a Sunday driver, Grozzo eased up to the highway. It was a good thing they had stopped. The highway was alive with traffic, going both ways.
<
br /> They sat a few minutes. No openings appeared in the steady line of cars. The dark man quickly got restless.
“That sonofabitchin’ cop’s gonna come here any minute.” His voice sounded tense.
“You’re right,” the other replied, leaning over the back of the seat. “Can you turn right here into this traffic without getting in a wreck? If we do that, we can turn left up the road somewhere. We won’t have to wait for a hole to cross both lanes at once.”
“Okay.”
Turning the wheel right, the driver pulled out into the line of traffic, accelerating violently. He was greeted by the screech of tortured rubber as the car behind braked desperately to avoid the smash.
Immediately they became a part of the traffic flow, one of the multitude of cars on the busy road. They cruised steadily, ignoring the fuming driver behind them.
Ahead, a flicker caught their eyes. It resolved itself into the blinking, red rotating light on a cruiser desperately snaking through traffic toward them but headed in the other direction.
They watched tensely as it went past, without even a glance from the driver.
After that the traffic seemed to loosen up. They made their left turn without difficulty and found themselves again on a now-familiar smooth gravel road.
Again, with the immediate source of tension gone, Grozzo was relaxed and confident. He turned around.
“How we gonna take it, boss, hot or cool?”
“What’s the best you can do and still stop if some yahoo comes out of a cornfield again?”
The other’s face took on a sulky look. The lip curled. “Well, hell, uh, maybe only fifty or so on these loose rocks, you know,” he finished weakly.
“Christ, they could catch us with dogs. We’re just gonna have to take a chance on these farmers. Run it up to about ninety. I want out of here.”
The other nodded and complied, again bending over the wheel and concentrating keenly on the road ahead, his whole attention absorbed in his driving, leaving it to the man in back to do whatever thinking and worrying had to be done
36
Superintendent Franklin sat off to one side of the transmitter, quietly but intently listening to the flow of radio conversation. His face was a study in emotions.
His stomach would have made a more violent study. It churned and burned. He was frustrated and unhappy. Now there came a lull in the transmissions, and he slipped into thought.
For all his theorizing about the chances against intercepting the robbers in open country, the men from Post Seven had managed to do just that. They had not only found them in full flight, but had given chase, and as they raced westward in pursuit, it seemed there was a good chance they could run the quarry into a trap south of Lincoln. He was glad they almost had their men trapped. Catching them was their job—and his.
But he felt sorry that they were being trapped in a way he had thought could not happen, a way that made him and his ideas look slightly foolish.
“Maybe a really big man wouldn’t react like this,” he told himself. “Maybe I should be able to swallow my mistake and congratulate these men with a clear conscience and no regrets.”
He knew he could not, not yet, anyway. It made him feel guilty toward his men and put him in conflict with himself. It was a sticky feeling. He wished something would break, something would happen to get him off this hook on which his conscience had put him.
Then the pursuing car fell silent. He sat forward, listening with a curious mixture of disappointment and fear, as the Sergeant tried desperately to contact the car, then the one following it, and the one going west on Route Ten, trying to get information.
There was fear in the dispatcher’s voice, too.
“Car Ten,” the Post repeated. The voice was tense.
“Yes, sir.”
“Any sign of Eight?”
“No.”
“Car Five, come in.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You haven’t been transmitting. Where are you now?”
“I’m not just sure. You dispatched me west at the same time as Car Twenty, only he went on up to Route Ten. I’m still going west on the gravel road, but I’m not sure how far south I—”
“Post Seven, Post Seven, this is Car Ten,” an excited voice broke in. “I just passed a bunch of glass, and a little farther on a hole in a cornfield. Looks like somebody went in.”
Franklin was on his feet and taking the mike from the Sergeant. “Car Ten, continue as you are—straight west in pursuit. Car Five, find out where you are, then get on the road that runs four miles south of Route Ten. Find out what that hole is that Car Ten’s talking about. Check it out and report. Any questions?”
“Well, uh, I don’t know whether he’s east or west of me now.”
Franklin’s voice took on the cold, oily edge of a man impatient with a stupid child.
“We’ll just leave that up to you to find out.”
There was no reply.
A few seconds later, Franklin said, calmly, “Car Ten.”
“Yes, sir,” was the instant reply.
“Keep going as you are until you run into a dead end at Route Sixty-six. We are going to assume that Car Eight is still on their tail, unless or until we hear otherwise. The cars from Peoria are still on the way down. The plan is just the same.”
“Yes, sir.”
With the lead car out of communication, no one knew at this point whether they actually had a chase going or not. It might be that Car Eight was still on the felons’ tail, chasing them toward the cul-de-sac south of Lincoln, but, at any rate, the car’s radio was broken. This had been his reasoning when he had directed Car Ten to proceed on west with the chase. It was only a few minutes behind Car Eight and the culprits, on the same road.
He hoped he had done the right thing. Just because Car Eight had stopped transmitting, he reasoned, he was not justified in jumping to conclusions. He had no actual knowledge that Eight was out of commission. It was best to proceed on the assumption he was still running.
On the other hand, there was at least a good chance—better than even, in the Super’s opinion—that something had happened to Car Eight. Especially after that business of the glass in the road, and the swath cut in the cornfield. It didn’t look good. He had a familiar sick feeling now in the pit of his stomach. He had had it during the war whenever one of the Hellcats under his direction had been splashed by Zeros.
The minutes dragged on as he waited for the report to come in from Car Five’s investigation. He was afraid it might be a long wait. The man had not sounded very intelligent. He checked his watch. Twelve-eighteen.
He need not have worried.
After fourteen lead-dragging minutes, a sudden voice, high-pitched with excitement, filled the room.
“I found him, I found him. He went all the way across a cornfield. The windshield’s out and the car’s all jam-fulla corn stalks. I can hear him moanin’ under there. Send an ambulance.”
Immediately, the Superintendent replied, “Can you give us your position? Where are you?”
There was no reply. He had apparently gone back to aid the other man.
Franklin did not keep trying to contact him. The air was dead except for the background hum of the set. Franklin handed the mike back to the Sergeant and, hands in pockets, without saying anything to anyone, walked back to the teletype room.
Things were again as they had been before. There was no use now pretending these men were going to run into the trap south of Lincoln. They might by some blind piece of luck run on into it, but he knew he could not count on luck of that sort.
No, they were out again—free—loose once more in the maze of secondary roads. Only now they would be more alert, harder to jump. They were like animals that had been flushed—wary and keen. It would be harder to get near to them a second time.
And he had lost a man!
He felt more strongly than ever that their only real chance now was to bag the pair at the Tollway. This interception do
wnstate, with its tragic ending, had been only a statistical fluke. He had to count on staking everything at the blockade ring. He forced himself to think.
Was there anything he had overlooked? Any source, any avenue of aid or assistance? Chin in hand, he thought for a moment, then went to the phone and picked it up. After dialing, he said, “Operator, this is the Superintendent of State Police. I want a person-to-person call to the head of Air Traffic Control at Chicago Municipal Airport. Will you give this call priority, please!”
After less than a minute’s pause, he said, “Hello, this is Franklin, head of State Police.” He went on to explain in some detail the situation that they faced, and the fact that they hoped to use the Tollway as a blockade. “I called you,” he finished, “to see whether it is possible that you might alert the pilots flying over that area in the next three or four hours to be on the watch for the car we are looking for.”
“I, uh, well, that’s a pretty unusual request, sir. I don’t know,” the man said. “I don’t, uh, think I have enough authority to pass on it, actually. Let me call the FAA. I’ll call you back.”
“Okay, thanks,” Franklin said, but his hopes sank. The request had started its upward bureaucratic spiral. He’d probably get a letter next week asking him to put it in writing.
He dismissed it from his mind and went back to the teletype.
37
They had been lucky. During the thirty-mile chase there had not been a sign of a car other than the one chasing them. Now they were out of the jaws of the trap, and headed north once more. Without the pressure and tension of pursuit, the old pattern of the intersections came to haunt them again.
It was worse for the man in the back seat. He had nothing to do. At least the driver was kept busy driving, and did not have as much opportunity to sit back and imagine things, like a tractor emerging in front of them at every crossroad. Perhaps it was just as well that their positions were not reversed, for the man in the back seat was stronger. He could take more.
Yet, for all his cold nerve and intelligence, Rayder was not psychic. He could not know that the man in charge of the police apparatus had—for the second time that day—decided that they could not be intercepted and chased down in open country and had elected to concentrate on trying to catch them at the approaches to Chicago.
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