by Jerry
Ben got out of his seat with a snort. “I’ll ‘pop’ you, skinhead,” he snapped. “You may be eight years younger than I am but you only have one third the virility and one tenth the brains. And eight years from now you’ll still be in deficit spending on both counts.”
“Careful, venerable lord of my destiny,” Clay admonished with a grin, “remember how I spent my vacation and remember how you spent yours before you go making unsubstantiated statements about my virility.”
Kelly stood up. “If you two will excuse me, I’ll go back to the dispensary and take a good jolt of male hormones and then we can come back and finish this man-to-man talk in good locker room company.”
“Don’t you dare,” Ben cried. “I wouldn’t let you tamper with one single, tiny one of your feminine traits, princess. I like you just the way you are.”
Kelly looked at him with a wide-eyed, cherubic smile. “You really mean that, Ben?”
The older trooper flushed briefly and then turned quickly into the galley. “I’m going to try for some shut-eye. Wake me at two, Clay, if nothing else breaks.” He turned to Kelly who was still smiling at him. “And watch out for that lascivious young goat.”
“It’s all just talk, talk, talk,” she said scornfully. “You go to bed, Ben. I’m going to try something new in psychiatric annals. I’m going to try and psychoanalyze a dummy.” She sat back down on the jump seat.
At 2400 hours it was Vincennes Check with the density reports, all down in the past hour. The patrol was settling into what looked like a quiet night routine. Kelly chatted with Ferguson for another half hour and then rose again. “I think I’ll try to get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee for you two before I turn in.”
She rattled around in the galley for some time. “Whatcha cooking?” Clay called out. “Making coffee,” Kelly replied.
“It take all that time to make coffee?” Clay queried.
“No,” she said. “I’m also getting a few things ready so we can have a fast breakfast in case we have to eat on the run. I’m just about through now.”
A couple of minutes later she stuck her head into the cab. “Coffee’s done. Want some?”
Clay nodded. “Please, princess.”
She poured him a cup and set it in the rack beside his seat.
“Thanks,” Clay said. “Good night, Hiawatha.”
“Good night, Babe,” she replied.
“You mean ‘Paul Bunyon,’ don’t you?” Clay asked. “ ‘Babe’ was his blue ox.”
“I know what I said,” Kelly retorted and strolled back to the dispensary. As she passed through the crew cubby, she glanced at Ben sleeping on the bunk recently vacated by Ferguson. She paused and carefully and gently pulled a blanket up over his sleeping form. She smiled down at the trooper and then went softly to her compartment.
In the cab, Clay sipped at his coffee and kept watchful eyes on the video monitors. Beulah was back on auto drive and Clay had dropped her speed to a slow fifty as the traffic thinned.
At 0200 hours he left the cab long enough to go back and shake Ben awake and was himself re-awakened at 0400 to take back control. He let Ben sleep an extra hour before routing him out of the bunk again at 0700. The thin, gray light of the winter morning was just taking hold when Ben came back into the cab. Clay had pulled Beulah off to the service strip and was stopped while he finished transcribing his scribbled notes from the 0700 Washington Criminal Control broadcast.
Ben ran his hand sleepily over his close-cropped head. “Anything exciting?” he asked with a yawn. Clay shook his head. “Same old thing. ‘All cars exercise special vigilance over illegal crossovers. Keep all lanes within legal speed limits.’ Same old noise.”
“Anything new on our hit-runner?”
“Nope.”
“Good morning, knights of the open road,” Kelly said from the galley door. “Obviously you both went to sleep after I left and allowed our helpless citizens to slaughter each other.”
“How do you figure that one?” Ben laughed.
“Oh, it’s very simple,” she replied. “I managed to get in a full seven hours of sleep. When you sleep, I sleep. I slept. Ergo, you did likewise.”
“Nope,” Clay said, “for once we had a really quiet night. Let’s hope the day is of like disposition.”
Kelly began laying out the breakfast things. “You guys want eggs this morning?”
“You gonna cook again today?” Clay inquired.
“Only breakfast,” Kelly said. “You have the honors for the rest of the day. The diner is now open and we’re taking orders.”
“I’ll have mine over easy,” Ben said. “Make mine sunny-up,” Clay called.
Kelly began breaking eggs into the pan, muttering to herself. “Over easy, sunny-up, I like ‘em scrambled. Next tour I take I’m going to get on a team where everyone likes scrambled eggs.”
A few minutes later, Beulah’s crew sat down to breakfast. Ben had just dipped into his egg yolk when the radio blared. “Attention all cars. Special attention Cars 207, 56 and 82.”
“Just once,” Ben said, “just once, I want to sit down to a meal and get it all down my gullet before that radio gives me indigestion.” He laid down his fork and reached for the message pad.
The radio broadcast continued. “A late model, white over green Travelaire, containing two men and believed to be the subjects wanted in earlier broadcast on murder, robbery and hit-run murder, was involved in a service station robbery and murder at Vandalia, Illinois, at approximately 0710 this date. NorCon Criminal Division believes this subject car escaped filter check and left NAT 26-West sometime during the night.
“Owner of this stolen vehicle states it had only half tanks of fuel at the time it was taken. This would indicate wanted subjects stopped for fuel. It is further believed they were recognized by the station attendant from video bulletins sent out by this department last date and that he was shot and killed to prevent giving alarm.
“The shots alerted residents of the area and the subject car was last seen headed south. This vehicle may attempt to regain access to NAT 26-West or it may take another thruway. All units are warned once again to approach this vehicle with extreme caution and only with the assistance of another unit where possible. Acknowledge. Washington Criminal Control out.”
Ben looked at the chrono. “They hit Vandalia at 0710, eh. Even in the yellow they couldn’t get this far for another half hour. Let’s finish breakfast. It may be a long time until lunch.”
The crew returned to their meal. While Kelly was cleaning up after breakfast, Clay ran the quick morning engine room check. In the cab, Ben opened the arms rack and brought out two machine pistols and belts. He checked them for loads and laid one on Clay’s control seat. He strapped the other around his waist. Then he flipped up a cover in the front panel of the cab. It exposed the breech mechanisms of a pair of twin-mounted 25 mm auto-cannon. The ammunition loads were full. Satisfied, Ben shut the inspection port and climbed into his seat. Clay came forward, saw the machine pistol on his seat and strapped it on without a word. He settled himself in his seat. “Engine room check is all green. Let’s go rabbit hunting.”
Car 56 moved slowly out into the police lane. Both troopers had their individual sets of video monitors on in front of their seats and were watching them intently. In the growing light of day, a white-topped car was going to be easy to spot.
It had all the earmarks of being another wintry, overcast day. The outside temperature at 0800 was right on the twenty-nine-degree mark and the threat of more snow remained in the air. The 0800 density reports from St. Louis Control were below the 14,000 mark in all lanes in the one-hundred-mile block west of the city. That was to be expected. They listened to the eastbound densities peaking at twenty-six thousand vehicles in the same block, all heading into the metropolis and their jobs. The 0800, 1200 and 1600 hours density reports also carried the weather forecasts for a five-hundred-mile radius from the broadcasting control point. Decreasi
ng temperatures with light to moderate snow was in the works for Car 56 for the first couple of hundred miles west of St. Louis, turning to almost blizzard conditions in central Kansas. Extra units had already been put into service on all thruways through the Midwest and snow-burners were waging a losing battle from Wichita west to the Rockies around Alamosa, Colorado.
Outside the temperature was below freezing; inside the patrol car it was a comfortable sixty-eight degrees. Kelly had cleaned the galley and taken her place on the jump seat between the two troopers. With all three of them in the cab, Ben cut from the intercom to commercial broadcast to catch the early morning newscasts and some pleasant music. The patrol vehicle glided along at a leisurely sixty miles an hour. An hour out of St. Louis, a big liquid cargo carrier was stopped on the inner edge of the green lane against the divider to the police lane. The trucker had dropped both warning barriers and lights a half mile back. Ben brought Beulah to a halt across the divider from the stopped carrier. “Dropped a track pin,” the driver called out to the officers.
Ben backed Beulah across the divider behind the stalled carrier to give them protection while they tried to assist the stalled vehicle.
Donning work helmets to maintain contact with the patrol car, and its remote radio system, the two troopers dismounted and went to see what needed fixing. Kelly drifted back to the dispensary and stretched out on one of the hospital bunks and picked up a new novel.
Beulah’s well-equipped machine shop stock room produced a matching pin and it was merely a matter of lifting the stalled carrier and driving it into place in the track assembly. Ben brought the patrol car alongside the carrier and unshipped the crane. Twenty minutes later, Clay and the carrier driver had the new part installed and the tanker was on his way once again.
Clay climbed into the cab and surveyed his grease-stained uniform coveralls and filthy hands. “Your nose is smudged, too, dearie,” Martin observed.
Clay grinned, “I’m going to shower and change clothes. Try and see if you can drive this thing until I get back without increasing the pedestrian fatality rate.” He ducked back into the crew cubby and stripped his coveralls.
Bored with her book, Kelly wandered back to the cab and took Clay’s vacant control seat. The snow had started falling again and in the mid-morning light it tended to soften the harsh, utilitarian landscape of the broad thruway stretching ahead to infinity and spreading out in a mile of speeding traffic on either hand.
“Attention all cars on NAT 26-West and East,” Washington Criminal Control radio blared. “Special attention Cars 56 and 82. Suspect vehicle, white over green Travelaire reported re-entered NAT 26-West on St. Louis interchange 179. St. Louis Control reports communications difficulty in delayed report. Vehicle now believed . . .”
“Car 56, Car 56,” St. Louis Control broke in. “Our pigeon is in your zone. Commercial carrier reports near miss sideswipe three minutes ago in blue lane approximately three miles west of mile Marker 957.
“Repeating. Car 56, suspect car—”
Ben glanced at the radiodometer. It read 969, then clicked to 970.
“This is Five Six, St. Louis,” he broke in, “acknowledged. Our position is mile marker 970 . . .”
Kelly had been glued to the video monitors since the first of the bulletin. Suddenly she screamed and banged Ben on the shoulder. “There they are. There they are,” she cried, pointing at the blue lane monitor.
Martin took one look at the white-topped car cutting through traffic in the blue lane and slammed Beulah into high. The safety cocoons slammed shut almost on the first notes of the bull horn. Trapped in the shower, Clay was locked into the stall dripping wet as the water automatically shut off with the movement of the cocoon.
“I have them in sight,” Ben reported, as the patrol car lifted on its air pad and leaped forward. “They’re in the blue five miles ahead of me and cutting over to the yellow. I estimate their speed at two twenty-five. I am in pursuit.”
Traffic gave way as Car 56 hurtled the divider into the blue.
The radio continued to snap orders.
“Cars 112, 206, 76 and 93 establish roadblocks at mile marker crossover 1032. Car 82 divert all blue and yellow to green and white.”
Eight Two was one hundred fifty miles ahead but at three—hundred-mile-an-hour speeds, 82’s team was very much a part of the operation. This would clear the two high-speed lanes if the suspect car hadn’t been caught sooner.
“Cars 414, 227 and 290 in NAT-26-East, move into the yellow to cover in case our pigeon decides to fly the median.” The controller continued to move cars into covering positions in the area on all crossovers and turnoffs. The sweating dispatcher looked at his lighted map board and mentally cursed the lack of enough units to cover every exit. State and local authorities already had been notified in the event the fugitives left the thruways and tried to escape on a state freeway.
In Car 56, Ben kept the patrol car roaring down the blue lane through the speeding westbound traffic. The standard emergency signal was doing a partial job of clearing the path, but at those speeds, driver reaction times weren’t always fast enough. Ahead, the fleeing suspect car brushed against a light sedan, sending it careening and rocking across the lane. The driver fought for control as it swerved and screeched on its tilting frame. He brought it to a halt amid a haze of blue smoke from burning brakes and bent metal. The white over green Travelaire never slowed, fighting its way out of the blue into the ultra-high yellow and lighter traffic. Ben kept Beulah in bulldog pursuit.
The sideswipe ahead had sent other cars veering in panic and a cluster inadvertently bunched up in the path of the roaring patrol car. Like a flock of hawk-frightened chickens, they tried to scatter as they saw and heard the massive police vehicle bearing down on them. But like chickens, they couldn’t decide which way to run. It was a matter of five or six seconds before they parted enough to let the patrol car through. Ben had no choice but to cut the throttle and punch once on the retrojets to brake the hurtling patrol car. The momentary drops in speed unlocked the safety cocoons and in an instant, Clay had leaped from the shower stall and sped to the cab. Hearing, rather than seeing his partner, Martin snapped over his shoulder, “Unrack the rifles. That’s the car.” Clay reached for the gun rack at the rear of the cab.
Kelly took one look at the young trooper and jumped for the doorway to the galley. A second later she was back. Without a word, she handed the nude Ferguson a dangling pair of uniform coveralls. Clay gasped, dropped the rifles and grabbed the coveralls from her hand and clutched them to his figure. His face was beet-red. Still without speaking, Kelly turned and ran back to her dispensary to be ready for the next acceleration.
Clay was into the coveralls and in his seat almost at the instant Martin whipped the patrol car through the hole in the blue traffic and shoved her into high once more.
There was no question about the fact that the occupants of the fugitive car knew they were being pursued. They shot through the crossover into the yellow lane and now were hurtling down the thruway close to the four-hundred-mile-an-hour mark.
Martin had Beulah riding just under three hundred to make the crossover, still ten miles behind the suspect car and following on video monitor. The air still crackled with commands as St. Louis and Washington Control maneuvered other cars into position as the pursuit went westward past other units blocking exit routes.
Clay read aloud the radiodometer numerals as they clicked off a mile every nine seconds. Car 56 roared into the yellow and the instant Ben had it straightened out, he slammed all finger throttles to full power. Beulah snapped forward and even at three hundred miles an hour, the sudden acceleration pasted the car’s crew against the backs of their cushioned seats. The patrol car shot forward at more than five hundred miles an hour.
The image of the Travelaire grew on the video monitor and then the two troopers had it in actual sight, a white, racing dot on the broad avenue of the thruway six miles ahead.
Clay triggered the c
ontrols for the forward bow cannon and a panel box flashed to “ready fire” signal.
“Negative,” Martin ordered. “We’re coming up on the roadblock. You might miss and hit one of our cars.”
“Car 56 to Control,” the senior trooper called. “Watch out at the roadblock. He’s doing at least five hundred in the yellow and he’ll never be able to stop.”
Two hundred miles east, the St. Louis controller made a snap decision. “Abandon roadblock. Roadblock cars start west. Maintain two hundred until subject comes into monitor view. Car 56, continue speed estimates of subject car. Maybe we can box him in.”
At the roadblock forty-five miles ahead of the speeding fugitives and their relentless pursuer, the four patrol cars pivoted and spread out across the roadway some five hundred feet apart. They lunged forward and lifted up to air-cushion jet drive at just over two hundred miles an hour. Eight pairs of eyes were fixed on video monitors set for the ten-mile block to the rear of the four vehicles.
Beulah’s indicated ground speed now edged towards the five hundred fifty mark, close to the maximum speeds the vehicles could attain.
The gap continued to close, but more slowly. “He’s firing hotter,” Ben called out. “Estimating five thirty on subject vehicle.”
Now Car 56 was about three miles astern and still the gap closed. The fugitive car flashed past the site of the abandoned roadblock and fifteen seconds later all four patrol cars racing ahead of the Travelaire broke into almost simultaneous reports of “Here he comes.”
A second later, Clay Ferguson yelled out, “There he goes. He’s boondocking, he’s boondocking.”
“He has you spotted,” Martin broke in. “He’s heading for the median. Cut, cut, cut. Get out in there ahead of him.”
The driver of the fugitive car had seen the bulk of the four big patrol cruisers outlined against the slight rise in the thruway almost at the instant he flashed onto their screens ten miles behind them. He broke speed, rocked wildly from side to side, fighting for control and then cut diagonally to the left, heading for the outer edge of the thruway and the unpaved, half-mile-wide strip of landscaped earth that separated the east and westbound segments of NAT-26.