by Barry, Mike
He would try not to hurt them. His policy from the beginning had been clear: he was a policeman, he could not hurt a policeman. Rogue, maverick, exile as he might be, his essential loyalties still went toward the fools who were only trying to do or escape from their jobs. But there were limits to his principles, he thought. He hoped that they would not be tested. Rocking the car, holding the wheel, then lashing it on the main divider line in order to create a confusing target, he cocked the pistol, leaned over, quickly rolled down the right window of the Plymouth a quarter of the way and fired at the left front tire of the second car.
He knew that the only thing going for him was surprise. If he could just unbalance that vehicle before they even knew properly what was going on—but the bullet richoted off the pavement, he could hear it spit back the gravel and he had to cock and fire again, wasting vital seconds, almost losing control of the car before he was able to put the second bullet dead center into the valve cap of the left front tire. The second car swayed. It lurched toward him. It lurched away.
Then it went completely out of control, through a lane of traffic, toward the curb. Halfway there it was hit by the third patrol car hitting its brakes too late, it spun almost lazily and turned completely around, then it smashed into a streetlamp, the metal quivering. Intensity became stop-action at the moment of impact, the car hung for seconds, minutes really at the point of intersection before caving into that streetlamp with a lazy kind of grace, and then everything happened very quickly indeed.
Wulff vaulted from the Plymouth, twisting the wheel hard to the right, slamming the brakes and ramming it into neutral before he did so, more out of prayer than design. Holding his pistol in front of him he ran clumsily but desperately toward that second patrol car. The third, after the impact, had skidded into the oncoming lane of traffic and had hit a Volkswagen broadside, sending that one out of control into a bench on the other side of the street; the fourth patrol car however was closing in behind the smashed second, the brakes shrieking. The driver, though either instinct or fear had set the siren wailing.
Wulff kept on moving. He had maybe a leeway of thirty seconds to operate, maybe less if things kept on going this way. The first car in the convoy, the one actually carrying Sands, had been caught by surprise and was halfway up the block before it could stop, even when it did so the stop came casually and the driver seemed to be meditating his next course of action. The car was not coming back.
Car three was out of the scene, car one confused, car four gathering its senses. That left car two to deal with, but Wulff had already covered that one. He was in at close range now, his pistol exposed, waving it at the two astounded cops in the front seat. “Don’t move!” he said. “Don’t move!” He leaped toward the back where he could see the outlines of the valise distinctly.
The driver pulled out his gun, awkwardly. Wulff, not even thinking, shot it out of his hand. The other one, alert, dropped to the floor before struggling for his own gun but by that time he had the back door of the car open. He felt the handle of the valise almost leaping into his hand like a dog’s tongue and he yanked it off the leatherette. The valise bobbled against his knees, hit him a glancing blow on the shin. The man on the floor shot at him, the bullet going past Wulff’s ear.
Wulff shot him in the shoulder. Even as he did so there was a flicker of guilt. He had not meant to shoot police. Whatever he was, whatever New York had done to him he considered himself a cop. But there was no time now for scruples. The cop who had been shot screamed and grasped his shoulder, his gun falling away from him like a twig. Wulff had the valise in his hands now. He ran back toward the Plymouth.
By this time the first patrol car had wheeled around. It was bearing down upon him, moving the wrong way in the lane but not making good speed. Traffic had, of course, piled up during all of this. Cars had come to a stop, drivers were even now cranking down their windows to see what was going on. They created an obstacle course for the convoy which were now hopelessly separated from one another.
Gasping, he ran with the valise back toward the Plymouth. It was at the far extension of the lane, over the dividing line and the brake had slipped out, it was creeping imperceptibly forward. He felt the heavy breath of bullets passing his skull, two of them, as he dived toward the open passenger door, flung himself, atop the valise, inside. With a flailing leg, he slammed the door closed by hooking his toe into the handle and wedged himself behind the driver’s seat.
All four cars, even the wrecked one at the other side of the road had their sirens going now. The beams and horns jolted him. Doubtless at this moment all of them were using their radios as well, frantically calling for aid. In just a matter of moments now the area was going to be sealed off with cars. He threw the car into first, released the clutch, floored the gas pedal.
The car moved outward into the oncoming lane. The oncoming lane was blocked, of course, by cars piled up behind the accident, but he ignored this. There was enough small space in front of him to open up some kind of maneuver and he went to the extreme side of the road, touching the shoulder, feeling the car buckle beneath him. The valise slid into the door with a clang. He put out a hand, supported it in place and brought the car back to the center line. Straddling it, there was just enough room left and right for the Plymouth to pick its way through. He was going forty miles an hour now, maybe forty-five and beginning to feel the disconnection of speed.
Bullets went into the glass. Nonsense. The car was bulletproof. Spatters of glass opened like teardrops to his left and right but the basic structural integrity of the car remained. He passed the first car, going the other way at high speed, opening it up, burning rubber. There was a quick frieze of three faces: the two police, in the back an open-mouthed gasping man who could only have been Sands. So this was the famous Phillip Sands who made even Louis Cicchini tremble. He did not look remarkable at all. Wulff should not have thought that he did.
Now he had the valise and a little distance opened up but he heard the sirens behind him suddenly louder and knew that the real business was beginning. They were going to chase him. Of course the sonsofbitches were going to chase him. What else could they do? It would be their asses if he were able to get away.
Hopeless. By rights he should quit now, pull over and let them take him. How was he going to be able to outrun police cars at full throttle? He had proved his point by taking over the valise—that in itself, unless he was badly mistaken, was going to lead to investigations and shakeups within the department here. How had they let him get away with it? He had made fools of them all.
But he was not in this for moral victories or to score points over the police department. Let the losers worry about their moral victories: he was the Wolf. Opening the car up to an insane sixty miles an hour through the city streets he opened his mouth in a mad grin to the wind, gripping the wheel until his hands turned white, hearing the mutter and jounce of the valise behind him. The losers could have their moral victories, the bureaucrats could have their signals of intention, their shows of strength.
He was the Wolf again and he was in this game to win.
XV
He got them all the way out to the Turnpike. The Plymouth was, as Cicchini had promised, indeed a hell of a road car, all of its troubles and reluctance seemed to go away when he moved the needle over seventy which he was able to only a few blocks short of the interception. Downtown Boston became a pastel of mud colors, faces like pennants, buildings like mottled dreams, he ripped the car through all of this at a speed of gradual intensity, building it, moving the Plymouth toward the Turnpike. He felt that if he could only get there he might be able to outrun them on the flat open spaces of the pike. The state cops would be in on this of course, reinforcements would have been radioed in from a radius of maybe twenty-five miles, but Wulff had a kind of bizarre confidence in his ability and his luck. What had the odds been that he would even be able to retrieve that valise? Yet there it was, next to him. He made himself a vow, rocking the car through
dust at fifty miles an hour, looking for an access road to the Pike: he was not going to voluntarily turn that thing over again. They might get it from him, they might not, but they would have to kill him to get hold of that valise this time. Stupid once, dead twice. He ignored the beams and flashers, ignored the sirens, kept on driving. They would not try shooting at him again in heavy traffic. These cops might have been taken unaware but they were not stupid. Whatever they stood to gain by retrieving that valise they would lose by using downtown Boston at rush hour as a shooting gallery.
He stayed with the car. There were police cars ahead of him trying to head him off. It stood to reason that they would call for reinforcements the other way, but it was an open traffic pattern and Wulff did not doubt his ability to deal with any kind of traffic on the open road. Coming onto the Pike there was a sickening lurch as if the chassis of the car was going to take off backwards from the rest of it, he had had the clutch all the way in to avoid a downshift, but he was able to compensate by heavy work with the accelerator and the clutch, working them against one another. The car came back to itself. He was in business.
He went through the toll booth at sixty-five miles an hour, all the windows up, hunched over the wheel, glaring at the road. He was not going to have any dealings with toll booth attendants any more; that was one certainty. Behind him the police cars came in a screaming heap one after the other. He faked left, Worcester, and then sent the car hurtling New York bound. Twenty-five mile an hour speed limit on the access ramp. He got the car up to sixty. It held.
Once he hit the Pike there was a brief illusion of vaulting, of open spaces. The cars were not yet behind him; if there was anything up ahead it was not yet visible. The road was strangely open for a rush hour; a trickle of cars in the west-bound lane but nothing whatsoever eastbound. No one was taking the turnpike at this hour. Then he suddenly understood: they had probably cleared it and blocked it off already. They were not so stupid after all. Now they might have twenty miles of road in which to run him down and he would be open to them.
In his rear view mirror he could see the first police car coming onto the Turnpike now, beginning to close the gap already. In the city the superior mobility of the Plymouth and his skill behind the wheel might give him some kind of balance, but the open road was a different thing altogether. There was no way that he was going to be able to outrun them on open road, particularly if they put solid blocks ahead. He wanted the valise badly but not badly enough to drive into a solid block holding onto it. With one part of himself he held the wheel, concentrated on keeping ground between himself and the following cars, swept the road ahead for the first sign of blocks or a lurking state patrol car. On another level he was making rapid calculations.
His only way off the highway was on foot. That seemed obvious. The thing about the road was that it nailed down everyone on to its two dimensions of speed and distance. No one really thought of going off the road and this would be the only way in which he could break out of the lockstep and possibly evade them. But even assuming that he could crawl off the road with the valise, what were the chances that he would be able to make it back into Boston or any other town without being apprehended? These men were no fools. Like Wulff at the toll booth, they had made one terrible mistake in yielding up that valise but they were not apt to repeat it.
Nevertheless: what she was there to do? He could see the situation; already they were closing ground. The patrol car behind him, apparently a maverick moving far ahead of the pack was within twenty to twenty-five carlengths, moving to the size of an apple in the rear view mirror. Once they drew alongside to run him off the road, that would be the end of it; these men were accomplished drivers, he would not be able to do to them what he had managed with the fools in the Mercedes in San Francisco.
He hit the brake rapidly, repeatedly, feeling the interruptions of the car’s speed as jolts moving up through the floor and into the backs of his thighs, almost disengaging the delicate balance with seat and machinery which had sustained him so far. He kept on hitting the brakes and when the car had yanked itself down to twenty-five miles an hour he spun the wheel, gripping it in his hands, rocking it back and forth like a fisherman whipping out a netful of fish into a bucket. The entire transmission groaned with the shock. He stayed with it.
He rocked the car clear off the pavement and onto the shoulder. On the shoulder, he accelerated.
The patrol car following had come level but the driver obviously did not know what to do. He swayed indecisively toward the shoulder where Wulff was scuttling along, then hesitantly came back toward the center of the road. He had to brake violently at the same time or lose Wulff, and the braking threw the suspension out of alignment, the car rolled sickeningly, overcorrected and went toward the divider-strip. Wulff could see the passenger-cop gesticulating frantically at the driver, who gripped the wheel, struggling in an abstraction of panic. The car rolled into the divider strip and flipped.
Wulff did not watch it further. He had his own problems. For the moment the accident to the patrol car had cleared the road, there was no one behind him, but he knew that any sense of isolation was illusory, and soon the heavy troops would be moving in. He even thought that he might see in the distance some suggestion of a block, shrouded outlines of cars humped over like insects in the haze, but block or none he was committed. He kept the car rocking on the shoulder now, gathering speed, carefully setting it up for what he wanted to do. With a free hand he slapped together the lap-and-shoulder harness dangling free around him, another old New York habit. You were trained to lash yourself in in the dead of night there.
He felt the belts digging at him, holding him now like a mummy in a coffin. He hoped that it was not a coffin that he was driving but a serviceable souped-up Plymouth about to perform its last and greatest feat of readability. He would see. He certainly would see. He thought of Cicchini and offered a small appeal, not to the man or his integrity, because that would have been pointless, but to his common sense. Cicchini would not send him out in a defective vehicle. It simply would not, as the man would himself put it, pay. You did things right. In Cicchini’s business you did things right all the time because you were apt to be permitted only one mistake.
The car was rocking freely now. Before he could think about what he was doing further, allowing any kind of imagination to enter, Wulff whipped the wheel all the way to the right, and spun the car off the shoulder.
He was heading into a wide, flat, blasted meadowland, shallow and without protuberances of any sort as far as he could see. This was important, but what was almost as important was that the land was completely level, because everything that happened now depending upon his ability to control the car within the planned geometry of limits. He felt himself launch into a roll like an astronaut and like an astronaut he held on, orienting himself through eyes fixed to the unchanging point of the dashboard, feeling gravity depart. Weightless, he lashed against the ropes.
The car rolled once, came unsteadily to all fours like a dropped cat. He gave it a little more gas, yanking the wheel and the car rolled again. He let it go. He was drifting straight right now, rolling in the meadow like a playful bear, rolling toward a clump of trees about fifty yards downrange.
The car kept on going. He ducked his head in, hunched his shoulders, presenting the minimum surfaces to possible impact. He wished that he had had a crash helmet—open the trunk of this bomb and doubtless he would find one—but too late for that now. The landscape spun around and through him, surrounding him on six sides; he could see the sky through the side window, see the ground through the windshield. Still the car rolled.
Controlled destruction; he hoped that it would not explode. It should not if the gas tank were properly shielded; he had hit nothing hard enough to trigger the flames. Still, you could not tell. You could not tell about the structural integrity of an American car.
To anyone watching from the road—and as far as Wulff was now concerned he hoped that they were watchi
ng—he had lost control of the car and was in a long, flat deadly slide. The car seemed completely beyond the driver’s mastery; the only ending for something like this would be a dead man. He was counting on that. Struggling in the car, storming against the seat-belts he found himself almost smiling. He was preparing for Burt Wulff an exit which, he hoped, would keep damned Boston at least away from him….
The car came to ground again and this time, with another violent shot of gas, Wulff kept it level, straightened the wheel, ran it parallel to the clump of trees by about five yards. He unbuckled all of the belts, freed himself, leaned over at speed and pushed open the right passenger door. It swayed back at him once and slammed; on the second, more violent try he was able to throw it off its hinge, even against the wind resistance, and hold it into place.
Wulff raised his left foot off the clutch, jammed the brakes violently, siezed the valise in his right hand, pushed off, vaulted—and rolled.
He hit the ground at speed, the valise yanked away from him so rapidly that it was as if a giant fist had materialized from the air to jolt it away. All right. Let it go. It could not go too far. At twenty miles an hour, Wulff rolled over the ground, retracted into himself, feeling energy lash him like waves. Even at this growing distance he could feel heat from the car, the burning oil and rubber of the Plymouth. He decelerated, came to rest finally in a shallow grove about a hundred yards from the point of dive, feeling his limbs, ascertaining that he was intact except for a few minor bruises. He risked a quick glance over the terrain seeking the valise, saw it a long ways downrange, a tumbling object coming to rest near a tree trunk.