by Larry Crane
As soon as he reached the tire, the fusillade started again. The bullets winged and whined against the body of the truck, slammed dully into already flattened tires, ricocheted off metal, burrowed into the concrete, and whistled into the cables overhead.
Bracing his back against the front tire, Lou faced in the direction of the napalm drums. For the first time he realized that the disorganized muddle of flashing lights at the east side of the bridge was no longer there. The police squad cars were masked by the bulk of the Mack East semi-trailer, and it loomed as a big black bug suspended in the center of a corona created by police headlamps. He saw that the corona was growing as the cruisers inched toward the center of the span. The firing on his side had stopped.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The men on the east side, Wes and Victor, must have been killed, or they had cut and run. Soon the cops would be all around him. From the looks of it, they were more interested in filling his body with holes than in capturing him. He sat on the pavement with his back to the Mack West tire, and soon the smell of gasoline began to intrude on his senses. The bullets had pierced the hundred-gallon tank on the truck. The liquid was spreading in an iridescent film over the pavement beneath it, draining off into the gutter with the rain, and flowing under the arch of Red’s neck at the curb.
Lou got to his knees and scrambled under the trailer toward Frawley’s body. He reached across him, for his carbine. Immediately, the police threw another fusillade of fire. Lou was caught in the middle of the searchlight beam. He scrambled back to safety behind the tire as bullets screeched around him, careening off the concrete in a shower of sparks, miraculously failing to ignite the gasoline. By the weight of it, he judged the magazine of the carbine to be almost full.
Back toward the center of the bridge, the police cars were creeping forward. Lou crouched behind the front tire of Mack West, gathering his strength for a sprint. He got to his feet and plunged out into the darkness adjacent to the bridge railing. He pumped his legs with all of his strength. He saw the dark form of his drenched jacket in the roadway ahead.
The headlights of the approaching squad cars created angular shafts of light through the wheels, undercarriage, and stanchions of Mack East and the three-quarter ton full of napalm drums. He dove for his jacket, grasping the machine beneath it in both hands. He whirled the handle once; nothing. Then again, harder. Again. On the third twist, the center of the bridge seemed to heave up in a ball of yellow and crimson flame. A thunderous roar enveloped the bridge and sent shocks through the girders and the concrete surface, throwing Lou to his back.
Globs of thickened aviation gasoline arched through the night—clearing the overhead cables—and then plunged to the river below. The massive ball of flame slowly rose off the surface of the roadway and engulfed the cables and lights above.
Lou got to his feet and turned back toward the western end of the bridge, racing back toward Mack West. For nearly a full minute, the center of the bridge was aglow with intense seething light; yet no one fired at him. He went right to the truck, hugging the side of the roadway and the railing. The air in his lungs seemed to swell in his chest until he couldn’t catch his breath. And still no one fired.
Back in the shelter of Mack West, Lou sank to his knees behind the front tire. The entire bridge and the mountains on either side of the Hudson were lit by flaming napalm that now stuck to the overhead cables and slowly dripped in globs of orange flame to the roadway. He’d stopped them.
He became aware of the pulsing, rug-beating throb of helicopter blades. He looked out to the north of the bridge and saw a military UH-1B hovering at the level of the roadway, its landing lights gleaming. Red lights flashed on the tail boom. He was receiving no fire. The cops must have been holding off to keep from accidently hitting the chopper or firing into their comrades closing in from the east side.
Slowly the craft moved forward, dipping its nose and gaining altitude. It ascended above the bridge, swinging back to the eastern side. Thirty seconds later, Lou heard throbbing directly overhead. The chopper hovered out in front of him, by the traffic circle, and descended to the ground. There was no firing. It was the perfect time to go.
He reached the end of the railing. Instinctively, he veered to the right, across the narrow strip of grass. He dove headlong into the underbrush, still holding the carbine. He crawled on all fours over roots and rocks and under bushes and low hanging branches that grabbed at his weapon and held him back. He reached the cut.
It was steeper than he thought. He started down the embankment on his rump, warding off boulders and stumps on his way down with his feet, but soon he began tumbling and sliding in a cascade of rocks and water. The pool at the bottom was not deep and it was no colder than the rain.
At first, it was absolutely black in the cut. Gradually his eyes adjusted, but there was no moon and no reflective surfaces to magnify what little light existed. He was shielded from the open ground a hundred and forty feet above him at the level of the bridge. He heard no sound except the splashing of water at his feet and his own deep breathing. The rain still came down steadily, unrelenting. For that he was thankful. It would mask all of his movements.
There wasn’t much time. He didn’t know if they’d seen him dart off under the cover and confusion of the helicopter landing. The only thing to do was to strike out west, shielded from view until he was far from this place.
“Hello...” he heard from the other side of the stream. It was a half whisper. “Is it you?”
“Come over here,” he said softly. “Over here. I’m holding out my hand.”
He heard her stumble into the water and stifle a screech. Then his hand was holding hers; pulling her across.
She rushed to him, clutched at his shirt, and wrapped her arms around him. “You don’t look dead,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I heard a lot of shooting and the explosion,” she moaned. “I thought you were a goner.”
“We were lucky,” Lou said.
She kept her arms locked around his body and burrowed her face into his chest. He put his hands up to her back, and then began patting her jutting shoulder blades.
“Okay, okay. That’s enough. We’re going to have to get out of here,” he said. “They’re going to be looking for us.”
She nodded but didn’t release her grasp or say anything. He brought his hand up to her hair. It was a tangle of wetness. He pushed the long black strands off her forehead. She looked up at his face.
“Hey, c’mon,” he said, taking her shoulders and pushing her away. “We’ve got to move. We’re going upstream from here.”
“Say my name,” she said.
“What?” he said.
“Say it.”
“Tasha,” he said.
“Syd,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Say it.”
“Syd then,” he said. “Come on, Syd.”
He swung the carbine over his shoulder and then his rucksack. He grasped her hand and took one more look back toward the Hudson and the bridge high above it. The napalm mixture still burned in the cables and on the roadway. A cluster of squad cars hulked about a quarter of the way across the bridge where they had stopped when he blew the drums.
Right behind them, the Penn Central tracks stretched north beside the river. Had a train come along, they might’ve had a free ride out of there. But there was no train, and they had no time to wait for the Empire Express. It was completely dark directly above the tracks at the top of the gorge. That was good, but temporary. The police would be swarming all over this area as soon as they got organized. They began to pick their way along the edge of the water, moving west on level ground beside a broad inlet.
The cut was grooved into the rock a good hundred and fifty feet below the level of the surrounding ground. The inlet, its edges laced with boulders, was shallow and sluggish. But up ahead, the stream clapped on the boulders as it cascaded down from the high ground. To the sides and stra
ight ahead, the stream was punctured by flashing specters of white. Above them, overhanging branches made silhouettes against the night sky.
They stopped to rest for a minute and looked back down the inlet from where they’d come. Across the Hudson a white beacon flashed at the level of the water beneath the bridge.
Ahead, up the gorge, the Popolopen Bridge, that carried Route 9W across the chasm, loomed against the sky. Hundreds of the curious were out on the highway. Good. They’d be in the way, clogging the highway, slowing the police moving to cut them off. The media must have picked up the story almost immediately. He looked down at the luminous dial of his watch. Midnight.
“Let’s go,” he said. They tried to hurry beside the rushing water. They cringed against the clacking of rock against rock in the rushing stream. The police wouldn’t hear anything down in the gorge because of the commotion caused by the buzzing oglers. Still, at any second he expected to see a cop peer over the edge and train a spotlight down on them. It would have to be a strong light to reach them.
The inlet narrowed even more past the bridge. The wet air muffled the roar of the rushing stream as it crashed down the incline. Then the gorge narrowed sharply; and they were on their hands and knees beside the torrent, picking their way through the rocks and boulders.
It was rugged and exhausting work. The rigors of the long night were creeping into his bones. He didn’t dare admit it. The girl would surely collapse. He climbed, scratching and clawing, to the top of the incline. There was a small dam, and beyond the dam, a tiny lake and then more flashing water as they continued to pull themselves gradually out of the Hudson River channel.
“We have to stop,” he heard from behind. He turned and went back to the girl. She was down on all fours beside the water, her head drooping between her shoulders. He dropped down to her. Her breath was coming in short, desperate pants. Her cheeks and forehead were hot to the touch.
“All right, we’ll stop here for a while. Take it easy,” he said.
He remembered the map of the area perfectly and didn’t consider taking it out of his waistband, where he’d put it before the operation started, neatly folded in a plastic bag. There wasn’t enough light to see it anyway. He had memorized the primary and secondary escape routes.
First, get out away from the bridge and into the gorge. Once there, stay with it until it rose up to almost level ground near Queensboro Furnace. It would be dangerous as long as they were confined to a gorge dominated on both sides by high-speed roads. The going would be slow for them, while the police would have the opportunity to speed ahead. Also, the cops would be able to patrol the roads to prevent them from crossing to the other side, boxing them into a narrow corridor they couldn’t escape. It was important to keep moving at least until they reached the Furnace. Once there, they’d be able to strike out into the woods in any direction, making it difficult to track them down. But now, they still had some climbing to do and a road to cross.
She took in long, deep breaths. He scooped some water out of the stream and patted it onto her face. For the first time in an hour, he noticed that the rain had nearly stopped. Far above them, on the left, he heard the faint rush of cars on the Palisades Parkway. He imagined a driver speeding along the four-lane highway, listening to a news report and wondering if there might be some fugitive lurking on the side of the road ready to jump out and wave him down.
On the right, Mine Torne Road meandered through the rock-strewn terrain. An occasional headlight blinked and then vanished as some traveler wound back and forth between the hills. The whole area was dominated by the Torne, surging 250 feet in the air and blotting out the night horizon.
“We can’t stay here any longer. They’ll figure out where we are pretty soon. They’ll be all over the roads. It’s just a little further now; about a mile more. We’ll be able to stop and rest for the night.”
“You go ahead. I can’t move. I’ll follow you later. I’m dying.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he snapped. “You’re not giving up now, after all you’ve been through. C’mon,” he said, pulling at her arm. She got to her feet and started walking again.
Queensboro Furnace was just a name on a map. It was etched in his memory as the spot where the stream split in two. One branch curved due north, running past Camp Shea, leading upstream to Weyants Pond. The other led south beside the interstate. They would slip between the streams, cross Furnace Road, and make their way overland about a mile to Turkey Mountain; a long ridge, but inconspicuous enough to afford them a haven.
It was a full two hours since they’d escaped the bridge. Daylight was only five hours away; plenty of time for the authorities to begin to react effectively to what had happened. If they were thinking at all, especially if they had seen him duck away, they’d be patrolling the roads west and north of the bridge. It was the obvious place to go.
He saw the gravel road, a chalky ribbon ahead, as soon as they came up onto level ground. He immediately sank and pulled the girl down beside him. She was gasping frantically again.
She slumped to the ground and lay on her side. Lou kept his head up, staring straight ahead at the road. He could see no movement. Up to the left was the Parkway. An occasional car swooshed along in a broad curving sweep. There was no traffic on Mine Torne to the right. The rain was falling very gently again. He kept his head perked up with all of his senses attuned to the gravel strip ahead. He heard nothing and saw nothing.
“Hey,” he whispered, ducking to speak into her ear. “I’m going to move ahead just a little bit to get closer to the road. You stay right here. Understand?”
“Don’t leave me here alone. I’m coming,” she said, starting to rise.
“Shh! For chrissake, I said stay here! When I see that it’s okay, I’ll whistle and you come up.”
“Please.”
“Goddam it, are you going to do what I say or what?”
“I want to come with you.”
“You’re staying. Listen up, and come when you hear the whistle. This is crucial. We can’t blow it at this stage of the game.”
He slowly got to his feet and began to move forward, out of the creek bed and through a grassy marsh. He’d taken the carbine from his shoulder and now held it tightly across his chest, ready to put it into action if need be.
With no cover, this was the most vulnerable area of all. Fifty feet from the road, he stopped and crouched in the marsh again. He lifted his head up above the grass, listened, and watched. He’d spend an hour here if he had to, just to be sure they wouldn’t be caught crossing the road in the open.
Off to the right, he heard the approach of a vehicle on Mine Torne Road. He watched the headlights come from a long way off, disappear at a curve in the road, and then reappear a few seconds later. Directly opposite his position in the marsh, the car turned to the right on a curve. The headlights swept across the marsh, and he ducked. Then, the red glow of the taillights dimmed into nothing. It was silent again.
He whistled as loudly as he could, trying to sound like some bird. What kind of bird whistles at night? Then he heard the sloshing through the swampy ground behind him, but he kept his eyes on the road.
“I could swear I heard a robin,” she said.
“Shh. Can’t I get you to be quiet?”
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“We’re going to move very slowly up to that road. When we get to it, I’ll stay on this side. ’You run over to the other side and duck into the bush. Understand? No pussy footin’ around now. I want you to move as fast as you can.”
“Do you think there’s something up there?”
“I don’t think anything. I just don’t want to get caught in the open. I know you can’t see or hear anything, but this is the worst place for us. They could be sitting right up there waiting.”
He kept her beside him as they edged toward the road, pausing to listen every couple of feet. Now he began to discern a sound in the night air that was familiar: a whooshing sound
, like an acetylene torch, coming out of the darkness, off to the left.
“Down!” he rasped, plunging to the ground and pulling her with him. “Lie still. Don’t move.”
Then they both heard it, loud and clear, from a hundred feet up the road: “Foxtrot thirty-two, this is Alpha six...”
“Foxtrot thirty-two, pack it up and move down here to the junction with the blacktop, over.”
A sudden, groping beam of light shot from a car on the road and flooded the gravel at their heads, sending a shiver of fear down his spine. The engine spun to life and the vehicle—an olive, military police car—crept down the road, passing directly above their huddled forms at the embankment. They crouched, frozen, until they no longer heard the crunch of gravel. Then, when the taillights flashed brightly in the distance by Mine Torne Road, he said: