Win Some, Lose Some

Chapter 13

The curtains blazed up. The gas had splashed as far as the opposite wall. The stolen equipment from the construction site, along with everything else, had been tumbled about by the collision. There had to be a fire extinguisher somewhere, but there was no time to find it.

The great tire blocked them off from the worst corner, and it was firmly lodged. The wall-to-wall carpet would be the worst problem. Frieda was wielding a heavy drape. The fire retreated after each swing, but instantly recovered. The sofa caught. Now they were blocked from the door.

As long as they continued to move at the same speed, they could hold the fire in this room. The instant they stopped, the whole thing would go up. Using the butt of his pistol, Shayne hammered the glass out of the bedroom window beside the pillows he had arranged to look like an unconscious man. Then he punched the talk button on the two-way phone.

“Your trailer’s on fire. Pull over.”

He knew at once from the deadness of the sound that the trailer’s swing had snapped the connection. There had to be some way to get the attention of the people in the cab. If he and Frieda came through opposite windows at the same time, they still might be able to make the capture.

He was looking for something to throw. The first thing he considered was the oxygen tank of a welding outfit. Another possibility hit him. He remembered throwing a torch into the payloader bucket. If he could find that, he could cut their way out and climb through into the pickup.

Frieda was pushing furniture into the fire, trying to make a firebreak. It wasn’t working.

“Hold it three minutes?” Shayne shouted.

“Try.”

He spotted the torch. He found the acetylene and made his connections in a hurry. Pushing too hard, he broke his last match. He tore a page from a cookbook, twisted it into a long spill, and lit it at the fire. In another moment, the torch was spitting. He adjusted the mixture, modulating the flame from orange to a hot, hard blue.

Kicking everything out of his way, he began work on the wall. The flame went through the thin sheet metal like a knife through ice cream, leaving a charred line from floor to ceiling. Frieda retreated down the passageway, using her drape as a flail, while he completed a crude door. As the cuts joined, the metal section fell inward.

“Frieda.”

She had lost her cap. Her hair had come loose, and her face was smeared with soot. She looked marvelous, as always.

Holding on with one hand, he reached across to the pickup and opened the back door. He stayed there, straddling the gap, while Frieda squeezed past. A sudden change of direction would have spilled them both on the highway, but the engineers who designed the highway had believed that the straightest road is the shortest and fastest and therefore the best. Flames filled the kitchen and one bedroom. Frieda shifted her grip from the jagged metal edge to Shayne’s shoulder, then to the roof of the pickup, and swung on in.

Shayne followed her across. Their speed had dropped to thirty and was still dropping. Perhaps the driver had realized finally that something unusual was taking place behind him.

Shayne crouched to disengage the hitch. He unhooked the chains and snapped the latch. The ball still rode snugly in its socket. Getting a good grip, he jumped hard on the bumper, and the burning trailer pulled free.

They would be changing vehicles in another ten miles. When Downey saw the headlights closing with him-an ordinary black Ford or Chevy, nothing to worry about, except that, being in charge, he was the one who had to worry about everything-be picked the dark glasses off his knee. He had killed the dashboard lights earlier. Pam was about to start a cigarette. He told her to wait till the car was past.

“In fact,” he said, watching the mirror, “get down on the floor. A pickup and trailer, two men and a girl. You never know, they might just remember.”

Pam slid to the floor and tugged at Werner’s pants until he followed, with a sigh of protest. The headlights came closer, much too slowly. Downey decided to brake as soon as they were alongside, timing it so they wouldn’t notice his brake lights, and let them scoot past. But it was the other car that braked and fell back.

Pam, on the floor, could tell something was wrong. “Jack?”

“Somebody wants to play games.”

The overhead mirror was blocked by the camper body. He was driving with the two big side mirrors. Their lights stayed in his eyes.

“Creeping paranoia,” Werner remarked. “Poor Jack, everybody’s chasing him.”

“If they want to pass, why don’t they pass? We’re only doing forty-five. Here that’s crawling.”

The lights came at him again even more slowly. Downey had an impulse to hog the center line until the next exit, and if they followed him off, he would know they were hostile. But with that enormous trailer behind him, he had to play it conservative. He wasn’t used to driving this much vehicle. He felt slow and unwieldy, like a pro basketball center in a room with ordinary people.

He glanced at the speedometer, wanting to see what they did if he dropped his road speed again. He felt a distinct jar, and his eyes jumped to the mirror.

“He cut in on me!”

The trailer was swinging. It swung away, back, away again.

“They’re on fire!”

The car behind them drifted out on the shoulder, definitely burning. Flames showed through the windshield. The others scrambled back on the seat, and Werner put his head out the window.

“What happened?” Pam said in the middle. “Tell me what happened.”

The burning car pulled over, and two figures jumped out, one of them ablaze. Downey came down on the gas. He wasn’t about to back up and help. Let the fuckers burn. Some kind of freak accident that couldn’t happen again in a hundred years. Brakes probably. They were driving with their emergency on, which was why the car had seemed slow to respond. When flames came up through the floorboards, the driver had been so startled that he jerked over and rammed Downey’s trailer. Drunk? Undoubtedly.

Werner said, “Man, they’re burning.”

“That’s their problem. How about our back lights? Are they on?”

Werner craned all the way out. “No,” he reported. “So if we pass a cop, we can expect to hear sirens.”

“Not for the first time tonight,” Pam put in.

“Nobody cruises this late,” Downey told them. “We’re going to do the last stretch on a side road, if I can get that son of a bitch to start tracking.”

He maintained a hard foot on the gas, but the trailer continued to wander. He was getting a bumping, an irregular oscillation. Perhaps the jolt had broken something loose, and it was rolling around in there. He could still see the glow from the burning car, and he decided against stopping until they had left the four-lane. The next exit was a quarter of a mile ahead, then presently an eighth of a mile. He shifted down for the ramp.

Suddenly his front wheels bucked, as though they had struck a speed bump like those in the trailer camp. But on the Interstate? He continued the turn, and the feel of everything changed. They were no longer pulling a load. The ramp curved away. Without quite believing it, he saw their unattached trailer, still on the main highway, continuing south. And it, too, was on fire!

That was the worst thing yet on a bad night. Some supernatural force must be working against them. Downey straightened the wheel in time to keep from leaving the ramp. The pickup was enjoying its freedom.

“There goes our million bucks,” Werner observed.

What was he talking about? The only million-dollar object around here-and then it came to him. A vise seemed to close on his head. Canada was inside that trailer, tied to a bed.

The trailer continued to pick up speed, coming down from the overpass. It was beginning to drift. Soon its outside wheels were off on the shoulder. It ran down a slight embankment, hit the fence, and kept going into a cultivated field. A million dollars. No chance of getting anybody out of that fire. It was out of control.

Pam clawed at his shoulder and pointed. He saw it, a big irrigation wagon standing all by itself well out in the field. He understood what she was shouting. But the way their luck seemed to be running, the wagon had to be empty. If there was water in it, there was no way to bring it to bear on the fire.

The trailer changed direction, moving less rapidly on the uneven ground, and headed straight for the water wagon like a camel smelling a well.

Downey cut so hard that he jumped the ramp at the bottom. The fence protected only the ramps and the big highway itself. He went straight in across country, dropping into the pickup’s bottom range. The field was in snap beans, nearly ready for the pickers. His rear wheels kicked out torn plants and soft dirt.

The trailer stayed upright, stopping only fifty feet from the wagon. He dropped Werner, who ran ahead. Downey came swerving in and stopped with the trailer in his lights. Inside, the fire was crackling nicely, but it was giving off little heat. He was able to get almost to the bedroom window, through which earlier he had seen the kidnapped man on the bed. This was the one room not ablaze. There still might be time.

He heard a yell from Werner. Turning, he saw a plume of water erupt from the tank and start a long sweep to the right and the left. Downey felt mist blow in his face. The main arc, however, was missing the trailer by twenty feet. Werner struggled with the short hose on the turret’s fixed arm. He managed to free it. It lashed around madly, spraying everything at random. He worked his hands toward the nozzle, brought it under control, and aimed the powerful stream at the fire. Perhaps by accident, he caught Downey in the chest and knocked him to the ground. Correcting his aim, he sent a cascade of water through the bedroom window.

The van Greco had appropriated proved to be unexpectedly agile. The brakes were so good that when he touched them lightly to get the feel the sudden check nearly sent him into the glass.

“This baby has power.”

The needle hit seventy in no time at all. Nick was worrying about what they would do when they overtook the trailer. They couldn’t attempt the same trick a second time because the gas can was empty.

“Bottle gas,” Greco said. “These things carry stoves. Look in back.”

“Bottle gas! That stuff can blow your ass off. I’ll drive this time. You throw.”

“No, it worked, it worked! Burning like a son of a bitch.”

In the fields to the right, they saw the burning trailer. So, after all, some of the improvised cocktail had taken effect. Greco stopped so they could watch the finish.

There was a noise in back, and somebody groaned. They looked at each other.

“We got company,” Greco said.

Then water jetted up out of a standing wagon and began to fall on the flames. The smoke changed color. Another minute or two and the fire would be out. They would transfer Canada to the pickup and be on their way. An attack on that crowd with only one gun was out of the question.

“Up and down all night,” Nick said. “Up and down. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

“No, listen, if we can keep them back from the fire-”

And he was out and running. He went through the break in the fence, going flat on his face after five steps. He saw two figures near the trailer, one more on the wagon. He brought out the gun. All he had to do was knock the man off the wagon, then pop off a shot or two to persuade the others to keep their heads down. The fire would take hold again, and soon nothing would be left of Canada but bones and charred flesh.

He was breathing hard from the run, and he couldn’t get the sights to hold steady. He fired anyway. The bullet hit the tank and went singing away, going nowhere. The guy dropped to the ground, but the nozzle was wedged in place, and water continued to splash into the trailer. Maybe Canada would swallow enough smoke so he wouldn’t wake up. Maybe not, too. It would be so nice to make sure.

Then he saw Nick running in a wide circle, heading for the wagon. Greco had to revise his opinion of the boy. He had been nothing but a drag so far, clowning when he wasn’t complaining, and then finally losing his gun. But even to think about climbing on that wagon, that took balls.

He came up on one knee. The minute Nick started his climb, he intended to waste a couple just for the hell of it. All Nick had to do was give the nozzle one swipe and then slide to the ground. In movies, people did things like that all the time.

And there the prick was, edging along the top of the tank. Greco kept swiveling, watching for movement. Sure enough, a head came up, but in an unexpected place. The guy had fooled him by wriggling between the bean rows. He fired at Nick, Nick fell forward against the nozzle. The stream’s force flung him off the tank, leaving the nozzle whipping about like something alive. At the trailer, flames appeared again almost at once amid the masses of smoke.

Everybody was out of sight again, and Greco dropped out of sight also. Now he would find out if any of those jokers was man enough to climb up the way Nick had done and redirect the hose. Greco was closer now, and he was feeling the heat. This was one shot he didn’t intend to miss.

The trailer was burning from one end to the other. Larry Canada was done for, and Greco and Nick could collect their money. Abruptly the hose stopped lashing around and hung down lankly, with only a dribble coming out. And then there was an immense bang from the trailer, sending a column of sparks and flame hundreds of feet in the air.