Win Some, Lose Some

Chapter 9

Shayne was watching the action from the high cab of a Euclid payloader. He stepped across to the next vehicle, a bulldozer-backhoe, and turned on its radio. Moving only when the bullhorn was roaring, he went deeper into the park, turning on radios at random. On the return, he stopped to take off the brake of the scraper he had picked out earlier, and let it roll out to block the road. The hot plant began banging and clattering, and he was able to move more freely. He found the ignition key under the floor mat and checked the controls. The bullhorn was calling on Canada to surrender. Canada came out. A masked figure pounced on him from behind, and a second masked man ran up and helped hold him until he slumped to the ground.

The Cadillac’s headlights came up. A third figure appeared. Together they struggled to get their heavy captive into the back seat of the car. Shayne waited. When the job was nearly complete, he picked the transmitter off the dashboard. He looked at the highway for an instant before committing himself, but there was still no sign of reinforcements.

“Hold it,” he called harshly. “Right there.”

The sudden command traveled from the payloader to all the live radios in a great circle around the Cadillac and came back, echoing from one metallic surface to the next. He had the volume all the way up everywhere, and it produced a pretty effect. One of the figures wheeled back, his gun raised. The words had come from everywhere at once, and there was nobody to shoot.

“Drop your guns,” Shayne commanded. “Hands on the hood of the car. All of you.”

The man with the gun continued to wheel.

“You told Canada not to be stupid,” Shayne said. “Don’t be stupid yourself. One wrong move, and you’re dead. Drop the guns. Now.”

One warning shot might have tipped the balance. The figure in the open lowered his gun without dropping it and dived for the car. The headlights winked off.

All the radios clamored: “Open up when the car moves.”

Shayne pressed the starter switch, and the powerful engine came to life as the Cadillac jerked forward. He turned on his headlights. They were oversize, like everything else about the enormous machine. Caught in a blaze of light, the Cadillac came back. It went forward again, heading not for the road Shayne had blocked, but deeper into the site. Shayne had once spent a day in a payloader, checking on a time-sheet swindle, with a driver who could pick up a cigarette butt with a flick of his huge bucket. He had learned the principal moves, but he had to fumble. The bucket lifted and dropped as he got the wrong lever. The machine, he knew, had a top speed of forty miles an hour, but it was slow building up. He couldn’t hope to overtake a Detroit car on a straight, smooth road. This track, however, was anything but that. He was in third with two more to go, coming up fast. The Cadillac went slithering far out on a turn. Shayne, with his tight turning radius, came up behind it before it could recover.

He lifted the bucket and threw the wheel over sharply.

The big bucket slammed into the Cadillac’s fender, spun the car around, and banged it hard into a parked truck. Shayne was braking and sliding. The bucket’s momentum whipped him around. He reversed and came back, bucket down. He turned and set. He lifted the bucket and brought it down with crushing force on the car’s front end, sending the rear wheels high in the air. One tire blew.

The nearby radios all shouted at once, “Stay in the car. I want to see three guns.”

He saw one at once, thrust out the nearest window. The bullet went through his windshield. He cut the lights and dropped to the ground. He didn’t need to capture all three. One would be enough.

He faded back through the parked equipment and began to work toward the Cadillac’s taillights, which continued to burn in spite of what had happened to the rest of the car. Almost there, he reached into a truck cab, snapped the headlight knob, and pushed it back in at once, having seen one of the masked figures on top of a bulldozer blade. Shayne ran straight at him in the darkness, colliding with him as he came down. Shayne had the advantage. He knew it was an enemy, but before the other could shoot, he had to be sure that Shayne wasn’t one of his colleagues.

Shayne chopped hard at a forearm and heard the gun land some distance away. Getting the man around the chest, Shayne ran him backward. They had to collide with something soon, and they did-the side of a truck. The curve of the fender caught his opponent at the base of his spine. He gave a high squeal of pain or dismay. As his head came forward, Shayne clubbed him with a hard rising left. The heavy mask took the force out of the blow. The tight cap came off in Shayne’s hand, and he had an impression of an abundance of hair. He went to the body, getting in two punishing punches before he was caught on the back of the head with something hard swung with considerable force.

He went down, already starting his roll. He pivoted and went under the truck.

“Here!” somebody shouted.

As he came back out, Shayne banged against a moving body. They grappled for an instant. Something touched him on the side of the face, unmistakably the muzzle of a gun.

All the lights flashed on at once. There were too many guns in this fight, all on the wrong side, and Shayne went back under the truck. He saw running feet, a masked face, a gun.

He struck his shoulder painfully against the hump of the axle as he rolled. Another gun went off somewhere else, and the figure looking in at Shayne pitched sideward, making a hurt sound. A hand came down and pulled him to his feet. Shayne counted legs. He got to five. There must have been one more he missed.

He pulled around, seeing movement in another direction, and saw a bicycle wheel. Frieda was back. He waited for her to find him.

The others were moving away. After a time, she called his name softly. Crawling out, he went toward the sound. They met at the wrecked car.

“Three of them. You hit one. Where the hell are the cops?”

“Coming.”

Taking her hand, he pulled her to the payloader. In the high cab, he started the engine but left the headlights off, and picked up the transmitter.

His own words came rushing back at them from all sides. “Give up. There’s no way you’ll get out of this. Give up.”

“I’m impressed,” Frieda said when silence returned. “Why aren’t they?”

“I heard them say they killed somebody. So they’re going to try to get by us. What happened with Gold?”

“I couldn’t stop him, Mike. He went straight through the barrier. Caved in the whole front end, but he kept going.”

“Here they come,” Shayne said, bringing up the lights. “Give them a couple of shots to keep their heads in.

Shayne had guessed the direction wrong. The payloader had four gears in reverse. He started at the top of the range instead of the bottom and stalled. The other vehicle, a light-duty tow truck, was headed away from the highway. Shayne came about and ran up quickly through the forward gears. The tow truck hit a swinging gate and went through without slowing.

“We won’t catch them in this,” Frieda said.

“I don’t see anything faster.”

He reversed and backed up to the control trailer. Inside, he turned on the lights and found the phone. He had to look up the number. After that, he listened to the phone ring for some time before a voice said, “Highway Patrol.”

“You got a call about a break-in at the Homestead construction site. They’re in a tow truck traveling east on a dirt road out of the interchange. The road’s not on the map. It must come out by the air base. Three people, and they’re armed.”

“The trouble is,” the voice said, “I already dispatched all the cars. They’re coming in from two sides. I know that road, but I couldn’t get anybody in there in time to cut them off. Who is this calling?”

Shayne replaced the phone slowly.

“No?” Frieda said from the doorway.

“Too late. But that’s all right. We know a couple of new things, and we have Canada.”

“We have Canada,” Frieda repeated. “What good does that do?”

“When he wakes up, he’ll think we’re the ones who kidnapped him. That opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities. Let’s get him out of here.”

Frieda went for the van while Shayne examined the Cadillac. The blows from the bucket had knocked the body out of square, and neither of the rear doors would open. Canada was firmly wedged between the two seats. He was giving off a strong smell of chloroform. Shayne was about to back out. Then he leaned all the way in and picked an empty syringe off the floor. He sniffed it. If Canada had been given a full load of this, he would be out for the rest of the night.

At first, Shayne considered getting a wrecker and taking the whole car. That would still leave the problem of getting the big man out somewhere else, so he swung the payloader into position, coming in at an angle with the bucket all the way down. The sharp front lip dug deep beneath one of the Cadillac’s rear tires. Shayne lifted straight up, flipping the big car over on its side. Then he raised the bucket, lowered it onto the car, and stepped up the downward pressure slowly, checking at intervals until the body was back in square. He unslung a long double chain and hooked it to the frame between front and rear doors. He lifted; the Cadillac came up easily, not exactly in balance. The door could be opened now, but Canada was still jammed. Shayne remembered a jerking technique which the operator had used to shake sticky materials out of the bucket. He swung the big car over a sand pile and jerked the lifting lever forward and back quickly, producing a powerful grating shake. The Cadillac danced and jangled at the end of the chain. After the second shake, Canada came tumbling out to a soft landing in the sand.

Shayne was getting the hang of. it now. He worked the lever again, dropping the bucket sharply, which dislodged the hook. The Cadillac, like a mouse tossed by a cat, flew through the air and ended up on the gravel bank. At that point, it had probably lost most of its resale value.

“A marvelous toy,” Frieda called up. “And we ought to be going, Mike.”

Shayne meanwhile had continued to improve on his original idea. He turned the bucket completely upside down, swung hard, and caved in one corner of the big equipment trailer, partially jarring it off its blocks. He worked the bucket edge into the opening and came back, peeling off one of the side panels. He tilted the bucket forward. Jumping down, he climbed into the trailer, which was brightly illuminated by the payloader’s headlights. He gutted it completely, throwing everything into the bucket-torches, jackhammers, welding machines, drills, hand tools, one huge payloader wheel and tire. Frieda had the van in position with the rear doors open. Shayne swung the bucket and tipped it all in.

Then he picked up Canada, getting a good deal of sand in the same bite. He tilted the bucket slowly. When Canada started to slide, Frieda guided him into the van.

The back of the van had two fitted bunks, a small stove, and a smaller ice chest. Shayne raised one of the bunks, moved the fat man underneath, and lowered the bunk again. The clutter of stolen equipment around him would keep him from rolling.

“Well, I don’t get it,” Frieda said, “but unless we want to meet those police cars on the highway-”

“We’re going out the back door.”

He pointed at the dirt road the others had used. At the gate, she paused briefly while Shayne looked at the lock. It had been clipped off with bolt cutters. They drove on. Seeing the first revolving light behind her, she braked sharply and cut her own headlights.

“You better drive, Mike,” she said after a moment. “I can’t see a thing.”

“I’ll lead you.”

He found a small pencil flash in the glove box. Jumping down, he set off at a fast walk. When they reached a line of trees, he came back in the van and she turned on the lights.

Almost at once, they came to the empty tow truck, abandoned at the side of the road.

“Here’s where they changed cars,” Shayne said. “Don’t stop. I want to be back on a paved road before they start talking about us on the shortwave.”

“Next time we rob a construction site,” Frieda said, “let’s take a payloader. They’d make lovely pets.”

With its heavy load, the van was giving them a surprisingly stable ride. Sometimes, even on pavement, it had a slight tendency to wander. The road gradually improved, skirting the Homestead Air Base, and came out on Route 1.

“Now can we talk?” Frieda said, relaxing. “I think I’m beginning to see the idea. Canada’s gone. So is a lot of their portable equipment. What the real kidnappers are going to think-”

“Right. That wasn’t a rescue, but a hijacking. According to Tim, there’s been some pretty heavy pilfering going on. They’ll think the regular thieves were working tonight, saw what was happening to Canada, and decided on the spur of the moment to move in. But this was a well-planned operation. When Canada didn’t cooperate, they reacted nicely. They’ve probably got the ransom note written, all their arrangements made. They’ve been thinking about how they’re going to invest all that money. I don’t think they’ll give up as long as they think there’s a chance to recover. If they can find out who’s been doing the stealing-”

“They’ll try a hijack in reverse, and we’ll be there waiting for them. Clever. But how will they know anything’s missing? They were already gone when you did all that.”

“A couple of angles I haven’t told you about yet. They already kidnapped one guy and killed him-a loan shark named Eddie Maye. Eddie’s wife told us he was being followed by a cop. How big a cop we don’t know, but he must have been fairly big because Eddie was lying awake worrying about him. That voice on the bullhorn sounded pretty professional, a cop’s voice. He’ll be talking to the sheriff. And then he’ll ask around-who’s been doing the stealing out here?”