Pursuit

by Richard Unekis

  A different voice came in. “This is Post Seven. We are monitoring you. Cars Five and Twenty, if you are reading these transmissions turn west and give any help you can.” Without waiting for acknowledgment, the dispatcher’s voice went on: “Car Eight, how are you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess. I’m still flat out. That’s an awful fast car they got. I don’t know if I’m gaining or not.”

  “Okay, close them if you can, but don’t try to overhaul them. Try to plink their tires, and don’t take any unnecessary risks. They may be armed.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is Car Five. Roger on that last transmission, I have turned west.”

  “Car Twenty, me, too.”

  “Hank, I’ve had it floored all this time, but I still can’t see anything. You think maybe they could have switched roads after they passed me?”

  “No, because I was two miles south of you and I came back up two miles to where I am now. You just can’t catch up, ’cause we’re going as fast as you are.”

  “How fast are you going? I’m hitting one thirty-five. I still think I ought to be catching up.”

  “Well, it’s getting a little rough. I’m floatin’ off these bumps half the time now. The needle bounces around; about the same as I was, I guess, about one thirty-five. This guy’s got the fastest car I ever chased.”

  The Post voice came back on: “If it gets too rough, back off on it. Don’t kill yourself.”

  The reply was an inaudible mumble that might have been: “If he can do it, I can, too.”

  After the warning from the Post, the trooper in Car Eight stopped transmitting. He was young, and he had been challenged. No one had ever outrun him yet. He had one of the newest cruisers, supposed to be capable of matching, if not topping, any production car in the country. To him, this chase was now a matter of professional pride. He couldn’t let the other driver simply walk away from him on a clear road. If he did, he figured, he might as well turn in his shield and go drive a truck.

  He knew the dispatcher was probably aware of all this, but he also knew that if the chase got much more hairy—at least, if he told them about it—the dispatcher would do his duty and tell him to back off. And if he did, that would be the end of it. In that case, he would have a face-saving excuse. But he didn’t want to be saddled with a failure, excuse or no. He wanted to catch them.

  Carefully letting go with his right hand, but without for a second taking his eyes from the road, he dropped his arm, undid the clasp of his holster, and transferred his service revolver to the left side, where he stuck it into his tunic belt, reversing it so that he could grasp it readily with his left hand when the time came.

  34

  In the radio room, the men sat like statues, hardly breathing. Franklin said nothing, letting the Sergeant continue to handle the dispatch.

  The trooper had stopped transmitting messages as he concentrated on his driving, but he had left his transmitting equipment on.

  Not wanting to interfere with his man, the Sergeant did not say anything for a few minutes. Finally, deciding it was time for a check, he thumbed the mike switch and said, “Car Eight.” The sensitive receiver in the Post picked up, not only the return transmission, but the sound of the car’s engine, laboring at extreme speed.

  “This is Car Eight.” The excitement was still in his voice. “I’m still on ’em. I think I’m gainin’ on ’em.”

  There was a sudden rise and fall on the motor’s crescendo. Then it settled down again to a steady, high-pitched roar.

  “What was that?” asked the Sergeant.

  There was a pause, then the somewhat reluctant reply: “Well, it’s gettin’ just a little bit rough. The back wheels get bounced up every once in a while, and the motor revs up.” He said it half-apologetically, then rushed on. “But the bumps are slowin’ them down. I can see it. I’m cuttin’ down on them.”

  The Sergeant knew that his man was taking an awful chance, pursuing at that speed on any kind of surface, let alone on a gravel road, but he could sympathize with the boy. It was hard to give up in a chase. If he were forced out of it now, the young man would sulk for months. Moreover, there was the morale of the other men to consider.

  Reluctantly, the Sergeant bit his lip and said into the mike: “Okay, stick with it. Anybody else in sight?”

  “No, but I can’t see much out of the rear view.”

  “Car Ten, can you see anything of him?”

  The other voice came on quickly.

  “Still no sign. I’ve got her wound clear up.”

  “All right, keep at it. You can’t be very far behind. Car Twenty, where are you?”

  “Heading west, too.”

  “Are you on the same road they are?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m three or four miles south of Route Ten.”

  “Car Ten, what do you think?” the dispatcher asked.

  “I don’t think so. We’re four miles down from Route Ten, I don’t think Twenty got up this far.”

  “Okay, Car Twenty, you’re probably on the wrong road. Cut up to Route Ten and head west. You might be able to head ’em off.”

  “Yes, sir. On the way.”

  As he listened to the chase, and the desperate effort of the young man in Car Eight to catch the fugitives, the Superintendent felt a pang of dismay at not being able to help. Worse, he had qualms of guilt over the way he had directed the chase.

  Perhaps he had guessed wrong on the best way to use his forces. The thing had happened which he had predicted would not happen. The car had been located on an open hunt, and was being chased, within a few miles of the city where the robbery had taken place. Of course, it was luck that the trail had been picked up. The fugitives had almost wrecked their own car. But there was always the element of luck to be reckoned on.

  He started back to the teletype room to call off the blockade, but as he sat down and got set to type, he had a second thought. Maybe he had better wait.

  They were not caught yet. If he stopped the machinery of setting up a blockade now, there would not be time to set it up again if the criminals gave the cars from Post Seven the slip. These men were tricky. They had already eluded a helicopter earlier today.

  He typed only “WAIT MIN,” and again walked back to the radio room to follow the chase.

  He stood behind the Sergeant and listened to him query Car Eight, which appeared to be gaining slowly. Then he scribbled on a piece of paper and pushed it in front of the Sergeant, who glanced down at it, nodded and then dispatched Car Twenty up to Route 10 to try to outflank the fleeing men.

  Franklin, fighting down his urge to stay and listen, walked quickly over to his map, studied it intently for a minute, then went into the teletype room. Interrupting a message, he belled Peoria’s signal, then typed: “PRIORITY PEORIA DISPATCHER THIS SUPER.”

  “PEORIA GA,” the machine chattered.

  He typed, “ARE U MONITORING CHAS POST 7 CARS”

  “YES” appeared on the sheet.

  “HAV ALL UNITS BEEN DISPATCHED NORTH TO TOLLWAY BLOCKADE”

  “ALL BUT 2” was the reply.

  “CHANGE DISPATCH FOR THESE 2. START THEM DOWN ROUTE 121 TOWARD LINCOLN NOW FOR INTERCEPT TRY. BE SURE U GIVE DISPATCH CONTROL OVER TO POST 7. HAVE CARS USE POST 7 COMM. FREQ SO CAN TALK TO CARS NOW IN CHAS. ANY QUEST.” he typed.

  “ROGER WILL DO NO QUEST,” appeared on the paper before him.

  He leaned back a minute in thought, resisting the impulse to make a quick dash to the radio room to see how it was going.

  Leaning forward again, he belled the upstate Post to which he had given local dispatch control for establishing the blockade.

  “POST 7 CARS HOT PURSUIT FELONS AM SUPERMARKET ROBBERY. PROCEED WITH TOLLWAY BLOCKADE AS PLANNED UNLESS THIS CHASE ENDS WITH POSITV CAPTURE. ACK AND CONFIRM.”

  “CONFIRM TO PROCEED WITH TOLLWAY BLOCKADE AS PLANNED UNLESS CHASE ENDS POSITIVE CAPTURE,” was the reply.

  He rang off and went back out to the other room to plan how
to use the two units now moving down from Peoria toward Lincoln.

  35

  Rayder hunched in the rear of the plunging machine. His face was not pleasant. It was contorted, animal-like. He alternated between crouching, listening to the radio over the whistling rush of air, and peering back at the rocketing cruiser as it gradually closed in on them.

  He had made a couple of mistakes, and he was a man who neither liked to make mistakes nor liked to admit them. And there was no one he could blame for his errors. There was no alibi. The whole caper had been his from start to finish. The driver, who was tensed in front, fighting his duel with their pursuer, was little more than a chauffeur. Rayder was the brains.

  Not that he would have alibied anyway. Making excuses was not one of his weaknesses. Basically, he was too proud, too strong, to make even that slight gesture toward weakness which looking for an excuse implied.

  His first mistake had been in accepting Grozzo’s assurance that this machine would outclass the police cruisers. When the chunky driver had told him this car was uncatchable, he had simply accepted it uncritically as the statement of an expert. He should have checked.

  He glanced up again. The police car was drawing noticeably closer. It was no more than a quarter-mile behind now, pitching as they were from the slight changes in grade, and sometimes taking small, sharp upleaps on small bumps.

  His second mistake had been not to bring a gun. Rayder had a horror of dying. He was young, and he felt that he had a lot of living to do, especially since he had lost so much time in prison. He had felt that if they brought guns, there was always a good chance of something going wrong and somebody getting shot. He knew that if anyone was shot during the commission of a felony, even accidentally, even if killed by police fire, the felons were automatically guilty of murder.

  He could think of no worse death than electrocution. The feeling that had pervaded the Big House when there was an electrocution was impossible to describe. Toughened as he was, the memory still made his stomach knot. Better—he had thought at the time—better a thousand times to be captured than to be electrocuted.

  But that was then, and this was now, and he was alive and free, and he wanted to keep his freedom. He realized that, more than anything else, he simply wanted to stay free. He would risk death for it now, if he had the chance.

  Slowly the young trooper edged up.

  The large windshield of the pursuing car gave almost a complete view of the interior. The trooper had whipped off his hat, but left his sun goggles on. Now, switching hands so as to leave his right hand on the wheel, he dropped the left into his lap. It came up with his service revolver.

  Working slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, he deliberately put the gun out the window—only to have it sent flying viciously back, straight up in the air. It looked as though it bucked once, shooting harmlessly into the air as he fought to control it in the slipstream. He had completely misjudged the rushing force of the wind; at this speed it was sufficient to support heavy jet aircraft.

  He worked the weapon back inside, then dropped everything while he damped down the slow, sidewise oscillation he had set up in his car by his actions. Rayder watched the man going through this deliberate ritual, bringing the car back under full control.

  Without any conscious effort on his part, Rayder suddenly relaxed. The tension and hatred drained from him. He felt somehow detached. This had happened to him before in tight places. At a point where other men lost their nerve, got hysterical or went to pieces, he suddenly became cold and objective. He was aware of this trait in himself and he valued it. He was aware that he had no control over it. It was just something that happened to him.

  With this rush of cool reason to his hot brain, there came the realization that the trooper could not hurt them. At least, not with the gun. It might as well be a BB pistol.

  He would be shooting with his left hand while driving with his right, from a jolting auto going over one hundred thirty miles an hour, at another pitching machine going the same speed. These things made his shot difficult, but what made it impossible, Rayder knew, was the wind. It was far too strong for him to be able to hold a gun steady.

  He watched coolly as the gun inched out again. Sure enough, as soon as it was extended sufficiently out the window to hit the main blast of air, it began to wobble and shake, as if it were held by an old man with palsied hands. In a few seconds it discharged. He neither saw a flash nor heard a report, but the weapon and the hand holding it leaped back and were caught fully by the wind, whipping back with a vicious snap into the doorpost.

  Two down and four to go.

  Rayder began to try to think of a way to get this guy off their backs. True, he could not shoot them, and at this speed he would hardly be silly enough to try to wreck them, but as long as he sat there on their tails with his radio going, it would not be too long till a roadblock would be set up ahead.

  He wanted to wait until the man was out of ammunition. He was pretty sure Grozzo didn’t know they were being shot at. Of course, he could see in the mirror that the cruiser was fairly close, but all he would be likely to see at this speed would be a dancing, blurred image of a car, not the driver, or the gun. And he couldn’t take his eyes off the road and look around.

  Rayder was afraid of the volatile Latin’s reaction if he found out the cop was shooting. He plotted for a minute. To shake the cop, they would almost certainly have to slow down and maneuver, and maybe throw stuff out. But they would almost surely have to slow down just to pitch something out the window. If they slowed while the cop had shells left, he might just get one into them. They would have to keep going like this till he used up the other four shots.

  Again the gun came out the window. Apparently, the trooper had not hurt his hand. This time as he pulled the trigger, he seemed to pull the pistol down, too, and it was again caught by the full force of the air blast and whipped back.

  Rayder was almost sure that the man did not actually get the shot squeezed off until the gun was pointed almost straight down. He got a distinct impression of a splatter in the road near the front of the pursuing car.

  “He’s liable to shoot out his own tire,” he muttered, with a sudden surge of elation.

  It had become apparent to the trooper by this time that he did not have much chance of using the gun effectively. Each time, as he shot and his left arm was flung back, his whole body was jostled so that his right hand, tightly gripping the wheel, caused it to jerk. Even though he tried to avoid this, he could not do so entirely, and every time it happened, his car started to sway. Slightly, it was true, but at top speed a slight sway could build rapidly, so that it would be necessary each time for him to stop and concentrate on damping out the dangerous rocking.

  Once more the gun appeared. The hand was weaker this time. The gun wobbled more. The slaps against the window frame were taking their toll. This time he did not try as hard to aim. Again the hand slapped back.

  “That should make five,” Rayder thought. “One more, you bastard.”

  Again the dogged trooper tamed the swaying machine. Then, instead of trying to aim deliberately and squeeze off the round, he tried a snapshot.

  Probably by nothing more than blind luck, he got a hit with his last bullet. Almost before Rayder was aware he was taking another shot, the hand had flashed out. A small neat hole, starred with cracks, opened up in the side of the rear window opposite the watcher. The bullet, deflected upward, buried itself harmlessly in the headliner.

  For a second the policeman seemed to be waiting expectantly. Then realizing his defeat, he dropped the gun and whipped off his sunglasses. He stared his impotent fury at the figure looking coldly back at him, now harmlessly out of his reach.

  Grozzo was trying to look over his shoulder. His eyes were wide.

  “Is he shootin’ at us?” he asked.

  “No, he’s not, not now,” replied the hawk-nosed man harshly. “You know any tricks to throw him off? He’s gonna sit back there and si
ng like a canary over that radio. We gotta get rid of him.”

  “Yeah, okay,” replied the other, nodding his head emphatically. “I been waitin’ for you to gimme the word. Better hold on.”

  He was confident. This was his specialty. Also, he felt put on the spot. He had claimed to have the fastest car, and it had been caught. He had to shake the cop.

  Without visibly changing his position in the seat, he simultaneously made two moves. He pushed in the clutch and with his left hand gave one swift tug on the hand brake, then released it. He did not pull it hard enough to break the rear wheels loose. He wanted to kill some of their speed quickly, but not too much, and he wanted to do it without telegraphing this to the other driver.

  The hand brake did not connect to the stop lights, as did the foot brakes, so there was no warning flash. By disengaging the clutch, he eliminated the telltale puff of exhaust smoke which would tell an experienced driver that the car ahead had changed engine speeds.

  It almost worked.

  Without warning, the startled trooper found the green car suddenly in his lap. Reflexively, he hit the brakes.

  Grozzo had made his moves in the hope that his pursuer would be taken by surprise and would reflexively slam on his brakes. If he locked all four wheels, at this speed, even for an instant, there was a good chance he would go into an uncontrollable slide.

  But the trooper was a good driver, too. Even as his foot hit the pedal, he realized what was going on. He rode the brakes, just a touch; just enough to dump sufficient speed to keep from hitting the other machine. Then, smarting, and wanting to show that he could play, too, he let his car glide up to the other, closer and closer until they almost touched.

  Down between the endless banks of shimmering green corn they flew—bumpers less than six inches apart—the trooper looking quietly into Rayder’s cold, hard eyes. There was no more than eight feet between them. Each would have shot the other without hesitation if given the chance. But for all the damage they could do to each other, they might as well have been on separate planets.