WEST ON 66

by James H. Cobb

  'em, Ira."

  Jubal went on his way, leaving us alone with Little Brother. Ira eyed me and I could tell that he was making up whatever he used for a mind about something.

  "You know what?" he said.

  "No, what?" I replied laconically.

  "I think you're right."

  "You're getting smarter all the time, Ira."

  "And you know what else?"

  "Illuminate me, man."

  Ira gave me a nasty grin and stepped up behind Lisette's chair. "When Jubal gets back, I'm going to tell him that I think you're right. I'm gonna say that we ought to get out of here before that Spanno outfit shows up. I'm also gonna say that I think we should take you two smart-asses with us."

  Ira's free hand, the one not holding the gun, came down on Lisette's shoulder, and I saw her stiffen.

  "You see, I think you do know where all that money is. And I think that Jubal and me can make you tell us where, the good old-fashioned way." He leaned forward a little more, and his hand slid off Lisette's shoulder and across her chest.

  I didn't pay too much attention to what he was doing, though. I was looking more at Lisette, watching the fury build­ing behind her eyes. I was getting myself ready to move, too.

  Claster didn't notice. He was too busy gloating. "Hey," he said, "maybe if you tell us where the money is right away, my brother and me will even let you watch us screw this gal of yours awhile before we kill you." His hand slipped beneath Lisette's shirt to her breast.

  Oh, he shouldn't have done that. Lisette might be afraid of Mace Spanno, but she was a lady not inclined to take a great deal of bullshit off of anyone else. She kept her fingernails trimmed fairly close, but well shaped and manicured. And now, with her lips curling into a snarl, she reached up and back to Ira Claster's face and sank those two handfuls of short, sharp-bladed knives bone deep into his cheeks. Then she ripped downward with all her strength.

  Wasn't no kitten scratch, man. Claster couldn't have been shredded any worse if he'd tried to kiss a cranky bobcat.

  He screamed and fell back against the wall, clutching at the bloody tracks raked across his features. Then we were all over him. Lisette grabbed the automatic's barrel with both hands, twisting it back and out of Claster's grip while I used my in­terlocked hands like a sledgehammer, pounding him down to the floor. There the steel toe caps of my boots finished the job.

  It wasn't pretty. But then sometimes that's the way it is when you're trying to stay alive.

  "Ira?" Jubal Claster's questioning yell came from the front

  of the station. "Ira!"

  I reclaimed the gun from Lisette. I use a two-handed FBI grip with the Commander a lot of the time anyway, so my wired wrists weren't that much of a problem. Plastering myself against the wall next to the hallway entry, I motioned the girl aside and undercover with a jerk of my head.

  Jubal didn't oblige me by rushing back into the living room. There was silence out toward the station office. Very gingerly I eased forward to take a look around the corner. I caught the silhouette of the older Claster brother doing the exact same thing down at the other end of the hall.

  Both sides made a statement about where they stood in the situation. Revolver and automatic bellowed, .44 and .45 slugs passing in midflight. Neither round did much except spray wood splinters and plaster.

  "Out!" I snapped back over my shoulder, throwing another bullet down the hall to keep Claster back. Lisette obeyed, fling­ing the back door open and ducking out onto the porch. I fol­lowed her a second later, only I went out low and fast, rolling in a parachute landing fall. A smart move, as another couple of rounds from Claster tore up the door frame.

  Lisette and I got around to the right side of the house, press­ing back against the gritty clapboards. There was not one damn bit of cover anywhere except for the two black-painted fuel tanks about fifty feet west of the station. Hiding behind a gas­oline storage tank is not one of the most brilliant moves you can make in a gunfight. On the other hand, neither is shooting at one at close range. I nodded the direction and whispered,

  "Let's go."

  No slugs chased us as we made the dash away from the house. We dived behind the sun-heated steel plating of the tanks onto the dry cheat grass and prickly brush stubble. With Lisette huddled against me, we took a second to gulp some air.

  "You okay?"

  She gave me quick, reassuring nod. "Okay." "I've got a knife in my right boot. Get it." Obediently she dug the weapon out.

  "Good. Open the shroud line cutter, the button on the bot­tom of the grip. Get this damn wire off me."

  It didn't take her long to get a strand into the notch of the little hook-shaped blade. She gave a yank, the wire popped, and in a few seconds I was loose. Lisette massaged my scored wrists, trying to help get some feeling back. "What do we do now?" she asked lowly.

  "We get the hell out of here before Spanno shows up." "How?"

  "That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn't it?" We were literally in the middle of nowhere. We were cut off from the forested hills to our west by a mean-looking ravine, and everything else in all directions was nothing but desert. The nearest people were out on the highway a good five miles off. If we were going to make it out, we needed the car. And we didn't have time to be fancy.

  "Okay, Princess. Here's how we work it. When I give the word, we run straight across the road to the corner of the cafe opposite us. If we're lucky, ol' Jubal will be too busy patching up his little brother to pay much attention."

  Lisette nodded again, gathering her long legs under her, ready to move. "Okay. Go!"

  We weren't lucky. I lagged behind a little, looking back over my shoulder for enemy action. About halfway across the broad street, I spotted movement inside the door of the gas station office. I lengthened my stride and dived for Lisette. Catching her around the waist, I took her down, trying to take the worst of the impact as we hit the gravel. The first of what seemed to be an impossibly long string of shots snapped over our heads. With near-misses spraying pebbles around us, we scrambled around the corner and behind shelter.

  Give him credit, Jubal Claster knew his guns. He was using an M-1 carbine on us now, a great weapon for this kind of work. Light, fast to handle, and using a thirty-round banana clip you could load it on Sunday and shoot it all week. The carbine had been my favorite carry back in the army, and I'd picked one up war surplus myself.

  Too bad that mine was in the back of my bedroom closet at the moment.

  I sidled up to the edge of the building and risked a look around the corner. The '57 was parked only about fifty feet away, but it might as well have been back in Chicago for all the good it did us. Jubal was directly across the road from it. He'd pulled his Power Wagon around in front of the station's gas pumps, and he was forted up solidly behind the vehicle. I could see him keeping low, cautiously peering over the truck bed in our direction.

  He had all the approaches to the '57 covered. And any sec­ond now that little light was going to come on, telling him that if he just put a few bullets through my tires and radiator, no­body was going anywhere.

  I drew back from the corner, trying to think. Lisette stood pressed against the wall beside me. She'd gotten us out and now she was waiting for me to do my share and get us away. I closed my eyes and did like they'd trained us to do back when I was earning my Ranger tab. I tried to build an image of the battlefield in my mind, hunting for a point of tactical advan­tage.

  I opened my eyes again. Wait a second. What had changed about the front of that gas station?

  I took another quick look around the corner. That was it! When we'd made our move on brother Ira, Jubal had been out front gassing up his truck. He'd pumped the reservoir of one of the Tokheim dispensers full, but we'd interrupted him be­fore he could trip the release valve and empty the fuel into the truck's tank. That reservoir was still full. There was ten gallons of gasoline in a big glass cylinder right above Jubal Claster's head.

  A guy with hi
s eyes full of gas couldn't see to shoot very well. Come to think of it, a guy soaked to the skin in high-test probably wouldn't be all that anxious to fire a firearm at all.

  I flexed my fingers and settled the grip of the Commander carefully into the palm of my right hand. Then I whipped around the corner, taking aim at the loaded pump reservoir and taking my shot.

  I connected. The heavy glass tank popped like a balloon under the impact of my bullet, the hydraulic shock of the big hardball slug spraying gas all over the place.

  That was all according to plan. What happened next, though, was bad timing, just plain-ass, doo-dah bad timing.

  Jubal had seen me come around the corner of the cafe, and he tried to take a shot at me. He was not able to stop his trigger pull as the cloud of gasoline mist engulfed him. The crack of the carbine was lost in the roar of the explosion.

  The WHOOM of the blast shoved me back around the cor­ner of the cafe. It took me a second to get my feet under me again and look out to see what the hell had happened.

  Hell had happened. Both Claster's truck and the entire front of the service station were a solid mass of flame. There was even a damned soul in there, a vaguely man-shaped blob of flame that danced in the heart of the holocaust, making sounds that no human being should be able to make. Then the spare gas cans on the back of the truck cut loose, blowing the figure back through the front wall of the office. Hopefully it also killed him.

  "What happened?" Lisette gasped at my side.

  "Something I sure didn't figure on."

  It was about then that I noticed the flames racing around the building toward the station's main storage tanks. "Let's get out of here!"

  We went for the car. I suppose that according to the pro­fessional hero's manual, I should have dashed across to the station to see if brother Ira needed rescuing or not. However, during the past few days he'd tried to assault me with a wrench, he'd attempted to blow my head off with a shotgun, and he'd succeeded in knocking me cold. He'd also gleefully been mak­ing plans to rape my girl and torture me to death. Excuse me, Sir Baden-Powell, but I just didn't like the son of a bitch all

  that much!

  I swept a smoldering piece of board off the '57's hood, and we piled in. Car must have see the fire licking hungrily at the base of those tanks, too, because she caught the first turn of the starter. Tires scrabbling, we copped a breeze out of there, and I treated the main street like a drag strip.

  It didn't take long for those several thousand gallons of gas­oline to protest their mistreatment. We were only about a quarter-mile beyond town when premium and regular both cut loose with a double-barreled blast. It was like the pictures of the A-bomb tests out in Navada, a blazing mushroom cloud and the sky raining fire.

  Thus endeth Peerless. Lisette knelt on the seat, looking back. "That," she whispered, "was bad."

  We didn't realize it yet, but we didn't know what "bad" was. Maybe Mace Spanno really had been planning to screw the Clasters over. He'd told Jubal that he was forted up in Flagstaff. In reality, he and his boys must have been staying somewhere a lot closer.

  Atop the little rise east of the town, sunlight flared on a windshield and a car materialized out of the road mirage. I got off the gas and let the '57 roll to a halt. The black Chrysler came to a stop about fifty yards away, straddling the center

  line.

  "Oh, shit!" was an inadequate phrase for the moment, but

  it was all I could come up with.

  The '57 growled deep in the twin throats of her headers. The only other sound was Lisette's ragged breathing as she pressed herself back into the seat. I twisted around behind the wheel and looked back. Heavy pale smoke engulfed Peerless, little fingers of fire dancing in the base of the cloud.

  An ebony-and-chrome devil blocked the one road out of hell, and the only way to go was back.

  I socked the gearshift into reverse and floored it. The '57 shot backward like a startled crawdad.

  When I had the speed, I whipped us into an inverted boot­legger, aiming Car's nose toward Peerless. Up the road, smoke boiled out of the Chrysler's rear wheel wells as they came after us.

  We fled toward the town, driving headlong into the holo­caust. Grass, brush, and wood, all baked kiln-dry under the desert sun, had practically exploded alight, and little flame sprites of burning thumbleweed skittered out into the desert, spreading the conflagration.

  We howled down Main Street again, thick ash-laden smoke streaming around us, heading for the dead end at the aban­doned bridge abutments. Jubal Claster's gas station was my cutoff mark. Both the station and the cafe across from it were blazing now like cardboard boxes in an incinerator, the flames arcing across the road. I felt the radiating heat before I could even make out the buildings through the murk.

  Weaving around a chunk of burning fuel tank that lay in the road, I cranked the wheel hard over and took us around into the alley behind the burning cafe. The Chrysler arrived a couple of seconds later.

  I'd hoped that in the smoke they'd overshoot and go through the end-of-the road barricades and into the ravine. No such luck. Bannerman, Spanno's kid wheelman, was good. He threw that big coupe around in a bootlegger turn of his own and bounced away from the barricades without even scratching his paint. Running even, we thundered up the back of Peerless, he on the main street, me on the back alley, visible to each other only in flashes between the buildings.

  He beat me. He got a lead and hooked in between two houses. Suddenly the long black nose of the Chrysler slid across the alley in front of us, cutting us off. The '57 sobbed to a shuddering halt, her front bumper a meager foot from the 300-C's dark, rakish fender.

  Hemmed in between burning sagebrush and a back wall, I reversed away again. A gunshot from beneath the Chrysler's low roof chased after us, the pistol slug creasing my door handle and screaming away in a wild ricochet. I got the '57 into a forward gear and cut blindly into a driveway between another pair of buildings. Lisette cried out as we found ourselves con­fronted with a solid wall of fire.

  I kept my foot to the floor. Either it was a drift of burning tumbleweed or it wasn't.

  It was thumbleweed. We blasted through the brush in an explosion of sparks and embers, searing little dots of flame swirling in through the windows, stinging us as we tore out onto Main Street. A couple of buildings down, the Chrysler backed onto the highway as well, blocking us in, keeping the only escape route sealed.

  Both cars came to halt, idling broadside to broadside and about seventy feet apart. For a few seconds we all just sat there, watching each other grill like racks of ribs as the fires spread around us. My throat was raw with the smoke, and Lisette choked beside me. I kept my fingers curled around the knob of the floor shift, waiting for Spanno and company to make the next move.

  Maybe they mistook our passivity for surrender. At any rate, the passenger-side door of the 300-C opened and Nate Temple emerged. Gun in hand and leveled at us, he started over to take possession.

  I let him get about halfway across the gap between the cars, and then I floored it again. I charged the '57 forward between two old stores across the street, as if I were going for the alley on the other side. Reacting, the Chrysler shot backward into another diagonal cross-alley to cut us off once more.

  Fake out! The hole I'd been aiming for didn't even go through to the far-side frontage road. I started my move, then hit the binders and reversed hard for the third time, sweeping back out into the highway in a wild rubber-sobbing arc. In this automotive game of Tossing the Broad the bad guys had just picked the wrong card.

  There was still the infantry to get past, though. Nate Temple materialized out of the smoke, sidling in across the front of the car, trying to lay the snub sights of his Detective's Special on me.

  The '57 almost seemed to go after him on her own, snarling and hurling herself at the Chi-town gunman. By all accounts, Nathan Temple was bad news, a real tough guy. However, he'd never taken on a psychotic Chevrolet before. He took one look at the '57
's glaring headlights and the chromed pushbars gleaming like fangs in her grillwork and gave up on his target practice and got the hell out of the way. He hurled himself up onto the smoldering porch of the old trading post as we hooked at him with a fender.

  By that time, Spanno and his wheelman must have figured out that we'd screwed them over. The black Chrysler came lunging back out onto Main Street. Too late. We swerved past and we were clear, tear-assing out of Peerless for good this time.

  Clean, smokeless air boiled in through the '57's windows. It wasn't as good as a cold drink of water would have been, but it was close. Twisting herself around in the seat, Lisette looked back. "They're coming," she croaked.

  It hadn't taken them long to get Temple back aboard and to start chasing. That big black road shark that had started to haunt my dreams was streaming up the highway behind us. And I thought that nemesis was only meant for the bad guys.

  I leaned into the gas pedal and sent the tach needle arcing up toward the red line.

  "Okay, Car," I murmured. "Now we get serious."

  It was a matter of numbers. The way I had it souped up, the '57's mill could produce a solid 283 horsepower and maybe a scootch more, 1 horsepower per cubic inch of engine dis­placement. The Chevrolet 283 Turbofire was one of the first two automotive power plants mass-produced in the United States that could be taken up to "one to one." Unfortunately, the other "one-to-one" mill was the Chrysler Hemi, the same kind of engine that lived under the hood of the 300-C chasing us. And it had a displacement of 392 cubic inches.

  On a winding road where cornering and acceleration would have counted for more, I could have taken him. Spanno's wheelman was dragging an extra thousand pounds of car around. But as it was, there was just the single wide bend that aimed us back toward 66. We were like a quarter horse racing an English Thoroughbred—you got him beat off the line, but once he gets stretched out and in the high end, your ass is his.

  There was nothing to do about it, though, nothing except keep my foot to the metal and see how it played.

  We came smoking out of the bend with the Chrysler on our hip and nothing in front of us but the straightaway south to the main road. I didn't have to check the mirrors to know he was back there. I could hear him. The scream of the high-revving 283 was heterodyning with the baritone bellow of the Hemi, blending and phasing in an anarchistic chorus of steel straining toward disintegration.