Hearts Racing

by Hodgson, Jim

  “What’s wrong?” Buck asked.

  “We have not seen it here because Denver is far removed from the military action, but I’ve just had word this afternoon from Miriam. Our facility was hit by the French air force acting on intelligence that it was a Mexican secret base.”

  “Oh my god,” Faith said, her voice a gasp. “Is Miriam okay?”

  “She is,” Miguel said, “but it is not Miriam who worries me.”

  “Barker?” Faith asked, her voice cracking with emotion.

  “As far as Miriam can tell, he is unharmed. But the blast of the bomb damaged a wall, allowing him to escape. We can only assume he is at large and attempting to make his way back to New Lyon.”

  “No!” Faith said, hoarse. “If he gets back to New Lyon, he could have my brother executed!”

  Miguel nodded. “That is why we are in a rush to get back. Mister Barker has a head start on us, but he won’t have the resources to drive the whole way. He will have to walk, and we have enough gas to get most of the way there if we drive carefully, and I am doing my best to contact someone who can help reinforce us.” Miguel’s phone range. He held up a finger then answered, speaking rapidly in Spanish.

  “LeMond, can’t you go any faster?” Buck asked.

  LeMond answered without taking his eyes from the road. “I could, but it would burn more gas. Miguel has calculated that our optimum speed is a bit slower than I’d like.”

  The evening went on like that, turning into night. Miguel argued, pleaded, and cajoled, trying to get one of his contacts to agree to help them get back to New Lyon as the needle in the dashboard’s fuel gauge eased toward the E.

  Faith was visibly getting more and more restless. Buck tried to calm her by holding her hand, draping an arm around her shoulders. She smiled at him, but he knew there was nothing he could do to help. So he slumped into his seat, arm still around Faith, and closed his eyes.

  Buck jerked awake, and asked where they were.

  “East of St. Louis,” LeMond said.

  Buck’s stomach grumbled, but there was nothing to eat and they had no time to stop.

  There was some good news, though. Miguel had finally gotten in touch with one of his contacts who could provide some gasoline. If they could make it to Nashville, they would be filled up.

  Just a few hours later, Miguel’s contacts proved to be as good as their word. Miguel guided LeMond through a maze of suburban streets to a back alley then leaped out of the car. A weathered tarp sat next to a garbage dumpster. Miguel grabbed it and whipped it aside to reveal red plastic gas cans. LeMond cut the van’s engine and everyone hurried to fill the van’s tank. Buck thought it was lucky that no one else had happened upon the cans, but then again they could be being watched at that very moment from any direction. He looked around, but the area was deserted. Even so, he was glad when the gas was in the van and they were back on the road.

  Soon they were rolling through Chattanooga, and it looked like a sure thing that they would make it back to New Lyon. The roads here were just as deserted as they’d been for the whole trip.

  When they rolled into New Lyon, it would be late evening and the jail might be closed, but they could probably find someone to speak to all the same. If they had to wait until morning for an administrator, that would most likely be enough. Miguel said his contacts thought there was no way the French could plan and carry out an execution in any less than three days, which was comforting in that it meant they might have a little time, but unsettling as well. Buck wondered how they knew exactly how long an execution took to plan and carry out. He decided not to think about it.

  “All we have to do is get to the jail and show this message,” Miguel said, holding up his phone. “The French have not surrendered to the Mexicans yet, but it is only a matter of time. They are providing no resistance now. Mexican forces hold most of California and are sweeping east with almost no resistance. They hold New Orleans. Florida as well.”

  “Are we in any danger?” Faith asked. “Of being shot, I mean?”

  Miguel looked tired. He swayed in his seat as LeMond drove the van around a stalled car sitting directly in the middle of the highway. “Probably. But with luck we will not run into any troops.”

  As he said that, there was a deafening boom from under the car. Screams erupted as the van lurched to a halt and slewed sideways, tires screeching in pain. Everyone was thrown forward, including Buck, whose already injured ribcage emitted a flash of pain. He was thrown from his seat and into the open space between LeMond and Miguel, cracking his head on the dash.

  “Ow!” he said, pushing himself back. He was sitting on the floor of the van now, and Faith leaned forward to examine his head. He reached up to touch it, and his fingers came away with a spot of blood on them.

  “You’ll live,” Faith said.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Did we get hit with a missile or something?”

  LeMond was working the key in the ignition. The van responded with metallic whirring noises, but nothing else. After a few more tries, LeMond reached under the dash and pulled the hood release.

  Quiet descended, except for moans as riders checked themselves for injuries. Everyone piled out as LeMond bent over the engine bay, where steam rose into the air.

  “Well, I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s shot,” he said.

  “No!” Faith said “Come on, it’s got to start. We have to get to New Lyon!”

  “Can’t we do something?” Buck asked.

  “First we’d have to find out what’s broken, which takes time, and then find parts and fix it. Or we could get another vehicle, but that might not have gas in it,” LeMond said, turning to collapse against the van. He slouched to rest on the front bumper. There was an acrid smell that definitely didn’t smell to Buck like a working vehicle.

  “Can you do anything, Miguel?” Faith asked. “Please, there has to be something.”

  “I am sorry, I have already pulled all the strings there are to pull,” Miguel said. “My contacts are preparing to accept France’s surrender. We are in no man’s land now.”

  Faith screamed with frustration, her hands balled into fists. She hammered them against the van, yelling at it to start working again. She then leaped into the driver’s seat and tried the key. Again, the van’s starter whirred, but it didn’t even sputter once. Still, she tried, keying the starter until the whirring slowed due to drain on the battery. At last, she gave up, crossed her arms across the steering wheel, and threw her head down onto them, her body racked by sobs.

  Her crying sounded to Buck like the end of the world. All the tension and exhaustion and sorrow of the last few months were coming out. They had taken their toll on Faith. And there was nothing he could do about it. He went to her anyway, stepped close and kissed her on the ear. He then put his foot in the door and pulled himself up to reach the van’s rack where the bikes were kept.

  “What are you doing?” Faith asked.

  “I’m riding to New Lyon,” he said.

  Faith turned to look at him, her eyes glistening with tears, then bolted down from the van’s driver’s seat and folded Buck into a hug. After he yelled due to the pressure on his rib, she apologized and settled for kissing him instead.

  LeMond said “Yes!” out loud, and they both turned to look at him.

  “What?” LeMond said, grinning. “I knew it.”

  Buck had always wanted to ride on a deserted highway. With its smooth surface and gentle grades, a highway presented excellent terrain for a paceline. As usual for wishes that eventually came true, however, this one manifested in circumstances Buck could never have foreseen and would never have asked for had he known about them.

  He hadn’t had more than a few hours fitful sleep in the van the night previous, and he’d completed a stage race the day before. Add to
that the injury he’d gotten to his ribs during the race, plus the crack his head had taken on the dash when the van failed, and he wasn’t feeling anywhere near his best. But right now, the situation required speed. And he could still deliver speed.

  They’d been about 120 kilometers from new Lyon when the van broke down, a distance Buck expected to cover in around five hours. The Miami riders had leapt aboard their bikes and were working together to make the best possible time into the city by sharing the hard work of being on the front of the group. Occasionally a rider would sense a dip in morale, and whip it back into shape with a yell of “Vamonos!” which would be echoed by the rest of the team.

  Each rider would stay at the front of their single-file line for about a minute then flick his elbow to let the rider behind him know he was moving off the front, or “pulling up.” Then that rider faded to the back of the line and the second man took over. This way everyone worked as hard as they could while getting maximum recovery time.

  Buck was pleased with their speed, and they met little resistance. They weren’t at race speed, but then none of them were fully rested and there hadn’t been enough water. Every time he thought about slowing the pace or resting for a few minutes he thought about Faith and her face as he’d ridden away. He knew he was her only hope for making it to the New Lyon jail before Barker got there.

  One thing working in his favor was that he already knew exactly where to go. The jail complex was on the south side of the city, near where one of the most popular training rides—known as the “Airport ride,” since it looped around near the New Lyon airport—started. Buck had ridden past the jail on many a Sunday morning to join other cyclists for that ride. The rest of the team presumably had no idea where to go, but it didn’t matter. He just needed their help getting there with all available speed.

  He also had the document that had been on Miguel’s phone. Miguel had forwarded it to Buck’s phone, which was in one of his jersey pockets, wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it from sweat. Buck hadn’t had time to look at it, but it looked like a pardon for Michael Racing from the President of Mexico himself. All Buck had to do was show it to the jail staff, who would surely know by this point that they were, if not at that exact moment, soon to be under Mexican jurisdiction. Miguel had said that anyone with questions about the authenticity of the document could call any Mexican embassy, or the Mexican government itself, and they’d be put through to someone who could help. That seemed good enough to Buck. Government employees tended to play things safe. Why would they execute a man if there was any doubt? They probably wouldn’t.

  Unless they already had.

  Buck tried not to think about that, focusing on the road and his bike and getting to the jail as quickly as possible.

  On the outskirts of town, the Miami riders began looking around at Buck to see if they needed any directions, but he motioned for them to keep riding. The highway took them directly into the center of town, which was just as free of moving vehicles as the highway had been. The feeling of no cars got more and more eerie as they moved into the city center, however. Buck just expected to see cars on the road. Expected to be cut off or run into by drivers using their cell phones while at the wheel. There was none of that. But it was the middle of the night, after all.

  Once Buck moved to the head of his paceline and led off the highway, they saw one or two people walking on the sidewalks—unheard of at this hour. No one had the gas to drive around the city, but life went on anyway. The effect was amazing. What would it be like to live in a city that was like this all the time, with no cars and only bikes? Probably pretty amazing.

  Once at the jail building, Buck leapt off his bike. His body protested every movement, but he couldn’t listen to it. He had to find someone he could talk to so he could get this whole situation sorted out for good. He pulled off his cycling shoes so he could walk without his feet clicking and clacking around on his riding cleats. It meant he’d be negotiating Michael’s release in dirty sock feet, but that wasn’t the worst part of his appearance. He was filthy, hadn’t slept, and his brow still showed a trickle of dried blood.

  The glass front of the building was tinted heavily, so he couldn’t see inside, but two of the doors had handles on them. He pulled one, expecting it to be locked, but it was open. Jail is open twenty-four hours, he thought. Or closed twenty-four hours, depending on how you look at it. He turned to look at his riders, who were sitting on a curb next to their bikes. He felt bad leaving them, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

  Inside, Buck found himself in a linoleum and concrete block reception area, lit brightly with fluorescents that made everything look a shade or two wrong. He caught sight of his reflection again, this time in a dingy, bulletproof window that shielded a uniformed jail employee from whatever acts of violence visitors might attempt. The window had a hole in the middle of it with a metal grate.

  The man didn’t look up.

  “Excuse me,” Buck said, but the man still didn’t look at him. Buck took a second to consider what he was going to say. Hi, I know I look like a street urchin, but I’m here on behalf of your new Mexican overlords to negotiate the release of . . .

  Buck’s thoughts were interrupted when the man behind the desk finally looked up then made a startled noise. “Gah!”

  “Yeah, sorry, I know I look bad,” Buck said. “It’s been a long couple of days.”

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any food or water. If you want to sleep here, you’ll have to get yourself arrested,” the man said, his interest fading.

  “No, I’m not a street person. I’m here to negotiate the release of an inmate.”

  “Uh-huh. Sure y’are.”

  “No, really. Look, I have documentation from the Mexican government.” Buck reached into a jersey pocket and withdrew his phone, unwrapping it from the plastic bag. The guard looked alarmed for a moment then appeared to realize he was behind bulletproof glass, so even if Buck had a gun it wouldn’t do much good.

  “Sir, this isn’t Mexico,” the guard said. “Even if you do have a document, it won’t do any good—”

  Buck cut him off, rudely. He didn’t have time for this. “No, listen. A man who’s been pardoned might be about to face execution. I’m here to stay that execution.”

  “Okay, buddy. Now you’re pissing me off. I’m signaling my superiors and we’ll have you removed if you don’t leave.”

  “No! Wait. I rode a long way to get here because there’s no gas and—”

  Buck abandoned the sentence because of his eyes. They were sending images to his brain that were so awful that further speaking was not possible. The whole situation was futile. It didn’t matter anymore what he said, or did, because there, in the window of the door leading into the guard’s little windowed office, was Monsieur Peter Barker. And he was smiling.

  Barker pushed the door open. He looked a bit gaunt and had some scrapes here and there, but from his face you’d think he was walking down the stairs from his bedroom on a present-laden Christmas morning. “Well, well, and well again,” he said. “Look who we have here.”

  Buck said nothing. His hand holding the cell phone with the pardon document on it fell to his side.

  “My goodness, Heart, you look positively terrible. Why are you here? Oh, mais oui! Don’t tell me . . . You came to see Michael, oui?”

  Buck just glared. What could he say?

  “Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but he’s very busy today. Very busy indeed, oui. His schedule is clear tomorrow . . .” he trailed off and tapped his lips with a finger. “Oh, but he won’t be able to talk then, will he?”

  Buck looked at the guard for help but saw no possibility there. The man wore a completely blank expression.

  Barker went on, obviously savoring every syllable of his speech. “You see, bad things happen sometimes, Heart. Bad things indeed. I
walked for days just to get here and take care of this bit of business. But it’s worth it. I am so completely pleased you are here.” Barker was whipping himself into a frenzy now. He was venting his rage at being imprisoned, at being made to walk all the way back to New Lyon, and probably also, Buck thought, his rage at not being able to attract a woman like Faith without death threats to her family—which had failed to get her, anyway. Flecks of spit flew from his lips and landed on the bulletproof glass as he raised a trembling finger at Buck. “Now you will find out what it means to feel the full wrath of New France!”

  “What’s going on here?” said another voice. A man poked his head into the room from an office on the other side of the glass and looked around.

  “Ah! Warden Voigt,” Barker said. He pointed out the bulletproof glass. “I request you detain this man on my orders.”

  Voigt gave Barker a look. “On your orders? Monsieur, it does not really work that way. We have something criminal procedure. Napoleonic code, non?”

  Barker gave a curt huff. “You are speaking to your mayor, Warden Voigt.”

  “You have not been sworn in yet, Monsieur Barker, and this is my jail,” Voigt said. “Now, what is this man asking—hey!” Voigt had turned to look at Buck, who expected heavily armed gendarmes to burst into the room at any second and throw him in the darkest cell in the place.

  “Hey!” Warden Voigt said again. “Aren’t you Buck Heart, cycling champion of New France?”