by Thomas Hopp
McKean called, “Look out for those guys!” but I was already in motion. I had slowed only momentarily where Mike’s driveway met the highway. Knowing the Sheriff must already be in his car and on our tail, and with our escape to Winthrop blocked, there was no need to second-guess. I shifted into low and cranked the wheel to the left.
The man in the rear of the pickup leveled his shotgun. Knowing his blast would be concentrated enough to kill at short range, I floored the gas pedal, dumped the clutch, and we jumped forward with tires screaming on the asphalt. I heard the shotgun’s blast, but it had gone high or wide and there was no impact of buckshot. The Mustang’s tires painted black stripes on the asphalt and threw up a cloud of blue smoke that momentarily screened us from the gunmen.
As we gained speed, the black vehicle burst through the smoke and came after us. Keeping one eye on my rear-view mirror, I saw the shotgun man fire his second barrel over the top of the cab, and I heard the clatter of buckshot on the Mustang’s metal skin. But we had pulled away enough that the shot had no effect. I held the steering wheel straight and shifted through the gears in a furious acceleration that quickly widened the distance between us and the pickup. Silently thanking the Mustang’s outsized engine for leaving our pursuers behind, I tore along the highway westbound toward the North Cascades at more than eighty miles an hour and gaining speed.
Jameela sat up, and I was glad to see in the mirror that she was unharmed by the flying lead. She turned to watch the pickup fall behind us.
I heard McKean say, “Hello, operator?” He had his cell phone to his ear. “What’s that? Operator, you’re breaking up. We have an emergency.”
“We’re too far off the beaten path,” I said. “There’s probably no cell phone tower out here.”
“Then we’ll have to ride this one out on our own.” McKean clicked off the phone and put it away.
In the mirror, I spotted the Sheriff’s car following the pickup. Its lights weren’t flashing. “The only worse thing that could happen to us,” I said, “is if that cop calls in another cop to cut us off.”
McKean shook his head. “I doubt Sheriff Barker wants any other police knowing what he’s mixed up in. Did you see who his passenger was?”
“Yes,” I said. “The kidnapper.”
On a straight stretch of highway, I pushed the Mustang to just over one hundred miles an hour, and the pickup fell rapidly behind. But any hope of a clean escape faded when the Sheriff pulled out and passed him, quickly reaching a speed that matched our own. The highway entered a series of winding turns, which I took at the limit of control. The patrol car took the turns smoothly and soon was not far off my tail. A glance in the mirror sent a jolt of adrenaline rippling through me - Massoud had opened his window, put his arm out, and leveled a pistol at us.
We rounded a forested bend and raced through a homestead valley, heading into the mountains. The only witnesses to our deadly chase were cows and horses grazing behind barbed wire fences. I heard the crack of the pistol over the sound of air rushing through the hole in my windshield.
“I’m no James Bond,” I said. “I’m not trained for this.”
“You’re doing well,” said McKean. “I’ll trust your driving until we get to a safe stopping place. Somewhere with too many witnesses.”
I cast my memory back over the unpopulated country we had seen on our trip from the west. I wasn’t optimistic about our chances. I held the car on the road through another sweeping turn with my speedometer pegged at one-hundred-ten miles an hour. McKean got a map out of the glove box. He said, “The first settlement of any size is Marblemount, on the other side of Washington Pass. It’s seventy-five miles from here.”
The Sheriff hadn’t lost any ground. “I can’t hold these guys off for long,” I protested.
“Seventy-five miles it will have to be,” McKean said simply. “I have utmost confidence in you, Fin.”
A bullet shattered my side mirror.
“I’m glad you feel that way.” I tightened my grip on the wheel and gritted my teeth when a sharp mountain turn came up suddenly. I tried to ease into it, rotating the steering wheel as precisely as I could, but the Mustang’s tires cried and it heeled over hard to the side. The loss of traction brought it up close to the guardrail and gave me a glimpse into a deep and boulder-filled stream gully. I wrestled the car back in line, white knuckled, but felt the traction getting more squirrelly with each twist of the highway. The Sheriff’s car seemed immune to the centrifugal force of the turns. Somehow, despite my speed, he drew near my rear bumper.
“How does he drive like that?” I cried out in frustration.
“Ah,” said McKean, as if the answer had just struck him. “He probably has a gyroscopic stabilizer mounted in this trunk, or reactive suspension, or both.”
McKean’s thoughtful assessment of the Sheriff’s vehicular superiority was cold comfort. As we raced higher into the mountains, the crags towering around us moved past at an unreal speed, as if we were in a low-flying jet. I tried to pull ahead of the Sheriff by taking outrageous chances. On an upgrade, I caught up to a slow-moving motor home and shot around it without checking for oncoming traffic.
There was a Volkswagen minivan coming at us around a bend.
I didn’t flinch, and squeezed in ahead of the motor home at the last split second. The VW driver hit his brakes and sounded his horn like a mad bee, buzzing ee-ee-ee-oo-oo-ooh as we went by. On a short straightaway, I glanced into the mirror, hoping my chance-taking had paid off. It had. I was leaving the motor home behind and the Sheriff was stuck behind it. But my moment of joy was brief. The next curve opened onto a long uphill straightaway with a passing lane. The Sheriff passed the motor home easily and accelerated after us again.
The North Cascade Mountains rushed past like a Disneyland ride while I kept the gas pedal floored and gripped the wheel with sweaty hands. My passengers silently watched the squad car out the rear window. I steered through each turn at the limit of my ability, often over one hundred miles an hour and frequently with all four wheels screaming and drifting toward the shoulder. The centerline was no more than a neglected reminder that I crossed freely, straightening every curve. Coming around one hairpin with my view obscured by a sheer rock wall, I met a deadly surprise - an oncoming semi truck. Its big, square cab filled the lane I had strayed into. I jerked the wheel to get back to my own side, but reacted too hard and the Mustang went into a four-wheel drift. I pawed the wheel right, left, then right again, pulling us through several fishtailing turns by willpower more than skill. I held my breath until we were back on a straight course. Jameela stifled a scream.
McKean cried, “Nice moves!”
A glance in my mirror told me the Sheriff had had more time to dodge the semi. He had moved smoothly back into his own lane and kept his momentum intact while mine bled away. I floored the gas and accelerated up a straight stretch of road, but he caught us with speed to spare. He pulled out into the empty oncoming lane and came side-by-side with us. Massoud hung out the passenger window and pointed his pistol at me. His dark hair blew flat sideways in the stiff wind and he had trouble framing a level shot. My heartbeat accelerated to panic level. Before I could react beyond that, he jerked the trigger and a bullet shattered my side window, showering everyone in the car with glass particles - but it missed me, somehow.
At that instant, with tiny glass shards peppering the side of my face, I expected to die. I didn’t guess or wonder about it. I knew it. My hands trembled on the steering wheel until I could barely keep it in my sweaty grip. I had no James-Bond training, no license to kill, nothing close to the preparation one needs to deal with such an overwhelming threat. Jameela screamed loud enough to make my ears ring. At first she cried out in terror but in mid-shriek, her tone changed to rage.
Suddenly she was hanging out the window behind me, shouting profanities at Massoud in Arabic. And she wasn’t content with mere words. The back floor of my car had an odd collection of things I had meant to clean up
or use someday. Jameela hadn’t failed to notice. As Massoud drew a second bead on me, she leaned far out the side window brandishing, of all things, a can of Pringles Barbecue Potato Chips. She pitched it at him along with a curse in Arabic. The can burst open against the elbow of his pistol arm and a flock of chips flew to the rear like chaff from a jet fighter. Massoud was distracted, but only for an instant. He turned his attention back to me, trying to square a shot but finding it hard to hold the gun steady in the wind. Jameela rummaged across the back floor again and came up with a full one-quart sports bottle of Talking Rain drinking water, which she chucked hard at his head. He ducked, giving up his aim. He lost his aim again when she tossed one of my hiking boots, and again as she tossed its mate.
“Hey!” I protested without thinking. “Those boots cost a lot of money - “
“How much is your life worth?” Jameela roared.
“You’re right,” I said. “Use any ammunition you can find.”
She grabbed a loaded litterbag and threw it at him. As its contents strewed along the highway, McKean muttered inanely, “The Sheriff will give us a thousand-dollar littering ticket in addition to killing us.”
That got a nervous laugh out of me. But Jameela was single-minded. She kept up her barrage, following the litterbag with an individual-sized Domino’s Pizza box, which spun like a Frisbee and winged off Massoud’s right shoulder. Then came another Pringles can, regular flavor this time, empty and crushed from having been stepped on. It flew past his face a little high and to the left. Jameela followed it with a fresh curse but there was a lull in her barrage of flying objects.
On a straight stretch, drag racing the Sheriff at over a hundred miles an hour, I glanced at her in the mirror. Her dark hair blew in the wind that roared in through the shattered window. Her dark eyes were lit with an animal rage that surprised me. And, she looked more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen. A chill tingled along my spine. But she scowled at me, turning the scorn she had heaped on Massoud on me. “Is that all the trash you’ve got?” she demanded. “I’m out of things to throw.”
“Sorry,” I said, wishing I had let the Mustang accumulate a mountain of junk.
My would-be murderer, Massoud, had finally found the time he needed to frame a shot. Grinning triumphantly, he aimed at my face. But the squad car hit a pothole and his shot thumped into the metal of my door, stopping inches from my heart.
With Jameela out of ammo, I knew Massoud would get a clean shot if I didn’t do something quickly. To the right, the road edge vanished over the brink of a canyon. That gave me only one option. I wrenched the wheel toward the Sheriff. The Mustang swerved within inches of the patrol car, causing Massoud to draw his head and arm inside for fear of having them crushed.
I had no intention of colliding with the patrol car. But, as I had hoped, the Sheriff swerved to avoid what seemed like an imminent collision. As the squad car lost momentum, I floored the gas pedal to give the Mustang a narrow lead. Another oncoming semi forced the Sheriff back into the lane behind us.
McKean, so often a man of eloquent commentary, sat bolt upright, silent, muzzled by one too many rapid events.
We entered another hairpin turn. As the Mustang heeled sideways and her inner wheels left the pavement, I clenched my teeth and gripped the wheel with knuckles long-since gone white.
But the Sheriff’s sedan seemed to hug the road more tightly every time my car got squirrelly. Barker had no intention of letting us reach a safe haven on the far side of the pass, which was rapidly nearing as we covered miles in seconds. As we exited a particularly treacherous turn he made a fresh move, pulling up tight on the left side of my tail. When he didn’t advance further, McKean muttered, “He’s going to try the PIT maneuver.”
“The what?” I asked, but I found out immediately. The patrol car’s right-front bumper contacted the Mustang’s left-rear bumper. Simultaneously Barker turned his wheel and accelerated against us, putting a rightward momentum into the Mustang’s rear end. We began a sideways sliding motion that I sensed would become a fatal spinout. Gripping the wheel with all my might, I steered out of the spin - but just barely.
“P - I - T,” McKean spelled out the initials, raising a long index finger to accentuate his remarks. “Pursuit Intervention Technique. Sheriff Barker surely trained for this at a police driving academy. The efficacy of the PIT maneuver depends, not so much on the impact, but upon the sideways momentum imparted to the target vehicle. He’ll use it again to push your rear end sideways, initiating a spiral motion that will spin you off the highway. Unless - “
“Unless what?” I cried. The Sheriff was coming up on my left rear quarter again for another try.
“Unless you provide a counter-momentum,” McKean replied. “You must impart an equal-and-opposite rotation to your own tail.”
“What? How - ?” I had no time for lengthy explanations. The Sheriff’s bumper was within inches of the Mustang’s rear end again.
McKean’s lecture faltered as he saw how immanent catastrophe was. “Er, a fishtail…In the opposite direction…”
I reacted by gingerly swinging the wheel twice, back and forth, just as Barker was about to make contact. The Mustang responded to my dicey steering and its tires floated loose of the pavement.
McKean continued, “…causing a counter-impact…”
The Mustang took on the sort of counter-rotation McKean had called for, just as Barker accelerated into my left-rear quarter.
The two cars banged together much harder this time, and my counter-momentum amplified the PIT maneuver’s impact. Suddenly all four of my tires were screaming on the pavement in a corkscrew slide. I yanked the wheel this way and that, but we went into a full spinout, rotating over the highway surface at nearly ninety-miles-an-hour as the mountains swirled dizzily around us.
Jameela screamed. I shouted in frustration, expecting to hit the ditch and tip into a fatal rollover. But then my mind cleared. All panic fled. I chose the only course of action left - I kept my foot off the brake and let the car’s momentum carry us in slow revolutions straight ahead along the highway. The scenery seemed to glide past almost serenely, through three complete 360-degree pans, while the car’s speed bled off.
When I finally was able to apply the brakes and bring us to a halt, we were still in the westbound lane but facing eastward.
Filled with adrenaline, I gasped like a guppy out of water. My passengers were no better off. McKean’s eyes flicked from side to side as if the landscape were still spinning past him. Jameela had sunk into the back seat until she was almost lying down. She sat up slowly, as if she couldn’t believe she was still alive. She and McKean looked at me with such wide-eyed expressions of relief that I burst into hysterical laughter.
“Well done, Fin,” said McKean.
My giddiness lasted only until Jameela exclaimed, “Where is the Sheriff?”
I looked around, expecting to see the patrol car to screech to a halt and hear the roar of gunshots. But nothing was there at all.
After a moment, Peyton McKean pointed a long finger past the cracked front windshield, back in the direction we had just come. “Look there.”
A second set of tire marks, interwoven with ours, painted a braided trail that led off the highway. The guardrail had a new gap about thirty feet long. A trace of dust rose over the fallen bumpers and flattened barrier posts. Beyond that, nothing was to be seen except a forested canyon, beyond which craggy Snagtooth Ridge rose in the distance.
McKean raised his finger and restarted his aborted lecture. “So we see that your counter-thrust against the Sheriff’s PIT maneuver had the desired effect. Your reversed momentum imparted a counter-spin to the front end of Sheriff’s car with the net effect that it was Barker who went off the highway rather then you.”
“Are we truly safe?” Jameela asked. She had a hand on her chest. Her neck veins pulsed.
“Safe for the moment,” said McKean. “But we had better get away quickly. They might get out and start
shooting.”
I restarted my engine, U-turned the Mustang, and raced away westbound, jamming the accelerator down to put plenty of distance between us and them. As we moved up an extended switchback curving beneath the granite tower of Liberty Bell Dome, nearing Washington Pass, I could look back and see where the Sheriff had crashed. Beyond the broken guardrail was a cliff that dropped seventy feet onto a lower rock outcrop. The patrol car had pancaked upside down, crushing the passenger compartment. Dust billowed around the wreck, but there was no sign of the occupants.
“Fatal,” McKean remarked as we sped around a turn that hid the scene from us.
“No doubt you’re right,” I said. A peculiar emotion arose in my chest as I drove on at a slower but still speeding pace. Somewhere in my heart was a turbulence, a soul-deep unease.
“I just killed a man,” I said.
“Two,” said McKean. “And very well done.”
I shook my head. “I’m not cut out for this.”
“Apparently,” McKean countered, “you are.”
My hands trembled on the wheel from pent up adrenaline. I murmured, “What a hell of a way to go.”
Jameela put a hand gently on my shoulder. “It could have been us, Fin.”
“I suppose so.” But I was haunted by a crawling discomfort along my spine, a nagging sense that no man’s death is a good thing. I glanced at Jameela in the mirror and noticed tears streaking her cheeks. Little tremors moved through her.
I said, “You were very brave back there.”
She nodded. But she looked too much in shock to feel proud of what she had done. That was something we had in common.
There were no other signs of pursuit as I drove over Washington Pass and headed west down the valley of the Skagit River. I kept just over the speed limit, cruising swiftly for Seattle. McKean pulled out his cell phone again. But then he looked thoughtful, and put it away without trying a call.
