Chapter 8
Heller spent Monday morning calling tire stores and distributors, asking questions I couldn't make heads nor tails of. He was using engineering terms that several times must have been very close to a Code break. Slippage and friction coefficients and something he called "residual resistance to side thrust."
About eleven, Bang-Bang, apparently having ROTCed enough for that day, picked him up in the old cab and they went whizzing out to Spreeport.
The garages and shops Heller had been using were quite isolated. They were beyond Spreeport and stood on a rise closer to the beach. Beyond it was all recreation area and public beaches. Of course, at this late season, the whole sector was deserted. Even other racing teams were gone—moved south to warmer circuits. Loose sand and dead leaves were spinning about. It must be quite cold, particularly in the wind from the sea.
The doors of the garages and shops were metal, the kind you lift up on counterbalances. Only one tiny window was in each door.
The trailer truck was stored in two halves: the cab, a big diesel, was in one garage all by itself. In the next one to it was its trailer. The Caddy was sitting on the trailer.
Heller unlocked and pulled up the counterbalanced door to the larger garage that held the trailer. He went in and punched with his fist at a tire.
"They just don't make tires, Bang-Bang."
Bang-Bang had the collar of a military greatcoat up around his ears. "Sure they do. You ain't had any real trouble."
"I have so. I skidded her one day and bang, there went a tire. If every time I put her in a real skid, I lose a tire, I couldn't win a race against a cat with its feet tied."
"Is that what makes you so (bleeped) pessimistic about winning?" said Bang-Bang.
"It certainly is," said Heller, and he punched another tire. "They buckle on lateral stresses. That's the only way I can figure it."
Suddenly, in a flash, I understood. That (bleeped) Madison! That first day he had had a sniper posted somewhere so he could get a shot of Heller having a near accident! I knew it, just like that.
I verified it. I got the strip of it. I turned the sound volume way, way up. I played it through. What a roar! Screaming rubber. Aha! A distant bang! It was a second after the blowout itself. Must mean that sniper had been three hundred yards or so away!
That (bleeped) Madison might use snipers in the race itself. If so, how many snipers would Heller have on him in addition to my two? Or was that Madison's plan? One couldn't tell.
In a way, it was a relief. Heller didn't suspect that was what was wrong. But in another way, it might make
Heller dream up something to prevent blowouts. The whole thing made me quite nervous.
Heller was out now, standing in the wind. He was looking to the northeast, up the beach. "There's a cold front," he said.
"I know I'm cold, front and behind," said Bang-Bang.
"I think it's going to snow," said Heller. He was looking at some high, thin clouds. "Yes, in a couple of days. And then it will be followed by another cold front right out of the Arctic. Bang-Bang, that race is going to be run in frozen slush. Now, I tell you what you do, Bang-Bang. You grab a plane this afternoon...."
"Yes," said Bang-Bang, very alert.
"And you fly up to Hudson's Bay in Canada and you buy the very best dog team you can find and we'll just tow the car around...."
"Oh, (bleeps), Jet. You had me taken in for a minute." He began to laugh.
"I think it's a great idea!" said Heller, dead serious. "We hitch the dog team to the car. You could stand on the two rear fenders with a whip and yell 'gee' and 'haw' at the dogs to steer and I could run along in front on snowshoes to break trail. And we'll put an igloo where the pit is.... But no. I don't think NASCAR rules include pemmican."
"What's 'pemercam'?" said Bang-Bang.
"That's the fuel you feed the dogs."
"Jet, you'd find something funny if you were a corpse."
"Sometimes, things are so bad that all you can do is laugh," said Heller. "We're in trouble. All this (bleeped) storm of publicity that's roaring around. I can't back out. If I go on with it, I'm sunk."
"Izzy bought you a ticket for South America," said Bang-Bang.
"I have a feeling," said Heller, "that there will come a day, not too distant, when I'll be asking you to kick me for not using it. But it's against my creed."
I was intent at once. Another Code break? For I remembered clearly that day in the Personnel Office at fleet, the creed of the combat engineers, "Whatever the odds, the Hells with it. Get the job done."
But Heller said, "Come on. Let's go in the shop and get the heat on before you freeze to death. I've got to think of something."
And that was exactly what I was afraid of. Now I had two unknowns. What was Madison really going to do? And what was Heller going to do?
I only knew what I was going to do—stop the Hells out of him!
Chapter 9
On Wednesday it started snowing.
There was a battle of forecasters played up heavily on TV. Was it going to be snowing at race time or was it going to be bright sunlight?
The flood of publicity carried on. Snow or sun, it was never even mentioned that somebody might call the race off.
It didn't matter what the weather was. I had solved all that. I had rented a little van with an independent heater in the back. It had lug tires, being designed for the suburban trade. So let it snow! I also bought a pair of the highest-powered binoculars I could find in a hock shop. I had to acquire them because my efforts with a hacksaw to cut off a tourist telescope from the observation platform of Fort Tryon got interrupted by some schoolkids who couldn't read my Federal identification.
With the snow came new information about the race. The spot ads and talk shows began to talk about "bombers."
I had no idea what a "bomber" was. The hotel TV had a teletext system cable and after rejecting several definitions I found one that fitted. A "bomber" was an ordinary car with no added armor except roll bars. It had all its glass removed. Its object was to ram other vehicles to make them unable to move. They backed, mainly, to protect their own radiator and engine. They were used in demolition derbies. A winner of one of these was defined as a vehicle that could still move under its own power.
Now the controversy made sense. Would only bombers be allowed or also standard stock cars? The racing commission solved it by including both. It said that as this was a demolition derby that would test laps and hours of endurance, both bombers and stock cars could participate. It was a wise decision. The public would have lynched them if they had arrived at any decision that tended to exclude the Whiz Kid's car. It, strictly speaking, was not a bomber but a hopped-up stock car.
The bogus Whiz Kid, Heller's "double," Was muchly seen on talk shows and in the news. He was being very pugnacious about the oil companies, bragging about his cheap fuel and generally making an ass of himself.
Then, that very Wednesday afternoon—following through all day Thursday—the other drivers began to be announced. They were the toughest, meanest bomber drivers that existed on any circuit! There would be eighteen starting cars and the list of names sounded like a horror movie. "Slammer," "Mayhem," "Killer," "Morgue," followed by some last name, seemed to be the order of the day.
Amongst this crowd of wanted murderers, the name "Hammer" Malone seemed to be the star. His car bore a gravestone silhouette for every driver he had killed.
On the national talk show, "America Alive or Almost Anyway," the bogus Whiz Kid and Hammer Malone met head on. They began yelling at each other and then they were at each other's throats and then the cameras fell over and you couldn't see the end of it. Special appearances of the bogus Whiz Kid in his red racing suit were featured the following morning to assure his millions of fans he was all right and that he would get Malone and the oil companies in that race!
Heller, through all this, just went on working. He seemed to be using his suite as an office f
or I couldn't tell what he was up to. The interference was on continually as the UN was in session. He had stopped appearing in the lobby. I sort of got the impression he was lying low.
Snow and more snow. Friday another battle of forecasters. Would it be clear or snowing ten o'clock Saturday morning when the race was scheduled to start? Bets were being laid on that. But bets were being made on everything you could think of. It was difficult to get an idea of what would constitute a win, and as so many people had beaten each other up over trying to decide this, the racing commission announced, in a stop-program bulletin, that the winning car would have to be able to move under its own power and to do one thousand laps. No car could do a thousand laps without refueling four or five times. So if the Whiz Kid did that without refueling, then that was how he would win the race, but other cars could refuel as much as they wanted.
There was an outcry on this but the bogus Whiz Kid stuck out his jaw, opened his buckteeth and said that was fine with him. He knew the oil companies would bias the race. But he was still taking them on.
A presidential statement that Friday night informed the world that America could not lose as long as it had sterling youth of the stamp of the Whiz Kid.
On that note, knowing the roads would be jammed at dawn Saturday, I slid out in my van. I had my viewer. I had my binoculars, I had warm clothes and I had my rear heater.
The spot had already been picked. It was a knoll that overlooked the speedway three-quarters of a mile away, much higher, providing a clear view of the track. It was in the front yard of a house and a hundred dollars had secured the spot.
My snipers, with white cloaks, were posted much closer to the track on building tops, armed with silenced and telescopically equipped Weatherby rifles firing .30-06 "Accelerator" bullets, 4,080 feet per second.
In complete comfort, smug and confident, I lay down on the van's bunk, the viewer buzzer set to alert me if Heller stirred.
What a beautiful victory this would be—for me.
Can Heller escape 17 bomber drivers
and two hidden snipers?
Does he die? Lose? Win?
Read MISSION EARTH
Volume 4 AN ALIEN AFFAIR
The Enemy Within Page 35
