Pitt kept a wary eye on the tach as he made his final shift with the Warner four-speed. Coming onto the backstretch, the Stutz was pushing a hundred kilometers, with the Hispano pressing hard and gaining in the turn.
Onto the straightaway, the Hispano moved up on the Stutz. Cussler was going all out. He pushed the big French car to the limit, the noisy valve train nearly drowning out the roar of the exhaust. The flying stork ornament that was mounted on the radiator crept even with the Stutz’s rear door handle.
There was nothing Pitt could do but keep the front wheels aimed straight, the accelerator pedal mashed to the floorboard, and hurtle down the track at full bore. The tach needle was quivering a millimeter below the red line. He dared not push the engine beyond its limits, not just yet. He backed off slightly as the Hispano drew alongside.
For a few moments they raced wheel to wheel. Then the superior torque of the Hispano began to tell, and it edged ahead. The exhaust from the big eight-liter engine sounded like a vulcan cannon in Pitt’s ears, and he could see the trainlike taillight that waggled back and forth when the driver stepped on the brakes. But Cussler wasn’t about to brake. He was pushing the flying Hispano to the wall.
When they sped into the final turn, Pitt slipped in behind the big red car, drafting for a few hundred meters before veering high in the curve. Then, as they came onto the homestretch, he used the few horses the Stutz had left to give and slingshotted down to the inside of the track.
With the extra power and momentum, he burst into the lead and held off the charging Hispano just long enough to cross the finish line with the Stutz sun-goddess radiator ornament less than half a meter in front of the Hispano stork.
It was a masterful touch, the kind of finish that excited the crowd. He threw back his head and laughed as he waved to them. He was supposed to continue and take a victory lap, but Giordino and Mancuso leaped from the pit area waving their hands for him to stop. He veered to the edge of the track and slowed.
Mancuso was frantically gesturing toward the white limousine that was speeding toward an exit. “The limousine,” he yelled on the run.
Pitt’s reaction time was fast, almost inhumanly so, and it only took him an instant to transfer his mind from the race to what Mancuso was trying to tell him.
“Loren?” he shouted back.
Giordino leaped onto the running board of the still-moving car. “I think those Japs in the limousine snatched her,” he blurted.
Mancuso rushed up then, breathing heavily. “They drove away before I realized she was still in the car.”
“You armed?” Pitt asked him.
“A twenty-five Colt auto in an ankle holster.”
“Get in!” Pitt ordered. Then he turned to Giordino. “Al, grab a guard with a radio and alert the police. Frank and I’ll give chase.”
Giordino nodded without a reply and ran toward a security guard patrolling the pits as Pitt gunned the Stutz and barreled past the gate leading from the track to the parking lot behind the crowd stands.
He knew the Stutz was hopelessly outclassed by the big, newer limousine, but he’d always held the unshakable belief that insurmountable odds were surmountable.
He settled in the seat and gripped the wheel, his prominent chin thrust forward, and took up the pursuit.
30
PITT GOT AWAY FAST. The race official at the gate saw him coming and hustled people out of the way. The Stutz hit the parking lot at eighty kilometers an hour, twenty seconds behind the white Lincoln.
They tore between the aisles of parked cars, Pitt holding the horn button down in the center of the steering wheel. Thankfully, the lot was empty of people. All the spectators and concours entrants were in the stands watching the races, many of whom now turned and stared at the turquoise Stutz as it swept toward the street, twin chrome horns blasting the air.
Pitt was inflamed with madness. The chances of stopping the limousine and rescuing Loren were next to impossible. It was a chase bred of desperation. There was little hope a sixty-year-old machine could run down a modern limousine pulled by a big V-8 engine giving out almost twice the horsepower. This was more than a criminal kidnapping, he knew. He feared the abductors meant for Loren to die.
Pitt cramped the wheel as they hit the highway outside the racetrack, careening sideways in a protesting screech of rubber, fishtailing down the highway in chase of the Lincoln.
“They’ve got a heavy lead,” Mancuso said sharply.
“We can cut it,” Pitt said in determination. He snapped the wheel to one side and then back again to dodge a car entering the two-lane highway from a side road. “Until they’re certain they’re being chased, they won’t drive over the speed limit and risk being stopped by a cop. The best we can do is keep them in sight until the state police can intercept.”
Pitt’s theory was on the money. The charging Stutz began to gain on the limousine.
Mancuso nodded through the windshield. “They’re turning onto Highway Five along the James River.”
Pitt drove with a loose and confident fury. The Stutz was in its element on a straight road with gradual turns. He loved the old car, its complex machinery, the magnificent styling, and fabulous engine.
Pitt pushed the old car hard, driving like a demon. The pace was too much for the Stutz, but Pitt talked to it, ignoring the strange look on Mancuso’s face, urging and begging it to run beyond its limits.
And the Stutz answered.
To Mancuso it was incredible. It seemed to him that Pitt was physically lifting the car to higher speeds. He stared at the speedometer and saw the needle touching ninety-eight mph. The dynamic old machine had never been driven that fast when it was new. Mancuso held on to the door as Pitt shot around cars and trucks, passing several at one time, so fast Mancuso was amazed they didn’t spin off the road on a tight bend.
Mancuso heard another sound above the exhaust of the Stutz and looked up from the open chauffeur’s compartment into the sky. “We have a helicopter riding herd,” he announced.
“Police?”
“No markings. It looks commercial.”
“Too bad we don’t have a radio.”
They had drawn up within two hundred meters of the limousine when the Stutz was discovered, and the Lincoln carrying Loren immediately began to pick up speed and slip away.
Then to add to the growing setback, a good ole farm boy driving a big Dodge pickup truck with two rifles slung across the rear window spotted the antique auto climbing up his truck bed and decided to do a little funnin’ to keep the Stutz from passing.
Every time Pitt pulled over the center line to overtake the Dodge, the wiry oily-haired driver, who grinned with half a mouth of vacant teeth, just cackled and veered to the opposite side of the road, cutting the Stutz off.
Mancuso pulled his little automatic from its ankle holster. “I’ll put one through the clown’s windshield.”
“Give me a chance to bulldog him,” said Pitt.
Bulldogging was an old-time race driver’s trick. Pitt eased up on the right side of the Dodge, then backed off and came at the other. He repeated the process, not trying to force his way past, but taking control of the situation.
The skinny truck driver swerved side to side to block what he thought were Pitt’s attempts to pass. Holding the Stutz at bay after numerous assaults, his head began to swivel to see where the old classic car was coming from next.
And then he made the mistake Pitt was hoping for.
He lost his concentration on a curve and slipped onto the gravel shoulder. His next mistake was to oversteer. The Dodge whipped wildly back and forth and then hurtled off the road, rolling over in a clump of low trees and bushes before coming to rest on its top and crushing a hornet’s nest.