He moved swiftly, but didn’t try to push it, got to the engine of the truck, and opened the hood. Where others might have seen complexity, confusion, terror, he saw the universe of his upbringing, the nurture of experience, the thrill of God-given genius about to be engaged. Expertly, he reached deep into the engine space beyond the big architectural structures, and into the nest of wires, found the MAP sensor, directly behind the fuel filter bowl. He quickly disconnected the factory connector and connected the Xzilla harness in its place, plugging in the male connector to the harness. He cut away the wires connected to the injection pump and attached the blue wire tap to the wire closest to the engine block. From that point on, it was wire work. He had to know which wires to cut, which wires to reconnect, all of them color coded. Quickly he grounded the engine-ugh, was it really necessary to unscrew the negative terminal connection, no, not really-and then cut a hole through the rubber grommet to the right of the master cylinder assembly, and shoved the wire harness through it into the cab. He dashed into the cab, and didn’t bother to mount the switch but simply began plugging the wiring harness into the module itself, that little green box, where the gods of engine monitoring lived and worked. He turned the key and watched the module’s blinking LEDs finally signal success after running through the sequence, settling in the red, the highest power zone. He turned the key further, and after a grinding clunk and another turn of the key, the engine burst to life.
And, brother, did it burst. The sound was almost like no engine on earth, a guttural blast, full of implications of the explosive, and it rocked the entire vehicle. He could hear the engine revving insanely, suddenly injected with a power beyond measure, almost too much for the confines of the combustion chambers. It was on steroids! It was the Barry Bonds of truck engines!
“Fifty-seven four,” yelled Vern, “a new record.”
Brother Richard goosed the pedal, and the engine howled demonically, yet it didn’t burst into flames.
He had it. He finally had it. And pretty goddamned near time too! Talk about cutting it thin, why the deal was only a day or so away and-
Suddenly he saw the paint on the cantilevered hood begin to bubble and crackle, and that meant flame, invisible to the human eye, had burst out of the engine.
Shit!
He rolled sideways, hit the ground, and kept rolling as he heard the tell-tale whoosh of the fuel in the tank igniting, not exploding-it wasn’t under enough pressure-but flinging a blade of hot-star radiance a good thirty bright feet in the air from under Mr. Penske’s fine vehicle, bleaching the color from the day for just a second. Then the flames settled back into your normal total-toast truck burn, licking and eating and devouring, issuing the rancid odor of scorched metal, melting plastic, burning rubber.
Vern carefully backed out in the Eldorado, threw out his cigarette, turned on the air conditioner to full to evaporate the sweat on the men’s brows. Soon enough they found a main road and were well gone by the time the fire trucks and poor Detective Thelma Fielding showed up.
“Lord A’mighty, that was close,” howled handsome Vern, aflame in delight at the excellent adventure. “You’se almost tonight’s meal.”
“I’m too tough to digest, I’d keep you boys up all night with stomach pains.”
“It ran good for a while, though,” said Ernie.
“Yes, it did,” said Richard. “I think that’s it. I don’t think I had it grounded right. You’re supposed to remove the nut at the negative battery cable and attach the black wire. I didn’t take the nut off, but just wound the black wire around the terminal. Naughty, naughty. Next time, I will take the few seconds to remove the nut. It’s time well spent, and we will be close enough for government work, you’ll see.”
“You sure, Brother Richard?”
“Sure, I’m sure. All on that day, I’d hate to burn like a bonfire ’stead of running like a stallion.”
“Burning hurts,” said Vern. “Case you hadn’t noticed.”
“So I hear. Saw a fellow burn to death once. Lord God, he screamed. I had the distinct impression he wasn’t enjoying himself a bit.”
“Nor will you, Brother.”
“True enough, Brother. Well boys, get that old fraud of a daddy or an uncle or a molester or whatever polysexual archetype he’s playing this week to pray hard for you and me or else we’ll all arrive in hell pre-fried, COD. We’ll be a goddamned bucket of Colonel Grumley’s chicken, extra crispy.”
FIFTEEN
Bob drove through the town of Mountain City, sped along a picturesque route toward Virginia, and soon enough found Iron Mountain Armory. Of course it had a sign reading GUNS AND SURPLUS, and of course it was in an old Quonset hut with trees clumped around it with a small parking lot in front of it on Route 91 heading north. The mountains were to its left, casting late-afternoon shadows that buried the place in dimness. But he could make out a large-scale wooden.30 caliber Browning air-cooled mock-up at the apex of the corrugated steel building’s curve. The old trainer showed cutaways displaying red bolt faces and chambers, which must have taught six or seven generations of machine gunners their tricks before going on the surplus market and ending up on every gun store roof in the South. The gun was rotting, though its stout four feet of mock barrel, swaddled in cooling sleeve with the omnipresent grid of round perforations, certainly looked menacing enough. The place, like the old machine gun model, had that beaten-down quality to it, a sense of better times having gone by, interior rot under the paint.
He walked it to find what he expected: ratty old trophies of bucks and bulls long since killed, fish in waxy midleap glowing against polished wood plaques, racks of rubbery rain ponchos, utilities, BDUs, netting, shovels from half the world’s armies, web gear, Chinese knock-offs of current sandbox dutywear, Multicam and digital-camo patterns everywhere, lots of gun safes, sunglass cases for that super-Tommy Tactical look, and behind the counter fifty or so rifles racked butt down for easy examination. The front case had another fifty or so handguns, mostly the black plastic stuff that was taking over the market, little of the blue steel and walnut motif that Bob and his generation had learned to shoot on except in the used box. ARs were the predominant theme, gun safes second, and hunting only a third.
Fella came up to him from the counter, older gent, heavyset, eyes dead, not your natural-born salesman type.
“Help you, bud?”
“Hope so, sir,” Bob said. “You the manager?”
“Close enough.”
“My name’s Swagger. My daughter is Nikki Swagger. If the name’s familiar, it’s because she was the girl reporter from Bristol who had a bad car accident a week back on 421 coming down the other side of Iron Mountain. Someone tagged her and she’s still in a coma.”