“Why, it’s an autogyro!” Nora exclaimed. “It’s like an airplane, but instead of having wings, it has a giant propeller on top that can lift it almost straight up off the ground, so that you don’t need a runway for take-off and landing.”
Dodge rolled his eyes. He knew what an autogyro was, and was irked that the woman had assumed he would be ignorant, but he withheld the sarcastic reply that had welled up automatically from his bruised ego. “Think it’s a coincidence?”
Hurley shrugged. “The Padre would say, ‘There are no coincidences.’”
Nora glanced first at Hurricane and then at Dodge. “I’m sorry, are you actually suggesting that anarchists have autogyros? That’s absurd.”
“Who said anything about anarchists,” Hurricane answered, winking at Dodge. “Did you, Dodge? I sure didn’t”
Nora folded her arms and made a pouting face. “Hmmph.”
Before Dodge could even think of an answer, he realized that the autogyros had banked to the right and were moving east. “Decision time. Do we follow the gyros, or keep looking for that panel truck?”
Hurricane grimaced. “Well, we know where the gyros are. Can’t say the same for your tomato truck.”
That was good enough for Dodge. He accelerated ahead looking for the cross street that marked the new heading for the two aircraft. Although traffic was light, he veered and wove through the moving maze, occasionally cutting off other drivers and when necessary blowing through traffic signals with his horn blasting a warning to clear the way. A policeman, his traffic control whistle shrieking like a banshee, tried to wave them to a stop at one intersection, but Dodge dared not comply.
“There!” Hurley shouted, too late for Dodge to make the turn. “That was the one.”
Dodge twisted the wheel and feathered the brakes. The rear end of the Auburn slewed around in a half circle, leaving curving streaks of rubber on the macadam. He downshifted to second gear and let out the clutch, even as the car was still sliding, and charged back into the intersection, cutting a wide turn onto the cross street. Dodge had no idea where they were, but the two autogyros were plainly visible, flying directly above the roadway, perhaps three blocks further down.
Dodge kept the accelerator pedal pushed to the floor and watched as the speedometer needle swept past the ten mile an hour increments like the sweep second hand of a stopwatch.
“Tomato!” Hurricane exclaimed. “Maybe four blocks. They’re stopped at a signal.”
“Unbelievable,” Nora said, shaking her head.
Dodge wasn’t sure what exactly was proving to be such a challenge to her credulity — maybe she just couldn’t fathom Hurley’s astonishing eyesight — but just then, he didn’t much care. With one foot resting on the brake but never depressing it, he charged ahead, passing other cars like they were parked, and after a few seconds, the panel truck appeared before his eyes.
The signal changed and the tomato truck began moving forward with the rest of the cars, but then it abruptly charged ahead, and Dodge knew their prey had at last been alerted to the fact that they were being hunted. Since there was no longer any reason to mask their approach, Dodge laid on the horn and kept the pedal to the floor.
The cars between the Speedster and the panel truck seemed to quickly grasp that they were in the middle of a veritable dogfight, and one by one they slowed down and got out of the way. Dodge seized on this advantage, and in a few moments pulled to within about fifty feet of the more cumbersome delivery vehicle.
“How do we stop them?” he shouted to Hurricane.
“Get alongside them.” The big man said extended one long arm down into the gap behind the seat, and when he drew it back, in his fist was one of his legendary, custom-made .50 caliber semi-automatic pistols. “I’ll persuade them to pull over.”
Dodge nodded and angled the front end to the left side of the panel truck. But before he could close the remaining distance, the back door of the truck opened and he saw one of the men that had earlier attacked them, no longer masked, but smiling like he knew a secret that would ruin Dodge’s day.
As it turned out, he did.
Although they had been partially protected from the dynamite blast by Hurricane’s hasty barrier, Newcombe and Lafayette had been standing at the moment of detonation, and as such had been hit that much harder by the shockwave. Whereas the others had been left dazed, the scientist and the writer had been knocked unconscious, and remained that way as the two masked bombers had manhandled them down the ladder and into the back of the panel truck. So when he gradually floated back to the surface of awareness, Findlay Newcombe had no sense of the passage of time; in fact, even his memory of the bomb attack itself had been knocked out of his head. One moment he was visiting with Dodge and Hurricane — and who could forget the rather charming Nora Holloway? — and the next he was…
Where am I?
Newcombe jolted in place, as if waking from a dream of falling. He would have thrown his hands out to catch himself, but they didn’t respond. That was when he realized that his wrists were bound.
He struggled for a few moments, even as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim conditions. There was enough illumination — indirect light that seemed to be constantly moving and shifting — for him to make out the cramped dimensions of the enclosure in which he now found himself. That, coupled with the vibration and occasional shift from side to side, told him he was in a moving vehicle. He was also able to make out two men, squatting near his feet, at what he took to be the rear of the vehicle, quietly conversing. They both wore dark clothes, and had saturnine features and unkempt facial hair. One of them was smoking a foul cigar, and its smoke hung in great brown curls overhead,
“What the devil’s going on here?” This indignant eruption was practically in Newcombe’s ear — which he only now realized wasn’t working properly — and he started again. His foot struck the man with the cigar, but the only reaction from the man was a disdainful glance. The source of the shout, whom he now realized was Rodney Lafayette, was lying alongside him, similarly bound.
“Rodney!” Newcombe shouted. He felt awkward doing so; he wasn’t a loud person by nature, and his evident deafness didn’t make it any easier. It actually took several attempts to reach a level of volume sufficient to overwhelm the other man’s bluster. “Shut up!”
Lafayette did not shut up, but he did change the focus of his outrage. “How dare you take that supercilious tone with me? Have you any idea who I am?”
“Of course I do, you cretin. I called you by name, didn’t I? And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in a heap of trouble here, and you’re just making it worse with all your shouting. So…shut…up!”
Lafayette continued to writhe in righteous indignation, but Newcombe’s efforts earned a chuckle from one of the men seated at his feet. But a moment later, the man looked away, his attention fixed on something in the front of the vehicle. Someone from the front seat had spoken to him, and after exchanging a glance with his comrade, the man fired off an answer in a language Newcombe did not recognize. At least his ability to hear was returning.
“What was that?” Lafayette demanded. “What did he just say?”