“I don’t know,” the scientist answered patiently. “It sounded like Greek.”
“Well, it’s all Greek to me, too, but you don’t have to be obsequious.”
“What I meant was…” Newcombe sighed and rolled his eyes. “Never mind.”
The subject of the exchange in a language that was either Greek or something very similar, became evident a moment later as the man with the cigar cracked the rear door open a few inches, allowing daylight to stream inside. Newcombe lifted his head and caught a glimpse of the New York city streets flashing by…and then he saw something that made his heart soar. About fifty yards behind them, and closing fast, was a very familiar red sports car: Hurricane Hurley’s Auburn Speedster.
He was on the verge of whispering to Lafayette that they would soon be saved, when the man with the cigar did something that dashed his burgeoning hopes. The man delved into the box on which he had been sitting and produced what Newcombe initially took to be a long candlestick. He then puffed on his cigar until its tip glowed bright orange, and touched it to the wick.
Only it wasn’t a wick.
As the bearded man tossed the lit stick of dynamite toward the Speedster, Dodge did the only thing he could think of. He slammed on the brakes and lowered his head.
The Speedster’s tires shrieked across the pavement, and started veering out of control to the left. In that same instant, the dynamite hit the pavement, and even though there was still a bit of fuse left, it exploded.
The blast threw up a foul cloud of dust and smoke, and the shockwave slammed into the Auburn, buckling one of its side panels and peeling the paint. Nevertheless, Dodge’s instinctive reaction minimized the actual damage. In the fraction of a second between when Dodge applied the brakes and the dynamite was thrown, the truck traveled a hundred feet or more. Shop windows on either side of the thoroughfare were shattered and when the dust settled, there was a new pothole in the street, but the dynamite might simply have been an enormous firecracker for all the injury it caused.
Dodge restarted the stalled engine.
“You’re not serious,” Nora gasped. “We’ll be blown to smithereens.”
He didn’t answer, but started forward again. He wasn’t exactly sure how he would avoid subsequent explosive attacks, but now he was forewarned. Beside him, Hurley pushed Nora down into the footwell, and then extended his arm, sighting down the barrel of his pistol as the Speedster began once more closing in on their quarry. But then, inexplicably, he thumbed the safety down and lowered the weapon.
“Can’t risk shooting at them. I might hit the Doc, or worse, make ‘em crash, and with that load of dynamite they’re driving around, we can’t take that chance.”
Dodge nodded, chastened. He held back this time, keeping a healthy distance, while he wracked his brain to come up with a strategy to rescue his friend. For the moment, he could come up with nothing better than simply following the panel truck and hoping for his luck to change.
Suddenly, the back door of the delivery vehicle flew open again, and the bearded man threw out another stick of dynamite. He did not simply toss it on the pavement, but instead drew back and, to the best of his ability given the cramped space in which he sat, hurled it in a high arc, directly in the path of the sports car.
Dodge watched the sizzling end of the fuse as it tumbled end over end through the air, with the practiced eye of a home run slugger watching the pitch. He didn’t just see it, he saw where it would eventually end up, and this time his reaction wasn’t a reflex, but a perfect synchronization of eye, mind, body and machine. He punched the accelerator, steering sharply to the right, and the car swerved under and away from the dynamite. When the inevitable explosion came, it was at their back, lending its energy to the Speedster’s momentum.
Dodge immediately tapped the brakes, falling back to maintain a standoff distance. “How much more dynamite do you think he has?”
“Enough,” Hurricane answered. “You’ll know when he’s running out because he’ll get desperate.”
“People are going to get hurt if we keep this up.” Dodge chewed his lip thoughtfully. “We need to figure out where they’re going. And why they want the Doc.”
“Or Rodney!” Nora chirped from her place of concealment.
Hurricane ignored her. “They don’t want him dead; we know that much.”
“He’s a scientist. He knows about…” Dodge glanced at the huddled woman and chose his words carefully. “Important things.”
“But those…ah, things…don’t work anymore.”
“These anarchists, or whoever they are, might not know—”
“Look out!”
Ahead of them, the panel truck door came open again, and Dodge reacted even as Hurley shouted his warning, preparing himself physically and mentally for the next dynamite attack.
But nothing could prepare him for what happened next.
Newcombe gasped in alarm as the man with the cigar tossed the dynamite out, mostly out of fear for his friends’ safety. But when the dynamite exploded less than a second later, and the panel truck rang like a bell from the close proximity of the blast, he realized that the explosives were as much a threat to him as they were to Dodge.
Dynamite was really nothing more than a way of making nitroglycerine — an extremely delicate and very explosive liquid — safe to handle by binding it in a matrix of inert material, sawdust or diatomaceous earth, wrapped in paper. But if the dynamite wasn’t stored and maintained properly, the nitroglycerine could seep out of the matrix. When that happened, you didn’t need fuses or blasting caps to make the dynamite explode; simply dropping it on the ground might be enough to ruin your day. Evidently, this was true of the dynamite his kidnappers were using.
The two men exchanged angry words in their shared tongue, and the man with the cigar hung his head in embarrassment. Newcombe didn’t have to speak their language to decipher the gist of the conversation.
“Good heavens!” Lafayette exclaimed. “They’re using trinitrotoluene.”
Newcombe frowned. “No, I’m pretty certain it’s dynamite. Trinitrotoluene would be more stable—”
“What difference does it make, man? We’ll be blown to smithereens.”
Newcombe thought Lafayette seemed more upset about having been corrected, or perhaps about having failed to impress him, but he couldn’t argue with the man’s conclusion. Before he could respond, however, the man with the cigar delved into the box and brought forth another stick, which he promptly lit. This time he waited a few moments, letting the fuse burn down more than halfway, before opening the door wide, drawing back and heaving it with all his might.
He slammed the door well ahead of the blast, but the concussion nevertheless reverberated through the vehicle. The other man nodded approvingly and then the unseen driver made a comment, which prompted the man to begin preparing yet another stick of dynamite.
“Inspiration dawns!” Lafayette announced abruptly.
“What?”
Lafayette did not answer, but as soon as the smoking man opened the door in preparation to launch another bomb, the pulp writer drew his knees up, then kicked straight out. His feet slammed into the wooden box holding the dynamite. Like one billiard ball striking another, the box in turn struck the man with the cigar and knocked him right out of the moving truck.
The remaining captor dove forward to catch the box before it too slid out. He succeeded, barely, wrapping both arms around the crate as it teetered on the edge. Newcome sagged in relief, knowing that they had come within a whisker of being erased from existence.
And then Lafayette kicked again.
Dodge was ready for another stick of dynamite to come flying his way, but not one that was still in the hands of the bomber.