The man pitched forward, out of the back of the panel truck and slammed face down into the macadam, where he skidded and tumbled to a stop. Dodge angled the Speedster to go around him on the left, but before he could pass, the dazed bomber weakly propped himself up in order to fling one arm out. A hissing stick of dynamite arced through the air, directly in the Speedster’s path.
Dodge hauled the wheel in the opposite direction, but he was going too fast. The rear end swung around and the car went into an uncontrollable spin, sliding diagonally across the street, away from the dynamite but right into the man who had thrown it. The Speedster’s unique boat-shaped tail end clipped the bomber and sent him tumbling once more down the road toward the retreating delivery truck.
The gravitational forces caused by the spin pushed Dodge across the seat, crushing him into the immovable Hurley, and at almost the same instant, the explosive detonated in mid-air, hammering them with the shockwave. Dodge’s hands slipped from the steering wheel and his feet were pulled right off the control pedals as the vehicle turned two complete circles before slamming into a parked car.
Waves of vertigo and pain rolled over Dodge. Even though he was now motionless, the entire world seemed to be whirling around him like a tornado, and at the center of the gyre, a strange series of images appeared: A wooden box, poised on the edge of the panel truck… A man diving to prevent it from falling… Both suddenly pushed out of the truck. Then, Dodge’s gaze was inexplicably drawn to the bright red letters stenciled on the box as it dropped toward the pavement.
“Oh, no!”
Chapter 3—Aftermath
The crews aboard the two Cierva C.30 autogyros, high above the street and well away from heart of the blast, had the best view of what happened next. Even so, most of it was faster than the human eye could follow.
The shock of hitting the pavement was enough to detonate the nitroglycerine that had oozed from the old dynamite sticks. The man holding the box was vaporized instantly, erased from existence in the flash. A wave of energy rolled out in every direction, blasting apart the other kidnapper, even as he was still tumbling from the impact with the Speedster. An enormous cloud of smoke and heat rose heavenward like a blossoming flower, and then, perhaps a full second later, a booming noise louder than any thunderclap reached the ears of the pilots overhead. They could not move fast enough to fly away from the ensuing shockwave, and while it was not quite enough to knock them from the sky, they were nevertheless buffeted by what felt like a hurricane-force wind gust. After a few uncertain moments, however, they regained control and got their first look at the aftermath.
From the air, the radial blast pattern was astonishing to behold. An enormous crater, at least forty feet in diameter, had been gouged out of the macadam, exposing sewer tunnels and shattered pipes that gushed water. Around that focal point, everything had been pushed out. Trees growing along the sidewalk had been flattened, their branches and bark stripped away. Decapitated lampposts canted away from the crater on all sides, and a number of parked cars had been shoved onto the sidewalk and in many cases, into the storefronts and residences beyond. The Speedster, no longer quite so bright red, was now almost inextricably intertwined with another vehicle, though through some miracle, the trio within had survived the explosion by ducking down at the last instant. The sports car, however, was not the vehicle that concerned the pilots of the autogyros.
The black panel truck had been closer to the detonation than any other vehicle, but because it was already moving away at more than fifty miles an hour, the energy of the explosion catapulted it forward rather than blasting it apart. By some fluke, the rear door of the truck swung closed as the doomed kidnapper fell out, which afforded the occupants of the vehicle some protection from the heat and kinetic energy, but even so it was not a smooth ride. The vehicle was lifted off the ground, and for a moment it nosed down as if it might flip end over end, before finally slamming once more onto the pavement and rolling straight forward in a shower of sparks.
The autogyros circled the crater, observing the blast zone to ensure that there would be no secondary explosions, and then swooped down like predatory raptors. Unlike airplanes, they did not need long runways to land, but instead dropped in almost vertically to settle onto the debris strewn street only a few hundred feet from the panel truck. The pilots, occupying the rear seats in each craft, remained at their respective controls, keeping the engines of the gyros at idle. The passengers — two men decked out in leather jackets and flying helmets — cautiously climbed out of their cockpits, mindful of the free-turning rotor blades whirling overhead, crouching low as they moved out from under the lethal spinning disk, and then hastened to the battered delivery vehicle.
The frame of the panel truck had been battered out of square by the explosion, and the two men had to work together to wrench the rear door open. Once inside, they quickly assessed the status of the two captives, verifying that the dazed men were not seriously hurt, then hoisted them out. Unlike the original kidnappers, the two men from the autogyros carried their burdens as a team, with one man holding the shoulders and the other the feet. They took Newcombe on the first trip, shuttling him to the cockpit of the nearest aircraft and depositing him within as gently as possible, no mean feat considering that the struts which supported the overhead rotor assembly were directly above the passenger’s seat. Once the scientist was safely ensconced within, they raced back for Lafayette and transferred him to the other aircraft. As soon as they were finished, the two leather-clad men insinuated themselves into the cramped forward cockpits. The whole process took less than five minutes,
During the time spent on the ground, the pilots had engaged the take-off transmission, diverting power from the engines that powered the forward propellers, to keep the overhead rotor turning. With their passengers aboard, they revved those engines until the rotors were spinning fast enough to lift the autogyros off the ground. The rotor functioned much the same way as the wings on a traditional airplane, but because the rotor blades were always moving, they could provide lift even when the aircraft wasn’t moving forward. Once aloft, the transmissions were disengaged, and the rotor wings were kept turning simply by the flow of air. The two craft leaped from the blast site, and raced away above the city rooftops.
The explosion made the blast in the conference room seem like a bump from a careless pedestrian by comparison. The metal body of the Speedster helped deflect some of the concussive force, but for several minutes Dodge could do little more than lay where he was, slumped in the seat of the misshapen vehicle. He felt like he’d just gone fifteen rounds with Joe Louis, and wanted nothing more than to just lay on the mat for the full count and let someone else carry him out of the ring. But because he was still alive, and because his friend was still in danger, he reached down to his core and found the strength to lift himself up one more time.
The explosion had utterly transformed the street. Where there had been orderly rows of parked cars and neat storefronts, there was only ruin. It took him a few seconds to get oriented, but his eye was quickly drawn to the idling autogyros on the far side of the enormous blast crater. Any lingering question about whether the presence of the aircraft over the escaping panel truck might be just a coincidence was now unequivocally answered.
Wincing, Dodge clambered over the side of the Speedster, then remembered that he was not alone. “Hurricane!”
The big man opened one eye, then managed a nod. “I’ve survived worse. Not much worse, though. Miss Holloway, are you still with us?”