He let it get very close this time, he could hear the roaring down the back of his neck, and then he made the sharp turn again, this time going under the wingtip as he curved around. He leaned into it, feeling good, knowing he’d outfoxed them, and then she yelled, “They aren’t coming after us!”
He risked a look, almost losing his balance, and she was right. The plane was still trundling on in the same direction, hurrying away from them now, picking up speed.
“They gave up!” she yelled, and pummeled his shoulders.
“They did not! Hold on!”
He knew what they were up to now, the bastards. Why wouldn’t they accept defeat? Spoilsports. Rotters. What if Goliath had gotten up and taken two Excedrin and gone back into the fight? What then?
He made the turn so tight this time they nearly flipped over, and then he chased after the plane, straightening out onto his former course just in time to see the plane lifting into the air, far away, and its light still not illuminating anything that looked like a farther shore.
Was this the goddamn ocean? Was he on his way to Iceland? For God’s sake, enough was enough.
He hunched over, urging the little machine on, and Vivian clung to his torso, her head against his head, the fur fringe of her hat tickling his cheek. She shouted, “What are they going to do?”
“Wait and see!”
The plane was up now, circling into the sky, no longer awkward and bulky and cumbersome. It was in its own element now, and had become fast and lethal. Grofield, taking quick glances up as he raced now into unrelieved black darkness, saw the plane climb and climb, circling, and knew it would only be a few seconds before it started its run. He shouted, “Let me know when it starts down!”
“Are they going to land on us?”
“Only if they don’t have anything in there to drop, honey.”
She didn’t have anything to say to that, but a few seconds later she cried, “Here they come!”
“Hold on!” he yelled, and began swerving the machine back and forth.
“They’re shooting!”
Grofield concentrated on his driving, seeing the spotlight giving him a shadow again, seeing it get brighter. He kept swerving out of it, but it kept picking him up again, and when it seemed to him the last possible instant he made a hard left and the plane roared by no more than twenty feet in the air and something blew up on his old route.
“Wonderful!” he yelled. “They’ve got hand grenades in there!” He swerved back to the right, and kept going.
She yelled, “What can we do?”
“Pray for shore!”
“They’re coming around again! Give me your machine gun, I’ll shoot them down!”
“Without falling off? Forget it!”
“They’re going to kill us!”
“Don’t you believe it!”
“Here they come! Oh here they come!”
The blackness ahead of him turned gray, paler, brighter, the long black shadow of their shape grew shorter, and abruptly he slammed on the brake, and she almost flipped over his head. He pushed back against her, to keep her aboard, and the plane growled by just over their heads, and there were two explosions, ahead of them, one to the left and one to the right. If he’d repeated the same maneuver as last time he would have run directly into one of those grenades.
“Will you warn me?” she bleated.
“No time. Hold on.” And he accelerated again.
And this time, before the plane lifted, he saw in its light an unevenness ahead, a rising ragged slope of snow. The shore, at long long last.
Then the plane had lifted, was turning away, and there was no longer any light to see by. Grofield yelled, “We’re going to hit the shore in a minute! For God’s sake hold on!”
“I will!”
“Do you see the other machine gun tied on back there?”
“See it? It’s been raping me for the last ten minutes!”
“When we stop, grab it and run to the left, and if the plane makes a try for us shoot the hell out of it.”
“You bet I will!”
“Try to get... ”
The machine hit something. It bounced into the air, Grofield lost the handlebars, Vivian’s arms were torn away from around his chest, and he found himself flying through space with his feet somehow entangled with the machinery. He landed badly in soft snow, lunged off to the right, and the skimobile rolled over his feet and went on its own way.
Grofield struggled with the machine gun strapped to his shoulder, finally got hold of it, and light was starting again. He didn’t know where Vivian was, he wanted to yell to her to shoot at the light, but he didn’t know if she’d managed to get the other gun or not. He didn’t even know if she was still conscious.
But here it came. He lifted up, and saw nothing but that glaring white spotlight screaming directly at him out of the black sky. An actor he might be, but he felt absolutely no urge to take a bow. He aimed the machine gun and began firing and the light shrieked closer, and suddenly it went out.
Grofield rolled into a tight ball, knowing retribution was coming. He shoved himself as deeply as possible into the snow, but when the blast did come it was damn close, and it shoved him even deeper. For the second time tonight the wind was knocked out of him, and for a few awful seconds he lay there with his mouth open, mouth and nose full of snow, finding himself absolutely incapable of taking a breath.
Breath came back slowly, with an agonizing pain in the chest, but it did come back. And the plane didn’t. When he could move, Grofield rolled over onto his back, brushed the snow out of his eyes, and looked up. At first he saw nothing, but then he made out the receding red tail assembly light, high in the sky, going away, as though no longer interested in such petty problems as Alan Grofield.
He sat up, stiff and aching and bruised all over. He called, “Vivian?”
Somebody groaned.
He got to hands and knees. “Groan again,” he called.
She groaned again.
He crawled in that direction, and touched wet cloth. He slid his hand along the cloth and said, “Vivian?”
A weak voice said, “Watch that hand, there.”
“Why? What have I got?”
“So far, leg.”
He patted it. “You sound like you’re all right,” he said. “Do you think you can stand on this?”
“In a day or two.”
“We don’t have a day or two.”
“You’re right.” She grunted, and then her shoulder bumped into his face. “Sorry. I was sitting up.”
“That’s okay.” He put a hand on her shoulder, slid it down her arm to her gloved hand. Then he got stiffly to his feet, and pulled her up.
She leaned against him briefly. “That was exhausting,” she said.
“We have to find the skimobile,” he said.
“I know.” She stepped away, but still held his hand. “I have a flashlight,” she said. “Do we dare use it?”
“Definitely. They’ve gone.”
“I didn’t get a chance at the machine gun,” she said. “I’m sorry, it all happened so fast.”
“It worked out.”
Light, a narrow flashlight beam shining on churned-up snow. They were no more than six feet from the edge of the lake, and about a dozen feet in the other direction was the skimobile, tilted to the right, with a spray of blankets and canned goods all around it.
She was still holding Grofield’s hand, and he saw her looking at him in the reflected glow from the flashlight. He said, “Let’s go check out the damage.”
“Sure,” she said, but when he started forward she stood there, and kept holding his hand. He glanced back at her, puzzled, and she said, “Thank you.”
“I was taking care of me, too,” Grofield reminded her.
“You didn’t have to take a passenger,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Grofield said.