A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (24 page)

“The bullets were coming right at me. Through my hair, through my coat. He wanted to kill me. Red tried to shoot me.” She was sobbing quietly now.

“You’re all right. I see where the bullets went. They missed you. Do you hear me? The bullets missed you.”

“Yes. Yes. They missed,” she said.

The probing beam of a searchlight coming from the direction of the traffic circle split the darkness around the truck. The light penetrated the plane of the truck and bathed the drums in the center of the span in light. Millions of flashing streaks of rain pierced the shaft of light; and then, as if the illumination were a signal, all the cops opened up with their weapons against the side of the truck at once.

Bullets pummeled sheet metal and ricocheted against the stanchion under the trailer. They pierced the thin steel easily and then whistled out the other side, crashing against the bridge’s railings and cables and shattering against the pavement in a shower of concrete splinters.

For a full five minutes (that seemed like an hour), police emptied magazine after magazine of ammunition against the truck, flattening every tire on the far side, exploding every window, and ripping the air with the whine and echo of a hundred impacts of metal on metal. And through all of this, the two of them huddled against the left front tire of the truck, unscathed.

It was no longer a battle of wits; it was survival, instinct, doing what they had to do to stay alive. Lou had to get rid of the searchlight first. He reached down and grabbed the girl’s carbine and jerked a round into the chamber.

He edged up to the bumper at the front of the truck and peered around the corner, down toward the traffic circle and the light. The beam was powerful and narrow, like an air-raid light mounted close to the ground. It pierced the night with a long, probing finger and left the sides of the bridge in darkness. The cops were able to direct the beam to any area of the bridge they desired. If they ever caught him in it, they’d have a hundred rounds in him before he could move an inch.

He called back to the girl: “Look, we’ve got to get out of here! We don’t have time for talk. They’re itching to rush us or to start lobbing some tear gas in here.”

Then he turned and went back to her. “Now I’m going to roll out to the side over there and start blasting away with this thing. That’s going to hold their heads down for a minute or so until they get adjusted and start moving the light around. I want you to get yourself to the back tire of the truck. When I start shooting, you dash for the side rail of the bridge and stay in the shadows. They’ll be looking at where my muzzle flash is coming from. You’ll have about a minute to run for the end of the bridge. Run with all your might, right toward those bastards.”

“When you get to the end of the railing, cut off to the right. Dive into the bush. When you get in the woods, run for all you’re worth until you reach the cut. There’s a deep gorge with a stream running at the bottom of it. That’s where we’re going. Both of us. When you reach the cut, scramble down. It’s steep. Wait for me at the bottom. I’m coming after you.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t lift her head to look at him. She just hunched over against the rain, shaking her head.

He grabbed the front of her jacket just below the chin and jerked her body violently. He stood up and pulled her to her feet. She was limp and heavy. He cracked her hard across the face with the front and back of his hand. She screamed and fought against his grip on her jacket. “You’re going! Do you hear me?” he screamed, pushing his face into hers and glaring into her wide and frightened eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m going.”

“Straight ahead to the end of the railing. Down to the right. Don’t stop running until you hit the bottom by the stream. Wait for fifteen minutes. If I don’t come, you get the hell out of there.”

She straightened and stared into his face and nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

“Get over there by the rear wheel,” he shouted, shoving her ruthlessly. She stumbled to the rear wheel of the trailer and crouched down. “When I shoot, you go! Hear?”

She didn’t move. “Hear!?” She nodded.

He leaped with his body parallel to the ground, rolled over once into a firing position at the curb , and immediately squeezed the trigger— once, twice, evenly, calmly—sending .30 caliber bullets winging toward the police cars and lights, driving the cops down behind their vehicles. Calmly, he pumped well-aimed shots into every shadow he saw in front of him, just high enough, wide enough, not to hit anybody.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl dart out to the far side of the bridge. She stumbled and sprawled headlong on the pavement in the darkness. She recovered and dashed forward and disappeared in front of him, into the blinding beam. He kept squeezing the trigger until all rounds were gone. And then he rolled back to the safety of the front tire again, leaving the rifle where he had lain.

As soon as he reached the tire, the fusillade started again. The bullets winged and whined against the body of the truck, slammed dully into already flattened tires, ricocheted off metal, burrowed into the concrete, and whistled into the cables overhead.

Bracing his back against the front tire, Lou faced in the direction of the napalm drums. For the first time he realized that the disorganized muddle of flashing lights at the east side of the bridge was no longer there. The police squad cars were masked by the bulk of the Mack East semi-trailer, and it loomed as a big black bug suspended in the center of a corona created by police headlamps. He saw that the corona was growing as the cruisers inched toward the center of the span. The firing on his side had stopped.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The men on the east side, Wes and Victor, must have been killed, or they had cut and run. Soon the cops would be all around him. From the looks of it, they were more interested in filling his body with holes than in capturing him. He sat on the pavement with his back to the Mack West tire, and soon the smell of gasoline began to intrude on his senses. The bullets had pierced the hundred-gallon tank on the truck. The liquid was spreading in an iridescent film over the pavement beneath it, draining off into the gutter with the rain, and flowing under the arch of Red’s neck at the curb.

Lou got to his knees and scrambled under the trailer toward Frawley’s body. He reached across him, for his carbine. Immediately, the police threw another fusillade of fire. Lou was caught in the middle of the searchlight beam. He scrambled back to safety behind the tire as bullets screeched around him, careening off the concrete in a shower of sparks, miraculously failing to ignite the gasoline. By the weight of it, he judged the magazine of the carbine to be almost full.

Back toward the center of the bridge, the police cars were creeping forward. Lou crouched behind the front tire of Mack West, gathering his strength for a sprint. He got to his feet and plunged out into the darkness adjacent to the bridge railing. He pumped his legs with all of his strength. He saw the dark form of his drenched jacket in the roadway ahead.

The headlights of the approaching squad cars created angular shafts of light through the wheels, undercarriage, and stanchions of Mack East and the three-quarter ton full of napalm drums. He dove for his jacket, grasping the machine beneath it in both hands. He whirled the handle once; nothing. Then again, harder. Again. On the third twist, the center of the bridge seemed to heave up in a ball of yellow and crimson flame. A thunderous roar enveloped the bridge and sent shocks through the girders and the concrete surface, throwing Lou to his back.

Globs of thickened aviation gasoline arched through the night—clearing the overhead cables—and then plunged to the river below. The massive ball of flame slowly rose off the surface of the roadway and engulfed the cables and lights above.

Lou got to his feet and turned back toward the western end of the bridge, racing back toward Mack West. For nearly a full minute, the center of the bridge was aglow with intense seething light; yet no one fired at him. He went right to the truck, hugging the side of the roadway and the railing. The air in his lungs seemed to swell in his chest until he couldn’t catch his breath. And still no one fired.

Back in the shelter of Mack West, Lou sank to his knees behind the front tire. The entire bridge and the mountains on either side of the Hudson were lit by flaming napalm that now stuck to the overhead cables and slowly dripped in globs of orange flame to the roadway.
He’d stopped them.

He became aware of the pulsing, rug-beating throb of helicopter blades. He looked out to the north of the bridge and saw a military UH-1B hovering at the level of the roadway, its landing lights gleaming. Red lights flashed on the tail boom. He was receiving no fire. The cops must have been holding off to keep from accidently hitting the chopper or firing into their comrades closing in from the east side.

Slowly the craft moved forward, dipping its nose and gaining altitude. It ascended above the bridge, swinging back to the eastern side. Thirty seconds later, Lou heard throbbing directly overhead. The chopper hovered out in front of him, by the traffic circle, and descended to the ground. There was no firing. It was the perfect time to go.

He reached the end of the railing. Instinctively, he veered to the right, across the narrow strip of grass. He dove headlong into the underbrush, still holding the carbine. He crawled on all fours over roots and rocks and under bushes and low hanging branches that grabbed at his weapon and held him back. He reached the cut.

It was steeper than he thought. He started down the embankment on his rump, warding off boulders and stumps on his way down with his feet, but soon he began tumbling and sliding in a cascade of rocks and water. The pool at the bottom was not deep and it was no colder than the rain.

At first, it was absolutely black in the cut. Gradually his eyes adjusted, but there was no moon and no reflective surfaces to magnify what little light existed. He was shielded from the open ground a hundred and forty feet above him at the level of the bridge. He heard no sound except the splashing of water at his feet and his own deep breathing. The rain still came down steadily, unrelenting. For that he was thankful. It would mask all of his movements.

There wasn’t much time. He didn’t know if they’d seen him dart off under the cover and confusion of the helicopter landing. The only thing to do was to strike out west, shielded from view until he was far from this place.

“Hello...” he heard from the other side of the stream. It was a half whisper. “Is it you?”

“Come over here,” he said softly. “Over here. I’m holding out my hand.”

He heard her stumble into the water and stifle a screech. Then his hand was holding hers; pulling her across.

She rushed to him, clutched at his shirt, and wrapped her arms around him. “You don’t look dead,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“I heard a lot of shooting and the explosion,” she moaned. “I thought you were a goner.”

“We were lucky,” Lou said.

She kept her arms locked around his body and burrowed her face into his chest. He put his hands up to her back, and then began patting her jutting shoulder blades.

“Okay, okay. That’s enough. We’re going to have to get out of here,” he said. “They’re going to be looking for us.”

She nodded but didn’t release her grasp or say anything. He brought his hand up to her hair. It was a tangle of wetness. He pushed the long black strands off her forehead. She looked up at his face.

“Hey, c’mon,” he said, taking her shoulders and pushing her away. “We’ve got to move. We’re going upstream from here.”

“Say my name,” she said.

“What?” he said.

“Say it.”

“Tasha,” he said.

“Syd,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Say it.”

“Syd then,” he said. “Come on, Syd.”

He swung the carbine over his shoulder and then his rucksack. He grasped her hand and took one more look back toward the Hudson and the bridge high above it. The napalm mixture still burned in the cables and on the roadway. A cluster of squad cars hulked about a quarter of the way across the bridge where they had stopped when he blew the drums.

Right behind them, the Penn Central tracks stretched north beside the river. Had a train come along, they might’ve had a free ride out of there. But there was no train, and they had no time to wait for the Empire Express. It was completely dark directly above the tracks at the top of the gorge. That was good, but temporary. The police would be swarming all over this area as soon as they got organized. They began to pick their way along the edge of the water, moving west on level ground beside a broad inlet.