Sweepers (46 page)

She groped for the Glock as her foot slipped off the brake pedal. But now the lights and her view ahead disappeared as something spattered all over the front windshield, something opaque, something that instantly blotted out all the light from their own headlights and the other car.

It sounded as if they had entered a sustained rainsquall of heavy, wet plaster as she found the brake pedal again and wrestled the Suburban away from the embankment closing in on the right-front window. The interior became cavelike as she stared uncomprehendingly at the now-blackened windshield, her right shoulder pressed up against the dashboard as the car decelerated. The drumming noise continued as whatever it was covered the front windows on both sides and then moved down the left side and back windows, the spray clattering down the side and over the back of the -car like the pressure nozzles of a car wash.

Then abruptly the Suburban tilted as it ran off into the ditch on the right side, banging its frame over the edge of the gravel road and screeching the right side against the embankment before finally stopping with a loud bang.

She was momentarily stunned as the right side of her head hit hard on the center mirror. The engine raced, the rear tire,, machine-gunning gravel out from under the chassis, until she realized she was stepping on the accelerator. She jerked her foot off the pedal, but it was too late. The big car swayed once and then settled all the way over onto its right side almost in slow motion, in a mighty crunch. Karen screame( but was able to jam the shift lever over into the park position as she slid across the front seat and banged up against the right-front door, pursued by a small landslide of all the little things that accumulate in a car. Train sagged down towarc her, thankfully still in his seat belt, although the top bel bolt was creaking ominously as she struggled to get herself upright. The engine stalled out. It had become almost pitch. black inside, with only the instrument lights providing illumination.

For a moment, she just sat there, trying to get her bearings. Train was out of it, hanging like a sack of potatoes it his seat belt. The side of her head stung, and she was disoriented. The smell of gasoline began to penetrate the Sub, urban’s interior. Then she heard something outside.

She froze.

Silence. Then another noise, behind the car, but muffled Whatever was on the windows was making it hard to hear Another noise. She felt around in the clutter piled up against the right-front door for the Glock but couldn’t find it. Train groaned softly. He started trying to unlatch his seat belt.

“Don’t undo your belt,” she whispered. “We’re over on side. Someone’s out there.”

The smell of gasoline was getting stronger-Then she thought she heard a car start up. Train groaned, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t see a thing,” he whispered. “Bastard got me.’ I

“My eyes are okay, I think,” she said.

She was pretty sure her eyes were working. She scrunched herself up against the dashboard and helped Train to release himself from the belt and slide his legs down to stand on the right-front door. He was rubbing his eyes furiously.

There were no more sounds from outside, other than dripping and gurgling noises from the engine compartment.

Conscious of the gasoline, she switched the ignition off, leaving the interior of the car pitch-black. She reached up and turned on one of the map lights over her shoulder. She looked around at the windows, but they were covered in what looked like thick dark paint. “There’s something all over the windows. It came from the other car, when I was trying to get us stopped. There was some kind of gun sticking out of his trunk.”

Train rubbed his eyes again. “Everything’s purple. I never saw the damned thing coming.”

“You had your hands full,” she whispered. “I recognized it at the last instant and covered my eyes.”

They both. shut up and listened. They could hear the sounds of the engine block beginning to cool, and other noises from outside. “You think he’s still out there?” she said.

“No. I don’t think so,” he whispered. “But we’re going to have to get out of the car to find out. Where’s the Glock?”

She finally found the gun lodged under the right armrest.

“Can you see well enough to use it?”

“Not yet,” he said. “That phone have a signal?”

She recycled the phone and waited for it to go through the warm-up sequence. “Two dashes. Not much of one, if any .

“‘Antenna may be busted,” he said, “Try nine-one-one anyway. Tell them we’re overturned a few miles west of State Road 216, on a county road. I think I saw a fire tower.

I don’t know the county road number.”

While Karen transmitted the message in the blind, Train popped the door locks and then pushed up on the left-front door. It was stuck shut.

Then he reached over and tried the leftrear door, with the sameresults.

The door latches were working, but the doors were frozen. Train then tried all the windows, but none of them would move, either. He held the window switch for the driver’s door down until the circuit breaker under the dash popped. He swore again. There was a new dripping sound, somewhere in the back.

Karen peered at the stuff on the windows.’ “I think they’re stuck. This stuff’s like glue.” She turned around, looking past Train’s legs, but it was all over the back window, too.

The right-side windows were clear, but they were compressed into the embankment. The gas fumes were getting stronger. ” ‘ We’ve got to get out of here,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. Train tried all the window switches again. Another circuit breaker popped.

“Ignition’s off, right? It may not ignite,” he said, twisting to look the darkened back of the vehicle. The back of the car looked like a coroner’s vehicle, with the windows painted black. “Unless it gets to the catalytic converter. And after that run, that thing’s going to be red-hot,”

“We’re over in a ditch, Train. That gas is going to pool.

We’ve got to get out of here!” ‘ “That stuff looks like plastic of some kind,” he said. “If we could get a window open, we could cut our way out.”

He popped the latch on the door compartment and held up the knife.

“But these god damned electric windows are dead,” she said

“We can’t get at it.” Then she remembered the Glock.

“What if we use this to shoot a window out?” she asked.

“Break the glass and then cut that stuff.”

Train thought for a moment and then nodded. “Right.

Don’t bother with the windshield. It’s safety glass. Do the window on the driver’s side. Shoot a pattern-three across the top, three across the bottom, and then one in the middle.

Then I can kick it out, I hope. Put something in your ears.”

Karen stuffed some Kleenex in her ears as Train did likewise. Then he suggested they get in the backseat to avoid flying glass. They ended up standing on the fight-reardoor panel. The smell of gasoline was much stronger in the back.

“Is this safe?” she asked. “To fire the gun with all these fumes?”

“No choice. I still can’t see anything. Do it, Karen.”

She tried not to think about whd or what might be waiting for them if and when they got out of the car. She aimed the Glock at the left top edge of the window while Train covered his ears. She had to pull hard on the trigger before the gun fired once, and the noise was deafening in the tightly enclosed car. A starred hole appeared roughly where she had aimed. She pulled again, and in her excitement she fired five more rounds before stopping. She was astonished to see that Train was grinning at her through the pall of gunsmoke, but then he was moving, swinging his body over into the front seat, his chest half on and half off the front seat’s backrest, his massive legs kicking up at the window, dislodging a hail of glass shards. But then his foot was punching into what looked like a rubber sheet outside the.window.

Karen coughed, choking. The car was now full of smoke as well as gasoline fumes. Train was coming back over the seat, his shoes crunching on shards of glass as he fumbled for the knife., He banged away at one comer of the - glass with the butt of the knife and then cut a line through the plastic skin covering the window aperture. Karen crouched low in the backseat to get away from the smoke and the gasoline fumes, fighting the urge to scramble past him and out that hole.

Suddenly, the air above her head cleared and she looked up. Train was slashing at the rubbery coating now, making the hole bigger. Then he leaned back down into the backseat.

“Give me the Glock,” he said. She passed it up to him, and he stuck his head and fight hand out of the hole. Immediately, he ducked back down.

“Forgot. Can’t see.

Everything’s still purple. You look.”

She squeezed up against him in the space between the front and back seats, poked her head out of the hole in the rubbery substance, -and looked around. There was only the pale stripe of the gravel road cutting through the dark woods. The other car was gone. But the stink of gasoline was even stronger outside. She ducked back down into the car.

“Looks clear,” she said. “But there’s definitely gas pooling somewhere.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll boost you through the window.

You cut the stuff off the door, ‘cause there’s no way I can fit through that window.”

She nodded, handed him the Glock, and squeezed her head and shoulders through the hole. He hunched down on the right-side door, wrapped his arms around her legs at the knees, and straightened up. She felt like a Polaris missile coming out of that hole, and she promptly lost her balance as she scrambled to find a handhold, finally grabbing the edge of the luggage rack on top of the car. She tore her skirt sliding over the bottom edge of the car but landed on the gravel more or less upright. Train popped his head and one arm out of the hole right after her and gave her the knife.

In order to free the front door, she had to climb back up on the side of the car to cut away the rubbery dull white film covering the whole left side of the ear. The film was thin but very strong, and it would not peel off the side of the car, so she had to cut through to the seam of the left-front door before being able to yank it open. The rubber clung to the door like a shroud.

Train climbed out, and together they scrambled wordlessly around the front of the car. But just as they started up the hill, they heard the sound of the car phone ringing.

They looked at each other. The phone rang again.

“Who the hell-” Train said.

“Mcnair. I’ll bet it’s Mcnair. We called him, remember?”

“But-“

“There must be a signal now,” she said. The phone rang again. Karen handed him the knife and ran back around to the side of, the car. But there was no way to reach the phone inside without climbing back up on the side of the car.

Train was about to help her when something at the back of the Suburban caught his peripheral vision. A whiff of smoke? A tiny white object, back by the bumper. Purplewhite. Fverything tinged with purple. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them, desperately trying to see as he moved carefully toward the back, of the car. Karen was stretching, trying to lean into the car.

“Karen, wait a minute,” he called as the phone rang again. And then he froze when he recognized what was on the rear bumper. A lighted cigarette was dangling from a string tied to the bumper, about eighteen inches over the shimmering puddle in the ditch. The ash had burned almost back to the string.

“Karen! Karen! Get, out! Get away, now!” he shouted, and then began to backpedal sideways across the hill, trying to get to her.

Karen had been halfway into the hole in the driver’s window when she heard him yelling. She turned, saw the look on his face, dropped back off the car, and bolted up the bank, where Train grabbed her. Together, they scrambled up the hill. An instant later, the car exploded behind them in a bright red-and-yellow fireball. They both hit the ground as the hot compression wave seared the night air over their heads, and then bits of hot metal and flaming plastic were’ clattering around them on the wet hillside. Down on the road, the remains of the Suburban burned furiously, hot enough to keep them backing UP the hill, hands held by the sides of their faces to ward off the intense heat. The road and the surrounding trees were thrown into stark visual relief in the yellow-orange glare. They stopped, about fifty yards up the hill and sat down in the underbrush.

Karen examined her torn skirt, ragged stockings, and uniform jacket. “Remind me never to go parking with you in the woods again,” she muttered.

Train grinned weakly in the firelight. “Well,” he said, “I try to give all the girls a hot time. The good news is that fire ought to bring somebody..”

“The good guys this time, I hope,” she said, trying to cover her thighs with the tom skirt. “I’ve got to go buy some fatigues if you and I are going to keep seeing each other like this.”

He grinned again and put -his arm around her. But then he grew serious.

“We were lucky. Very damned lucky.

Again.” He described the cigarette hanging off the bumper.

“It’s the oldest time-delay fuse in the business, and it leaves no trace. Once the cigarette burns back to the string, it drops.

In our case, into that ditchful of gasoline.”

“Then he meant to kill us this time.”

“No doubt in my military mind,”

Train said, shifting his bulk in the grass. She noticed for the first time that there was a cut on his forehead. Down below, the burning hulk was settling now as the frame deformed and bits of the interior fell out onto the road. The hood popped open as they watched, revealing several glowing engine components. The night breeze was raining soot all over the hillside where they crouched under a small tree. Finally, the fire began to diminish.

“How did he know where to find us?” Karen said.

Train rubbed his eyes and thought about that. It had to be the phone lines at his house. Mcnair had described where the hospice was, and he’d also intimated that Sherman would be there, that they would all be there. “He got it from Mcnair’s phone call. My phones must be tapped.”

Karen nodded in the flickering light, knowing the feeling.