Saving Jason Page 17

  I jumped from the fence and ran to where I had left Aimee. Without the distant glow from the barn light, the night was pitch-dark again and it took me a few minutes to find her. I bumped into the dead electric fence more than once in the process, scaring myself witless each time.

  Aimee was in trouble. Her breathing had become shallow, her pulse was faint, and her skin was cold. Shock was well under way. I had to get her to a hospital. There were plenty of vehicles in the barn and only two men left. The odds were atrocious, but there was no alternative. Somehow, I needed to outwit or overpower them or she would die.

  The bison had all lost interest and moved off a good distance, swallowed by the night again. The big bull was lowing and roaring—he may have been hit by a bullet—but he was on his feet and moving. His adversary was never going to move again.

  I pulled Aimee under the fence and once more hitched her up onto my back. I started back across the field. She felt heavier.

  “Leave me,” she moaned close to my ear.

  I could not leave her. The ghost of another woman was there with her. And if I could save this woman, then maybe the ghost would finally let me be.

  “We’re leaving here together,” I whispered to her. “Just do me a favor and keep breathing.”

  She moaned again.

  The long building was a black wall against the black sky, an illusory goal, but the shadow loomed larger as I approached it. I was heading in the right direction at least.

  I carried her across the rutted dirt drive. We were almost at the barn when the light came back on, an alarm like an old-time firehouse bell went off, and the wall-sized rolling steel door began to rise with a rumbling clatter.

  Aimee whimpered in my ear at the sudden noise and explosion of light. But she was still alive. I took her to the side of the barn and laid her down in the shadows.

  “I need to find us a way out of here. I’ll be back for you. No matter what.”

  She didn’t reply. In the dim light, I could see her face again. She was beyond pain. She needed a hospital and soon.

  A big diesel engine ground into life, and a moment later twin high beams preceded a Mack tractor truck out of the door and into the yard. The lights swept over the field and caught the group of young male buffalo grazing peacefully again. They looked up disinterestedly and went back to their midnight snacking. Nothing else moved.

  A second truck started up. The lights came on. I saw what they were doing. They would have a fleet of large trucks, lights covering the field. Then they could each take a truck and hunt us down—if we were still out there. As it was, a stray flash of light as a truck made the turn could easily frame us on the wall and it would be over. I needed to move.

  The second truck—another big tractor cab—pulled out and lined up parallel to the first, their lights covering a swath forty yards wide over the field.

  The driver of the first truck jumped down from the cab and strode back into the building, leaving the truck running, lights on. It was Gino. He carried the gun by his side. I pressed my back up against the wall and waited for him to pass inside. He didn’t see me.

  I was frozen with indecision. The risk of trying to take one of the trucks while one of those two was there and keeping watch was too great. Doing it with Aimee slung over my shoulder was impossible. But the risk of staying put was almost as great. I huddled there while a third truck rolled out and lit up the field. Then it was the weasel’s turn to bring out another truck. The two men continued to alternate until six trucks were lined up, all idling loudly, high beams slicing the darkness into narrow strips of gray bordering swaths of brilliant white. Nothing more happened for at least another ten minutes. The two men sat in the bookend trucks, scanning the field for any sign of us—or the caveman, though by then they must have realized that it was his demise that had caused the electrical blackout. The lights from the line of trucks revealed highlights from the ground between them and the fence, but little detail. If we had still been hiding out there, we could have stayed low and been invisible.

  Gino must have realized that the plan wasn’t working. He jumped down from the cab of the truck and jogged to the other end of the line. He and the weasel conferred for a few minutes, with gestures that indicated their plans. Gino returned to the Mack, gunned the engine, and slipped it into gear. The two trucks—the big Mack with Gino on board and a honey wagon with the logo YOU DUMP IT, WE PUMP IT spelled out in brown—pulled out onto the grass, plowing it down as they ground slowly toward the fence. About halfway there, they turned, allowing the lights to sweep like large, and deadly, spotlights. But there was nothing to see but grass and the tall fence. They continued.

  Eventually, on one of those turns, the lights would pass over us hiding against the wall and we’d be discovered. The odds were strongly against us no matter what I did, but they were never going to get any better.

  “Aimee? Come on. We’re going to get out of here now.” I tried to get her arms over my shoulders again, but she was limp. There was nothing for it but to lift her in my arms and carry her clutched to my chest. She would not weigh any less that way, but she would be marginally easier to hoist and keep in position. I squatted beside her, tucked my hands underneath her, and with an explosive jerk, I rose up. Her head flopped back and her arms and legs dangled. She had been reduced to an awkward burden. I held her to my chest and scurried toward the nearest truck.

  It was another big semi cab. I didn’t know how to drive one, but I didn’t have much choice. Aimee was already beginning to slip out of my grasp. I staggered to the opposite door, propped her on the running board, and climbed up. The engine was idling and the cab unlocked. I swung the door wide, jumped down, and lifted Aimee into the passenger seat. I sat her up and strapped her in.

  “We’re almost there,” I said. “How are you holding up?”

  She didn’t answer. She might not have heard me. Pain and loss of blood were ganging up on her senses. Her body and brain were sealing off all nonessential systems. There wasn’t much time.

  Lights swept over me as one of the two big trucks out in the field made a turn for another pass. I froze, hoping that I had not been seen. Immediately, I realized that there was no point. If I’d been spotted, I needed to escape soonest, and if by some fluke they hadn’t seen me, it was still time to break out. I slammed the door behind me, climbed over Aimee, and half fell into the driver’s seat.

  There was a big red button labeled BRAKE. I pushed it. Nothing happened. I pushed it hard and it sank. The truck rolled a few inches. There was a clutch and a tall gearshift. How hard could it be? I held down the clutch, revved the engine slightly, shoved the shifter into the spot where first gear was on every manual transmission I had ever seen, and let out the clutch. The truck began to move—in reverse. I was headed directly for the barn, going fifteen miles an hour—backward.

  I pulled the truck out of gear, and shifted into where third ought to be. The engine growled at me and the transmission bucked unhappily. But it didn’t stall. I pressed down on the gas, spun the wheel, and headed for the main gate.

  “No comments on my driving, okay?” Maybe she could hear me.

  The bright high beams swung by again, washing the cabin with blue-white light. They were on to me. I shifted up two gears and the truck bucked again before accelerating like a muscle car. With no load or trailer, the 400 horsepower and 1,300 pounds feet of torque on the average big diesel goes straight to acceleration. I had to race through the gears to keep up with the roaring engine. The gates were a hundred yards ahead and approaching quickly. The tall side mirror showed both trucks bouncing across the field after me. They had already been moving when I started and were traveling faster, so they appeared to be closing in. I triangulated our relative positions. The septic tanker had a slight chance of beating me to the gates—I had to assume that it had been stored empty. I raced up the gears and kept the pedal to the floor. The engine how
led every time I pushed my foot down on the clutch. It was going to be close.

  The Mack cab bounced onto the drive behind me, but now my head start was beginning to pay off. I looked again and saw that I was even pulling away.

  The tanker was coming in at an angle on my left. It hit a deep rut just before the driveway and bounced hard and high. For a split second, the weasel let up. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I kept the accelerator floored and squeezed through in front of him. The double gates were right there.

  “Hold on. This is the tricky part,” I said. Aimee didn’t answer.

  I hit the first gate while still shifting and the wheel was almost wrenched out of my hand. I let go of the shift and held on to the wheel. Planks, two-by-fours, hardware, and whipping strands of barbed wire flew in all directions. But I was gone before it all registered. The outer gate was sturdier, but that just meant it was louder when it cracked and exploded as I came through.

  I pulled the wheel hard to the left and bounced onto the asphalt. The truck felt like it was ready to roll over, but it surprised me. It held the road and barreled on. The next turn was coming up fast. A left would take me out toward the highway and the hope of finding help and a hospital. Straight would lead me deeper into the desolation of the Pine Barrens. If they caught me there, I would have no chance. But if I could get to the highway, I could soon have every highway patrolman in Suffolk County out to stop me. And that would be enough to turn the tables. I turned left.

  The truck gave that same vertiginous pull as if it wanted to fall over on its side. I let the truck take the turn wider, thumping off the pavement on the far side and plowing briefly through the underbrush. Short pine trees and scrub oaks snapped at the window on the passenger side, while others sank beneath the tall chrome grille.

  The first of my pursuers took the turn. Gino in the Mack. Like the vehicle I was driving, it had no trailer. It was all about horsepower and torque. But he was the better driver. He seemed to have some idea of what the hell he was doing. I did not. He downshifted into the turn and took it slower, but much steadier, keeping it under control. I was merely hanging on, hoping that my lack of knowledge wasn’t going to get me killed.

  I aimed for the road and the truck responded, bouncing back onto the tarmac again. I tasted blood and found that I had just bitten my tongue. But I was ahead of the other two trucks, and while they were in pursuit and, I was sure, intent on killing me, they were following me to where I wanted them to go.

  The transmission seemed to have an as yet inexhaustible number of gears. I was in sixth and the engine was howling for another change. I pulled the stick back and the gears ground and the truck bucked. I shoved it into neutral and tried again, double-clutching this time. Much smoother. I was barreling along at seventy through the dark woods. A faint glow up ahead signaled civilization and safety.

  That’s when the truck behind me struck. Gino came racing up and hit the rear end of the tractor. It was barely a tap, but the effect was terrifying. The truck began to yaw and I felt as if all control had disappeared. I remembered hitting black ice in upstate New York when I was first learning to drive in college. I steered into the skid and let up on the accelerator. The wheels grabbed and I pulled the truck back into line just before it rolled off into the woods again.

  I knew what he had done. An asymmetrical push from behind doesn’t need to be forceful to be effective when a vehicle is traveling at fifty miles an hour or more. A gentle nudge can be deadly. I needed to keep directly in front of the truck behind me, so that if he tried it again, I would be able to take the blow solidly in the center. I moved the truck onto the crown of the road and tried not to think about what would happen if some poor citizen wanted to come down from the other direction.

  There were now two sets of headlights behind me; the honey wagon had finally achieved some momentum and was coming up strong. The woods whipped by. I risked another quick look at Aimee, but no miracle had happened. Her head was hanging to one side, her eyes staring at the dashboard. I thought I should feel something, but my adrenaline kept me from going there. I would pay for it later.

  The highway was just ahead. I hit the brakes and double-clutched down two gears. The Mack raced up behind me on the left and gave another nudge. The tanker was just over my right shoulder. I felt the truck begin to slide and I downshifted again. The wheels grabbed, but there wasn’t time—or room—to make the turn onto the on-ramp. The tanker’s lights filled the right-side mirror. I wasn’t so much driving as being driven.

  The Mack was coming up again for another push and I swerved to the right, just before passing under the L.I.E. The tanker truck veered away. The weasel overcompensated. He must have panicked. He didn’t have time to register what he’d done. The truck hit the concrete overpass at close to seventy miles an hour and the lights in my mirror went out. The sound of the crash was magnified in the short tunnel, but I wasn’t around long enough to absorb it. I felt no shock, no horror, just relief that I was now being pursued by only one crazy killer rather than two. I immediately flipped back to the task at hand.

  The next on-ramp was also a right turn and I was on top of it. There was no time to downshift again. I mashed the brakes, pulled the wheel over, and hoped that the tires would continue to hold the road. They did. Barely.

  The curve was tight, sloped for sedans and station wagons moving at thirty or forty, not for a giant diesel cab tearing through at fifty. I leaned into the turn, as though my puny one hundred and eighty pounds might make a difference. Somehow the truck held the road and I was on the L.I.E. and running back up through the gears.

  There was no traffic, though there was a steady stream heading the other way. They would be of no help to me. A green sign flashed by announcing the exits for Riverhead. No! I was traveling east, not west. Farther from the city and what I thought of as safety. Was there a hospital in Riverhead? I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. There would be other cars up ahead. Someone on the road would have a cell phone and be only too happy to report two semis playing bumper cars on the highway in the middle of the night.

  Gino had somehow made the turn back at the on-ramp and was still behind me. I kept to the left-hand lane. The trees along the edge of the road were taller and more substantial than they’d been closer to the farm. If I ran off the road into them, I doubted that I would survive. But the wide grassy dip that bordered the oncoming lanes looked like it might slow the truck rather than mangle it.

  I hit the horn and turned on the brights as I came up on a black BMW 3-series coasting along all alone in the passing lane. He pulled over, but not before tapping his brakes twice just to demonstrate his displeasure. I didn’t bother to hit mine, I just kept on coming until he moved to the side.

  The Mack was riding right down the dotted white line, blocking both lanes. He also hit his horn and brights. The BMW had nowhere to hide. His only escape was to outrun us. He stepped on it and went from seventy to over a hundred and left the two of us barreling along alone. But a mile down the road, just before the crest of the next rise, the brake lights on the Beemer went on and the car drove off onto the verge. We whipped by him, and as our headlights swept over him, the driver gave us a two-handed, middle-finger salute.

  I looked over at Aimee and our eyes met for just a moment. She had nothing left and it showed. She was giving up. I needed to end this soon and get her help or it would be too late.

  I watched the speedometer creep up into the low eighties, and just as I crossed the slight peak, I swung over so that I was straddling the white line as well. The swift glint of light reflected off glass caught my eye as we raced past a thick copse of vine-laden fir trees. Finally. Hiding behind the wood was a Suffolk County police cruiser clocking speeders as they came over the top. Two commercial trucks, thirty miles over the limit, riding the white line. The cop must have thought he had won the lottery. His flashing lights came on before he even hit the road.

 
One of us wanted to be stopped by a policeman. I was surprised to discover that Gino didn’t much care. I took my foot off the accelerator and immediately slowed by ten miles an hour. The Mack was on top of me, immediately coming up on my left side. But this time he wasn’t content to simply run me off the road.

  The window next to me exploded and the windshield began to spiderweb around a hole the size of my thumb. I registered the sound of the gunshot long after the evidence of its passing. There was a second crack followed by the whine of a ricochet off the back of the cab. He had failed at getting rid of me earlier; he was going to finish it now. I sped up.

  Behind us, the police cruiser had his siren blasting, but he was hanging back fifty yards or so. He must have seen or heard the gun. If I could just stay alive for another quarter of an hour, there were sure to be other police reinforcements gathering ahead.

  Gino must have figured out the same thing at about that time, because there were three more shots in quick succession. I thought at first they must have been wild and desperate as none came close to the cab. Then I realized that he was firing at the tires. An experienced trucker would have no trouble handling a blowout, even at the speed we were moving, but I was no trucker. I was learning as I went along. A slow panic began to build in my chest. The odds of our making it through the next fifteen minutes had just swung to a good bit less than even money. A trader isn’t supposed to take those long shots.

  A white pickup truck appeared in my headlights. Some hardworking laborer was hugging the right-hand lane and moving at exactly one mile an hour under the limit. Coming home from a bar, I guessed. I swerved around him and he flashed his brights at me in protest. No doubt, my rudeness was quickly forgotten as the other semi flew by, followed a moment later by the cop car, siren screaming. If the drinker was a religious man, he would have been saying a few prayers of thanks at that moment.