Clive Cussler - The Chase

No sooner were they on their way again over a reasonably smooth road than a hay wagon hitched to a team of horses loomed up. The farmer, believing he was the only one for a mile around, was driving right down the center of the road, with only a few feet to spare before the weeds and brush along the edge of the dirt thoroughfare met fences surrounding fields of artichokes, chilies, mushrooms, and lettuce.

Bell began to slow but had no choice but to pull the Locomobile half off the road and pass the hay wagon with only inches to spare, but he hadn’t been left enough room for a free-and-clear passage. He took out a good thirty feet of a frail wooden fence, luckily without causing severe damage to the car. Only the front right fender was bent and twisted, scraping the tire when it hit a bump in the road. Bell did not look back to see the farmer shaking his fist and cursing him as his horses reared and nearly turned the wagon over on its side. Nor was he happy at being inundated by the dust storm that spewed from the Locomobile’s drive wheels.

“That’s one mad sodbuster,” said Bronson, turning in his seat and looking behind him.

“He probably built and owns the fence we destroyed,” Bell said with a sly grin.

Within ten miles, Soledad came into view. Named after the Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad that had been founded over a hundred years before, the town was a major railroad stop in the valley for transporting to market as quickly as possible the produce grown there. Bell quickly slowed as he entered town and soon found a garage where he could purchase gasoline for the Locomobile. While Bronson and the garage owner poured cans of fuel into the big tank, Bell wrestled with the crumpled right front fender, bending it back away from the tire. Then he took the tube Bronson had patched, inserted it back inside the tire, and remounted it on the wheel before bolting it on the rear of the Locomobile.

“You fellas the first car in a race passing through?” the garage owner asked, clad in a pair of greasy coveralls.

Bell laughed. “No, we’re alone.”

The garage owner looked at the dusty and damaged automobile and shook his head. “You fellas must be in a mighty big hurry.”

“That we are,” said Bell, pressing bills that more than covered the price of the gasoline into the garage owner’s hand.

He stood there, scratching his head, as the Locomobile roared away and quickly became a red speck down the main street of town before traveling out into the farm country. “Them fellas must be crazy,” he mumbled. “I hope they know the bridge over Solvang Creek is out.”

Fifteen minutes later and twenty miles down the road from Soledad, a sharp left-angled curve with a down slope came rushing toward them. A sign that stood beside the road flashed past.

“What did it say?” asked Bell.

“Something about a bridge, was all I caught,” replied Bronson.

A barricade of railroad ties blocked the center of the road, and Bell could see the upper part of a bridge that looked as if it had broken apart in the middle. A crew of men were working to repair the center span while another crew were installing poles and restringing the telegraph and phone lines that had been torn away by a flash flood.

Bell jerked his foot off the accelerator, made a hard twist of the wheel. He jammed both feet on the brake, locking the rear wheels, fishtailing the rear end across the road, and causing the Locomobile to slow into a four-wheel drift. He straightened the front of the automobile with one second to spare and they flew through the air over the edge of the slope and dove down the steep bank of a broad ravine that had once been a dry wash. They landed in an explosion of dust less than twenty feet from a wide stream two feet deep that flowed toward the sea.

The heavy steel chassis and massive engine, driven by momentum, smacked into the water with an enormous eruption of silty brown water that burst over the Locomobile in a giant wave. The violent thump jarred Bell and Bronson in their every joint. Water gushed over the radiator and onto the hood before flooding over the men, drenching them in a deluge of liquid mud. Taking the full brunt of the surge, they felt as if they were driving through a tidal wave.

Then the big automobile burst into clean air on the opposite shore, as it shuddered and shed itself free of the stream. Bell instantly jammed the accelerator to the floor, hoping against hope that the powerful engine would not drown and die. Miraculously, the spark plugs, magneto, and carburetor survived to do their job and kept the big four-cylinder combustion chambers hitting without a single miss. Like a faithful steed, the Locomobile charged up the opposite slope until it shot onto level ground again and Bell regained the road.

With great relief after their narrow brush with disaster, Bell and Bronson pulled off their goggles and wiped them clean of the mud and silt that splattered the lenses.

“It would have been nice if that garage guy had warned us,” said Bronson, soaked by their ordeal.

“Maybe they’re close-lipped in these parts,” Bell joked.

“That was where the flash flood took out the phone and telegraph lines.”

“We’ll contact your counterpart in the Los Angeles office when we stop for gas again.”

The road flattened out and appeared well maintained for the next ninety miles. Bell, with his ear tuned to any miss of the brawny engine’s cylinders, let the Locomobile run as fast as he dared over the dirt-and-gravel road, thankful there were no sharp turns, and especially happy the tires held without going flat.

Finally, his luck ran out when he hit a stretch of the road that was rock infested but worn smooth by eons of rain. He slowed to save the tires, but one became embedded with a sharp stone and hissed flat within a hundred yards. One of the spares was quickly thrown on the axle and, with Bronson patching the tube once again, Bell continued his mad dash toward Los Angeles.

San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria came and went. Then they dropped down in altitude as the road ran along the Pacific Coast. The ocean glittered blue under the sky, turning white as the breakers rolled onto the white sandy beach that was flecked with black rocks.

Outside of Santa Barbara, they became airborne over a large hump in the road, crashing down on the other side with an impact that knocked the wind out of Bronson, who was amazed that the sturdy car held together without flying to pieces.

They entered Santa Barbara, where they refueled, filled the radiator with water, and installed the spare tire. A quick stop was made at the railroad depot, where Bronson sent a wire to his fellow agent Bob Harrington asking him to meet them at the Los Angeles railroad terminal.

Instead of taking the treacherous winding road called the Grapevine over Tejon Pass before plunging down into Los Angeles, Bronson directed Bell to run the Locomobile along the railroad tracks that were laid with far more gradual turns. The rough ride strained the automobile’s chassis as it rolled through the narrow pass below the 4,183-foot summit, but it held together until they reached the long slope leading down into the San Fernando Valley.

At last, the worst was behind them. Now they were in the homestretch, and the Locomobile was pressing hard and gaining on Cromwell’s private train with every mile. According to Bronson’s time estimate, they were only fifteen minutes behind. With luck, they just might reach the Los Angeles railroad terminal ahead of the Butcher Bandit.

Most cheering was the sight of tall buildings in the far distance. As they neared the outskirts of the city, the traffic began to build. Bronson marveled at Bell’s physical endurance. His blue eyes, hard and unblinking, never left the road. The man was born to sit behind the wheel of a fast car, Bronson thought. He looked at his watch. The hands on the dial read four-twelve. They had averaged over sixty miles an hour for the four-hundred-mile run.