Лесли Чартерис - Capture the Saint

The Saint ran towards Vi’s car, she raced to the passenger side, and Milo slammed a seared foot on the accelerator. The 4X4 lurched, spun, and charged towards the blacktop, its heavy tread seeking and finding sure footing on the hard, dark pavement. Through heat baked vision and dirt caked windshield, Milo considered Simon Templar as a miniscule figure fleeing from certain death.

“Under my wheels!” Yelled Milo, “Under my wheels!”

The Saint could not hear Milo’s rants, and had he heard them he would not have been impressed. What Milo perceived as Simon’s unavoidable doom, the Saint considered simply another of the evening’s avoidable inconveniences.

The BMW idled in anticipation, Vi secured her seat belt, and well before Milo was halfway down the blacktop, the Saint was behind the wheel, in command, and projecting an air of irrefutable confidence. For Viola, the sight of the monster truck bearing down on them served as adequate impetus for anxiety, and the ease with which the Saint launched the BMW from warmed standstill to tachometric intensity did little to alleviate her understandable internal tension.

The dark road vanished under their headlights with increasing rapidity, but Milo’s massive tires and lead footed approach to night driving gave his pursuit a roaring dragonian ambiance of such ferocity that Viola could almost sense the sinister hiss of an overheated radiator steaming at her neck.

The Saint’s fingers skimmed the black steering wheel with deft precision and characteristic disregard for inferences of danger. A signature whistle melodically eased through his lips and his piratical visage was wreathed in smiles.

“He wants to kill us, you know,” said Vi.

“He won’t live that long,” stated the Saint optimistically, “and don’t look back, it only encourages him.”

Vi looked back anyway; the truck was gaining. She turned to the reckless and unperturbed gentleman piloting her conservative family sedan as if qualifying for a stock car competition and wished she’d taken her husband’s sportier model. Vi had no choice but to surrender her trust to Simon’s rakish features and mocking blue eyes gleaming like chips of crystal. If she retained any hope for a happy ending to the night’s shenanigans, such faith was best invested in the durable desperado with the might of angels aligned in his favor.

“Before I forget,” said the Saint conversationally, “I want to tell you how impressed I was with your performance back there. Had you not become a public spirited rescuer of abandoned off-spring, you could have had a career in theatrical improvisation.”

“I minored in drama,” she admitted with distraction. Her fingers trembled, and her voice quavered. The night’s avalanche of relentless anxiety was not the stuff of which her evenings traditionally consisted, and for her to maintain an attitude of relaxed nonchalance while being pursued by a madman would be expecting a bit much.

Indeed, the ground pounding 4X4 with the singed and sinister driver weaved wildly behind them from lane to lane, attempting to gain advantage and pull either in front or along side.

The Saint shot the BMW through the intersection where the Woodinville/Duvall road met the miniscule heart of the second city and pumped it full throttle. The sizzling saboteur in the hydraulically heightened road beast banged a peeling fist on the dash board as if violence in the cab translated into increased speed on the road. There was some truth to this superstition, for the high-riding vehicle was cutting the distance between itself and the import. This fact of unfortunate logistics was not lost on the Saint.

“He must have one hell of an engine or German engineering isn’t what it used to be,” said Simon dryly and Vi felt obligated to offer a weak, if not particularly comforting explanation.

“Maybe I’m past due for a tune-up.”

Simon cocked an eyebrow at her self-deprecating comment, squinted at the reflection of Milo’s headlights in the side mirror, and eased his foot off the gas peddle. The BMW slowly decelerated as the truck accelerated. Milo, enthused at his high-speed progress, expelled a smokey whistle through his ugly gapped teeth and aimed his charred grill into the oncoming lane. In a moment he would be along side, determined to fling his 4X4 full force against the sleek sheet metal of the German import. Even though the mighty vehicle was not his personal possession, he was familiar enough with it to be aware of its more unique accessories. He reached down under the driver’s seat and snapped up a decidedly illegal and fully loaded sawed-off shotgun.

He laughed a crazed coughing cackle and spat black grit on the dashboard. The road ahead was clear, and a spasmodic jerk of his scorched head allowed him an inspiring view of the glowing red stain spreading like a billow of spilled blood on the night sky’s black velvet backdrop.

The Saint monitored every miniscule movement of Milo’s high-rise motorized would-be weapon, calculating speed, distance, and strategy. Milo’s madness was factored into the equation, along with his stupidity and forgetfulness.

For Milo, it was if the enormous tires were infused with demonic power — each tread a rapacious talon grasping hungrily at the asphalt, every inch of rubber a hard-skinned reptile — seeking their prey with remorseless resolve. He was riding the back of the beast, a pilot of death wielding fire and retribution. He could hear the distant howl of hell-hounds rising in his ears, see the swirling pyres of Hades licking the road ahead.

The Saint perceived the same audio and visual cues as Milo, but decoded them accurately — the distant howl, an approaching siren; the swirling pyres, a Snohomish County firetruck. Simon eased the hatchet out of his belt, lowered the window, and checked the side mirror to ascertain Milo’s proximity.

The two vehicles screamed around another bend, Vi did the same, and when the 4X4 pulled along side, Simon saw manifest madness, armed and dangerous, behind the wheel.

Milo extended his blistered arm full length towards the open window, his charred fingers tightening on the trigger. In one abrupt movement, the Saint threw the hatchet and slammed on the brakes. Although Simon Templar was more experienced in the art of hatchet throwing than the average Seattle tourist, the particular hatchet in question was neither of perfect balance nor was it manufactured with throwing in mind. It is adequate testimony to the Saint’s strength and aim that the hatchet, while not directly terminating Milo’s existence, sailed through the truck’s cab with sufficient force to painfully slice away the topmost portion of Milo’s right ear before disappearing out the opposite window.

The sudden shock had a profound effect on the 4X4’s erratic pilot. For a brief moment, the wild fog around his eyes and the swirling mist inside his head seemed to evaporate in a bright crimson light. For the first time since the meth lab burst into flames, the gap-toothed lackey saw things as they were. Sadly, they were not to his liking — most especially the enormous oncoming firetruck.

There was one icy moment of panicked indecision before Milo’s left hand desperately cramped the steering wheel far to the right.

The truck’s speed, the narrow road, and the sudden swerve united in a coldly coordinated conspiracy to capsize Milo’s metallic monster. The squeal of tires and screams of sirens drowned out similar noises made by Milo himself as the 4X4 tipped treacherously on its wheels, left the road in a sideways launch, and crashed end over end. Before the first horrific impact with terra firma, a relatively small, bright flash illumined the cab’s interior. The shotgun in Milo’s grip followed the same over end trajectory as the vehicle itself. When Milo saw himself looking down the wrong end of the weapon, he wondered who could possibly by trying to shoot him. In an understandable act of intended self-defense, Milo pulled the trigger.