Aaron Elkins: Dead men’s hearts

They let out their breath. “Well, the angle’s the same,” Julie observed coolly, looking from the shot-out window to the hole in the seat. “He’s still in the same place.”

Gideon nodded. “It overlooks the entrance to the canyon. He figures he can catch us if we make a run for it.”

“Let’s hope he can’t.”

“At fifty miles an hour, I doubt it.”

The angle of the shots-which would be the same as the shooter’s angle of vision-also made it clear that Forrest couldn’t see them and wouldn’t be able to see the driver’s seat either. But all he had to do to change that was to climb down twenty or thirty feet. And that he would surely do, more likely sooner than later.

So it was time to go. He squeezed her hand and snaked between the front seats, sitting quietly for a moment to make sure he knew how the floor-mounted gear lever worked and just where the clutch and gas pedals were. He didn’t expect to have much use for the brake. He thought about pulling shut the driver’s door, left open by Gawdat, but decided he was better off not sticking his arm out into the open.

“Better get down, Julie. Get on the floor.”

He pressed on the clutch pedal, shifted reasonably smoothly from third gear, where the fleeing Gawdat had left it, to neutral, turned the key in the ignition, and held his breath. The engine hesitated, chittered, and caught. He shifted into first and stepped on the gas pedal. The car pitched forward, stopped, pitched, stopped, pitched “The emergency brake!” Julie shouted.

“Where the hell is it?” he yelled back, bumping his head as they jerked along in a sort of automotive seizure, but before he could find it something beneath the floorboard gave way and the van sprang powerfully forward at last, gathering speed. He shifted to second.

“You okay?” he called over his shoulder.

“Oh, fine,” came Julie’s voice from the floor. “Having a wonderful time.”

He thought he’d heard at least one shot over the start-up commotion but apparently the startled Forrest had missed, and now they were quickly putting distance between themselves and him.

That was the good part. There were several bad parts.

First, they were headed into the canyon, not out. To get out of it he was going to have to get the van turned around and come barreling back through the entrance, right under Forrest’s nose. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t see that there was any choice.

Second, the promised fifty miles an hour was out of the question. They were going to have to do it at no more than twenty. The canyon floor wasn’t made for anything less than a half-track, and he didn’t dare shift above second gear for fear of getting stuck in the loose, rough terrain. And even if he chanced that and got away with it, he’d wind up breaking their necks or cracking their skulls at anything faster. Already they were bouncing crazily along again, the way they’d been when Gawdat had been driving. And they were tipped precariously to one side, hugging the sloping, rocky scree at the base of the cliffs; it was the only way to get enough room to turn the van around without having to slow down even more, or backing up.

The canyon, he knew by now, was keyhole-shaped, widening to a two-hundred-yard arc at the rear, and constricting to a narrow bottleneck at the entrance, over which Forrest held sway from his perch. Whatever else you said about him, Gideon thought, you had to admit he knew how to pick his canyons.

The plan, then, was to continue on this arc along the foot of the cliffs, until he had enough of a turning radius available to head back toward the entrance.

And through it, with any luck.

“Uh!” The sound was wrung from him as the right front wheel jounced over a pile of stones and dropped into a foot-deep hollow. The van tipped over so far that the open driver’s door slammed shut on its own. Metal screeched against rock as the undercarriage bottomed, but somehow the van scrabbled its way out. Gideon tasted blood where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek.

But they were still moving.

“Get ready now,” he called back, wrestling the wheel, “I’ve got enough room to make the turn. I’m just going to get it pointed toward the opening, step on the gas, and pray.”

“Amen,” Julie said.

They were about a hundred yards from the entrance; they would be in Forrest’s sights the whole time, head-on, with Gideon himself in plain view. But what else was there to do? They couldn’t stay in the canyon, and if they tried leaving the van and scaling the walls a leisurely Forrest could pick them off in the bright sunlight like moving targets in a carnival shooting gallery. Ping, they’d go, and fall over like growling bears or quacking ducks.

And Forrest would get the prize.

Gideon swung hard toward the right, put just a little more pressure on the gas pedal, and clutched the jerking wheel to keep the van headed straight for the opening. With all the rolling, lurching, and jolting that was going on without any help from him, he didn’t see any need to worry about evasive tactics.

The first shot was fired as he came full around, facing the entrance. There was an inconsequential snick from the front of the vehicle just below the window and a seemingly simultaneous thud as the bullet struck the floor on the passenger side, about three feet from Gideon’s right leg.

Why, those things can go right through metal, Gideon thought indignantly. Like butter. What the hell, it hardly seemed fair. On the other hand, that was the fourth shot Forrest had taken at them now, and they were still in one piece. Crack, there was another; he saw the dust spatter twenty feet in front of the van. Was Forrest panicking, getting less accurate rather than more? He hunched down lower on the seat and pressed as hard as he dared on the pedal. Seventy yards to go… sixty-five… He began to let himself think about Life After the Canyon.

He never heard the next shot strike, didn’t really see it strike. One second he was trying to decide whether or not he could risk taking the van over the rocks rearing up in their path. The next second the windshield was honeycombed by a thousand glittering little fissures that turned the landscape into a kaleidoscope. Immediately the steering wheel fought him harder, pulling at his arms as if it knew that he was blind, that it had the upper hand now.

“Hang on!” he yelled or tried to yell, pawing with his foot for the brake, but a scrunching shock sent him helplessly up in the air still clinging to the wheel, like a kid bounced off a seesaw and hanging on to the handle for dear life. Then, for a breath-stopping moment the entire van was airborne, coming down heavily on its rear wheels and careening on, slowed now but tilted wildly to the right, on two wheels; so much so that Gideon, flung like a bundle of laundry into the passenger seat corner, saw only sky through the driver’s window on the other side.

We’re tipping over, he thought. “Brace yourself!” he called. “We’re-”

And over they went, the van falling sluggishly onto its right side and then, slowly, surprisingly, continuing to roll, as if someone were pushing it down a hill. For an impossibly long moment it hung, balanced and seemingly struggling, before it tumbled onto its top with a terminal, metal-crumping whomp that smashed the remaining windows, popped the crackled windshield out of its mounting, and crumpled the left rear half of the roof like so much tinfoil.

Gideon ended up on his back on the ceiling along with everything else that was loose, including Julie, who was sprawled beside him under a welter of seat cushions, clothes and other junk.

He reached instinctively for her with his hand. “Julie, are you okay?” Years of dirt and sand that had been tramped into the van fell onto their faces like dry rain.