Brett Halliday - Win Some, Lose Some

Frieda whispered, “They came up before and dropped back. Two men. Something peculiar about them.”

Shayne caught the license number as the car crept closer. It was a rented Ford from the Hertz fleet. The driver, young and dark, was clutching the wheel as though about to go into a dangerous skidding turn, although the highway here ran as straight as a ruled line. The man beside him was fiddling with something on his lap.

These couldn’t be cops. Canada’s men wouldn’t be driving a rented car. Nevertheless, it seemed to Shayne that a strange electricity was flickering in that front seat. His eye jumped to his. 357. It was across the trailer, where they had arranged the lamps so their beams would converge on the door.

For an instant, the second man in the Ford looked straight at the trailer window. His face was in eruption. His head bobbed at the end of a stalklike neck. His hands came up, and when Shayne saw the flame of a cigarette lighter, he came around fast. There was no time for the gun. He kicked a chair aside and dislodged the great payloader wheel. It started to move, and Shayne gave it a hard push as it passed. It came up hard against the back wall. The sudden weight shift caused the trailer to veer toward the Ford.

The two windows were almost parallel when it happened, the window at Nick’s elbow and the trailer’s window. Greco was riding the brake, giving him plenty of time. It was an easy side-hand toss, but it had to shatter the glass and get through the blind.

With a faint clash of metal, the vehicles kissed. Greco had seen the fishtail starting and instinctively twitched away. It was this more than the slight collision that threw Nick off. He couldn’t wait to make sure that the flame had taken hold. He had to touch it off and throw in the same motion, and he couldn’t afford to miss. If he missed and the flaming gas dribbled harmlessly onto the highway, Canada’s kidnappers would know they were under attack, and out would come the guns. Greco would have to pull alongside, and it would be Nick who would bear the brunt of the shooting. Three people, three guns, and nowadays women could shoot, too, you know.

When the trailer’s bumper dug into their rear door panel, crumpling it inward, the throw was already underway. Nick started back in horror as a ball of fire exploded directly in front of his eyes.

The bottle had shattered on the edge of the window frame, breaking a pane and sending some of the blazing fluid into the trailer. But much of the explosion came back into the Ford. Nick yelled in astonishment, swinging his arms like a man attacked by hornets.

“Stop! Stop!”

Greco was fighting the wheel. He swerved back across both lanes and finally brought the car to a shuddering stop in the dirt.

Nick fell out, uttering sharp, high-pitched screams. His loose shirt was on fire. He whipped it over his head, setting fire to his hair. Greco embraced him roughly and put out the flames with his hands.

Nick’s thin screams subsided to moans. “It hurts, Greco, it hurts.”

Greco’s hands were hurting, too, but that didn’t mean they could stand there feeling sorry for themselves. Their good plan had gone sour for reasons Greco was unable to understand. That trailer had behaved as though King Kong or somebody had given it a push. It was already out of sight down the road. The gas Nick had slopped around when he was filling the bottle had caught fire with a whoosh, and the Ford’s front-seat compartment was burning fiercely. Greco backed away. This was a fire nobody would put out with his hands.

Headlights were coming toward them. It was the same Dodge van he had seen coming out of the trailer park. When Greco saw that they didn’t intend to stop, he leaped out, waving both arms and yelling.

The van swung to the right, trying to get by on the inside. Greco snatched out his gun and popped a shot through the windshield. It was done without aiming, but he aimed the next one, and when the driver realized what Greco was aiming at, and at that range was unlikely to miss, he put on his brakes and came skidding up to within a couple of feet of the blazing Ford.

Greco was so mad at this guy for his lack of concern for a fellow motorist in trouble that he was ready to shoot him out if he didn’t get out of his own free will. He must have conveyed that purpose, and the driver, a tall skinny fellow in glasses, slid to the ground, vibrating.

“What the hell is the gun for? I’ll drive you.”

“Get over there,” Greco snarled.

Doing what the gun told him, the thin man moved out in the weeds. Greco yelled for Nick, who was standing on the roadside, not in too great shape. Another yell brought him out of it. He looked for his gun. It was probably still in the burning car. Greco really yelled the next time, and Nick started toward him. They needed both guns, but the way Greco felt now, he was willing to take on the whole outfit with only his teeth and his fingernails.

The curtains blazed up. The gas had splashed as far as the opposite wall. The stolen equipment from the construction site, along with everything else, had been tumbled about by the collision. There had to be a fire extinguisher somewhere, but there was no time to find it.

The great tire blocked them off from the worst corner, and it was firmly lodged. The wall-to-wall carpet would be the worst problem. Frieda was wielding a heavy drape. The fire retreated after each swing, but instantly recovered. The sofa caught. Now they were blocked from the door.

As long as they continued to move at the same speed, they could hold the fire in this room. The instant they stopped, the whole thing would go up. Using the butt of his pistol, Shayne hammered the glass out of the bedroom window beside the pillows he had arranged to look like an unconscious man. Then he punched the talk button on the two-way phone.

“Your trailer’s on fire. Pull over.”

He knew at once from the deadness of the sound that the trailer’s swing had snapped the connection. There had to be some way to get the attention of the people in the cab. If he and Frieda came through opposite windows at the same time, they still might be able to make the capture.

He was looking for something to throw. The first thing he considered was the oxygen tank of a welding outfit. Another possibility hit him. He remembered throwing a torch into the payloader bucket. If he could find that, he could cut their way out and climb through into the pickup.

Frieda was pushing furniture into the fire, trying to make a firebreak. It wasn’t working.

“Hold it three minutes?” Shayne shouted.

“Try.”

He spotted the torch. He found the acetylene and made his connections in a hurry. Pushing too hard, he broke his last match. He tore a page from a cookbook, twisted it into a long spill, and lit it at the fire. In another moment, the torch was spitting. He adjusted the mixture, modulating the flame from orange to a hot, hard blue.

Kicking everything out of his way, he began work on the wall. The flame went through the thin sheet metal like a knife through ice cream, leaving a charred line from floor to ceiling. Frieda retreated down the passageway, using her drape as a flail, while he completed a crude door. As the cuts joined, the metal section fell inward.

“Frieda.”

She had lost her cap. Her hair had come loose, and her face was smeared with soot. She looked marvelous, as always.

Holding on with one hand, he reached across to the pickup and opened the back door. He stayed there, straddling the gap, while Frieda squeezed past. A sudden change of direction would have spilled them both on the highway, but the engineers who designed the highway had believed that the straightest road is the shortest and fastest and therefore the best. Flames filled the kitchen and one bedroom. Frieda shifted her grip from the jagged metal edge to Shayne’s shoulder, then to the roof of the pickup, and swung on in.