Brett Halliday - Caught Dead

As the houses dropped away on either side she built up her speed. The curves were sharper and tighter and the surface of the road deteriorated rapidly. Suddenly, as she came out of a curve, the car traveled sideward on loose pebbles and the front wheels began to shake. She attempted to break the shimmy by fighting up into a higher speed, but without success.

The road curved in and out of the creases in the dry slope, climbing toward the bent end of another long hairpin, where it would switch back on itself at a higher level. Above, it was lost in mist. Paula had her left knee braced against the wheel. A slight cross-ripple in the road added to the shake. The ground fell off abruptly to the left. The police car was almost directly below them now.

“There aren’t any side roads,” Shayne said. “They’re giving us room. You’ll have time to turn.”

The youth suggested something.

“Speak English,” Shayne said. “It was my idea.”

The exchange continued for a moment.

“O.K.,” the girl said. “We’ll do it. This is our fastest speed and it’s too slow. But I wish I knew what was in your mind.”

“I set this up, for Christ’s sake!” Shayne said angrily. “Don’t you realize that? I want to talk to you. Everybody said it couldn’t be done. It turned out to be easy. Use your head. How can I turn you in? I don’t know anything about you. I planted that with Rubino.”

She spared him one quick raking look before she went into the curve. The front end shuddered dangerously. She fed the motor gas and cut in sharply. The curve was poorly banked and she had to go to the brakes again as the car chattered toward the outer edge.

“You’ve got it,” Shayne told her. “Now kick her around.”

But she couldn’t correct in time and they rode up on the inner slope, striking a boulder. She braked hard and came back in a short arc, stopping a scant foot short of the drop. She hauled at the wheel. The road was barely wide enough to permit two cars to pass abreast. She went back, forward, and back, and on the next arc she was facing directly down the mountain. Her friend Julio had his Luger out the window. The other car could be heard laboring up toward them.

“Now,” Shayne said. “Pass on the outside and give them a chance to jump.”

She rapped the wheel for luck and shot back around the curve, gaining speed rapidly. The police car was now less than twenty yards away. Paula took the exact middle of the road. Julio waved the Luger and yelled.

“They’ll move,” Shayne said calmly. “Hang in there.”

They were in third, well short of the shimmy point, but apparently hitting the boulder had knocked the front wheels further out of line. The front end of the car was bucking like a jackhammer. Shayne grabbed the wheel, and was able to hold them straight for a moment. He had one clear glimpse of a frightened face at the wheel of the police car. Then something snapped in the steering linkage. They angled off the road and tried to climb the slope.

The police car slithered around them, brakes screaming. Magically, a single rubber-tired wheel appeared on the road ahead, rolling very fast.

Shayne felt the Olds starting to go. It fell over, hitting hard on its side, and slammed back onto the road with its three wheels in the air.

Dust rose around them. The sudden stillness seemed very loud.

Shayne and the others were tumbled together in a confused heap. The car was no longer moving, but he had the feeling that it was sticking over the edge, where a slight change in equilibrium would send it rolling and bouncing on down the mountain.

Withdrawing one arm, he unlatched the door carefully. It pulled out of his hand and banged back against the side of the car. He was relieved to find, looking out, that the car was securely lodged in the middle of the road, where it would stay until a wrecker came up from the city to get it.

“Well, you can’t win every time,” he remarked.

Julio was scrabbling for his Luger. Shayne crawled over him and out of the wrecked car.

The police car was backing toward them. It stopped, and one of the cops, swearing steadily and fiercely in Spanish, jumped out to cover Shayne and the guerrillas with a submachine gun.

“Watch it,” Shayne said. “The kid has a pistol.”

Either the cop understood English, or he picked up Shayne’s meaning from his tone. He approached warily. Reaching into the car, Shayne found the Luger, pulled it out by the barrel and tossed it at the Venezuelan’s feet.

“Some people are rats,” the girl said. “I knew it. I knew it.”

“I’m not the one who turned over the goddamned car.”

She was caught. He helped her pry herself free. Julio, holding one leg in both hands, was biting down hard to keep from making any sounds.

“This guy is hurt,” Shayne told the cops. “Hold it-here’s another couple of guns.”

He threw out his own. 38 and Paula’s. 25. Then he tried to help the youth. His injured leg was twisted beneath him, and Shayne saw a splinter of bone.

“It’s broken,” the girl said.

The doorframe had been forced violently inward, trapping the boy’s foot. Shayne tried to lever it back. He felt the bent metal give, very slightly. Pulling with his full strength he snapped at the cops to help. They worked themselves into position. Straining together, they forced the frame back so the boy could pull his foot clear.

Shayne was the first out of the car. He picked up the submachine gun, which the cop had put down, and backed off a step.

When the cop came out of the car he looked at Shayne in disbelief. He had watched Shayne being kidnapped, and at extreme bodily risk, after a breakneck chase, had saved him from the kidnappers. Surely this was a mistake.

He started forward, and Shayne fired a burst into the ground at his feet.

Paula and the second cop worked Julio out of the wreck. That cop said something to her urgently in Spanish.

She translated: “They both have children. They are sympathetic with our aims. They ask you not to shoot them.”

“Hmm,” Shayne said thoughtfully.

The two cops watched while Paula started the police car, reversed it in a series of careful maneuvers, and brought it abreast of the upside-down Olds. She helped the injured youth into the back seat. He was still managing to make no sound.

Picking up the Luger and the other guns, Shayne backed into the car. He continued to hold the policemen’s eyes as Paula went into gear and roared away.

“I think I can’t talk to you about that,” Paula said. “You have your own aims. I must make sure first if they contradict ours, and in frankness, right now I am in a state of confusion!”

They had come down out of the mountains and turned off on a rudimentary back road, leading south. The springs and shocks on the police car had not been designed for such a ride, and though she kept weaving to stay out of the worst ruts, she scraped more than once.

Each spokelike highway radiating up from the city ended in a ramshackle working-class neighborhood, spreading up into the dry gulches and along the slopes. These were the barrios, nearly unpenetrable tangles of shacks and lean-tos thrown together from odd scraps of wood and flattened metal. Paula skirted one such tangle and proceeded to the next.

She went on. “You have all the guns. You are clever enough and tough enough, certainly, to force me to drive you where you wish. And you haven’t done this. You cooperated in your own kidnapping. So you must want something of us, more than an explanation of a few things that perhaps puzzle you. And for that, you will have to talk to someone more important than me-I am very much one of the rank and file.”

“What’s your top guy’s name, Serrano?”