Stuart Woods: Heat

He picked up his gear and got out of there. He was soaked up to the knees with gasoline.

Early on, he had decided not to go out the way he came in. The tunnel was too close to the gasoline tanks, and if he made some miscalculation, and the place went up while he was still in the tunnel, he would be fired from it like the human cannonball at the circus — that, or the mountain would simply collapse on top of him. There was a better way out, he was sure of it.

He charged down the steps to the lower level and ran toward the rear of the structure, toward Jack Gene Coldwater’s offices. He realized that the hallways were all slightly inclined, and he could hear gasoline pouring down the steps behind him. He checked his watch; two forty-seven; thirteen minutes left. He didn’t like the number.

He ran through the suite of offices outside Coldwater’s and came to a stout set of doors, locked. He hadn’t counted on this, and he didn’t want to take the time to drill. He put on the night goggles for protection, aimed the Uzi at the lock and emptied a clip into it. The wood was splintered, but nothing had budged. He inserted another clip and tried again. Still holding. The final clip did it; the lock fell from its casing, and the doors swung open.

Jesse went straight to the false bookcase and moved it back; he found a steel door identical to the one in Coldwater’s study. He heard a trickling noise and looked down; gasoline was streaming into the room. Too late to use the Plastique; not the Uzi, either, even if he had had the ammunition. The lock was brass, though; it shouldn’t make sparks.

He got out the drill and started on the cylinder. It was tougher, though, than the lock to the generator room, and the drill began to falter. He looked at his watch. Six minutes to go. He dug in the tool bag for the spare battery for the drill, found it, ejected the old one and snapped in the new one. The drill came to life again. Half a minute later, the cylinder gave. He put down the drill and rammed the door with his shoulder. Apart from bruising his shoulder, nothing happened.

Jesse picked up the sledge and went to work on the door. Finally, it gave. Two minutes to go. He placed the remainder of his Plastique on the floor, put the two incendiary grenades next to it and set the timer, then he grabbed his flashlight, the drill and the sledge and ran through the doorway, pulling the steel door shut behind him. The tunnel sloped downward steadily, and there were no steps, so he could run quickly. He stopped thinking about the time, he just went as fast as he could. He had covered what seemed like about a hundred yards when the tunnel suddenly turned ninety degrees to the left and came to an end. The steel door was in front of him.

Forgetting about the noise, forgetting about everything, he dropped the sledge and, holding the flashlight in his mouth, put the drill to the lock and leaned on it. The bit skidded off the lock and hit the steel door with a clang. He started over. This time the bit seated, and he was boring away the brass. He put all his weight and strength against the drill, desperate to get through, and, a moment later, the drill and the cylinder came out the other side.

He picked up the sledge and began wildly banging at the lock. He hit it six times, then eight; on the tenth blow the door gave, pushing the false bookcase before it. He stepped through and found himself in Jack Gene Coldwater’s study.

“ I made it!!! ” he screamed at the ceiling.

“You made what?” Coldwater’s voice answered.

Jesse opened his eyes and found Coldwater and Pat Casey staring at him; both were holding guns.

“Well, Jesse, I wondered what all the racket was,” Coldwater said. He motioned Jesse to move away from the tunnel door. “That escape route was meant for me; I never expected anyone else to use it. Tell me, what are you escaping from?”

Jesse stared at the man, mute. The pistol was still in his belt, but he could never fire it in time.

“I think it’s time you told me who you really are,” Coldwater said. He sounded very disappointed.

Jesse found his voice. “I’m the heat, Jack Gene, and you’re burnt.”

Coldwater raised his pistol and pointed it at Jesse’s head. “Then you’ll have to join your colleague, Mr. Bottoms,” he said. He thumbed the hammer back.

Then, from somewhere deep inside the mountain, came a deep rumble, and the floor underneath them shook.

Casey was the first to speak. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

Coldwater looked at Jesse questioningly, and, as he opened his mouth to speak, there was a loud roar, and the room shook like a baby’s rattle. Beams crashed to the floor, and dust filled the air.

All three men were thrown to the floor, but Jesse was the first to his feet. He did the only thing he could do — never mind that they were fifty feet above the ground — he ran hard toward the windows at the end of the room and dove headlong through the glass.

Jesse thought as he fell. Fifty feet. He couldn’t survive that in one piece. Then he hit the tree. It rose a good thirty feet out of the ground, leafless, in its winter mode. Jesse, upside down, grabbed at branches, trying desperately to slow his fall. He tumbled, hit larger branches, held on to smaller ones, and suddenly, he was on his back in three feet of accumulated snow, wondering what had happened to him. A gunshot cleared his mind of fog. He rolled over and, clawing at the snow, got to his feet and ran toward the road, pulling the night goggles on as he floundered forward.

There were more gunshots and the soft “plop” that came when one struck the snow, but they obviously couldn’t see him; they were just hoping for a strike. Jesse’s mind was on something else, anyway; somewhere around here was a plastic bag with a million and a half dollars in it, and he was going to find it if he had to go through a gunfight to do it.

His pistol, amazingly enough, was still in his belt, and he drew it, just in case, to give himself the extra half-second. He stopped and looked around, and there it was, stuck into the snow like a bottle of champagne in a wine bucket. He snatched up the plastic bag and headed for the road. Then he stopped. He heard the front door of the house open and footsteps on the plowed driveway. Coldwater and Casey were in pursuit on foot.

They would think he was headed down the mountain, so he climbed a retaining wall of snow-covered boulders, ran across the drive and headed up the mountain, struggling through the snow. It was only twenty or thirty yards, he knew, even if it seemed like a thousand.

He made the clearing, and the truck was still there; he was afraid the mountain might have fallen on it. Then the vehicle became easy to see, because the sky was filled with light. He hit the snow, flat on his face and waited for the shock wave. When it came, it rocked the truck so much that he feared it would turn over. That explosion had been the gas tanks, he was sure, but they were on the north side of the mountain, thank God.

He got to his feet, got into the truck, turned it around and headed for the road. When he got there he turned off the engine and coasted down the mountain. Lesser explosions were going off, now, but they were increasingly behind him. Then, ahead, he saw a man in the road. It was Coldwater, and he was in a marksman’s crouch, aiming a pistol at the driver’s side of the truck.

Jesse ducked just as the windshield went white. He was driving from memory, now, trying to stay in the road. He heard Coldwater shout an obscenity as the truck passed him, then Jesse shoved the truck into gear and gave the engine a rolling start. No need to be quiet now.

He stuck his head up for one second and punched frantically at the windshield, breaking out a hole that let him see, and just in time to make a sharp curve. As he did so, a round through the rear window sprayed him with broken glass. Jesse floored the accelerator and concentrated on his driving. At least two more shots struck the cab of the truck, and then he seemed to be in the clear. He passed the church and turned right, and as he did, he was greeted with an improbable sight. Two vehicles passed him going the other way, one a milk truck, the other an eighteen-wheel Mayflower moving van. He had already done their job for them, and he was glad he hadn’t met them on the mountain road.