Stephen Hunter - Night of Thunder

Ugh . Now the unpleasantness. When he got to the F-750’s cab, however, the bodies were gone and some Grumley with a thoughtful touch had thrown a wad of NASCAR T-shirts on the blood and flesh matter that the Mk.211 had blown loose from the drivers. It wasn’t so bad; no hearts or lungs or heads lay about, it only looked like several gallons of raspberry sorbet had melted.

He got to work, linking the harness of wires to the Xzillaraider module. He quickly wired the unit to the fuse box, then slid behind the wheel, paying no attention to the three gunshots that ricocheted weirdly off the three-inch glass, leaving a smear, nor to the fact that the whole scene appeared to be lit by an orange glow, as the crashed helicopter blazed brightly in the middle of NASCAR Village. Under normal circumstances, who would not stare at an aviation disaster such as that one? But these weren’t normal circumstances, and Richard was much more fascinated by the blink sequence on the module. Yep, as he turned the key, the lights went through their positions and ended up in the red of high power.

He turned to see the Reverend, a Peacemaker in his hand and a cowboy hat on his head, and Brother Richard said, “When the tires are finished, old man, we are good to go.”

While Richard worked, the old man had been commanding Grumley defenses. His gunners peered three-sixty, looking for targets, and when a poor police officer approached on foot, illuminated by his traffic safety jacket, a Grumley put a burst of 9mm tracer into him. The tracers were a wonderful idea: they made manifest the strength and invincibility of the Pap Grumley firepower.

Pap watched as a sleek streak of 9-mils raced down the corridor between abandoned cars, struck the poor officer, who had not even drawn his pistol, and flattened him. Those that missed their targets spanged off the cars on either side, pitched skyward into the night air. Hootchie mama, it was the Fourth of July! It was Jubilee! It was hell come to earth, fire, brimstone, the whole goddamned Armageddon thing.

“Good shooting,” he yelled, “that’ll keep their damned heads down.”

Then someone poked him in the ribs and he looked down and saw a black hole in the lapel of his powder blue Wah Ming Chow custom suit. Fortunately the armored vest underneath stopped the bullet, but it meant some cop had fired from nearby up on the hill to the right.

“Over there,” he commanded, and two Grumleys put out a blaze of noon light in the form of a half-mag apiece. If they got the cop or not, nobody could say, but the bullets sure chewed the hell out of an SUV in line to get out of a parking lot. Fortunately for all concerned, it had been long abandoned and so if anyone died, it would only have been a copper.

The sound of shots rang out everywhere as Grumleys on the perimeter either saw or thought they saw policemen slithering closer, and answered with long, probing bursts of tracer. Now and then something caught fire, including the rear of a Winnebago, a souvenir stand whose supply of T’s and ball caps went up in flames, a propane heater for a barbecue stand. These small disasters added yet more hellish illumination to flicker across the already incredible scene, part monster movie (the citizens flee the beast), part war movie (the noise, the tracers, the screams of the wounded), and part NASCAR documentary (the tire crew operates at top speed, well choreographed and rehearsed) as the Grumley tire team, having gotten one of the off-road tires rigged, switched sides of the F-750, and went hard to work on the other.

But then a new source of illumination shocked all the Grumleys with its relentless quality. It was a harsh beam of light from a state police helicopter thirty feet up and fifty yards out, catching everything in high, remorseless relief.

“Drop your firearms,” came the amplified order, “you are covered, drop your firearms and-”

“Caleb, take ’er down,” yelled the old man.

“Pap, you sure?”

“It’s copper, boy, they about to fire.”

“Got it.”

Caleb set up the Barrett on the hood of an abandoned car next to the F-750. He shouldered the weapon for the first time, drew it tight to him, and put his eye to the scope-he had no idea, but it happened to be a superb Schmidt & Bender 4x16 Tactical model-and in a second, as he adjusted his eye to the focal length, saw the black shape of the helicopter behind the blazing radiance of the light which was quadrisected by the cross hairs of the scope. He fired. The gun kicked so hard it broke his nose.

“Ow, fuck,” he screamed, thinking, Wouldn’t want to do that again, goddammit.

He put a 650-grain Mk.211 into the helicopter, right through the engine nacelle, and the bird climbed upward abruptly as the pilot realized he was under heavy fire. But then all his linkages went, and from aircraft the thing alchemized into sheer weight, beyond the influence of anything except gravity, and it simply fell from the air, straight down into NASCAR Village, nose forward. There it hit, its rotors chawing up a circle of dust from every bite. It seemed to die like an animal for a few seconds, still and broken, and then it exploded, an incredibly bright, oily, napalmesque four-thousand-degree burn. It lit the scene like day, exposing the fleeing masses, the fallen and trampled, the occasional crouching police officer popping away ineffectively with a handgun from two hundred yards out. Then the glare dulled and subsided, and all detail was lost.

“That’ll keep them boys far away,” yelled the old man.

“I’d like to git me another, Pap,” said Caleb.

“You just wait on it, son, goddamn, them other birds is far away.” And it was true, for a mile out, a number of choppers had settled into orbit.

“Tires done,” yelled a Grumley.

“Richard, we are set to rock out of here.”

“Okay,” yelled Richard from the cab. “Git the boys aboard, all that want to come.”

“Time to go, fellas.”

With that, the Grumleys descended upon the F-750. That is, the armed Grumleys. The tire boys had been well prepped and knew there wasn’t enough room aboard for all of them. Instead, they moseyed to the edge of the cone of light, and there, in darkness, peeled off armored vests, put on new baseball hats, and melted off into the trees. There were a few Grumley cars hidden in outlying spots to which they’d have no trouble proceeding, and would rendezvous later for their split of the swag. But now it was left to Richard and the shooters to get the load out of there.

Richard, in neutral, rode the pedal as his gunmen jumped aboard. Pap climbed into the other seat.

“Four minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. “By God, we are ahead of schedule, don’t think we’ve taken a wound, much less a kill, and nothing left to do but to drive on out of here, Richard. Let them boys shoot at us all they want, ain’t going do no damage.”

Richard shifted from neutral, gunned ahead, battered the car in front away until he had maneuver room. He turned the truck, found an angle between two abandoned cars pinning him on his right, and smashed between them. They fought the strength of his vehicle. The clang of vibrations loosened everyone’s dentures, the metal screamed, but the cars yielded to the pumped-up CIT vehicle. Freed, he turned left, rode the shoulder for fifty feet, then turned right down an access road toward the speedway. This road took him to a bridge over a gully, and he pulled across it. Before him, pristine but not quite deserted, lay the heart of the kingdom, the confluence of courage for sale, engineering genius, soap opera, family feud, grudge, redemption, and failure, along with hats and shirts and signed portraits, the trailers turned to shops, the industrial pavilions, the souvenir and bric-a-brac outlets, the beer joints, and the cash machines that were NASCAR Village. It was the only thing between them and the mountain a mile away.