Stephen Hunter - Night of Thunder

Swagger had no trouble at first, and raced through the streets of Bristol, skewing and fishtailing around curves, zipping in and out of the traffic, as most people were off the streets or, if in their cars, intent on the racing news that had turned into robbery news. But the traffic began to thicken as he got through downtown and headed out the Volunteer Parkway toward the speedway and the civic disaster that engulfed it.

Signs of the disaster were everywhere as he buzzed at eighty down the road; it seemed that signal lights pulsed from every direction, and the traffic soon began to coalesce into something dense and motionless. He diverted to the shoulder but found that congested with fleeing citizens. He veered back onto the roadway and found the lane between jammed cars also impenetrable because of the panicked crowd.

He pulled up, looking for an alternate route from the mess of fleeing civilians and abandoned cars that solidified the parkway before him, when a cop on foot materialized from nowhere and started screaming, “Buddy, get that goddamn thing out of here, do you know what’s-”

But then Bob offered him the magic talisman of the FBI badge, and the man’s eyes slid quickly to the assault rifle Bob wore crosswise down the front of his body, and his eyes bugged.

“You got an update?” Bob said.

“Well, it’s a real bad ten-fifty-two, lots of shots fired, officers down all over the place. They got some kind of cannon or-”

“Can you get through to command on that thing?” He indicated the radio unit pinned to the man’s lapel.

“It’s a mess, I can try.”

“Okay, tell them FBI recommends they get their SWAT units to the mountain overlooking the speedway. They’re going to try to take that truck up there and go out by helicopter.”

“What truck?”

“It’s an armored-car job. They want to take all the baled cash to Mexico or wherever and anybody who gets in their way gets shot up. Now make the call.”

“Sir, we can’t move nobody in there now. It’s a mess, with thousands of civilians in the immediate and we can’t get through ’em.”

“Are there secondary routes to the mountain?”

“Not really. Lots of little streets, but nothing straight that ain’t jammed with cars.”

“Okay, advise SWAT to get as close as possible then move out on foot. It’s the only way. Now someone has to intercept them and I don’t see anybody around so it looks like it’s me. You tell me my next move.”

“You’re it? You’re the whole FBI? A guy on a bike?”

“Better yet, an old guy on a bike. We have people incoming by chopper, I’m advised. Look, we’re wasting time. How do I get to that mountain? Up ahead’s no good.”

“Okay, sir, I’d fight my way down Volunteer best as possible. Too bad you don’t have a siren on that thing.”

“I liberated it from a civilian.”

“You go down and about a mile before the speedway, you’ll hit Groverdale Road. You left-turn on that, follow it to something called Cedarwood Circle. You can cut through somebody’s yard there and you want to find Shady Brooks Drive, it’s not much, but it curls around behind some houses that have probably given their yards up to parking, and that’ll take you alongside the hill before it heads back to the parkway. You may want to leave the road when you’re next to the mountain, as I’m thinking there’s nothing up there except fields and stuff and maybe you can move faster. I’m guessing that’s the only clear way.”

“Got it.”

“You want my body armor?”

“Thanks, officer, I don’t have time.”

“When this is over, I’ll have to cite you for no helmet and driving off roadways.”

“You do that. Mr. Hoover’ll pay the fine.”

“Who?”

“Never mind, son. You get on that squawk box and try and get SWAT where I told you.”

“Yes sir. Good hunting, Special Agent.”

“Thanks.”

With that Bob spurted ahead, trying to ease his way between fleeing citizens, at last finding a fairly clear path between cars on the wrong side of the road. He never got into third gear. Up ahead the disaster played out; it seemed all the squad cars in the world were on the perimeter while the sky above was filled with the lights of orbiting choppers. He became aware of glare against the darkness which could only signify something burning hot, eating up aviation fuel, and that stench seemed in the air as well. He could hear no shots because of the sound of the engine, and now and then a hard-moving foot patrolman would try to wave him down and get him out of there, but the FBI badge made these phantoms depart.

At last he hit Groverdale, which took him down a road lined with modest houses, where each homeowner had turned his land over to parking use. The rate, he saw from the remaining signs, was a hundred dollars a night. Most people had been glad to pay it, and now most of them were in cars, caught in a thermal stew of light, dust, exhaust, cigarette smoke, and body odor, the cars locked bumper-to-bumper. But Bob made pretty good progress just along the edge of the shoulder where the road dissolved into grass and the walkers had moved up a bit, giving him room.

He found himself in a bright cul-de-sac, where the illumination blocked out all sense of what lay beyond. He had a sense, possibly from a new, dead quality to the echoes, possibly from the imposition of a kind of dampness on the sultry air, of a mountain, a huge, green obstacle, close at hand. Between the houses he could see glimpses of NASCAR Village, jiggles of flame, and everywhere, it seemed, emergency service vehicles trying to penetrate the gridlock of wreckage, but hopelessly behind the curve, unaware of what was happening to whom. He thought it was better he had no radio contact with any of this, for the network would have been a crazed blur of garbled facts, glaring misinterpretations, wrong advice, command ego, reluctance. It was like radio traffic during a big attack in that far off fairyland called Vietnam, all but forgotten these days but still the crucible that burned in Bob and made him the man he was.

He cut between two houses, almost put-putting along, riding the throttle grip and clutch grip and the gears between first and second, really defying the bike’s true nature, which was to rush ahead, faster and faster. He skidded, found himself in a backyard where folks clustered around a radio and looked at him fearfully. A shotgun or two seemed to come his direction.

“FBI!” he yelled, holding up the badge. “Which way to the fight?”

A fellow in Bermudas with a beer in one hand and a Remington 870 in the other gestured onward, the direction he was headed.

“You go get ’em,” he screamed. “Let me finish this beer and I’ll be right behind.”

“You’d best sit this one out, sir. You need to protect wife and family and in-laws.”

“Yes sir,” said the guy, settling into a lawn chair. “FBI with a machine gun on a Kawasaki in my back yard. Goddamn, ain’t I seen everything now.”

Bob lurched ahead, through a line of bushes, into another back yard, the bike grinding and chawing through a garden. Threading between houses, he found himself on a still-narrower road-this had to be Shady Brooks Drive, which was really only wide enough for one car, and which was jammed with them, all going the way Bob wasn’t.

But there was room on the shoulder, and he got all the way up into third for a while, at last running free of cars. Then he saw why. The road wound back to the right, toward the parkway, toward NASCAR Village itself, and that small metropolis now blazed like London in the blitz. Something had ramrodded through it, strewing wreckage and ruin everywhere.

But Bob saw clearly that proceeding in this direction would prove nothing, for it would take him only where his enemies had been.