Stephen Hunter - Night of Thunder

They waited, and then Julie pulled up in a rented red Ford passenger van. The door popped open, and Miko hopped out and threw herself at Nikki. The two daughters embraced.

“Your daddy,” said Nikki, “your daddy is still a tough old bird, sweetie. I fear for the boys you start bringing home in a few years.”

“I don’t like boys,” says Miko. “I like my daddy.”

“She’ll sing a different tune pretty damn soon,” said Bob.

Gingerly, Julie and Bob got Nikki, still a little fragile despite her protestations, into the backseat of the van. Julie got in next to her, got her seat belt on, and Miko got into the front seat. Bob climbed into the driver’s seat, engaged the engine, and pulled out for the long, last trek up I-81 from Knoxville to Bristol.

Brother Richard watched them, listening to his iPod.

Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?

Run to the sea, but the sea it’s aboilin’,

Run to the moon, but the moon it’s ableedin’,

Sinnerman, where you gonna to run to,

All on that day?

He was parked two blocks back in a recently stolen Dodge Charger, 6.7 liter Hemi V8, the car idling smoothly, giving no evidence of the 425-horsepower beast under its hood. He’d been on the Swaggers for three days now, knowing that sooner or later Nikki would leave the hospital. He knew they’d rent a van, and he ID’d the handsome woman who was the mother of the girl he had to kill.

Now he watched the little scene at the hospital doors, so sweet, the theme of family wholeness after an ordeal, the subthemes, the heroism of the father, the faith of the mother, the weird special talent of the daughter, the innocence of the younger child. But he wasn’t thinking about the family or themes; he was thinking tactically, of details involved in the action ahead. He knew that no matter how well the van was driven by this extremely competent man, it was too tall, too slow, too stiff, had too high a tipping point, to stand up to the assault of his Charger.

He knew so much. He knew which route they’d have to take to the I-81 ramp, and he knew exactly where he’d take them, right after Exit 66 and its outlet mall, where the traffic would be thinner, the road straight, the embankment low, and the precipice steep, and the jolt would force the van over and down it would go, bouncing, bouncing, snapping the spines of all inside.

I never meant to do a family, he thought, but I am the Sinnerman, and that girl has seen my new face and when she remembers, I am done. That’s what the Sinnerman does. He does what is necessary.

Bob drove through traffic idly, looking neither left nor right, paying no particular attention to anything. He turned a corner, then had a sudden inspiration.

“I could use a nice chocolate Softee,” he said.

“Daddy, you’ll get fat.”

“I’ll get a Diet Softee then,” he said, laughing.

He pulled into the immediate left, a convenience store parking lot.

Julie said, “Okay, everybody out.”

“Mommy, I-”

“No, no, just out, out, fast.”

There was something new and hard in her voice.

She shepherded the two girls, but not into the store for the treat, but instead into another rental, a car, where she directed them to lie low.

“Mommy, I-”

“Do it, honey. Just do it now .”

She turned back into the cab of the van, where Bob had cinched his seatbelt tight.

She made eye contact with him, and spoke not with love but with the mission-centered earnestness of officer to sergeant.

“This time, get him !”

All of a sudden, they turned right, just as he was himself caught in an unexpected snarl of traffic. Agh! They’re getting away. Brother Richard felt a spurt of anger. He could control so much, but not traffic. But just as swiftly it cleared up, and he darted ahead, took the right-hand turn and saw that they’d pulled into a convenience store, probably for a Coke or something, and were now pulling out, back on the road. He idled by the side of the road, let the van put some distance between them, then cut back into traffic and began his leisurely stalk.

He stayed far behind, occasionally even losing visual contact. But he reacquired the van as it pulled up the ramp to I-81 North. Again without haste, he let some distance build, took the ramp, and slipped into traffic. There it was, maybe half a mile ahead, the red van, completely unaware of his presence. He accelerated through the gears, the Charger growled, shivered at the chance to show off its muscularity and all 425 of its horses, and Brother Richard felt that octane-driven bounce as the car flew ahead, pressing him into the seat.

The miles sped by, the van always in the slow lane, holding steady at fifty-five, Richard a mile back, forcing himself to keep his power-burner at the same rate. He’d lose the target on hills or turns, but it was always just there, ahead of him, easily recoverable. The exits ticked by, until at last, almost an hour later, Exit 66, with its much-ballyhooed promise of consumer paradise at cut rate, took the majority of the northbound cars.

We are here, he told himself. We are where we have to be. We are Sinnerman.

He had them. The road was clear, no Smokies had been seen in some time, the odd trailer truck or SUV dawdled in the slow lane, now and then a fast-mover passed too aggressively in the left-hand, speeder’s alley, but not with any regularity.

He turned up the music on his iPod, that continual loop of the old spiritual, with its image of Armageddon, its sense of the endings of things, its image of the Sinnerman in all his glory, finally facing his ultimate fate, the one this Sinnerman was now about to make impossible by destroying the one living witness to his deeds and face.

He hit the pedal. The car jacked ahead. Clear sailing, only the red van stumping along across the ridge lines of the bland North Tennessee landscape with its anonymous farms and low hills. The car sang as it ate up the distance, alive under his touch as all cars always had been. He closed fast; they had no idea the Sinnerman was on them.

It was just like all the others: the blind-side approach, the perfect angle, the perfect hit just beyond the left rear quarter panel, the satisfaction of the thump as metal hit metal at speed, possibly a flash of horror as the doomed driver looked back, even as, predictably, he overcorrected as he felt control vanish and the side of the road beckon, not realizing that the overcorrection was the killer. Then the weirdness visible in the rearview mirror as the car twisted and lost traction, always seemingly in slow motion, and began to float as it separated from the surface of the planet. Once it floated, it pirouetted, almost lovely for a thing so full of death. Then it hit, as gravity reasserted its command, and bounced, jerked, spun, disintegrated, throwing up heaps of dust. Possibly it disappeared, going off a precipice or down an incline, but it didn’t really matter, for the velocity-interruption of the strike of car to ground produced more torque than any human body could withstand, and spines, like toothpicks or straws, snapped instantly. If the car hit a tree, hit a rock, hit an abutment, burned, shattered, splintered, erupted, it didn’t matter. Its cargo was corpses by the time the ultimate worked itself out.

He had them he had them he had them. He was in the blind spot, he found the angle, he veered for the fatal smash-

Where you gonna run to, all on that day?

A curiosity. Unprecedentedly, before he struck, the van disappeared. No, it didn’t disappear, it braked hard but well, instantly jettisoning its speed, and in a nanosecond was out of the kill zone as he oversped. But as it disappeared, it also revealed. That revelation was another vehicle, just ahead, so close to the first that it had been hidden by the height of the van. In another nanosecond Brother Richard discovered that it was a Dodge Charger like his own, only glistening black, the V8 6.7 liter Hemi, 425 horses raring to go.