Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

The sickening sound of his own bones breaking was accompanied by a shock wave of nausea and blinding pain that buckled Antravanian at the knees. He opened his mouth to scream, but one of the hands on his right stuffed a balled-up rag in his mouth, stoppering both the sound coming up from his lungs and the bile surging up from his belly. He blacked out for a few seconds and was lying flat on his back on the concrete floor when he opened his eyes. Parkhall was standing over him, straddling him at the knees.

“That was stupid, Mark. But you know now this isn’t a game. There are people who can do exactly what I told you they can. They not only can, they are very willing. I hope there’s no need to call them back to break your other wrist? Or something more critical to your survival?”

Antravanian managed to shake his head weakly.

“Good. There are plenty of security people around who can get you to a place where that arm can be looked after. After that, you go back to your room and take the rest of the day off, and tomorrow, if you need it. I’ll tell everyone you’ve had an accident. When you feel well enough, you can rejoin the group, and you and I can come to an understanding.”

Parkhall and his thugs departed, leaving Antravanian on the floor. The engineer stayed there for several minutes, trying to will away the pain and terror. He pulled the rag from his mouth with his right hand and attempted to call for help, but no useful sound crossed his dry tongue. Gingerly holding his crippled left arm against his stomach, he worked his way to his feet, closing his eyes and gulping air to put down the persistent nausea. Eventually he was able to stagger to the door of the warehouse and out onto the asphalt apron, where he got the attention of a security guard. Antravanian lied to the guard, saying he was injured when he tripped over something and fell.

At a hospital, the wrist was checked by an orthopedic surgeon, who said the break was clean and the healing should be complete. Antravanian was put in a cast, given some pills for the pain, and advised to watch where he walked. He went back to his room to lie down. For the rest of that night and most of Saturday, he stayed in his room, taking medication for pain, calling room service when he got hungry, struggling to decide how to handle the very real nightmare into which he had fallen, unbidden. At one point he almost decided it would be best to go along, but he knew that was a conclusion born more of fear than common sense. So late Saturday afternoon, instead of calling Parkhall and bowing to his demands, Mark Antravanian went to the small desk where he had set up a personal computer and with his one good hand, typed the note McGill would find in his mailbox several hours later.

But when Antravanian went to the lobby to deliver his envelope to the front desk, he was seen by one of the two men Parkhall had stationed there. He was seen again at 11:15, when he left the hotel and drove away. The watcher reported to Parkhall that Antravanian appeared to be heading for the airfield, possibly for the hangar.

So it was when Antravanian made his midnight call to McGill from Hangar Three, believing the phone there was more secure than the phone in his room, Parkhall was standing in the shadows, listening to every word. When the conversation ended, he allowed Antravanian to leave alone, then made a call of his own to the two who had muscled the engineer the day before and kept him under surveillance since. Parkhall didn’t want any more killing. To know it was going on was bad enough. To order it himself was to sink to a depth he’d never believed possible. He would have preferred to pay off Antravanian and bring him into the fold. But now that was out of the question.

Parkhall’s orders were clear and predictable. All the choices but one were gone.

Pace hunkered down in the backseat of Mike McGill’s rental car, up against the wide metal post separating the side from the rear window. In the dark, he wouldn’t be seen, and he could run the side window down enough to hear the conversation.

The two headed east on nearly-deserted Georgetown Pike, McGill behind the wheel negotiating the treacherous curves. A few moments later, Antravanian swung his little Chevy onto the same road, driving carefully with his right hand. His plaster-encased left arm was lying softly in his lap, the constant throbbing in his wrist elevating to real pain over every bump in the asphalt. He nudged the injured arm up against the steering wheel to steady the vehicle as he took his right hand away for a second to flip the rearview mirror to its night-vision setting. Some idiot was driving a van so close it was almost in the Chevy’s trunk, and he was using his high-beam headlights.

Antravanian was driving skillfully, but his mind was less on the road and more on the upcoming meeting at the bridge. In the last hours, his terror turned to fury. He was determined to bring down anyone who would take money to fake an accident investigation.

As he passed through the chic little town of Great Falls and entered the darkness of the oak-and-cottonwood canopy that enclosed the road for the next few miles, he rehearsed what he would say to McGill. When he hit the hilly, curving part of the Pike, he was barely aware of the light-blue Ford van pulling out to pass him. A fleeting question crossed his thoughts about why the stupid driver had waited for a double solid-yellow line when there had been plenty of opportunity to pass on the straightaways behind them.

So certain was he that the driver was drunk, it was almost no surprise when the van slammed broadside into his Chevy. He struggled with his one good arm to keep his damaged car on the road. He stepped on the brakes, thinking if he slowed down, the van would go by. But the van slowed, too, and body-slammed the compact car again. This time Antravanian had more trouble controlling the weaving. Pain stabbed through his useless arm, and the certainty hit him that he had met the occupants of that van before.

Antravanian’s anger washed over reason. His only motivation was revenge as he turned the little Chevy’s steering wheel sharply to the left and slammed into the van.

“You bastards!” he hissed. “Now it’s coming at you, how do you like it?”

He whipped the wheel over and hit the Ford again, but this time a misshapen piece of the Chevy’s front bumper got caught in the undercarriage of the van. The little car was dragged, out of control, about 300 yards down the road. Antravanian fought the drag by turning his steering wheel hard right, away from the truck. When the bumper let go with a bang, the Chevy veered to the right, leaped a low crash barrier and fell into the creek gully bordering the road. It bounced through the thick trees clustered along the creek’s bank, thrown around like a bearing in a pinball machine, and finally came to rest upside down with all four wheels spinning and steam rising from the shattered radiator.

The battered van stopped about twenty yards beyond the point where the Chevy left the road, then backed up until it was directly above the crumpled compact.

The van’s passenger, dressed in a dark jumpsuit, lowered himself to the road gingerly, nursing his own bruises, and picked his way down the embankment toward the Chevy. In his left hand he carried a pencil flashlight, in his right a .357 Magnum. He saw no evidence of life in the car, and when he knelt down and directed his flash through the splintered windshield, he saw Antravanian, dead or unconscious, pinned between the steering wheel and the seat. He worked his way around to the rear of the car and played the narrow beam of light over the exposed fuel tank. He allowed himself a smile when he found a spot at which the tank had ruptured, allowing a thin stream of gasoline to trickle down the hillside. This was almost too easy.