Стивен Хантер - G-Man

He looked in horror as the gunner in the Nelson car yanked his gun off the seat back, where it had rested for aiming through the window, cranked hard toward them, and just at that moment Ed hit the brakes, the Hudson fishtailing out of contention and the opponent’s field of fire, and the heavy sounds of the Colt were only sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The Hudson slid, wavering left, its tires grabbing for traction but finding none, and suddenly it was perpendicular to the direction of the road. Ed fought the wheel, finally got control of the car, but both saw that the gangster Ford had blown the chase open and was opening distance at a relentless pace. Ed cranked the wheel, stood on the accelerator, and rocketed ahead.

“He may have too much on me now, goddammit!” he screamed.

“Go, go, we can catch him!” Sam heard himself yelling, feeling magnificently without fear, his blood hot and angry, his instincts in a place they’d never been before, demanding that they close the gap, get into muzzle-burn range, and kill the gangsters.

“He’s slowing,” yelled Ed.

It was true. For unknown reasons, the Ford was decelerating, careening right, off the road to the shoulder, and then fishtailed down a dirt road, which had suddenly presented itself, where it came to a sloppy, dusty stop maybe fifty yards off Northwest Highway.

They roared by as Sam got the Thompson set again and dispatched a long burst, hoping to rake the car and send all its occupants to the morgue, but his shots started high, and went higher as they passed, while Ed pumped the brakes for control and brought the Hudson to a halt fifty yards or so beyond the turnoff.

“We’ve got him now,” yelled Sam, spilling from the car to get behind it, find cover, and resume firing.

“Bastard put one into the engine!” screamed Les. “I got no speed or acceleration.”

“Pull over!” screamed J.P.

Helen just screamed.

Les fought the dying car through a rocking right-hand turn, and as he transitioned from the pavement to the raw dirt of the smaller road, the windshield went red with dust, which typhooned through the open windows, blanketing everything in choking grit.

Then it was over, as the car came to a halt and its engine finally died.

At that moment the federal car flew by, trailing its own column of ruptured earth, even as one of the G-Men fired a Thompson burst as he passed them. It was bum shooting, and neither Les nor J.P. had time to react, or really any need to, the bullets spending themselves fecklessly far beyond their target.

“We take these guys, we grab their car, we detour into Evanston, it’s fine, it’s no problem,” Les directed.

Helen, crumpled in the rear seat well, screamed again.

“It’s okay,” Les said. “Sweetie, jump out and take a powder. Nobody’s going to shoot the woman. We’ll pick you up in a few minutes.”

Helen popped the door, rolled out.

“I love you, baby,” she yelled.

“I love you too, baby girl.”

She scampered away, as Les, outside on his side of the car, reached across the backseat for the Thompson gun, fetched it by its front grip, and brought it to the shoulder. Behind him, J.P., with the Monitor, squirmed out, slipped down the car body to the front tire, and came over the hood, bracing the heavy weapon on it.

“Try not to hit the car,” Les yelled. “We need it in one piece, and we need to do this goddamned thing fast.”

He brought his own gun up, oriented down the receiver, Lyman aperture to front sight, and confronted the blue Hudson, about a hundred fifty feet out, on the shoulder. It faced due south, while the Ford had died facing due west. Between them, the contested ground was a triangular chunk of grassy Barrington parkland unmarked by trees or bushes, just open ground, its yellow-brown grass alive in the chilly breeze, while, all around, skeletal trees stood in twisted postures, as if arranging themselves for the best view of the fun in front of them. Les squinched his eyes and could make out behind the Hudson the shapes of the two agents as they secured their weapons and set themselves for the fight of their lives.

Les raked a long burst across the rear of the Hudson, kicking yet more dust in the air. He heard the more convulsive blasts of the Monitor, as J.P. squirted a short welcome in the same direction; his bullets being faster and more powerful, they didn’t so much kick the dirt up as detonate it, blowing huge gouts of loam skyward, driving the guy who’d risen over the hood back.

The G-Man with the Thompson fired a long burst that pecked its way down the length of the Ford’s exposed side, blowing out windows, making the thing bounce and shudder as the bullets riddled the metal. Les answered with a mag dump, again aiming his shots into the ground just to the rear of the Hudson, again filling the air with a screen of grit, driving the Tommy gunner back. He wondered where G-Man number two was. No action from the other end of the car yet. Les came over to hunt for him, having just a little angle onto the car’s grille, but the fellow was too canny to make a dumb mistake like that, so Les’s burst was just an exercise in suppressive fire.

He dropped the mag, skittered back to the rear seat, and reached in to grab two more just as a burst of hardball blew through the door, shredding it, letting gray sky in through the new crown of twisted steel.

That was too close for comfort.

He rushed through the mag change, exposed himself briefly, and jacked out a short burst.

“We just gotta hold ’em!” yelled Sam from his position behind the rear of the Hudson, his Thompson trained on the Ford a hundred fifty feet away, as he scanned for targets. “There’ll be cops and State boys and even Charles here in minutes, maybe seconds. Just hold ’em.”

“He’s too far for the shotgun,” Ed yelled back from his crouch behind the wheel at the car’s other end, just below the crest of the hood. “Goddamn, I need a rifle!”

“I have ’em pinned,” yelled Sam. He ducked up, squeezed a small dose of lead off, then dropped down.

Ed had his Super .38 out. He rose over the hood, and though it was a long shot, he knew his chances improved with stability, so he placed the gun in both hands against the flat of the hood, held high, eyes pinned on the front sight, and fired three times at the hunched figure behind the hood whose automatic rifle was sending hellacious strikes toward them. He slipped down immediately after the third shot, hoping that one of these too-long attempts had connected but suspecting they hadn’t. He squirmed farther down and emerged around the grille of the Hudson and this time fired left-handed at the figure with the Thompson, again holding high, again doing everything right except hitting.

“Goddamn,” he screamed as the slide locked back, and he dipped back just as the earth next to him broke into spurts of dirt and grit, sending a sting of debris toward him. He reached into his suit pocket, yanked a Super .38 mag free, and slammed it into the shaft of the pistol grip, came back over again.

He saw Baby Face.

He saw him coming right at them.

“He’s coming, Sam. Hit him, hit him, hit him! He’s coming!”

Les fired, the gun quit on its own, and he looked to see a stovepipe jam at the breach, the shell trapped between the bolt and the breach opening at a weird angle. He pulled hard on the bolt, to no effect, felt a scalding column of steam rise from it.

This has to be over, he thought.

Every second we are stuck here, we are closer to going down.

I have to end this thing now.

He stood, slipped over to J.P., crouched at the other end of the Ford, and slid the Thompson to him.

“Fix this goddamned thing! Here, give me the big one.”

They exchanged weapons, J.P. taking the Thompson, looking at it, realizing the magazine follower had jammed the shell up too quickly. His quick fix was to hit the mag button and drop the defective mag, even as Les gave him a new twenty-round magazine. He locked it in, found the bolt free, drew it back.