“Lower the bus!” Ma Powers shouted.
“Lower the bus!” I screamed.
I’d seen it the moment we’d turned the corner. A road sign in a red triangle: LOW BRIDGE AHEAD, CLEARANCE NINE FEET. About three feet too low. Tim had seen it, too. He took his foot off the accelerator and at once we slowed down. There was a chatter of machine-gun fire from the back of the bus.
“Keep moving!” Ma Powers yelled.
She was cradling the machine gun like a bouquet of flowers. Except that I’ve never seen a bouquet with smoke curling out of the end. Looking past her, I saw that the first of the police cars had reached the turn. Despite our souped-up engine, it was gaining on us. And there were four more right behind it.
“What do I do?” Tim moaned.
“Just keep going—fast,” Powers said. Tim was about to argue, but there was something in Johnny’s tone of voice that made him think again. He gave a little squeak and stomped down on the accelerator. We rocketed forward.
The machine gun chattered again. The road was narrow now, hemmed in on both sides by a wire fence. There was only one way to go and that was straight ahead. But there was the bridge. It was looming up at us, a humpback bridge with a railway line on top. I could see the rails. I was actually looking down at them. At the rate we were going, we would hit it in around thirty seconds. The metal box of the people mover would crash right into the brickwork. I didn’t like to think what would happen to the people inside.
Powers ran back to join his mother—perhaps to warn her. I stood beside Tim, fighting to keep my balance as we bounced over the tarmac, hurtling toward the bridge. He wasn’t even trying to lower the bus. He was too frightened to let go of the steering wheel. Desperately I examined the controls. Why did there have to be so many levers? Ma Powers fired for the third time. And this time she found her target. The siren of the nearest police car died away. There was a screech of tires, a shattering of metal, then an explosion. The bridge glowed red. Twenty seconds until impact.
I ran my hands over the controls, frantically flicking switches and pulling levers left, right, and center. I turned out the lights, opened and closed the doors, lowered the antenna, and adjusted the mirrors. But I didn’t lower the bus. Behind us, Powers was shooting with the pistol he’d taken from the prison. Mother and son seemed to be having a whale of a time. A second police car had moved up to take the position of the first. And now they were firing, too. I tugged at another lever. The ashtray popped out of the dashboard. Ten seconds until impact.
The bridge was right in front of me now, filling up the windshield. Tim was whispering something. I think it was a prayer. I slammed my hand down on the controls. My palm hit the black ball at the end of the lever, shifting it forward. I heard a hiss underneath me. The hydraulic arm had come into operation. At the same moment, the whole bus began to sink like the end of a ride in a carnival.
But would it sink in time? There were only a few seconds left.
“Brake, Tim!” I shouted.
We hit the bridge.
We were just low enough to squeeze through. In fact, the mattresses didn’t make it. I heard them as they were torn free from their bindings and dragged along the roof. Looking back, I saw them plummet into the road behind us, right in the path of the leading police car. It swerved to avoid them, mounted the curb, and crashed through the fence, finally crushing itself against a lamppost. Ma Powers gave a short bray of laughter.
“Good work, kid,” Johnny called out.
But it wasn’t over yet. We’d taken out two of the five police cars. That still left three and already they were moving up on us. Ma Powers let off a hail of bullets. I heard a windshield shatter but they kept on coming. Two of them surged ahead. One stayed behind to keep the back of the bus covered.
The road was wider now. The two police cars had edged forward and separated, so there was one on each side, with us sandwiched in the middle.
“Nick . . .” Tim muttered.
There wasn’t much traffic about at that time of night, but looking ahead, I saw a truck thundering toward us. But with the two police cars on either side, we were taking up all the road. Somebody would have to give.
The truck gave. At the last second, with its headlights dazzling us and the blast of its horn deafening us, it swerved away, left the road, and jackknifed into a field. The truck had been carrying eggs. I know because some of them splattered into our windshield. With the horn still blaring, the truck hit a tree stump, somersaulted, and burst into flames. Later I heard that nobody had been killed. But between us we’d cooked up a fifty-thousand-egg omelette.
We were doing nearly seventy miles an hour by now. Ahead of us, cars were vacating the road as fast as they could—and they didn’t seem to care where they ended up. But they weren’t our problem. We were down at ground level. The two police cars were only inches away, racing alongside us. They had rolled down their windows. Two shotguns were pointing at us, one on each side. Two blasts and Tim and I would have more holes than a colander. We couldn’t slow down, not with the third police car behind us. We were going as fast as we could. We were stuck.
I stared at the nearest policeman, watched his finger tighten on the trigger. For a moment our eyes met and we were trapped in a blue-and-white nightmare. There was nothing I could do.
Nothing? At the last second I slammed my hand down on the controls. The bus rose into the air again. Simultaneously, the two shotguns fired. But now we were above them. The bullets passed underneath us. The police car on the left hit the one on the right. The police car on the right shredded the tires of the one on the left. Both cars went careering off in opposite directions.
Four down. One to go.
But it seemed that I’d pushed the lever a little too hard. Something had shortcircuited. We were no sooner up at the end of the hydraulic arms than we were on the way down again. And that was how we continued, up and down like some crazy jack-in-the-box.
“What are ya doing?” Powers called out.
“It’s broken,” Tim cried.
That was the understatement of the year. Sparks were flashing all over the control box. There was a smell of burning rubber and a wisp of smoke crawled into the air. Up and down. I could feel my stomach protesting. It was trying to go the other way.
Then the fifth police car pulled out and began to overtake us. It was the last one left and perhaps the driver thought he could cut us off. Ma Powers opened her handbag, pulled out a spare cartridge, and reloaded the machine gun. Johnny followed her as she staggered forward to get a better aim. The control box was on fire now. The engine was howling at us to stop. The hydraulic arms were creaking and shuddering as they pumped us madly up and down. I reckoned we had only a few minutes left before the whole thing either broke down or blew up.
Those last few minutes happened very quickly.
One moment we were up. The next we were at the same level as the police car. It was edging ahead, about to overtake us. Ma Powers raised the machine gun. Then I saw the two passengers in the backseat.
“No!” I shouted.
It was Snape and Boyle. I had no idea what they were doing there but it was definitely them. I could even swear that Snape winked at me before Ma Powers opened fire. But I was still shouting when the machine gun drowned me out. I saw the windows of Snape’s car frost over in a thousand cracks. I saw the tires cut to ribbons. I saw the mirrors and door handles spin away into the night. The car veered into us, out of control, then swung away. I watched it spiral into the curb. Then it was as if somebody had picked it up and thrown it. It took off, bounced, then cartwheeled into a telephone booth. A few seconds later it exploded.
They were dead. Snape and Boyle were dead. There was no way they could have survived. And they were the only people in the world who knew that I’d been framed. They were my only way out of this mess. And they were dead.
I could have cried. But I didn’t have time.
There was a sharp bend in the road. I heard Tim cry out. I looked up. He was spinning the wheel desperately. But we were going too fast. He’d lost control. Ma Powers dropped the machine gun. Johnny swore. The people mover, at ground level, left the road, sliced through a hedge, and hurtled toward a building. Tim didn’t even have time to slam on the brakes. Traveling at seventy miles an hour, we smashed into the wall.
At least, the wheels did. But by the time the impact came, the hydraulic arms had lifted us up again. The
