“No reason to go faster. No one’s chasing them. No point getting nabbed for speeding and all the aggravation that might ensue,” I said.
“Ensue,” Hawk said. “We riding on top of a fucking speeding truck with six armed guys in it in the fucking dark and you talking about ensue.”
“I’m going to shoot out a tire,” I said.
“They’ll think the gunshot is just the tire blowing.”
“I hope so,” I said. “And I figure the guy’s a good driver or they wouldn’t have him driving Russell.”
“So he won’t panic and roll the van,” Hawk said. The conversation was slow as we took turns talking into each other’s ear.
“And when he slows down we jump off and get out of sight, and when they all get out to change the tire we make our move.”
“Which is what,” Hawk said.
“We’ll see,” I said. “Hang on to me.”
Hawk held the rack bar with one hand. With his other he took hold of my belt. I twisted out over the edge of the moving van and looked down at the black road rippling by below me. With my left hand I clutched the roof rack, with my right I edged my gun out. I arched myself farther out away from the van, halfway off the roof, held by my grip on the rack and Hawk’s grip on my belt. I struggled to be steady, the muscles in my lower back were cramping. The position was nearly impossible. I tightened up my stomach and strained all the muscles in my body to hold steady and aimed and shot out the rear tire on the driver’s side. Almost at once the van began to swerve, the decompressed tire thumped loudly and the van heeled over toward the driver’s side as it lost its level. Brakes squealed. I was concentrating all I had at not dropping my gun. I could feel myself slide a little farther out as the van swerved again and then the brakes caught and it slowed, still swerving, and bumped off the road onto the shoulder. Hawk let go of my belt and I fell headfirst off the van and hit the ground and held on to the gun and rolled twenty feet down the road shoulder, into the ditch that ran beside it. Hawk landed silently and in two steps was beside me. We scuttled along the ditch, on all fours as the van careened to a halt, on the shoulder. There were weeds in the ditch.
We were ten feet down the ditch from them in the dark when the driver’s door opened and the driver got out. He walked back and looked at the blown tire, then he walked back to the door.
“It’s blown, Russell. The jack and the spare are in the back under the luggage.”
Someone in the van said something we couldn’t hear. Then the side door of the van opened and Russell got out. He went back and looked at the tire.
“Only flat on one side,” he said. He walked back to the open door. “Okay,” he said, “everybody out. Got to jack up the truck and change a tire.”
Susan leaned out, took Russell’s hand, and stepped onto the highway.
“Leave the guns in the van,” Russell said. “Don’t want some state cop to come by to help us and see six guys with machine guns.”
The bodyguards piled out of the van and stood along the highway looking at the van.
The driver went back to the rear door and opened it.
“Somebody gonna help me?” he said.
“Curley,” Russell said, “you help him. Rest of us will check out the heavens.”
He stood beside Susan. “Like those stars, baby? Romantic, huh?”
Susan didn’t say anything. She stood quietly beside him. The four bodyguards stood near them at the front of the van, while Curley and the driver unloaded the luggage.
I touched Hawk’s arm and pointed toward the two unloaders. He nodded and moved back down the ditch soundlessly. I edged in the other direction so that I was ahead of the van. When they finished with the luggage, the driver deployed the jack and the spare, while Curley squatted with the lug wrench and loosened the flat. The driver jacked up the van and then squatted beside Curley while both of them removed the bad tire. As they were in the midst of this Hawk came silently out of the ditch. He hit Curley across the base of the skull with the barrel of his gun and kicked the driver in the face. Curley’s shout of pain turned everyone toward him and I scrambled out of the ditch behind the others and put my forearm under Russell’s chin and my gun hard into his ear. From the back of the van Hawk, in a half crouch, aimed his gun at the remaining guards.
“Susan,” I said, “step away from the group.”
“My God,” Susan said.
I said it harder. “Step away.” She did.
“You four,” I said. “Facedown, on the ground, hands locked behind your head.”
The four bodyguards looked at me without moving, Hawk shot the one closest to Russell. The bullet hit him and spun him half around and he bumped into the van and slid to the ground leaving a smear of blood on the side of the van.
“On the goddamned ground,” I said and the three guards still standing dropped to the ground, facedown, and put their hands behind their heads.
“Spenser,” Russell said. It wasn’t a question.
“You finish the tire,” I said to the driver.
“I’m hurt,” he said. He was sitting on the ground with his face in his hands.
“Change it,” Hawk said softly and the driver squirmed around and got to his knees and started on the tire. Curley was on his face with his hands pressed over his ears as if he had a headache that any sound would pierce. He rocked slightly as he lay there.
