‘Sorry, Vince,’ Falk’s driver apologized.
‘Not your fault. We’ll just have to improvise. Merge in front of this truck and slow down once the road narrows to one lane.’ The van roared ahead and cut over with only fifty feet remaining in the merging lane.
‘Jack, are you still in position?’
The pickup driver’s voice crackled back in Falk’s headset: ‘I’m right behind him.’
The two eastbound lanes of the highway narrowed to one that was then channeled across the median and onto the westbound side of the road. A temporary concrete barrier was all that separated the two single lanes of opposing traffic. With a concrete wall to the left and a construction zone to the right, most drivers on the twelve- foot-wide strip of road felt like they were running a gauntlet. Nolan eased back on his accelerator, widening the gap between the truck and his beloved pony car. A beat-up red pickup truck closed in from behind, its grille filling the Mustang’s rearview mirror.
Nolan glanced in his mirror at the tailgating pickup truck. ‘I wonder if that guy is related to that jerk who passed us.’
Kelsey eased her seat back. ‘Why?’
‘No reason. he’s just riding my rear close enough to kiss me, and I’d hate to see him mess up my chrome.’
The freeway wasn’t very busy, which provided Falk with the best possible conditions for the hit.
The driver in the red pickup responded to Falk’s request by reaching out through his rear window to locate the quick-release fittings that held a set of cables tightly over the load of hay bales in the pickup’s flatbed. He twisted the fittings and the cables sprang loose. Almost immediately, the bales began bouncing and shifting freely. The driver then ran the pickup over a few nasty potholes, and his load of bales tumbled onto the highway.
‘We’re all set back here,’ Jack reported once the lane of traffic behind him screeched to a halt.
‘Good work,’Falk replied.’Watch for your cue to bump and grind.’
Falk nodded to his driver, who slowed the van to forty miles per hour. In minutes, a quarter-mile-long gap opened between the van and the next car on the road ahead; the four-vehicle procession was completely isolated on the one-lane stretch of highway.
Falk fed a clip into his silenced semiautomatic pistol and flipped the safety off. ‘Keep the van steady while I take out this truck.’
‘I wonder what that bonehead’s problem is,’ Hooks muttered bitterly. ‘First he races up to cut us off and now he’s slowing to a crawl. See if you can get him back up to the speed limit.’
Smith narrowed the gap between his rig and the van and flashed the high beams.’Maybe I can encourage him to pick up the pace.’
As the van drew close to the truck’s front bumper, the rear doors swung open and the truckers saw the gunman.
‘Holy shit!’ Hooks yelled. ‘Back off, Kent!’
The truck’s gears ground in protest as Smith downshifted and braked. ‘You don’t have to tell me twice. I just hope the bastard doesn’t shoot.’
Falk balanced himself carefully on the van’s rear deck and took aim. His first burst ripped into the front wheel on the driver’s side of the truck. The tire disintegrated into a hundred pieces of rubber. The truck’s cab shuddered and lurched into the concrete barrier, sending a shower of sparks onto a car in the westbound lane. Falk watched as the wide-eyed driver fought furiously to bring his rig under control. He then aimed at the truck’s remaining front wheel, shredding it as easily as the first.
‘Nolan, watch out!’ Kelsey screamed as the first pieces of the shredded tires pelted the Mustang like blackened hail.
‘I see it,’ Nolan replied with a focused calm. ‘He must have had a blowout. Hang on!’
Kilkenny’s white-knuckled hands were locked on the wheel as he tried to avoid the flying debris and distance himself from the damaged truck. He braked, only to feel his car suddenly lurch forward. Kelsey jerked in her seat again as the pickup struck from behind a second time.
As the semI’s trailer bounced off the barrier and ricocheted to the open side of the road, the pickup rammed the Mustang from behind at full speed. The car’s taillights shattered and the deck lid crumpled from the impact with the pickup’s concrete-filled steel-pipe bumper. The rear window of the Mustang exploded in a spray of glass fragments.
The pickup backed off and then accelerated again, ramming the pony car into the gap between the flailing semI’s trailer and the concrete barrier. The Mustang’s metal skin howled as the trailer’s rear bumper tore into the passenger door, dragging the car against the concrete barricade.
Back and forth Smith fought, trying to bring his crippled rig under control. He was down to thirty miles per hour, but it felt more like three hundred. He didn’t know what kind of nut would do something like this, but he planned to kill the one directly in front of him. His trailer started to swing again and Smith compensated, struggling to keep his rig upright and on the road. Behind, he felt a strange tugging, as if his trailer had gotten caught in something.
‘Nolan!’
Kelsey’s frantic scream was cut short by a second collision between the semI’s rear wheel carriage and the passenger side of the Mustang. The Mustang’s passenger door caved in, showering her with glass from the windshield and door. The trailer’s rear bumper speared through the Mustang’s left side, just behind the door, and locked the two vehicles together. Nolan and Kelsey were nearly jarred from their seats when the semI’s trailer pounded the car against the construction barriers.
Kilkenny’s shoulder burned with pain after bouncing off his door. Kelsey was flung forward with the impact, her head connecting with the dashboard before she snapped back into her seat, unconscious. Were it not for her seat belt, she would have been thrown across the hood to her death. Kilkenny held on to the wheel, but he had no control over where his car was going.
‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’ Hooks screamed as the entire rig shuddered and nearly jackknifed.
The semI’s nose skipped off the concrete roadway and dug itself into the soft sand of the shoulder. As the front bumper burrowed deep into the ground, the trailer snapped outward like a whip into the median. The semI’s sudden stop sent the fuel inside the tanker rushing forward in a violent swirl that shifted the trailer’s weight off its wheels and into a roll.
As the trailer rolled right, its rear bumper lifted the right side of the Mustang off the road. Nolan leaned inward as the roof of his car scraped along the concrete barrier. Halfway into the roll, the trailer’s bumper pulled loose, leaving the Mustang upended on the driver’s side.
The fuel trailer, still three-quarters’ full, continued to roll as the liquid inside shifted with the momentum of the turn. Hooks and Smith didn’t have time to recover from the jarring stop when their rig rolled onto the gravel bed created for the highway’s refurbished eastbound lanes. Sand and gravel flew into the air as the semI’s nose was pulled free from the ground by the roll. The cylindrical fuel tank ruptured when it struck the ground, pouring hundreds of gallons of fuel into the median.
Gasoline flowed like a waterfall from the broken tanker and soaked into the ground surrounding the over- turned rig. A wave of fuel rushed down toward the cab, where it splashed against the semI’s hot, twisted exhaust stacks. Flames flashed instantly across the surface of the growinG pond of gasoline, until they reached the fumes contained inside the ruptured tanker. The explosion sent a billowing yellow-black fireball into the sky. Hooks and Smith died instantly in the blast-their bodies trapped and incinerated inside the overturned rig.
The Mustang rocked from the blast, shaken enough that it fell back onto its wheels. Kelsey slumped lifelessly in the seat beside Nolan, blood visible from the cuts on her face and arms. Nolan was still groggy from the crash, but he didn’t need to move to feel the bruises that covered his entire body. The pain in his head told him that his skull had bounced off something hard, but at least he was still alive.
He tried to survey the scene outside his car, but his eyes were watery and his vision blurred by the salty blood that flowed from his forehead. Flames and smoke billowed from the fuel truck and he could feel the intense heat of the blaze. Both doors were jammed, and he hoped that his car was far enough away from the inferno. A van stopped on the road ahead and a person got out and started walking toward them. Help was on the way.
Falk didn’t bother to check on the two truckers trapped inside the burning rig; they were already dead. All that remained was to verify that the couple was dead and leave before the police arrived. If they were still alive, he’d finish the job. The hay bales they’d dropped had stopped traffic several miles back from the accident scene,
