the site. Shayne had once spent a day in a payloader, checking on a time-sheet swindle, with a driver who could pick up a cigarette butt with a flick of his huge bucket. He had learned the principal moves, but he had to fumble. The bucket lifted and dropped as he got the wrong lever. The machine, he knew, had a top speed of forty miles an hour, but it was slow building up. He couldn’t hope to overtake a Detroit car on a straight, smooth road. This track, however, was anything but that. He was in third with two more to go, coming up fast. The Cadillac went slithering far out on a turn. Shayne, with his tight turning radius, came up behind it before it could recover.
He lifted the bucket and threw the wheel over sharply.
The big bucket slammed into the Cadillac’s fender, spun the car around, and banged it hard into a parked truck. Shayne was braking and sliding. The bucket’s momentum whipped him around. He reversed and came back, bucket down. He turned and set. He lifted the bucket and brought it down with crushing force on the car’s front end, sending the rear wheels high in the air. One tire blew.
The nearby radios all shouted at once, “Stay in the car. I want to see three guns.”
He saw one at once, thrust out the nearest window. The bullet went through his windshield. He cut the lights and dropped to the ground. He didn’t need to capture all three. One would be enough.
He faded back through the parked equipment and began to work toward the Cadillac’s taillights, which continued to burn in spite of what had happened to the rest of the car. Almost there, he reached into a truck cab, snapped the headlight knob, and pushed it back in at once, having seen one of the masked figures on top of a bulldozer blade. Shayne ran straight at him in the darkness, colliding with him as he came down. Shayne had the advantage. He knew it was an enemy, but before the other could shoot, he had to be sure that Shayne wasn’t one of his colleagues.
Shayne chopped hard at a forearm and heard the gun land some distance away. Getting the man around the chest, Shayne ran him backward. They had to collide with something soon, and they did-the side of a truck. The curve of the fender caught his opponent at the base of his spine. He gave a high squeal of pain or dismay. As his head came forward, Shayne clubbed him with a hard rising left. The heavy mask took the force out of the blow. The tight cap came off in Shayne’s hand, and he had an impression of an abundance of hair. He went to the body, getting in two punishing punches before he was caught on the back of the head with something hard swung with considerable force.
He went down, already starting his roll. He pivoted and went under the truck.
“Here!” somebody shouted.
As he came back out, Shayne banged against a moving body. They grappled for an instant. Something touched him on the side of the face, unmistakably the muzzle of a gun.
All the lights flashed on at once. There were too many guns in this fight, all on the wrong side, and Shayne went back under the truck. He saw running feet, a masked face, a gun.
He struck his shoulder painfully against the hump of the axle as he rolled. Another gun went off somewhere else, and the figure looking in at Shayne pitched sideward, making a hurt sound. A hand came down and pulled him to his feet. Shayne counted legs. He got to five. There must have been one more he missed.
He pulled around, seeing movement in another direction, and saw a bicycle wheel. Frieda was back. He waited for her to find him.
The others were moving away. After a time, she called his name softly. Crawling out, he went toward the sound. They met at the wrecked car.
“Three of them. You hit one. Where the hell are the cops?”
“Coming.”
Taking her hand, he pulled her to the payloader. In the high cab, he started the engine but left the headlights off, and picked up the transmitter.
His own words came rushing back at them from all sides. “Give up. There’s no way you’ll get out of this. Give up.”
“I’m impressed,” Frieda said when silence returned. “Why aren’t they?”
“I heard them say they killed somebody. So they’re going to try to get by us. What happened with Gold?”
“I couldn’t stop him, Mike. He went straight through the barrier. Caved in the whole front end, but he kept going.”
“Here they come,” Shayne said, bringing up the lights. “Give them a couple of shots to keep their heads in.
Shayne had guessed the direction wrong. The payloader had four gears in reverse. He started at the top of the range instead of the bottom and stalled. The other vehicle, a light-duty tow truck, was headed away from the highway. Shayne came about and ran up quickly through the forward gears. The tow truck hit a swinging gate and went through without slowing.
“We won’t catch them in this,” Frieda said.
“I don’t see anything faster.”
He reversed and backed up to the control trailer. Inside, he turned on the lights and found the phone. He had to look up the number. After that, he listened to the phone ring for some time before a voice said, “Highway Patrol.”
“You got a call about a break-in at the Homestead construction site. They’re in a tow truck traveling east on a dirt road out of the interchange. The road’s not on the map. It must come out by the air base. Three people, and they’re armed.”
“The trouble is,” the voice said, “I already dispatched all the cars. They’re coming in from two sides. I know that road, but I couldn’t get anybody in there in time to cut them off. Who is this calling?”
Shayne replaced the phone slowly.
“No?” Frieda said from the doorway.
“Too late. But that’s all right. We know a couple of new things, and we have Canada.”
“We have Canada,” Frieda repeated. “What good does that do?”
“When he wakes up, he’ll think we’re the ones who kidnapped him. That opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities. Let’s get him out of here.”
Frieda went for the van while Shayne examined the Cadillac. The blows from the bucket had knocked the body out of square, and neither of the rear doors would open. Canada was firmly wedged between the two seats. He was giving off a strong smell of chloroform. Shayne was about to back out. Then he leaned all the way in and picked an empty syringe off the floor. He sniffed it. If Canada had been given a full load of this, he would be out for the rest of the night.
At first, Shayne considered getting a wrecker and taking the whole car. That would still leave the problem of getting the big man out somewhere else, so he swung the payloader into position, coming in at an angle with the bucket all the way down. The sharp front lip dug deep beneath one of the Cadillac’s rear tires. Shayne lifted straight up, flipping the big car over on its side. Then he raised the bucket, lowered it onto the car, and stepped up the downward pressure slowly, checking at intervals until the body was back in square. He unslung a long double chain and hooked it to the frame between front and rear doors. He lifted; the Cadillac came up easily, not exactly in balance. The door could be opened now, but Canada was still jammed. Shayne remembered a jerking technique which the operator had used to shake sticky materials out of the bucket. He swung the big car over a sand pile and jerked the lifting lever forward and back quickly, producing a powerful grating shake. The Cadillac danced and jangled at the end of the chain. After the second shake, Canada came tumbling out to a soft landing in the sand.
Shayne was getting the hang of. it now. He worked the lever again, dropping the bucket sharply, which dislodged the hook. The Cadillac, like a mouse tossed by a cat, flew through the air and ended up on the gravel bank. At that point, it had probably lost most of its resale value.
“A marvelous toy,” Frieda called up. “And we ought to be going, Mike.”
Shayne meanwhile had continued to improve on his original idea. He turned the bucket completely upside down, swung hard, and caved in one corner of the big equipment trailer, partially jarring it off its blocks. He worked the bucket edge into the opening and came back, peeling off one of the side panels. He tilted the bucket forward. Jumping down, he climbed into the trailer, which was brightly illuminated by the payloader’s headlights. He gutted it completely, throwing everything into the bucket-torches, jackhammers, welding machines, drills, hand tools, one huge payloader wheel and tire. Frieda had the van in position with the rear doors open. Shayne swung the bucket
