The door on my side opened, and someone leaned in. 'Remove the blindfold,' Hassan's voice ordered. It was ripped ungently from my eyes. When my vision adjusted, I saw a four-lane highway divided by a median. The night air felt damp. Running figures were unloading sawhorses from the panel truck across the road and setting them up on the highway on our side of the road in the pattern I'd indicated at the warehouse. Other figures were carrying weapons from the panel truck. A man handed a Sten gun to Hassan. I reached across my chest and touched the butt of my holstered Smith & Wesson to reassure myself somewhat.
Across the median the lights of the parked panel truck flipped on and off three times. 'Get out,' Hassan said. He still had his half-smoked cigar between his teeth. 'It's coming.'
I picked up the sack containing the torch and the plastic which had been in the seat between us, then stepped out onto the shoulder of the road. A car passed us, and then another, slowly, herded over to the edge of the road by the sawhorses. Another set of headlights, wider spaced, appeared on the upper perimeter of the curve. Hassan grunted and walked rapidly toward them.
A man ran out and placed a sawhorse across the single lane of traffic, sealing it off. There was an immediate shriek of hastily applied brakes as the truck loomed up alongside us. A khaki-clad figure bounded up onto the jump step as the truck came to a stop. The butt of his automatic rifle smashed through the cab window, and the man reversed his gun and leaned inside the cab. The plan called for another man to be holding a gun on the driver from the jump step on the other side, and I was sure that he was there although I couldn't see him.
Hassan strode to the rear of the truck. Both his hands were free as the sten gun was suspended from a shoulder sling. I followed right behind him. From now on I was determined that the stocky Hassan would never get behind me. Just one more straw in the wind as to my future with this group was the fact that Hassan had made no offer of the locker key to where my money presumably awaited me upon the completion of the hijack.
Hassan reached the rear of the truck while the sounds of tinkling glass from the truck's smashed cab windows still echoed in the night air. Across the road a man with a red lantern was busily waving-through traffic going in the opposite direction.
I had expected to be the one to force the door lock, and I would have taken as long as I dared to give Erikson more time to catch up to us by tracing the beeper transmission signal. Instead, Hassan unslung the sten gun and fired a long burst into the lock. It was wasteful but effective. The lock shattered, and we stood there for an instant while spent shells pattered to the roadway like falling rain.
Hassan flung open the doors and scrambled up into the truck. I turned and looked up the road. No headlights were advancing toward us. Around the curve the road had been sealed off according to the plan. I climbed up into the back of the truck and immediately drew my.38. Whatever was going to happen now was going to happen fast.
Hassan was prowling the truck's interior with a three-cell flashlight in his left hand. His right hand cradled the barrel of the sten gun still slung on his shoulder. According to the division of responsibilities outlined by the Turk, Hassan shouldn't have known what he was looking for, but he obviously did. Another indication that I was to be left on the scene as a very dead red herring.
Hassan's flashlight beam moved on past a stack of crates and lingered on a gray package, its shape almost like a miniature coffin. I couldn't see the
Hassan froze in his semi-crouched position. His flashlight went out, but not before I saw the barrel of the sten gun start to swing in my direction. I fired the Smith & Wesson three times. The range was six feet. By the gun's flash I saw Hassan's cigar fall to the truck floor from his slack mouth an instant before his body fell. There wasn't much left of his head.
The machine-gun exchange continued noisily outside. Erikson had arrived, and apparently in force. Right now I was intent upon survival. This was a dedicated group, and I was sure that someone else would be after the AEC package when Hassan didn't appear.
I dragged his body to the rear doors and flattened myself on the truck floor behind it. A voice snapped an impatient question in a foreign language. I waited,38 at the ready. A man started to scramble up into the truck. He paused when confronted by the barrier of Hassan's body, then went backward over the tail gate when I put a bullet into his chest.
A machine gun went off so close to me I could almost feel the heat. Hassan's body jumped and quivered as the slugs ripped into it. Then a waist-high spray of bullets hosed down the truck's interior. I stretched out my arm as I tried to line up on the unseen machine gunner.
The machine gun suddenly became silent. It took me only a second to see why. Through the open truck doors I saw a brilliant pair of headlights rounding the curve as a big car rocketed down the closed-off, outside lane, bouncing sawhorses to one side or grinding them beneath the wheels. The limousine-type car slid to a halt to the rear of the truck. Two men rushed out; one raised his arm, and lobbed a pineapple-shaped object toward the truck. It landed short, in the roadway, and rolled beneath the truck, out of my line of vision.
I knew what it was, but I couldn't do anything about it.
There was a brilliant flare of light as the grenade went off, and a giant hand slammed the truck body upward into my stomach.
My ears rang and my sight dimmed.
I could feel the truck disintegrating around me.
Then blackness descended.
I came to with hands patting my body. 'He's breathing, and I can't find any wounds,' I heard Erikson's voice. 'It might be just concussion. How's your leg, Jock?'
'The bullet must have hit a nerve,' McLaren's voice answered. 'I can't feel anything below the knee.'
'I'm afraid Bill and Eddie are in worse shape,' Erikson said soberly. I rolled over and sat up. 'Well, back in the land of the living.'
My throat was dry and there was something the matter with my ears. 'Glad to see the U.S. Cavalry made it on time,' I croaked.
'On time, hell,' McLaren snorted. He was sitting with one leg stretched out straight in front of him. Erikson had moved to him and was probing at the leg. 'Bayak was in that limousine,' McLaren continued, wincing. 'And whoever was with him recovered the AEC package while you were knocked out. The only break we got was that the grenade explosion blew the truck's gas tank right into the limousine and set it afire.'
I looked outside. I was surprised to find that the twisted truck body was level with the roadway. Up the road I could see the big car burning fiercely.
'We nailed the man who threw the grenade,' Erikson added, 'but not before he got the AEC package to Bayak. And Bayak just got away in the car that brought you here. Can you walk?'
I struggled to my feet and tried it. 'Sure.'
'Then let's go. Jock, hold the lid on things here.'
I looked around for my.38 and found it. Erikson took my arm and hustled me to a car parked in front of the truck. Across the road the green panel truck was also burning. Cars were backed up behind the burning truck, not moving. There was no traffic on our side of the road, either. It would have taken a stupid motorist indeed to encroach on the war zone. A body in olive-drab was crumpled across the median. Another lay in the middle of the road with a submachine gun still grasped in its stilled hands.
Erikson slid under the wheel, started the engine, and slammed the car down the highway. Beside him, I still felt partly numb and I was having difficulty swallowing. 'That car that Bayak's in still has the bumper beeper on it,' I reminded Erikson.
He grunted acknowledgment, took one hand from the steering wheel, and fiddled with a switch on the dashboard. A faint beeping tone sounded. 'There he is,' Erikson said. 'But damn near the outer limit of pickup range.' He sounded worried. 'If we were in our communications car, I could call ahead and arrange a roadblock, but the comcar was shot to pieces by those bastards. And if we stop to call we'll lose Bayak.'
Under the impetus of Erikson's heavy-footed driving the car was doing eighty. The continuous beeping tone became louder. 'We're gaining,' Erikson said hopefully. 'He'll be driving like a law-abiding citizen in order not to attract attention to himself. But with the start he has-'
