“No.” The driver looked disappointed. “I’m not completely sure who I’m running from, son. But they’re not good people.” He thought again of the murdered couple lying back in the motel, whose only crime had been helping him. It made him angry. His heart started to hurt slightly. Anger and tension weren’t good for him, but at the moment he didn’t much care. Somebody ought to be made to pay for what happened at the motel, he knew. It wasn’t right that something like that should go unpunished.

The boy leaned forward until his chin was practically resting on the wheel. “Now that’s funny.” They were approaching the old steel bridge which spanned the Clear Fork of the Brazos east of town. “Looks like some kind of a roadblock up ahead.”

Jake squinted through the windshield. His eyes were old, but he could still make out the two cars parked hood to hood that blocked both lanes at the far end of the bridge. At the same time a sudden roar announced the appearance of two more cars. They materialized from a parking lot concealed by trees and accelerated until they were tight close behind the pickup. Figures were moving around the two cars parked ahead.

“Wonder what’s goin’ on?” the boy muttered. “Sure a lot of excitement for so early in the mornin’.” He glanced sharply at his passenger. “Hey, you sure you didn’t cross no cops, mister?”

Jake didn’t hear him. The intent was clear. They were going to trap him on the bridge. There’d be no escape this time, no friendly back window to slip through, no familiar old car to speed to safety in. The boy was starting to slow down.

“I’d better see what they want.” His youthful bravado was fading fast and he sounded frightened and uncertain. Beer makes a lousy crutch.

“Damn them,” Jake whispered to himself, haunted by the image of the slain couple who’d helped him. “Damn them all to hell.” His heart was hammering away and the angina stole his breath. The fear of the moment, his anger, an overwhelming feeling of helplessness in the face of relentless pressure, the fact that this time there was no way out, all combined inside him. Maybe it was all those things and maybe it was nothing more than forced repetition, but for the very first time in his life Jake suddenly knew how he made things slipt.

Funny, after all these years, a distant part of him thought. How strange, all those bottles of soda opened for the neighborhood kids, all those erasers mysteriously falling loose from their pencils back in grade school. All the card tricks he’d deftly performed without having to read the instructions. Bottle caps and erasers and wheels and rags.

He suddenly didn’t care much what happened anymore. Twenty years he’d spent nursing a bad heart and now it didn’t seem to matter. He could go at any time anyway, whether he took care of himself or not.

But he wasn’t going to go at the hands of these people, and he wasn’t going to give them what they wanted from him, and he was going to find out what they’d done to his beloved Amanda.

“Pull over,” someone was shouting. The voice came from one of the cars that had pulled out behind them. It was in the wrong lane now, paralleling the truck. “Come on, kid, pull it over. Right now.” The speaker gestured with a pistol of indeterminate caliber.

Its size didn’t matter to the now-pale youngster. “Yes sir. Geez,” he muttered, “you wouldn’t think sneakin’ a few crummy drinks would cause so much trouble.” His right foot started to shift from the accelerator to the brake pedal. The pickup started to slow. Jake roused himself from his stupor and jabbed out with his left foot. The accelerator went toward the floor.

“Jesus, mister,” the kid yelled, “cut it out!” He put his own foot over Jake’s, but that only increased the pressure on the accelerator. He tried to kick Jake’s leg aside, but the oldster resolutely leaned over with his weight and held the pedal down.

The pickup responded with admirable speed. It leapt forward, leaving the paralleling car in its wake and allowing its driver only enough leeway to steer. Jake put a hand to his forehead as something happened.

Behind the pickup the paralleling car started to speed up in pursuit when the rear half of the steel bridge groaned and began to collapse. No one saw the bolts holding the key beams together turn to powder. The men in the car screamed as they went over the edge.

Behind them, the second car which had emerged from the hidden parking lot squealed as the driver frantically crushed his brakes. The back of the car went sideways and it came to a halt at the lip of the abyss. Echoes from the folding steel beams and massive chunks of falling concrete continued to reverberate through the night as they filled in the riverbed. Of the first car there was no sign.

“Oh Lord,” the boy was moaning as he fought to concentrate on his steering, “we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die. Please, mister, you’re gonna kill both of us, please!”

Jake said nothing, kept his foot on the accelerator and his eyes on the roadblock they were approaching. The men who’d emerged from the cars and started down the bridge had stopped when the rear section of the span had started to collapse. Now they scattered as the pickup exploded toward them.

“Get out of the way!” Jake found himself yelling to them. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Get out of the way!” Behind the pickup one of the huge support beams toppled sideways, pulling the middle section of the bridge down with it. Like a falling redwood, the mass of steel fell into the side of the power substation which occupied the lower river bank. The beam and bridge section tore through the chain link fence and smashed transformers like popcorn. The air was filled with ozone and a rippling, crackling sound like frying bacon. Blue sparks and thin fireballs lit the night.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone!” Jake shouted above the thunder that pursued them. His foot was still jammed against the pedal, his leg locked in position so stiffly that no two men could have moved it. He was crying as he shouted useless warnings.

One of the cars blocking their path went WHOOM and scattered itself all over the road. The other car did likewise a split second later, blowing itself backward into the trees. Something had slipt inside their fuel tanks. The disintegration didn’t halt there. Engines and seats and even headlights explosively disassembled in the air, sending metal and glass shrapnel rocketing in every direction.

Several of the stunned occupants of the two cars, who’d expected nothing more difficult than restraining an old man, had the presence of mind to dive for cover. Those sluggish of foot and thought were shredded by the flying debris. That same debris flew lethally toward the pickup but for some reason only dust struck it, particles too tiny even to pit the windshield.

The truck rumbled through the gap where the blockade had been seconds ago. Men lay on the road and in the grass, moaning and bleeding. One lay crumpled in one place, his arm in another.

Two of those who’d been hiding in the bushes dove into the river, heedless of its depth or the presence of rocks. Others melted into the foliage. One had the presence of mind, or perhaps it was instinct, to pull a pistol and start shooting at the fleeing pickup. Jake saw him standing by the side of the road and aiming with both hands. Several shots were fired, but they never reached the truck. Then the gun blew up in the man’s hands, turning them red and ugly. What was left of the tranquilizer rifle and its unique contents burned furiously inside one of the destroyed cars.

The pickup raced unimpeded down the road toward the onramp leading onto the interstate, carrying to safety a badly frightened young man and a sobbing, cursing older one who more than anything else didn’t want to hurt anybody….

Somerset had never heard Huddy sound so tired. It wasn’t just lack of sleep that plagued her lover. There were undertones of defeat in his voice that were utterly alien to him.

“Pull yourself together, Benjamin,” she said into the phone.

“You weren’t there, Ruth,” he said weakly over the line. “You didn’t see what happened.”

“Neither did you, Benjamin.”

“No, but I saw the results, and I talked to the men who did see it, and that’s as close as I ever want to get. How’s the grandniece?”

“Unhurt and sedated,” she told him. “My people got her out of the house without any trouble.”

“That’s a switch,” Huddy muttered.

“She didn’t have a chance to get to her phone, didn’t even have time to yell for her parents.” She could almost see him nodding appreciatively at the other end of the line.

“Should’ve done it that way in the first place,” Huddy mumbled. “But who knew? Who knew?”

“I had an idea that we were being too delicate about the whole business when you called and told me they’d missed him at the motel in Abilene,” she said firmly. “That’s when I decided to go ahead with my own ideas.”

“I’m glad you did, Ruth. I’m at my wit’s end.”

“Come on, Benjy,” she chided him, trying to raise his spirits, “I know we’ve had another setback, but it’s only temporary. Now that we’ve taken the grandniece we can back off Pickett and he’ll do just what we want him to. I know it’s an extreme move, but he forced us into it.”

“Setback? Ruth, this is getting out of hand. I never expected it to go this far. I never expected Pickett to …” He hesitated, stopped, started again. “Ruth, there are dead people all over the place, others scattered around area hospitals working with rotten explanations that the police are bound to see through sooner or later. Now another kidnapping, an innocent crippled girl, I just don’t—”

“Don’t go soft on me now, Benjamin,” she said tightly, trying to keep the anger and disgust out of her voice. “This is no time to think of backing out.”

“I wasn’t saying that,” he replied defensively. “It’s too late for anyone to back out even if he wanted to. I’ve authorized too much, taken the responsibility for too much. We have to see this through to its conclusion.” He was trying to sound confident and only partly succeeding.

“Those of our people who survived were told that a power station blew up. It did, but it was no accident. There are no accidents around Pickett. But it makes sense, and so far the local authorities are buying it. Why shouldn’t they? There aren’t any other explanations. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep the lid on this. Some of these guys saw things out there no power station failure can explain. Eventually they’re going to start wondering, and talking.”

“Do any of them suspect the old man directly?”

“I don’t think so. Materson, maybe. He was in charge of the operation. Local. But he wasn’t there when Pickett broke through so he didn’t see anything. I can keep him quiet. It’s only a question of money. I should’ve been there myself, Ruth.”

“You didn’t have time, Benjamin,” she said soothingly. “Neither of us could have made it up there in time. Now listen to me. We’ve made some mistakes along the way. We’ve had some problems. We can’t shoulder all the blame because we had no idea that the old man had this kind of potential. Frankly, I don’t think he knew it himself.

“When he finds out that his grandniece is missing he’ll turn docile and cooperative, you’ll see. I know I’ve taken an extreme step, but we’re reduced to taking extreme steps. He won’t be surprising us with any more unexpected … what do you call it… disassembling? I think he’s going to be real nice from now on. You ought to be pleased. I’m finally convinced your suspicions about him were right.”

“That’s something,” he admitted. “You’re right, Ruth. There’s nothing to worry about anymore.” He was sounding like his old arrogantly confident self again. “Sorry if I sounded reluctant. It’s just that I never expected things to go this far.”

“How could you? Oh, you’re safe as far as this Abilene business is concerned, aren’t you?”

“You mean the confrontation with Pickett, or the unfortunate business at his motel?”

“Both.”

“I think so. I was nowhere around when they happened.” He didn’t add that he was innocent as far as the grandniece’s kidnapping was concerned, too.