Once a Spy by Keith Thomson Page B

The aluminum housing swung toward him, smashing a spiderweb into his window. He would have jumped if he weren’t pinned in place by astonishment.
    “Eyes forward!” Drummond shouted.
    Charlie rotated his head to see a painter’s van darting from a curbside parking space and into their path.
    Reflexively he heaved the steering wheel counterclockwise, directing the Hippo into the left lane. There were buildings easier to maneuver than the Hippo. He sideswiped the van as the truck thumped into the left lane.
    He barely registered the impact. His world had compacted into a tunnel that contained only the Hippo, the street, and the teal Dodge. Everything else was in soft focus, all sounds were muted. It took a beat to register that Drummond was speaking. “… we’re fortunate to have a vehicle that’s five tons of steel. Otherwise they could T-bone us.”
    Charlie had heard T-bone applied only to beef, but he didn’t doubt its place in car chase terminology. Like Drummond’s take on teal cars, it didn’t seem like the stuff of delusion. So when Drummond added, “Stay as far to the left as you can,” Charlie pitched the Hippo that way and only afterward asked why.
    Drummond’s response was forestalled by a hollow thud. A thin beam of light shone from a new poker-chip-sized hole between them in the steel wall dividing the cab from the cargo hold. A bullet must have first pierced the truck’s rear door, then burrowed through the newspapers. The hole in the windshield told the rest of the story.
    Every last cell in Charlie tensed in anticipation of the next bullet. “I guess they don’t make five tons of steel like they used to,” he said.
    Drummond seemed unusually relaxed. “Did Grandpa Tony ever tell you about his apartment on State Street?”
    Charlie feared a non sequitur to top the Merrimack River. “No.”
    “As you’ll recall, he lived in Chicago during the Capone mob’s heyday. Sometimes he’d hear machine-gun fire, and he’d peek out his window to see mobsters speeding by in a Cadillac that had been shot to Swiss cheese, followed by a police wagon that wasn’t in much better shape. Always though, the vehicles were speeding, and the drivers were alive. The point is, it’s extremely difficult to fire from one moving vehicle at another with any degree of accuracy. In all likelihood, they’re just trying to fluster you. One of us getting hit by a bullet would be a matter of incredibly rotten luck.”
    “Then we’re in trouble,” Charlie said.

17
    “Get over as far into the right lane as you can,” Drummond said.
    “The left lane, you mean?” Charlie wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly; air was howling like a jet through the bullet hole. Also, he thought, albeit based on video game car chases, the idea was to obstruct the shooter’s aim at the driver, not facilitate it.
    “No, no, the right,” Drummond said. “I don’t want to let them get a line on our back right wheel well.”
    As if on cue, the Dodge drifted to that side. The man in the passenger seat nosed a gun out of his window, braced the stout barrel on his side mirror, and tipped it toward the Hippo’s back right tire.
    Charlie clocked the steering wheel. “Is he going for our gas tank?”
    “Apparently.”
    “I thought, outside of B-movies, bullets don’t ignite gasoline.”
    “In general that’s true, but if he can put a hole in the tank, the diesel will gush out and soon we’ll run dry. And in the meantime, if he can blow the tire, all it will take is one spark and—”
    “Big blob of fire?”
    “Essentially, yes,” Drummond said.
    Impressed by Drummond’s knowledge, as well as flabbergasted by it, Charlie nosed right, just as the man in the Dodge pressed the trigger. Drummond’s side mirror filled with the shot’s white glare.
    The bullet struck the Hippo’s rear cargo door, decimating its upper hinge. Already ajar, the door swung outward. The lower hinge kept it dangling from the truck. It hammered the road,