Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [104]
After some moments, the Porsche raced away. As they took off, Scooter shouted out the passenger’s window, but it was impossible to distinguish what he said.
When Muldaur caught up, the others were quiet. “Those guys are crazy.”
“God, that was close,” said Zak. “I thought they had you.”
“They almost killed you,” said Giancarlo.
“I think I felt static electricity on my shorts when they went by.”
“Even so, you shouldn’t have fired at them.” Stephens was in the lead, and, because he’d stopped and the trail had narrowed, the others were forced to halt behind him while he spoke.
“I shouldn’t have fired?”
“No,” said Stephens.
“Why not?”
“Because now we’re as bad as they are. The police are going to see that blown-out window and, well, they’re going to think we were the, uh, aggressors. We don’t have any evidence it was otherwise. I mean, think about it. We were more or less guiltless until you did that.”
“Are you kidding? Everything that happened today was their doing. Jesus, Stephens.” Muldaur tried to brush past him, walking his bike with a leg on either side of it, trying to push through until the butt of the rifle caught on Stephens’s Iron Horse handlebars. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were blind and deaf both.”
Zak pushed through the trail on the other side of a tree and got in front of Stephens. “If he hadn’t fired, they’d be gunning us down right now.”
Venturing south-southeast, they made their way through the woods, pushing their way through a couple of sections of heavy underbrush, where they were forced to carry their bikes on their shoulders. After several hundred yards they came upon an overgrown road at the same time as the walkie-talkie in Zak’s rear jersey pocket began squawking. “They shot at us! Those bastards shot at us.”
“You shouldn’t have let them have your gun,” came the weaker response.
“Screw you, Fred.”
Another voice came on: Kasey Newcastle. “Fred? You and Jenn and Roger be careful when you come down. They’re in the woods near the lake. They blew out one of my windows.”
“Don’t forget to leave a couple for me and Jenn.”
“You want them tied up with a bow, or do you want them loose?”
47
Kasey steered through the intersection and headed down the mountain. In all the smoke and confusion, he wasn’t entirely sure where he was, but he had the feeling this was the road that led to their camp. He and Scooter hadn’t spoken to each other since the shots from the woods. It was a first for both of them, having someone fire a gun at them. Scooter still claimed the popping sounds that morning from the cyclist’s camp had been gunshots, but the more Kasey thought about it, the more he believed the pops had actually been firecrackers. He even found what appeared to be tattered firecracker wrapping papers on the ground afterward.
Half a mile down the first slope he located a pullout and, knowing how rare such pullouts were, swung in and parked. Scooter jumped out with the rifle and, using his good arm, laid it on the roof of the Porsche Cayenne. He’d been drinking beer and popping Valium to dull the pain in his shoulder; his eyes were wide and glazed.
“What are you doing?” Kasey asked, as he surveyed the damage to the Porsche. Square pebbles of broken glass littered the blanket covering the corpse in back. Hot, smoky air had been whooshing inside the passenger compartment while they were driving, and the backseat was covered with dust.
“The minute they pop into sight,” Scooter said, “they’re dead.”
“You think you can do that with one hand?”
“They’ll be sitting ducks.”
Kasey was relieved the damage had been only to the windows because, compared with a hole in the sheet metal, they would be easy to replace. His eyes were watering from the smoke, though. It was smoky everywhere, but more so on this downslope, and with the back window gone the air conditioner was no longer filtering out the bulk of it. Now that he’d had some time to reconnoiter, Kasey recognized the road as the one they’d taken that morning when the chase began, the one where they’d cleared