Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [86]
Peering through a stack of dead trees and stumps the logging companies had dumped twenty years earlier, Zak found a perfect spy hole from which to observe the Land Rover 150 feet away. He watched as Scooter and Ryan Perry got out and took up the identical positions Muldaur and Zak had abandoned moments earlier. Scooter had a rifle in his hands.
Zak looked down at his crocheted cycling gloves and realized his hands were shaking. He couldn’t believe how angry he was.
From time to time Scooter would jerk the rifle to his shoulder and peer through the scope as if practicing to shoot at a moment’s notice. Zak turned to Muldaur and whispered, “You fart this close, they’re going to hear it.”
“I’ll make it sound like a 12-gauge,” said Muldaur. “We can get away while they’re ducking for cover.”
“You guys are gross,” said Stephens.
“I have an idea,” said Muldaur. “If they go down the hill, we’ll follow them. It’s a narrow track, but if we can get in front, we might get them to chase us.”
“Chase?” whispered Stephens. “Are you nuts? Why would we put ourselves in the line of fire?”
“Look how steep that road is. Scooter’ll crash trying to keep up.”
“What if he doesn’t? What if we crash?”
“It’s too chancy,” said Giancarlo, who was their best descender and whose opinion in this matter Zak valued above the others’. “Maybe one guy could pull it off, but even that would be dicey.”
“That’s why they won’t be expecting it,” said Muldaur. “It’ll drive Scooter insane to see two of us come past. And that Land Rover is high and tippy. You saw him last night. He’s a crappy driver.”
“He got super-pissed when we beat him,” said Zak. “If we did it again, he would really be mad.”
“I think it’s a bad idea,” whispered Stephens. “You can beat them down, maybe, but at the bottom the road runs flat along the river for a good bit before it gets to the bridge. If they don’t crash, they’ll catch you on that section.”
“If we do it right they’ll crash,” said Muldaur. “Somebody come with me.”
“It’s suicide,” said Stephens.
Muldaur looked at Giancarlo, who said, “My leg. I can’t do it.”
“Zak?”
“Chase them down the hill?”
“One of us on either side. Scare the piss out of them.”
“They’ll shoot at us when we come by.”
“They’ll be lucky if they keep all their teeth in their mouths going down that mountain.”
“So will we.”
“Are you coming with me?”
“I wish we knew the road better.”
When Scooter and his companion got into the Land Rover and disappeared slowly over the lip of the mountain, Muldaur pedaled through the weeds and rocks to the road. By the time Zak caught him, he’d already reached the juncture where the road headed downhill. Zak took the wheel rut on the right side of the road, while Muldaur took the one on the left.
38
“This thing just doesn’t seem right,” said Perry, holding the armrest on the door with one hand, bracing himself against the dashboard with his other. In an attempt to further wedge himself in, he had one foot on the seat and his knee in his chest. The Land Rover was rocking so violently Perry felt like a shoe banging around inside a washing machine. He’d already bit his tongue and smacked his elbow on the window, and now that Scooter was beginning to pick up speed, he’d fumbled for his seat belt so many times he gave up. It was all he could do to keep from bouncing through a window and landing on the road.
This was by far the worst road they’d seen so far—and they’d been on some doozies—rocky as heck, the pitches changing every fifteen or twenty feet, off camber at the worst times, with more frequent and rockier rain diversions across it than anything they’d seen until now. Much of the road surface seemed to be granite, slick and hard, and there were loose rocks everywhere. There was no telling how many months or years since anybody drove it.
The only good part was that Perry was able to see the