• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

McDade and Ryan glanced over and saw Chase pointing the automatic rifle at them. “We gotta get outta here!” Ryan shouted. McDade ducked, then hit the accelerator. The FBI car surged ahead.

“Let ’em have it!” Nelson shouted, pushing Helen down in the seat. Chase hesitated; he didn’t know who was in the car.

Agent Ryan didn’t wait. He aimed his pistol at Nelson’s car and fired, squeezing off seven shots, the shells ejecting into McDade’s face. Nelson, holding a pistol in one hand and driving with the other, fired back. Windows on both cars exploded. Chase still hesitated.

“What the hell are you gonna do, sit there?” Nelson screamed. “Can’t you see they’re shooting at us!”

As the FBI car pulled ahead, Chase began firing the automatic rifle; somehow his shots missed the FBI car. Ryan and McDade pulled ahead. Nelson couldn’t catch up. “They must’ve hit the motor!” he said. “We’re losing speed!”

Ahead, Agent McDade lost sight of Nelson’s car behind him.

“Where are they?” he snapped.

“They’re falling back!” Ryan said.

Just then Sam Cowley and Ed Hollis, heading northwest in a black Hudson sedan, drove past the gunfight in the southbound lanes. Hollis pulled a U-turn of his own. Ryan and McDade, meanwhile, scanned the traffic behind them for Nelson’s car. Unable to spot it, McDade veered into a roadside field. Both agents jumped out, lay flat in the tall grass, and waited for Nelson to approach.

Nelson, whose car was fast losing speed, saw Cowley’s car make the U-turn. In the rearview mirror he watched as the FBI car approached. “There’s a Hudson,” Nelson said. “It’s gaining on us.” Nelson tried to pick up speed, but it was no use; his engine was failing. Cowley and Hollis drew closer. Suddenly, just as they approached a roadside park in the town of Barrington, Nelson spun the steering wheel hard to the right and veered off the highway. He stopped on a dirt road beside the park and yelled for everyone to get out of the car. Helen scrambled into a ditch.

Agent Hollis didn’t see Nelson’s car until he was abreast of it. He slammed on the brakes, which screeched loudly, enough to draw the attention of customers at a Standard Oil station across the highway and a Shell station about 750 feet further down the blacktop. The FBI car skidded to a diagonal stop in the right lane, 150 feet past where Nelson and Chase stood beside their car, readying their guns.

Nelson stood on the running board and opened fire with an automatic rifle before Hollis and Cowley got out of their car. Gunshots slammed into the back of the Hudson. Chase laid a rifle across the hood of the Ford and began firing as well. Then Nelson’s rifle jammed; he threw it to Chase, yelling for him to reload it. Nelson snatched up a Thompson and resumed firing.

Cowley leaped out of the FBI car, a submachine gun in his hands. A desk man his entire career, the squat, jowly Mormon was the last man Hoover would have wanted facing off with Nelson. Neither Cowley nor Hollis wore a bulletproof vest; Cowley complained they were too heavy. Nor had Cowley, despite the Bureau’s pleas, bothered to qualify on the pistol range. Nonetheless, crouching beside his car, Cowley fired a burst at Nelson, who returned the fire. At least six of his bullets struck Nelson in the stomach and chest, shredding his intestines.

Nelson doubled over in pain but, with adrenaline coursing through his body, somehow continued firing at Cowley. Two rounds hit Cowley in the midsection. He sagged to the pavement, rolling into a ditch beside the car. One bullet had torn through Cowley’s stomach, the other his chest. A bulletproof vest would likely have stopped both rounds.

Hollis jumped out the driver’s-side door onto the highway and fired blasts from his sawed-off shotgun, a blizzard of pellets that struck Nelson up and down both legs. Nelson still would not fall. He staggered forward, now firing at Hollis, who retreated across the highway, seeking the slender cover of a telephone pole. After emptying the shotgun Hollis pulled his pistol and fired as he ran. A bullet from Nelson