Courier (28 page)

Both Vietnamese had guns out, but one looked like he was about to fall over. The other cowboy saw Rick in the shadows and waved his pistol at the bikers. "Get the fuck out of the way. We just want that guy."

The bikers looked at Rick, then back at the men with guns, and began to move to the side. "Hey, we don't even know him. He's all yours."

There was the very definite sound of a shotgun racking, and Hector walked out and stood next to Rick – the shotgun cradled in his arms. A voice in the window above them said, "Guns!" and the bikers both spun around, caught pistols as they dropped from the second floor, and turned back to face the men by the sports car. Rick spotted a movement over his head and looked up to see two hunting rifles emerge from the windows and center on the two men in the street.

"You want Zippo here?" Hector said. "I don't like him, but I'll be fucked if anyone who didn't get killed by gook assholes over there is going to get killed by a couple of gook assholes outside my shop. Now, if you want to argue about this, just pull those triggers, and we'll see whose arguments hold up. Otherwise, get the fuck out of here before the cops show up."

The two Vietnamese looked at each other. Then the battered one almost fell into the passenger seat. The driver shouted at Rick, "This isn't over, asshole."

He got in, and the Datsun took off – tires smoking in a full burnout.

Rick nodded to Hector. "Thanks."

"Shut the hell up. You just dropped us in a pile of crap." The mechanic turned to go back inside. "Now my guys have to watch out for these morons coming around hoping for better odds."

"Maybe not. That Kawasaki still there?"

"I told you it would be."

The sports car came up to the street corner on the left and pulled to the curb, clearly prepared to wait.

"If you don't mind, I think I'll hang around until it gets dark." Rick walked inside with Hector. "You got any bandages? Maybe an extra pair of jeans? I seem to have ripped these somehow."

"Sure, I'll trade." Hector rummaged in the back of the shop, and then threw a first aid kit to Rick. "Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?"

"You sure you want to know?" Rick asked. "People who know about this have a way of getting killed."

"The Skins aren't playing. I've got nothing else to listen to."

CHAPTER 32

 

It was early evening when Rick stopped the bright-green Kawasaki directly in front of the Datsun and blew the horn. As the two men jerked alert, he gave them the finger and took off, the rear wheel smoking and whipping. The sports car coughed to life and followed.

The Kawasaki was one fast machine. In the first block, Rick realized that the acceleration was sliding him back on the bench seat and forcing his hand to rotate the throttle – making the engine go even faster. He loosened the grip of his right hand, the speed dropped, and he jerked forward.

He spun the throttle again, and the front wheel immediately began to lift off the pavement. Finally settling the bike into a steady pace, Rick realized how drastically different it was to control this explosive crotch rocket. He was going to have to relearn the reflexes formed through thousands of miles on the BMW.

On the other hand, the soft rubber tires stuck to the road like Velcro, and he was almost drunk on the raw power in the triple cylinder engine. He'd have to take it slow in the beginning, but this dance was going to be a hell of a lot of fun before it was over. The gloomy twilight was darkening, and the sodium yellow of the anti-crime streetlights was everywhere. Rick turned and twisted through downtown, making sure he stayed just far enough ahead of the 240Z to keep them coming.

The Kawasaki's engine shrieked as he sliced the wide curve around Dupont Circle and blipped up two gears to beat all the lights along P Street. The transmission was so smooth he sometimes couldn't tell when it had completed a shift through his heavy boots – an altogether different feeling from the BMW's heavy mechanical
ka-chunk
.

He went left along P Street Beach, then crossed Rock Creek Parkway at M Street and danced through all four lanes of the dense traffic crawling through Georgetown. He crouched low over the tank and pushed into turns aggressively, searching for the limits and the potential of the race-tuned machine.

At the right turn to Wisconsin, he looked back. The Datsun was still there. It was a few cars back, so Rick deliberately missed a shift as he came out of the turn. The engine howled as the tachometer needle flew high into the red zone. He banged down all the way to first gear and almost stopped before he recovered. The sports car was just making the turn, and Rick knew that the inevitable fever of a close race would begin to wear away at the driver's sense of limits. He wanted him to be right on the ragged edge of control.

He goaded the other driver by making too many glances behind him and slid just a bit off the apex as he cut the corner onto P Street. He knew that the long straight stretch studded with stop signs in front of him was dangerous, so he carefully stayed just out of reach – jerking to a near stop and screaming away when the Datsun's bumper was almost touching his rear wheel.

Then he took the ramp down to the Rock Creek Parkway and opened it up. Behind him, he could hear the Datsun's tires complaining, but the car was keeping pace on the sweeping turns.

He went airborne briefly on the reverse-cambered turn onto Beach Drive and ripped through the tunnel and past the zoo at well over a hundred miles per hour. After that, the turns got sharper and he downshifted aggressively, slowing with the engine rather than the brakes as he fell into the turns and pulled out with a bit more power each time.

He blew right through the red light at Fletcher's Mill and pressed hard into the chicane turns that followed as his feel for the machine improved and he settled into a rhythm. When he slammed on the brakes and slid his rear to the right to make the sharp left turn at Beach Drive, he could hear the tires of the sports car screaming as the driver fought to keep from launching right into the water of Rock Creek below them.

He had just brought the bike upright from the ninety-degree left when he pushed it down into a hard right onto Ridge Road and up into the park. There were no streetlights here, and only his single headlight lit the long, hard uphill spiral.

He knew the tough green racer now, and he finally put everything into the dance. The tires gripped and squirmed on the rough asphalt as he increased speed on the uphill climb. He was approaching his limits, and as he heard the car behind him lose rear traction and take the car into a badly controlled powerslide, he knew the other driver was well beyond his.

At the top of the hill, he picked up even more speed, the trees whipping past in the cone of his headlight as he cut the apex of each curve with a perfection he hadn't shown before. He knew every inch of these dark roads from far too many sleepless nights, and he felt the calm of the dance slip over him.

Finally, he reached where he had been heading all along – the left-hand turn just at the peak of the hill. There was nothing but pitch-black trees on the right, and the wooden fence of the riding center blocked the view around the curve to the left. He remembered the pounding fear the first time he'd gone in to this turn at top speed and found the curve tightening. He had almost put the BMW in the woods that night.

Not tonight. As they roared into the turn, the red 240z was only yards behind the green motorcycle. Rick pushed the powerful bike into the turn well above eighty miles per hour, the tires at the limit of adhesion, the pegs grinding on the road, left knee thrust out for balance.

Right at the end of the fence, he pushed just a bit harder – putting all the strength of his muscular arms into twisting the handlebars against the turn. For a moment, he thought he was going to slip out, but the tires held, and he bent inside the road's curve, hit the low curb, and flew over the hard, dead grass of the meadow on the left.

Rick fought his reflexes and didn't touch either brake, instead using the throttle to drive the rear wheel spinning down into the dirt and grass. He found that tiny bit of traction he needed, leaned almost off the bike on his left side, and shot past a four-foot-high white granite stone by less than an inch.

Behind him, he heard a wail of tires and a massive impact of metal on stone.

He fought the bike to a stop, holding to a straight line across the bumpy ground. The trees on the other side of the small meadow came close, but he turned in a wide circle and looked back.

As he'd hoped, in the dark, the driver of the Datsun had been following his taillight and not the road and the heavy car had tracked right behind him as he went up over the curb – almost, but not quite, matching the bike's decreasing arc.

A row of foot-thick white boulders had been placed to keep cars from driving or parking on the grassy meadow. There wouldn't even have been time for the driver's muscles to react before the Datsun wrapped around the rock and spun violently off to the right.

As he approached, he saw that the rock had punched deep into the center of the hood, driving the engine back between the driver and the passenger. Stopping next to the front window, he looked in. Both men certainly appeared to be alive – alive and screaming in pain.

He heard sirens in the near distance. Time to leave.

Heading back the way he came, he saw the blue-and-red flashes light up the dark woods in front of him, and he switched off the motorcycle to douse the lights and carefully coasted off the road and between some trees. He turned his face away to prevent a flash of pale skin as the police cruiser went by. When he heard it stop at the horse paddock, he pushed himself backward onto the road and then coasted without lights down the curving road, steering by the reflected glow that always lit the darkest Washington night.

Dropping into the long final turn, he turned the switch, bump-started the engine, and drove calmly into the wealthy neighborhoods of upper Northwest DC, keeping the engine to a low purr, obeying all the speed limits, and carefully putting his foot down at all the stop signs.

CHAPTER 33

 

Rick jerked awake in the usual tangle of sweat and terror. For a moment, he just lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, taking the long road back from the tall grass and the blood-soaked mud. Then he turned his head and looked into clear brown eyes.

How did he get this lucky?

"Good morning."

"Hate to break this to you, Trooper. It's not morning," Eve said.

He laughed and stretched. "Well, it's about as close as I ever get."

"Are you ever going to win that battle?"

"Don't know." Rick rolled over and pulled her in close. "All I can do is ride it out in the dark and try to stay sane in the sunlight. I am not going to give the bastards the pleasure of seeing me ruin the rest of my life, but man, it's not easy. Let's change the subject."

"I will in a second. Which particular ‘bastards'? The US Army or the North Vietnamese?"

"Both."

"OK, what's the plan for today?"

He sighed theatrically. "I was hoping for a bit less of a serious turn in the conversation."

She kissed him lightly on the forehead. "All in good time, friend."

"OK, first I'm going to have to take a long bath, do a workout, and take another bath."

"Are you putting cleanliness next to godliness or right over there next to obsession?"

"There's a bit of that, but mostly, heat followed by exercise followed by more heat means I should be able to walk again."

She ran her hand down his stomach. "Yeah, walking is important, I guess."

"If you don't cut that out, this conversation is going nowhere." He tightened his grip on her back and trapped her hand between them. She began to wiggle her fingers.

"Final warning, Little Deer."

"Yeah, I know, she liked Running Bare. Ha. Ha." Eve looked at him closely and then took a deep breath. "My real name is
Esevona'keso
. It means ‘Buffalo Calf', and before you say something stupid, it's very important in our traditions."

Rick was silent for a minute. "She was the one who killed Custer?"

"Among other things. She also fought in a battle earlier the same year and charged the cavalry alone to rescue her wounded brother, Chief Comes in Sight. In your histories, that's called the Battle of the Rosebud. In ours, it's the Fight Where the Girl Saved Her Brother."

"So, you're a warrior?"

"Hardly. If anything, I'm a healer." Eve smiled. "You're looking at the second-best Jingle Dress Dancer at Lame Deer High."

"Maybe that would work better than the baths and the workout."

"We'll never know. I left my dress at home. I didn't think I'd be doing a lot of dancing in Washington."

"Maybe I should look up the girl who beat you for first place." She pinched him hard. He squirmed away and said, "What else is there I don't know about you?"

She moved close against him, and he could feet her smooth, athletic muscles. "Well, I was captain of the girls' lacrosse team."

"Another tribal ritual?"

"Maybe for the Iroquois up in New York, but we got it from Baltimore. The reservation doctor was our coach. He'd made varsity at Johns Hopkins." She snuggled back against his chest. "Enough cultural bonding. Let's hear some more about your life."

"I don't know what there is to say." He kissed her on the top of her head. "I had a childhood so bad that I ran away to join the Army, and then…" He trailed off and then started again. "Then there were a long couple of days in the Ia Drang Valley where I lost a lot of friends, a good deal of blood, and maybe a part of my soul." He shook his head. "God, that just sounds like a load of crap. Self-pitying and dumb."