Red Thunder (2 page)

"So, are you satisfied with the flight, Captain Garcia?" Dak asked.

"Everything looks nominal from here," I said.

"Don't know what those folks at NASA would do without you to help get 'em in the air every night," Dak muttered.

"It's not every night, it's more like—"

"Couple times a week."

"Yeah, okay," I said. It was about that often, at least when I could convince Dak to fire up
Blue Thunder
and take me out there. "Anyway, this one's taking the crew up to the Mars ship."

"What's your problem, Dak?" Kelly asked.

"No problem. Just restless, I guess. Manny likes to come out here,
look at 'em take off. Way I see it, it's just one more ship taking off
without me on it." Dak looked at the horizon where the rocket had faded
into the black sky. He looked hungry. At last he looked back at us.

"How about it, Manny?" he said. "Go back to the heartbreak hotel and hit the books? Or do a little off-roading first?"

"Is that one of those rhetorical questions?"

So me and Kelly piled into the back of the truck and Dak and Alicia got in the cab, and
Blue Thunder
roared to life. I've never asked just what Dak has under the hood, but
I figure NASA would be amazed if they could take a look. Put wings on
Blue Thunder
and it could probably catch up to the VStar. Dak flipped switches on a
dashboard only a little less complicated than the ones in airliners,
and the lights came on in groups. There were headlights and taillights
and searchlights. Yellow fog lights hung below the front bumper. Tiny
running-board lights could be made to crawl around the truck, like the
sign for a Miami casino. More headlights were mounted on the big chrome
roll bar that Kelly and I clung to, standing up in the pickup bed. And
right behind a thick Plexiglas spoiler on the hood was the truck's
crowning glory: a blue neon scrawl spelling out
"Blue Thunder"
.
Cuban gangbangers in immaculate low-riders, not an easy group to
impress, had been known to drive into ditches in amazement when Dak
rocketed past. As more and more lights came on, the color became
visible, a blue so rich the only place on Earth you could duplicate it
was deep in the ocean, and of a transparency you could only get with
dozens of coats of paint and endless hours of buffing.
Blue Thunder
was more a work of art than a vehicle.

Which is not to say it wasn't a hell of a vehicle. We bounced over
the dune, me and Kelly holding on to the roll bar in the back, and then
all four of the big off-road tires bit into the loose sand and we were
off.

I knew as well as anyone that we should have gone home and done a
few hours of studying. But if we had, Dak would never have run over the
ex-astronaut.

IT'S NOT STRICTLY legal to drive on the beach in Florida.

Okay, it's against the law. Would you believe they used to have car
races right out on the sand, not very far north of where we were that
night, until they built the big track at Daytona? It's true, I've seen
the video. Now they worry about every quart of oil that might make its
way into the Atlantic. I'm not saying that's a bad idea, but if anyone
thought
Blue Thunder
would leave so much as a drop on the
clean sands of Cocoa Beach they didn't know Dak very well. You could
cook and eat your dinner right off the engine block, assuming Dak would
ever let you do such a messy thing to his baby.

Dak would be spending hours tomorrow hosing off the worst of the
salty sand. He would remove wheels and brakes and shocks to clean them
with a toothbrush. If you think I'm kidding, you don't know Dak.

Kelly and I hung on tight as Dak steered through the packed sand and
foam, and every time he hit a wavelet spreading across the beach We'd
get a fine salt spray in our faces. Looking down through the open moon
roof I could hear the throbbing drums of some new South African group
Alicia had discovered. I could see the dash lights, including the
fuzzbuster unit I'd helped him install. It was supposed to alert us if
there was a cop transmitting anywhere within two miles. We knew the
cops had seen us out there, we'd heard them talking about us. They were
even pretty sure of who we were, and so far hadn't been able to do a
damn thing about it. They had to catch us first, and there wasn't a
police vehicle in the whole state of Florida that could keep up with
Blue Thunder
in the sand.

Kelly had one arm around my waist and one hand on the roll bar, and
that felt great. I had my arm around her, too. The wind and the spray
blew through her hair and she looked great in the moonlight. Dak was
staying close to the water and far from the dunes, because the soft,
rolling sands were where nighttime lovers liked to spread their
blankets.

Life seemed just about perfect. And that's when we ran over the guy.

He looked like a piece of driftwood when I first saw him. He was
lying on his back looking up at the stars, or what few stars you could
see with all the lights of Cocoa Beach behind us. I saw him turn his
head and squint against the bright headlights.

Kelly saw him the same time I did, and she shouted something and started pounding on the roof. I looked down.

Alicia straightened up—

Dak glanced up at me—

Kelly hit the roof even harder—

Dak looked forward... mouthed an obscenity... slammed on the brakes.

Blue Thunder's
wheels locked and we began to skid sideways. Dak corrected. He had us straightened out again when we ran over the man's legs.

We came to a stop. The truck's engine died and for a moment there
was only the sound of the surf. Then everyone started shouting at once.

I don't remember what anyone said. It wasn't anything terribly smart, I know that. We were scared.

Kelly and I jumped out of the pickup bed and hurried around to the
side of the truck. Dak had his door open, but that seemed to be as far
as he could go. He had his arms over the steering wheel and his head
buried in his arms. He was shaking.

Alicia hadn't been able to get out over Dak, so she came around the
front. Dak's running-board lights dazzled our eyes so we couldn't see
in the darkness beneath them. Alicia shined her flashlight down at the
sand, then made a little squeaking sound and backed up a few paces.

"We cut off his legs," she whispered. Kelly turned around and made a
gagging sound, then turned back. I knelt close to where Alicia was
shining the flashlight beam.

I could see that the man's legs ended a lot sooner than they should have.
Blue Thunder
had thrown up some big ridges of wet, heavy sand. I couldn't see where
his legs ended because the sand covered most of them below the knees.

But I saw his shoes easy enough. They were a good five feet away from his kneecaps and three feet away from the truck.

Dak stepped out of the cab, took one look at the disembodied feet, staggered into the surf and vomited.

I felt like doing the same... and then I realized what had happened.
I went over to them and prodded one with my own shoe. It rolled over.
There was no foot inside.

Alicia knelt and shined the light under the truck. Kelly knelt beside her and worked her hand down into loose sand.

She pulled up a bare foot, holding it by the little piggy that
stayed home, or maybe the one who had roast beef. A leg came up with
it, perfectly well attached to the foot. There weren't even any tread
marks on it.

First you feel a wave of relief. Then you get angry. I wanted to kick him. What sort of jerk lies in the surf line in the dark?

But I could almost hear my mother's voice.
Oh, yeah? What kind of jerk goes joyriding on the beach in the dark?
Okay, Mom. You're right, as usual.

"Let's get him out of there," I said, and grabbed a foot. Dak took
the other and we slid him out, where he squinted up into Alicia's light.

"This salt water ain't doing your undercarriage any good, hon," he said.

"It's
my
undercarriage," Dak said.

"Whatever," the guy said, and belched. Then he sort of passed out.

I say "sort of" because he never went to sleep. He passed into an
alcoholic fog where he wasn't really connecting with what was
happening. He was docile as a baby, and in the morning he wouldn't
remember a thing. Right now he'd blow a perfect ten on the lush-o-meter.

There's a good chance we saved his life. The tide could have easily
taken him out to sea where he'd drown without ever waking up.

"What's your name, dude?" Dak was asking him.

"This dude is down for the count, my friend," I said. "We'd better get him out of here before the crabs eat him."

"Drag him back in the dunes?" Alicia suggested.

"Worse than crabs back in the dunes," Dak said. "Passed-out guy could get raped back there in the dunes."

"He'd never know it," Alicia said.

"Maybe a certain soreness in the morning..." Dak rubbed his ass, and
we all laughed. Okay, so it wasn't so funny. I felt a little silly with
relief. You think about it, you realize how your whole life can change
in two seconds. We could have been gathered around a dead or dying man.

Kelly might almost have been reading my thoughts.

"We nearly killed him, don't you think we ought to try to take him home?"

"And have him blow chunks all over my upholstery? Let him fight off the fairies his own self."

"Gin doesn't come in chunks," Alicia said. She showed us an empty bottle of Tanqueray she had stumbled over.

"Yeah? Say he ate one of those World Famous Astroburgers an hour ago." Dak nodded toward the bar in the distance.

"Pretty good gin for a wino."

"He's not a wino. He hasn't been sleeping in back alleys. Look at his clothes."

It was true, the sneakers sold for well over a hundred dollars a
pair, and they looked new. The shirt and pants were expensive labels,
too.

"And he don't drink wine, either," Dak said. "So what's that make him? A
gin
-o? Whatever, it don't make his vomit any sweeter."

"So, we gonna take him home or not?"

"Where's home?" Kelly asked.

We all looked down at him again. He was still smiling, humming
something I didn't recognize. A wavelet hit him and eddied around our
feet, then sucked a little deeper hole under him as it ran back out.
That must have been how his legs got buried. An hour from now he'd be
under the sand, somebody else's problem. But none of us wanted that.

So I reached down and grabbed the side of his pants and pulled him up a bit, then fished his wallet out of his hip pocket.

It was hand-tooled leather and fairly thick. The first thing I saw
was the corner of a hundred-dollar bill sticking out. I opened it and
pulled out a wad of cash. I thrust it out to Dak, who looked startled
and took it. He counted it.

"Eight hundred big ones," he said.

"So take out a taxi fee and let's get him home."

He handed the cash back to me. "What's eating you, anyway?"

I didn't really know. Part of it was that I sure could have used the
money. Who would know? Certainly not this whacked-out jerk, lying there
pissed out of his mind.

You'd know, Manuel,
Mom said. She had this annoying habit of speaking just as loudly when she wasn't there as when she was.

"We'll just dump him in the back," I said. "I'll ride with him. He
barfs, I'll clean it up." Dak waved it away, and I looked at the wallet
again. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, all platinum, all made out
to one Travis Broussard.

"Cajun," Kelly said, peering over my shoulder.

"Huh?"

"The name," she explained. "There's some Cajun families from the
Florida panhandle, I think." I didn't know what difference that made,
unless he lived in the panhandle. That would be too far to drive him. I
found the driver's license, and as I pulled it from its pocket another
card fell to the sand. Alicia picked it up. I pointed out the address
on the license to Dak and Kelly.

"Is that far from here?"

"Forty-five minutes, maybe half an hour this time of night. Out in
the boonies, though. Don't look at me that way. I'll take the dude.
Won't even charge him for my gasoline."

Alicia whistled under her breath. "Look at this," she said. "The guy's an astronaut."

"Let me see that," Dak said, and grabbed the card. Then Alicia
played keep-away with her flashlight for a moment until Dak and I
overpowered her.

"This expired three years ago," Dak said. But before that it had
been a gate pass to the Kennedy Space Center, and identified Broussard
as a colonel and a chief pilot in the NASA VentureStar program.

THE QUICKEST WAY from the beach to Rancho Broussard involved twenty miles or so on the Florida Autopike. Dak eased
Blue Thunder
onto the ramp and allowed the Pike computer to interrogate his precious
baby. There are several things about the Autopike that just rub Dak the
wrong way. The most basic is simply that he hates to surrender control
of his rig. "You go driving, you should have at least one hand on the
wheel, like God intended."

I didn't argue with him on that one. There was still something
profoundly creepy about cars that steered themselves, at least to folks
like me and my mother. We could barely afford the thirty-year-old
Mercury that Dak and I were always rescuing from a one-way trip to the
junkyard. That Merk was not Pike-adaptable without spending about ten
times what the old wreck was worth. Poor folks like us ride the
Autopike about as often as we take the ballistic Orient Express to
Tokyo.

The other thing Dak hates about the Pike is... well, let's face it,
nobody likes to get passed, right? Nobody our age, anyway, and for sure
nobody driving a rig as gaudy as
Blue Thunder.
But ol' Blue
was built for power, not for speed. We were banished into the D lane,
the outer one for vehicles that cruise at about eighty-five or ninety.
What we call the "blue hair" lane, for all the old ladies in their
well-preserved Caddies and Buicks. Now you can see them by the
thousands in the D lane, going places they were too timid to drive to
before the Pike opened. It's a drag to be tucked in among them while
you watch the soccer moms in their minivans pass you in the fast lanes.