Lone Wolf #8: Los Angeles Holocaust (14 page)

Finally, air brakes screaming, the big oil tanker cranked to a stop thirty yards down the interstate and Wulff sprinted after it in the hitchhiker’s open-legged waddle of a run, hand extened. The driver looked down at Wulff as he closed in, shook his head, and then apparently deciding that he had already stopped and it was too much trouble to get the big truck out quickly again sat there impassively while Wulff got up on the running board and then into the cab. “I’m going to Chicago,” he said wearily.

“That’s good,” Wulff said, “that’s exactly where I’m going.”

The driver nodded slowly, grimly, calculating apparently the fact that he would have Wulff beside him for twenty hours or more. Little drops of sweat fell from his forehead to the steering wheel; he seemed already to have regretted the impulse to stop. “All the way in,” he said, “you’re riding all the way.”

“That’s right,” Wulff said.

“Got business in Chicago?”

“Got a lot of business,” Wulff said, “got a hell of a lot of business.” The driver began to work on the air brakes, releasing them one by one, struggling with the transmission, unlocked that, slipped it into the first gear of ten and slowly, groaning like an animal the tanker came off the shoulder. It began to move down the interstate, achieving forty, then forty-five miles an hour as the driver played the transmission like an organist, finally settling into seventh forward speed or something like that.

“Can’t get any speed out of them,” he mumbled, “fifty miles an hour the son of a bitch starts to come apart. And I’m loaded with explosives, too.”

“I know,” Wulff said, “I know, I know, I know the feeling,” feeling the solid jiggle of the guns within his clothing, feeling the dank wind of America on his face, feeling the pain and pressure of his quest as the poisons flowed throughout every vein of his body. He thought, Calabrese, I’m coming to get you, Calabrese you son of a bitch, I’m almost there, Calabrese, you better enjoy the time you’ve got left … because this is it, you old fucker, this is where it began and this is where it was going to end.

He hoped it would be that simple: that finally there would be the confrontation and an end to the quest. That was something to hope for.

Don’t count on it, though.

26 August 1973: New Jersey

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Copyright © 1974 by Mike Barry
All rights reserved.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4241-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4241-1

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