(Continued from PART ONE of Nowhere to Go But Up)

After I got Shadow straightened out again, I used my T-shirt to wipe the blood out of my eyes and off my head, and examined myself in my wide-angle mirror. I immediately decided the head gash looked worse than it was, though I wished for some way to staunch the bleeding. I seemed unhurt otherwise. Shadowfast too seemed okay, with the remaining gauges all in the green (metaphorically speaking)-- though engine temperature was a bit high, and oil pressure a little low (basically what I'd expect from the present circumstances).

I briefly held my smallish custom steering wheel in place with my left knee, as I worked my T-shirt up to around my head, to act as a sort of combination turban/headband/bandage. Once in position there, I pulled together all the slack and tied it into a crude knot, something like girls sometimes do with the bottom of their shirts to cool off. Luckily I'd been wearing a somewhat snug shirt that day, which helped this process along.

Once secured I could adjust its position as needed.

Well, another one down! I thought. But damn if that didn't still leave at least three more vehicles we knew of-- plus an unknown number of others. If we didn't get some backup soon, things would be bad.

I reloaded my flare gun just in case-- after I finally located it (I'd lost it in the melee). Turned out it'd fallen between the passenger seat and its door-- almost the least accessible place to me in the whole redesigned interior, under driving conditions. But I was able to find and retrieve it quickly with the help of my mirrors, and unbuckling my seat belt for a minute.

Thank goodness it hadn't sailed out a window!

This had been one of those times cruise control would have been nice to have in Shadowfast. As it was, I had to keep the gas going with my left foot for a brief interval.

I'd dearly hoped I'd have no tire blow out while unbuckled. I quickly strapped myself back in after retrieving the gun.

Dennis' voice came over the radio at that moment, telling me he could see an ominous looking roadblock up ahead. One he was sure we couldn't crash through. But the bad news didn't end there; he also informed me the previous ramming action had apparently punched a hole in his gas tank, as well as damaged the brakes on the limo, both hydraulic and mechanical, so that he needed help stopping for lifeboat transfer, pronto.

Holy crap! I realized we were hurting worse than I'd thought.

I knew what Dennis needed; I just didn't know if Shadowfast was up to it.

I plunged the throttle down, and got ahead of the limo in short order. Now I too could see bad things ahead: massive immobile dump trucks, blocking the interstate from road-side trees to concrete dividers; and no police cars to be seen anywhere; so this had to be more bad guys. Yikes!

I ran past the limo, swerved in front of it, and began what should have been a really delicate maneuver of 'docking' the rear end of Shadowfast to the front end of the limo. But with zero time to waste, delicacy was a luxury beyond our means.

I bumped into the limo a bit hard, but not unacceptably so; then I began braking. There were a few bad crunch, thump, and crumple sounds as Shadowfast and the limo made peace with one another. I braked harder. The same great weight which had served us so well in ramming the running blockade before, was killing us now.

Dennis was doing what he could to help by keeping the limo traveling dead straight, and basically doing 'power coasting': manipulating the trans gearing and engine compression resistance to help slow his pace. We'd both agreed that more extreme measures were too risky to try at this time.

Although I'd beefed up Shadowfast in quite a few ways suspension-wise, and tweaked the brakes too with extra-heavy duty metallic brake linings, wider tires for more rubber against the road, and functional ducted air scoops all around for extra cooling, I hadn't gone further than that. Maybe front disc brakes had been an option on 1969 Mustang Mach Ones, but whoever bought Shadowfast new hadn't ordered them. So I was stuck with drums on all four wheels. And now Shadowfast's greatest weakness was precisely where we needed the maximum performance. Crap!

I hated to think that for all my pride in modifying Shadow, I might end up flunking the most important test of his transformation.

Fortunately, the metallic linings actually worked better, the hotter they got. For normal speed street driving this could be scary, because if you had to do a panic stop in just a car length or two when the linings were cold, you might not make it(!). But there'd been many times I'd managed to get a successful massive deceleration from high speed out of the linings, due to their heavy use performance; which was one reason I'd never went any further in modifying my brakes.

But all that had been with Shadowfast dealing only with his own mass and momentum. Now he suddenly had three times or more than that to stop. I hoped the brake drums wouldn't get so hot that they deformed, and caused us to enter into a particularly spectacular crack up; or the brake fluid begin boiling, leaving me with nothing but my mechanical emergency brake on the rear wheels (and the various lower transmission gears, of course). Agh!

I knew the best performance would come from pumping the brakes; you didn't want lockup. And this was long before automated anti-lock brake systems were widely available on civilian vehicles to do your pumping for you.

So I pumped. And pumped. And watched the blockade with all its armed men get closer and closer. Behind us were the three surviving pursuit vehicles, too (being rammed by the limo seemed to have removed that one from the equation). But they had thankfully slowed up some now, I guess figuring those ahead would take up the slack, and the trap was well closed.

They weren't far wrong.

Shadowfast was handling like a drunk, 400 pound sailor. I had to fight the steering wheel, even as I maniacally pumped the brakes as hard and fast as I could. My left leg was getting very tired, but I dared not the indulgence of even the split second it'd take to switch feet; for our margin for error was dwindling fast.

I could smell burning rubber from my tires-- and hear it occasionally, in tiny 'chirps'-- as I pumped for all I was worth, and sometimes I wasn't fast enough to avoid causing a fraction-of-a-second wheel lockup among the four. On occasion an ominous loud thump or clank would emerge from behind me, as the interface between Shadowfast and the limo changed somehow. Even more worrisome were sounds of stress from elsewhere in the car, as the entire frame frequently shuddered against the burden of the hurtling limousine.

I hoped Shadowfast could hold together. But I knew my car's rear end all too well: the bumper was largely cosmetic, and the frame itself not all that sturdy, even new from the factory. My gas tank sat low in a rectangular area just forward of where all the worst grinding pressures were now taking place. And smack in the center of Shadow's tail was that wonderful, oversized race car style gas cap; which I figured by now must be a pile of scrap metal, busily producing sparks at the top of the tube running directly into my fuel tank. Ergo, I was just inches from fiery mayhem. Even if I assumed all the gunfire Shadow had taken before hadn't damaged something critical back there. I had firmed up some of the Mustang's standard equipment in the rear, in the form of various suspension mods; plus welded a roll cage basically into the middle of the car, with rear braces reaching back to the very front of the now shallower-than-standard trunk, and certain additional strategic welds tying everything together in several other spots. But I had no idea how well any of those things might be helping Shadow to hold together now.

I was tempted to try engaging reverse gear to let the engine help too, but was sure I'd only risk damaging the transmission or rear end, and likely not get much benefit anyway.

If we got through this next step, we'd badly need the engine and tranny.

The intervening distance between us and the blockade was getting uncomfortably short. Come on Shadow! I thought. Stop this monster now! We absolutely had to have some sort of buffer distance between us and the road block in order to transfer the V.I.P. and Dennis! And the bad guys behind us were a whole other story...

One of our pursuers, another pickup truck with shooters in both cab and bed, decided to break away from the otherwise slowing pack, and hound us right into the teeth of the maw ahead. I realized now that those slowing down were doing so out of self-preservation; they didn't want to get caught in the gunfire soon to ensue.

So I concluded the truck crew must be either especially blood-thirsty, or dumb.

Even as I thought Shadow's melting brakes and writhing frame could take no more, our mangled remnant of a convoy finally groaned to a halt-- stopping short enough from the blockade so that small arms fire wasn't likely to be very accurate.

Shit! That damn pickup was determined to finish us off, all on its own. From my mirror array I got early warning of its intentions, and moved to head it off, now spinning Shadowfast around 180 degrees, to face them in defense of the now motionless limo.

Where the hell was our backup!? I half questioned, half demanded, of the cosmos. We'd never ever had to go this long without the cavalry riding to the rescue in our practice exercises. Heck: there were supposed to be backup forces sitting around somewhere just waiting for us to call them! And Dennis said he had. Repeatedly.

The truck screeched to a stop a short distance from us, and began spraying the limo with gunfire to discourage its passengers from disembarking. They seemed to be aware of our transfer intentions, and hoping to stall us long enough for their allies from both directions to arrive on the scene.

"I don't have time for this," I said to no one in particular, as I saw Dennis and the V.I.P. struggling to exit from the far side of the car, despite the raking gunfire.

Then I saw a guy in the back of the truck lift up something that resembled a weird bazooka, preparing to fire it. I didn't know which of our two vehicles he was going to use it on, but it didn't much matter, did it?

I pushed on the gas and Shadow leapt forward, tires a'screaming, engine a'roaring. I didn't have the time or the distance required to execute anything fancy, so my intent was a simple collision of some sort to shake up the situation, and hopefully get a useful delay out of it. It seems there are countless cases in life where the crux of the matter can be decided with either a sufficiently long delay-- or speedy escape.

I couldn't strike the truck head-on, as that would have ruined my getaway capacity as a lifeboat with a crushed radiator and maybe even worse damages. But the small distance and large uncertainty in my calculations prevented me from rotating my car sufficiently in my approach to hit the truck with my rear end-- the optimal orientation. Instead, I smashed into its passenger side front corner post with my passenger side door. Rats!

But I did shake them up: no bazooka type device went off, and I never even saw it again after that. Of course, once the truck crew started recovering from the impact, they began focusing their small arms fire on me-- which again, helped Dennis out a little at the limo.

It seemed to take Shadow a long, long moment to work itself free of the truck, with bullets splashing all around me, and my main bullet protection behind my seat definitely not in optimal position now. But I finally got loose, and spun my way around to the far side of the limo, stopping there to offer the gaping windowless hole atop my ruined passenger side door to Dennis and his charge. Although it was likely unnecessary, I warned Dennis not to try opening the door, for if it could still open, it might not close and latch again afterwards, due to the damage.

This would be one of the few good looks at the V.I.P.s we carried that I ever got on that job. I usually never saw them myself.

At first I thought the V.I.P. was injured; but no. Amazingly, he was staggering drunk, and belligerent atop that. Completely uncooperative with Dennis, who'd already saved his life several times in the past thirty minutes.

"Come on Mister Bee," I heard Dennis say once, as the man continued to curse him, and many of his maternal ancestors.

There was a strange bright white smear under the guy's nose, and a bit on his clothes, that I couldn't for the life of me understand the source of at the time. Much later, I'd learn it was a common sign of cocaine use.

Dennis was doing his best to shepherd the obviously drunken man between the cars. I could hear the truck's starter grinding away; our collision had killed their motor, as often happened to autos in those days. I'd experienced that before with Shadowfast, and afterwards taken measures in my modifications to minimize such failures. Those fixes seemed to have worked in this instance.

Hmm. I realized I'd most likely be dead now, if Shadow's engine had died hitting the truck; that might mean I was now living on borrowed time.

Time the V.I.P. sure was wasting! An occasional bullet from either the truck or the road block ahead was caroming off our cars now.

"I can't get the door open," the drunk whined.

"Of course not! It's wrecked! Climb in through the window!" I ordered.

"But the glass is broke," he responded strangely. Like he couldn't understand what was happening around him.

I reached over and grabbed an arm, and began pulling him in. He struggled a bit to resist. Fortunately with Dennis helping on the outside, and me on the inside, we managed to get the idiot inside.

Whew! The guy reeked of alcohol! And something far more abhorrent, which took me a second to recognize, with it being mixed with the odor of alcohol and other substances. But he sure was dressed nice. Decked out in one of those silky looking suits that cost more than I'd paid for Shadowfast, plus all his mods to date. A brief feeling of despair passed over me, as I began to realize the damage toll on the car I'd spent so much of the past couple years putting together. If I survived this, there was still no telling if Shadowfast would. But I didn't have time for such commiserating now: I had to get Dennis onboard.

"Get in the back!" I told the shivering V.I.P., now huddling in my passenger seat, sitting atop the various items still piled there. He just looked at me without moving.

"I'm a pilot you know," he said inanely, with a mean look in his eyes and a smirk on his face.

"Get in the back!" I repeated, this time yelling, and emphasizing the words with some manhandling to force my recalcitrant, uncomprehending passenger between the seats and onto the carpeted shelf under the shot out rear window. Yeah, I know it wasn't necessarily the safest place for our charge to be, but after seeing just who we'd gone to all this trouble for-- and many of us maybe lost our lives in the doing-- I had little sympathy left for the guy.

Dennis had to help me again by working his way in through the window, as he simultaneously pushed the V.I.P. towards his new containment area. That's when the smell hit me full blast-- and I saw the wet brown stains leaking through the seat of the expensive pants. The V.I.P. had shit himself. Sheesh! Now poor Shadowfast would have to endure yet another insult from all this! I shook my head in anger and disgust.

Dennis and I unfortunately got some of the awful goo on us too, while trying to stuff the V.I.P. into the back. There just wasn't time to do it any other way.

I heard the truck's engine crank up. The truck's pursuit allies were about to arrive too, even as vehicles dispatched from the blockade ahead were nearing as well.

Don't die on me now Shadow, I silently pleaded. And waved one hand in front of my face to clear the air of the stink from the V.I.P.'s soiled suit. It didn't work. I hoped the stench didn't get any stronger; else I might gag and throw up.

As Dennis attempted to strap the V.I.P. and himself into their various locations (I had tie downs available for the carpeted shelf and the unfolded armor platform atop it; but those were meant to tie down equipment, rather than people), I pulled the flare gun from where I'd stashed it between my seat and the floor console, and verified it was still loaded. I was considering firing it at one of our attackers just before we sped off, but that seemed a weak move under the circumstances, and considering the distances. Then I saw it: gas spreading under the limo, from the leaking tank Dennis had mentioned before.

"Hold on to your ass," I warned my passengers, then extended my arm past Dennis' startled nose, and out the right side of my car, aiming at the wet pavement beneath the limo. I squeezed the trigger, loosing my fireball, then dropped the empty gun into Dennis' hands and floored it once more.

I moved us away from the spreading fire around the limo, expecting it to explode, but nothing dramatic happened for a moment. Time seemed to pass super-slowly as our acceleration built, and our enemies moved in. I had to try heading back the way we'd come rather than ahead, due to the blockade. This forced me into doing something like a large partial doughnut spin around the whole tableau.

But everything was happening too fast, and we were moving too slow. Bad guys seemed to be approaching from every direction. The universe took on the surreal aspects of a nightmare. Enemies were closing on every side at high speed, while we seemed mired in molasses. And the limo flames feebly flickered like a girl scout campfire. Some distraction that was proving to be! The plunk frequency of bullets striking the car was increasing; I could only hope none would strike me, Dennis, or the V.I.P., or some vital component of Shadowfast.

I guess I sort of panicked a little. Once I was almost straightened out of the doughnut, I practically without thinking flipped the nitro switch again. Suddenly the molasses was gone, burning rubber and thundering engine filled our senses, and we were firmly pushed back into our seats. I think I heard the V.I.P. scream, and I kind of hoped that meant he'd flown out the missing rear window (less deadweight improves acceleration, you know).

But that fantasy was quickly dashed by events. I had to fight for all I was worth to keep from losing control of the car, as we hadn't been entirely straight and true in a forward steered direction, when the switch was flipped. I was now paying the price for my premature conjuring of the beast.

My focus narrowed as if it was splashing down into a funnel. Nothing else in the world mattered, but keeping my car on the road. My mounting stress fatigue didn't help matters any. But finally things settled back down, and I was able to relax slightly. Then I realized part of the reason was the nitro had run out. Crap!

Though I'd been concentrating too much to notice it (and the closer roars of engine and wind helped muffle it), the limo had finally and spectacularly exploded just after I'd flipped on the nitro, rocketing us out of the vicinity. Even Dennis couldn't tell if any of our foes had been caught in the blast, but no one seemed to be chasing us in that moment. Of course, with the nitro boost it might take a minute or so for such pursuers to become obvious, I reckoned. But it did seem that we'd zoomed past the truck, and through its allies, not far from our nitro launching point.

I just hoped this was the end of the pursuit. We might be able to limp back to civilization now, with the V.I.P. and ourselves intact (I looked back in the mirror and was disappointed to see the guy still there on my shelf; he seemed to be crying and mumbling to himself).

It was only around this point I recalled we were now traveling at high speed the wrong way on an interstate highway. For we hadn't crossed the median in the turnaround this time. Noticing civilian cars and trucks haphazardly parked here and there off the road, plus seeing only the backsides of road signs, helped me recollect our circumstances.

A contrary indicator though was we were facing no oncoming traffic. Though our little drama had surely scared lots of folks off the road, it seemed something else must have staunched traffic flow up ahead somewhere. For no newcomers to be rushing into us, I mean. Hopefully the obstacle ahead consisted of a thousand highway state troopers, with some Army tanks to back them up!

I marveled at life creating a situation where I actually wanted the cops to be waiting for me up ahead.

Dennis interrupted my musing.

"Thanks for sticking with me man," Dennis told me, in something of a yell over the present racket.

"No sweat, Dennis," I smiled, with all the bravado I could muster (because I figured Dennis might could use a booster shot right about then, what with all those years worth of accumulated pure testosterone he'd had to expend ramming that car out of our way, while driving high speed backwards in a vehicle as long as a good-sized sail boat! Sheesh!). But frankly, I'd had my fill of this particular adventure at least several blood curdling confrontations ago.

"It doesn't get much closer than that," Dennis responded.

"No, I guess not. I think I'm going to quit when we get back," I said, having finally made my decision. After all, look at who we were protecting! It wasn't worth it. Plus, I had enough money saved now to live on for quite a while; even accounting for some substantial repair work for poor Shadow.

"Yeah, me too," Dennis agreed.

"So what's the deal with him?" I motioned towards the V.I.P. with my head.

"Mister Bee? Oh..." Dennis looked back to gauge the alertness of our passenger. Seeing he was almost incoherent, Dennis continued, though in a slightly hushed tone. Which meant really just a slightly subdued version of the previous yelling. The conversational conditions were a lot like those in a raucous night club or party, where the music or noise is so loud you can yell right into someone's ear, and someone else two feet away can't make it out.

"...he's a poor little rich kid, who can't stay out of trouble. His dad's a big wig in the government; his connections got the kid a gig in the National Guard to keep him out of Vietnam; let him play with jets instead, and stuff like that. All he had to do was keep his nose clean until his time was up, and then he could have went back to partying full-time again. But it looks like buckling down isn't his style..."

Vietnam. I'd been worried myself about the draft. Guys with my birth date had actually been first on the list, when I'd reached the age of eligibility.

Luckily though my wimpy physique, bad eyes, flat feet, trick ankle, and other flaws-- all of them all too real-- had gotten me out of it. But still, I often wondered how different my life might be if I had gone to Vietnam-- and survived.

"What kind of trouble?" I asked, in the same slightly less than screaming tone Dennis was using over the banshee wind.

"The usual. Knocking up local girls; starting fights he can't finish. Drunk driving, lewd behavior; pretty much everything you'd expect. But going AWOL is what got his daddy really steamed. 'Cause big daddy was an honest-to-God war hero in World War Two, I hear."

"He went AWOL? From the National Guard?" I couldn't believe it: he'd gotten to dodge the big V everyone else but we sub-standard physical specimens had to take-- and he seemed hellbent on getting his get-out-of-war-free card revoked!

Plus, I'd never realized it was possible to go AWOL from the National Guard; maybe this guy was the first to ever do it.

"Yeah. Just stopped showing up for duty. Lucky for him he's got big daddy to save him; otherwise he'd be in deep shit." Dennis suddenly burst out laughing after those words, and I joined in (I think his comment served to cause the latest wave of stress upon us to break at last, thereby affording us some much needed comic relief).

"So what's he crying about now?" I asked, after the laughing subsided.

"The raid; all this; I think the ramming is when he shit himself."

I felt a grim smile take hold. "Well, to be truthful, I probably wasn't far from doing that myself, a few times."

"Me too," Dennis agreed, with a like smile.

"So all we have to do is drop him off somewhere, and somebody else will take care of him, right?"

"Right." Dennis then proceeded to tell me where, just in case he himself wasn't around later. We were still on the job, after all.

We rode in silence for a minute or so after that, except for the quiet sobbing of our cargo (actually muted by the wind noise, but visible in the mirror), the steady rumble of Shadow's engine, and the wind buffeting its way through the wrecked passenger door, the interior, and out the rear window frame.

Then the all-too-short but loud peace was dispelled.

There was one unholy mess up ahead. It looked like a group of semis, complete with trailers, had been positioned just about perfectly to block the way on this side of the interstate, the other side, and the median in-between. The emergency lanes were impassable as well. Again, there was no sign of law enforcement being involved whatsoever. This was freakin' unbelievable!

Damn! You'd think that if this guy's dad was so important, we'd have gotten help by now! Uh Oh. It began to dawn on me that maybe the father was actually the one behind this; maybe he was so embarrassed by his son, he just wanted him out of the way, permanently. Heck: if the guy's dad had any political ambitions beyond what he'd already done, all this would add up!

He might even get some pure sympathy votes in some future election, after having his son tragically assassinated like this...

Holy shit: this might be some sort of government guys after us; or else thugs hired by them. For plausible deniability and all that (I think that term was coined well after the timeframe of these events; but that was the gist of what I was thinking).

Holy crap: I might not get out of this one!

I kept my latest suspicions to myself, as there seemed no point in burdening Dennis with them. Unlike me, Dennis was voicing aloud his displeasure at the latest turn of events. Basically via a colorful stream of cursing. I had no choice but to interrupt him.

"Dennis, if you've got any ideas for getting us out of this mess, I sure could use them," I urged, as I slowed down in preparations for a change in course.

Dennis shut up and thought for a moment, as I dialed back the velocity on our present course to calamity.

"Well, if you're up for it, there's a jump we might make off this damned road to get away."

"Where?" I'd made a few jumps with Shadow before-- including one doozy only me and maybe half a dozen other living souls knew about. Most of my jumps though had been due to pure accident, by running too fast over roads either too familiar or too unfamiliar to me. Yeah, I realize that sounds odd; the unfamiliar part's easy to understand: but the familiar? How does that happen?

Like this: within a single block of my high school years home is a suburban street running down a hill. The road's descent is sharply divided into two different stages, by an intersection with a cross street. This intersection is located about three-fourths of the way up the total incline.

The lowermost of these two descending stages is by far the steepest and longest.

One night I'd been in one of my cop-baiting runs, not losing them until I was uncomfortably close to my home. On this particular night, I was afraid the officers might have gotten close enough to positively identify me or my car, and so would head to my license/registration address to arrest me when I showed up there. In my young mind, I thought if I could beat them back to my house I could claim innocence, due to the near impossibility of me getting there first (if I'd really been the one they'd been chasing). Yeah, a foolish thought, that. But I was pretty young after all. Dangerously high on testosterone and adrenaline, for far too much of each and every day.

Well, it turned out they hadn't identified me, and weren't headed for my house. But the perceived threat had me running way too fast through the quiet side streets of my neighborhood-- and the steep drop off of the hill street ahead didn't even enter my thoughts. I think I was too busy watching my rear view mirrors, and considering what clever words I'd use on the cops when they showed up.

Then I unexpectedly sailed over the crest of the hill. Yikes! That first jump took me by surprise, but still didn't jog my comprehension in regards to what was to follow; for I simply wasn't thinking ahead like I should have been. Just as I felt relief at hitting the ground again after sailing over the hilltop, Shadow hit the much bigger, steeper, and longer jump.

Note that this happened too fast for me to work up any fearful anticipation over it beforehand. Especially in my clueless teenage state.

While in mid-air during the second jump, I finally realized what was happening and where I was. Which was fortunate, as there was a stop sign at the hill's bottom to protect cross-traffic. I had no choice but to stomp my brakes as soon as I touched down, as the city planners had never allowed for a jumper's deceleration in their designs. All four tires squealing, I'd screeched to a halt precisely where I was supposed to. I'd afterwards resolved never to do that jump again.

"Do a 180 and go back," Dennis told me.

I did, and we were soon headed back over the stretch we'd just covered. I knew Dennis was a car stunt professional, reasonably aware of me and my car's capabilities, and a father of kids: so I was fairly sure he wouldn't direct us into a suicide mission. Plus, it wasn't like there was anything else to do. I felt me and Shadow were pretty much fried; we needed to get this trip over with, one way or another. Shadow hadn't been in this bad a shape since I'd first seen him sitting in the back row of a used car dealer's lot.

"Now cut across the median here," Dennis directed at a certain spot.

The median crossing was uneventful-- though as always I worried that my lower air dam might catch on something.

"So where's the jump?" I prompted, as we reached the other set of interstate lanes.

"See that hill, about a quarter mile ahead?" Dennis asked, as he pointed to terrain some distance to our left (it looked like we'd be traveling in the proper traffic direction again, for this strip of highway).

"Yep. That's it?" I verified, as I turned onto the highway.

"Yeah. You better floor it now."

I did. And Shadow responded with his usual gusto. Ominously, the road ahead was as devoid of normal traffic as the one we'd just exited. There was obviously yet another road block completing the trap behind us somewhere.

But that wasn't my main concern at the moment.

"Dennis, that hill's quite a ways off the highway. I might lose control between the road and the hill going full blast like this."

"Yeah, that's a risk. But if we don't have enough speed when we clear the hill, we definitely won't make it."

"What are we jumping?"

"A river," Dennis said calmly.

"What the hell? We can't jump a river!"

"Trust me: we can do it. If we can get enough speed."

We were now over 120 by my speedometer, and still accelerating. Into the unknown.

"I gotta slow down Dennis--" I was having trepidations.

"No! For Christ's sake don't slow down, whatever you do! Trust me! We need all the speed we can get! In fact, it wouldn't hurt to hit the nitro about now--"

"I'm out. It's all gone." I said with some relief, as we were already going uncomfortably fast to be about to run off pavement into the rough. Then again, if Dennis thought we might need nitro to make it...agh! I pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor; I'd secretly let up a little, before Dennis' worrisome remark.

"Oh. Well, keep it to the floor. And pray." I noticed Dennis hurriedly clearing some of my equipment out of his way in his seat and floorboard, then double-checking his belts and the V.I.P.'s tie-downs, and finally putting his hands over and behind his head to get a firm hold on the roll cage there.

I did my best to center Shadowfast's run towards the hill. But once we left pavement, things got hairy. The jostling was tremendous. The V.I.P. started screaming mindlessly. Some of the screams seemed to be a sort of desperate praying. But mostly it was unintelligible.

The car felt like it was shaking apart. The steering wheel seemed like a live animal in my hands, that was trying frantically to escape. If someone had previously described to me the movement I saw and felt in the steering wheel and column moving up and down and all around in front of me at that moment, I'd never have believed them. It was all I could do to keep the wheel from being torn from my hands. The tremendous vibration alone had rendered my hands and forearms numb within seconds of leaving the pavement-- which made it even more difficult to hold on.

Then we hit the abrupt beginning of the rise. Shadowfast bottomed out more heavily than I'd ever felt it before. Sharp pains flared in my lower vertebrae and right leg. A loud and severe (but brief) scraping noise spiked into my consciousness. From what I could tell, Shadow's belly was riding the ground for a second. Ugh! I thought of all the unprotected parts underneath there...

Our attitude adjustment came instantly. It seemed we were pointed straight up into the sky, taking off like a rocket.

This would be a new experience for me in Shadow. Though it was thrilling, I thought that on balance I didn't care for it. It called to mind my most terrifying ride in an extreme amusement park contraption, around age ten. As well as a terrible involuntary leap off a mountain in the more recent past. But in that instance there'd been lots of trees to catch us, and everything had turned out amazingly well.

"Nudge it to the left now! Just barely! Just barely!" Dennis screamed over the wind blast, as we neared the hilltop horizon. It sounded as if Dennis were far, far away...

Then we were flying. A lot of the awful noise and vibration we'd been experiencing before suddenly receded into the distance, leaving behind only fading echoes in our ears and bones. Somewhere though, the V.I.P. still frantically begged God to save him. Amen, I thought. There was lots and lots of air underneath us, and my drivetrain was suddenly freewheeling like mad-- blue smoke abruptly burst out from around the rear and side edges of the hood in front of me.

I guess I was entranced or in shock for a moment-- but that blast of blue smoke woke me up, and I hastily lifted my foot completely off the gas.

I felt myself lift up out of my seat, restrained only by my seat belt. It might have seemed like a dream, but for the smell of human excrement still assaulting us. And doing so even stronger than before-- if that was possible. For some unfathomable reason, all the wind rushing through the car could not completely rid us of the odor.

What if Shadowfast became permanently marred by the smell? I thought, even as I should have been worrying about many other things.

The V.I.P. continued to scream. Completely unintelligibly, for the most part. Well, I reasoned, he couldn't have been screaming for as long as it seemed; for we'd just begun this jump a second or two ago.

Our front end lowered, and I saw the ground rushing up at us. And I think I screamed too. For no car was supposed to ever, ever be this far above the ground: I don't care what your excuse was.

This was scarier than my mountain jump, due to the lack of tree tops to welcome me. And maybe because of the greater speed as well.

I felt somebody shaking me-- it was Dennis. He was yelling something at me too.

"Get a grip on the steering wheel! You'll have to get control as soon as we land! You hear me? Grab the steering wheel!"

For some reason I'd let go the wheel. Or maybe the ruckus up the ramp had knocked my hands loose? Dennis was bringing me back to reality.

"Okay, I got it," I yelled back at Dennis, just before I began screaming again.

"Get hold of yourself! Hold down the gas! Hold down the gas!"

I did as I was told, significantly goosing Shadow, even as Mother Earth loomed menacingly in my damaged windshield.

Then we hit. The first time.

It was like a bomb had gone off in the car. Everything just exploded in pain and terror. I think the windshield cracked still more, and glass shards flew through the compartment. Something knocked the hell out of my head: I may even have blacked out for a split second. My vision blurred, as every single thing in sight was moving independently of everything else, for the first time ever in my young life. I felt Shadow's wheels and suspension take the hit like they were extensions of my own body: the impact hurt us.

We weren't designed for this I thought, as my whole world jangled and bobbed and weaved, and I struggled to hold onto the steering wheel.

I'm sorry Shadow, I thought, but you'll have to do the driving now: I'm all shook up. The true meaning of the famous song lyric seemed clear to me now.

The scraping bony fingers of Death himself could be heard rustling underneath us, as Shadow's under-carriage once again ground into the Earth.

Then I felt us lift off of terra firma again. Once more, blue smoke burst out around the sides of the hood, and I instinctively let off of the gas.

"Keep your foot on the gas! Keep hold of the steering wheel!" Dennis was screaming at me.

For a split second there was a little peace-- in-between the incoherent screaming of Mister Bee, the imperious orders of Dennis, the wild over-revving of the engine, and the gradually diminishing vibrations of the teeth in my skull, I mean.

I realized now we were landing on the bank of a small river-- or maybe just a large creek: because it wasn't all that big, compared to other rivers I'd seen. The stream rounded a bend just beyond the hill ramp, first approaching then receding again from the highway. It appeared our initial landing spot had been on the far bank from the highway, just across the flow, a bit past the elbow of the thing.

Unfortunately the stream (now on our immediate right) bent ever so slightly to the left ahead of us, so we had to too-- or else get dunked.

I remembered all the killers just behind the hill. If we drove into the river and got stuck now, they'd still get us. We had to make it around the next bend.

The coming curve in the river was very slight; almost imperceptible. But we weren't quite on the proper course to follow it. From our present aerial view, I realized this was what Dennis was screaming about.

Then we hit the second time. And I was struck blind.

This time I was able to perceive what the hell was whacking me in the head so hard: the impact made me bounce in my seat so violently, that my noggin was bashed against the interior ceiling of Shadowfast, in spite of my fastened seat belt. At that spot in the ceiling there was nothing but a thin wooden sheet coated with thin black cloth, between me and the hard metal roof of my car. There wasn't even any of the factory standard Mach One soundproofing insulation present there, as I'd removed all that during my modifications. The wooden sheet was flexible, so it did nothing to slow my head bopping against the roof.

A full race car harness! My kingdom for a harness! I thought. I'd considered replacing the factory seat belts with a true racing harness, but decided against it for cost reasons. Now I saw the folly of my ways. A helmet would be good too; a well cushioned helmet.

Fortunately my sudden blindness was quickly rectified: my stupid makeshift turban-bandage had fallen over my eyes at the second impact. I used one precious hand to yank it down to around my neck, even as I struggled viciously with the steering wheel. The turban hadn't helped one iota against the head-banging.

Have you ever had to do something that's so damnably difficult, you absolutely must yell aloud as you push for it? This was one of those moments for me. Of course, it's not like anybody could much hear me over all the other commotion.

Shadowfast's belly scraped hideously against the ground.

Once again I found myself wrestling against the forces of nature itself for possession of my steering wheel. Dennis was screaming at me again, but I didn't have the time or extra faculties available to process his words. I knew what I had to do: the trouble lay in doing it.

Then we took to the air again; I felt it in my stomach, as well as the sudden, anomalous slack in the car's suspension springs, and even the tires. This time I also seemed to hear Shadow's very frame groaning. Maybe it had before and I hadn't noticed.

"I know! I know!" I yelled back at Dennis in a vain attempt to get him to stop haranguing me, once I began comprehending his words again: for he was basically just repeating the same instructions over and over that I was already doing my best to accomplish.

The third impact came after a far smaller interval of time from the second, than the second had after the first. Thank God gravity was finally getting a firm hold on us again, I thought, even as I struggled to avoid a third head-banging (failing) and keep Shadowfast from plunging into the river (succeeding).

Man, but I was getting the king of all headaches! My neck didn't feel so good either.

For a moment I thought this might be our final landing, but I was wrong: we briefly lifted off yet again, before certainly being on solid ground for good. I'm unsure if there was actually daylight between the wheels and ground this last time around, but if not, it was a near thing.

I was surprised and annoyed to find the fuzzy uncertainty of our final landing a recurring theme for the next couple of minutes, as the unevenness of the natural terrain underfoot combined with our still substantial speed to have us heaving up and down like a ship in heavy seas. Heavy, hard seas. I don't know what our speed was by that point, because I couldn't make out anything as small as a speedometer needle in a large gauge a foot or so from my face, due to the incredible vibrations of all magnitudes shuddering throughout the whole car. Huge, heavy ocean swell-like actions, followed by repeated bottoming out of Shadow's front end, were merely the grossest elements of the mix.

I was forced to exert the strangest combination of gas and braking actions of my entire life during those couple of minutes: at times I had to accelerate to maintain sufficient control to prevent a disastrous skew towards the drink at right. But I would also throttle back and brake every chance I got, due to the thunderous beating we were taking by running over open ground at high speed, plus my desire to escape this raw bleeding edge of control I presently possessed, to attain something much closer to normal.

Our progress involved quite a bit of bobbing up and down, side-to-side fish-tailing, and near-misses of both hair-raising ground obstacles, and slippery slides towards a miserable, murderous, and muddy ending.

After what seemed like the longest two minute ride of my life, I finally got Shadow down to around ten miles per hour, and we muddled our way across a field of tall grass until we found a dirt road, which led ultimately to civilization.

Something seemed different: it took Dennis and I a little while to realize we were listening to Shadow's open headers now, the mufflers apparently having been ripped off by our landing. But after the enormous racket of the run just ended, the unshielded roar of Shadow's exhaust at normal speeds just wasn't that loud.

Dennis and I were wary of being double-crossed and ambushed again. So rather than deliver the V.I.P. to the destination we'd been ordered, we dropped him off at the first church we found with a preacher present, asking the holy man to get the local doctor and police to check him out, as he was the victim of a terrible accident. As the V.I.P. now meekly obeyed orders but for some incoherent babbling, was perhaps a little more banged up than me and Dennis due to his strapped down shelf ride, plus looked and stank pretty bad from his repeated self-soiling, he sort of backed up our story. And he groveled before the preacher like the preacher himself had saved his ass. Whatever, I thought. I wondered how much the V.I.P. would even be able to remember about all this, through his alcoholic haze.

Our employer ended up refusing to pay us for that last run. They claimed it was because we didn't deliver Mister Bee to the designated spot. They even threatened to have us arrested and sued the moment we ever mentioned any of this to anyone. Though Dennis and I were pretty steamed to lose a big wad of cash for some of the hardest work we'd ever done in our lives (not to mention the fact we'd fulfilled the intent of our contract by saving the V.I.P.), we wanted extrication from that bunch even more than we did the pay. So we took our financial lumps and walked away.

Maybe the biggest stunner of all was how not one scrap of this incident made it into the news. Despite all the carnage and likely deaths and severe injuries involved, not one mention was ever made on the local TV news, or in the newspapers. I know because I looked for it, to see if I could find out more about what had happened and why. I also asked others if they'd seen or heard anything about it. Even the blocking of the interstate on both sides was not documented by any outlet, despite there having to have been plenty of witnesses.

Even more eerie, I returned to that stretch of interstate the very next day (in a different car), to find almost no sign whatsoever that anything unusual had ever taken place there. This was less than 24 hours later, mind you. There wasn't even significant glitter of glass shards in places where I was sure I'd find some. There were some tire marks here and there, but nothing anyone would deem anomalous for an interstate highway.

I drove past the hill jump, and noted the tall grass had all been neatly mown there, as well as across the river, so no mashed places stood out from a distance. It also seemed the very sod had been replaced wherever the earth had been seriously disturbed. Slight coloration differences in some sections of grass, as well as small height discrepancies in various splotches of ground relative to their neighbors, could be detected; but given the natural fluctuations in the local terrain, these freshly made changes were barely discernible the day after events; and would be completely invisible within a week or two, I was sure.

The scope and scale of the cover up was breath-taking. If I hadn't lived through it all myself, and didn't have a wrecked car to prove it, I might have wondered if I'd dreamed it all up.

There was no way I could ever gain a full reckoning for the events of that day. Heck: I was no investigator. Plus, digging around would likely have been dangerous.

After witnessing all this, I wondered if Dennis and I were safe. He did too. For my part, I tried to be a bit more wary for months afterwards. I also sort of dropped out of sight for a while, in one of the few real vacations I'd ever allowed myself up to that time. Traveled far away, to a remote area boasting certain amenities I liked, but usually would forego in normal circumstances.

I took off with little more warning to friends, family, and associates than a few vague comments. So basically I simply couldn't be found at any of my usual haunts for a while, and no one knew of my whereabouts.

It helped that those who knew me were accustomed to such sudden unexplained absences on my part.

How long did my retreat last? Roughly a year. I really should have made it longer, but I ran out of patience. But if there still existed any threat related to my last V.I.P. run, I was never able to distinguish it from those stemming from other, newer sources, as the years went by.

Dennis however might not have been so lucky.

Dennis and I had never been what you'd call friends. Rather, we'd basically had a little more in common with one another, than with anyone else on the convoy team. So maybe we'd spoken a little more to one another than to the other members: that was about it, before that final run. As we'd never phoned each other for anything not relating to the job, we didn't keep in touch much afterwards, either. Except for a couple of steam-letting sessions about the refused payments and legal threats, and maybe a couple more face-to-face conversations about potential hit contracts on us, I mean.

Still, I was sorry to hear of him getting killed during one of his stunt shows. I only found out about it after I'd emerged from my hidey hole; turned out it'd happened a few months before that. I dug up a newspaper account at a library about the matter, but saw nothing to indicate foul play. Of course, with us possibly foiling a big time plot against the V.I.P. in that final run, nothing could be ruled out.

And setting up a fatal crash for someone who did auto stunts on a regular basis wouldn't be that hard either.

As for the fate of our other convoy team members, Dennis and I had never gotten satisfactory answers to that from our employer. Of course, we'd all been bludgeoned with the word "confidential" many times in response to queries, well prior to that final incident; so it wasn't much of a surprise to get it after it, too. So for all I know, everybody else was killed. Or survived. Heck: a few may have been recruited to help the bad guys in the attack; I don't know. But I suppose it doesn't matter. In any case, I've never yet seen or heard of any of them again, since.

So did I ever find out what happened to the V.I.P? Yep! Me and a whole lot of other people besides. He apparently lived and prospered long after his ride in Shadowfast. Got religion, and quit drugs and alcohol last I heard. It turned out his father did have further political ambitions after all. Was the V.I.P's dad behind the plot? Hell if I know! But both father and son had apparently ended up on top of the heap by the beginning of the new century.

One of these days, some of you may learn the true identity of the V.I.P. If that ever comes about, please don't thank (or blame) me for what the V.I.P. did later in life: for I was just doing my job back then; that's all. Of course, I often wonder how differently many things might have gone, if I had quit that job before that last, fateful run.

Heck, even during the run itself, if I'd broken formation and gone after that mystery car just before all hell broke loose, my personal life and maybe even world history itself might have been drastically altered from that moment forward. But there was no way for me to know how pivotal that moment would turn out to be, not just for me, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Sheesh! But of course, the existence of Shadowfast himself may well have been the true pivot point: for there would have been no escape possible without him.

I'd left the mortally wounded Shadowfast parked pretty far out in the boondocks-- on the 90 wooded acres or so of a close rural friend-- during my vacation.

Poor Shadowfast had been trashed by that last run. The list of damages was mind-boggling, even for me. I mean, when I'd first bought the car, it'd already been classified as totaled by one insurance company. But it looked worse now than it had then.

In the days before I'd taken off for parts unknown, I'd spent a little time in postmortem.

I'd found some new dings in the car's sheet metal top, apparently stemming from all of us slamming against the roof.

In building the car, I'd made the carpeting easily removable for cleaning. One day I pulled up the carpeting to try to hose off some of the excrement which had escaped the V.I.P.'s pants, and discovered the entire car had buckled in the middle. There was a massive crease running across the rear floorboard from door to door, just behind the two front seats, but forward of the main two roll cage base welds. The buckle apparently stemmed from the punishing hill jump landing(s). I can't explain why the top part of the car had no corresponding fold or bends-- but it didn't, so far as I could tell eyeball-wise. At least, not one which stood out from the other visible damages. Maybe the roll cage's welded tie ins to the roof framework had something to do with it? But the strange nature of certain of Shadow's injuries didn't stop there.

There was a mind-boggling bend visible in the rear end axle too. You could plainly see it from behind the car, as the driver's side rear wheel seemed to be tilted in at the top, and out at the bottom. But the rear end damage didn't seem to affect the car's driving, or cause braking or wheel bearing problems. It was very odd. I wasn't sure if the hill jump or the first truck impact-- or both-- were responsible. Folks, it looked like the very inner axle to which the wheel was attached had to be bent for things to appear this way externally: but the wheel itself didn't wobble, or do anything else out of the ordinary, going down the road (which it seems it should have, with a bent axle). The weirdness was baffling. I would have loved to have had an expert explain to me how some of these things could be.

Shadow was still drivable, believe it or not. Though the wind and bad weather were problems with the missing rear window and ruined passenger door. The rear window especially hurt, allowing rain to pour in and soak my shag carpeted plywood shelf in the back, if left unprotected. Of the two 'glass pack' mufflers Shadow had once sported, one had been ripped loose of the header flange it had been bolted to, while on the other side a good chunk of the headers too had left with their muffler, upon our hill jump landing. This made Shadow painfully loud to drive now. The transmission seemed to occasionally shift a little strangely. The gas gauge was still missing, of course. The front air dam wasn't damaged nearly as badly as I'd expected: only the rubber bottom had been torn off, with the metal upper suffering some folding along its bottom edge, which could be unbent. A bit of bodywork tearing between the front fender flares and the dam was evident. The front tires had smashed so heavily upwards into the flat steel of the wide custom front fender flares, that the fenders themselves had crinkled above, and cracked the combination of fiberglass and bondo used for smoothing out their overall lines. By contrast, the rear tires had been deeply slashed by the edges of their factory standard fenders slamming down on them at speed. What had kept the tires from blowing out, I have no idea (they weren't even steel belted radials). And they'd stayed up through following months, despite their fatal-looking injuries. I suspected Shadow's stripped down weight and toughened suspension had been key to the survival of the tires.

Shadow's front bumper was mostly undamaged, but had been tilted somehow, so that it now appeared angled upwards, like a plane taking off from an airport. The angle was more pronounced on the passenger side than the other. This upward tilt of the center had forced the left and right ends of the bumper downwards, contributing to the tearing between air dam and front fender flares, as the bumper ends normally sat just above the transition points between same in the bodywork.

The open front ends of the traction bars were full of dirt they'd scooped up. The emergency brake cable running underneath the car had been cut as cleanly as if with a knife. Good thing I hadn't needed it after the jump!

There were sixty-two bullet holes in the body exterior that I could find (I'm counting the shot gun blast as a single hole, though there were a few penetrations inside its diameter which may have been caused by different weapons). It'd been a little tougher to count the holes in the wrecked passenger side door. Beneath the interior shelf, one bullet had hit a battery cell, causing some acid leakage and damage there. I found sixteen places bullets had been stopped by the metal plate behind my driver's seat. And nine on various spots of the roll cage and unfolded shelf armor set up, with another seven behind the passenger seat (the roll cage hits were mostly invisible until you removed the padding). There were a couple of ragged holes on the interior panel of the driver's side door which seemed to mark ricochets. Yikes! Most of the bullet holes were in the rear area of the car, but there were some to be seen on almost every major body part.

The rear bumper was ruined, but somehow had stayed attached to the car, despite most of the heads on its restraining bolts being sheared off. The lower left and right sides of the custom rear spoiler, as well as my tail lights and the massive factory standard gas cap all once part of Shadow's rear, had been chewed up badly by events. The small body panel which had hung below the bumper and housed my combination back up lights and strobes had disappeared entirely: frayed wires hung down to mark its passing on one side.

I drove the wounded Shadowfast a few times before my retreat. Partly to determine if it was salvageable. And partly to feel out what I wanted to do with the car next. Those drives were painful to me. And also revealed still more damages. For instance, my driver's side motor mount was now broken. Again. This puzzled me, as it was a new replacement part for the mount I'd broken before, in a perilous mountain escape. I would have expected the older and more worn mount on the other side to have broken before the new one.

I did a few very minor repairs to the vehicle, both before and after my retreat; but found myself increasingly unwilling to invest much more time or money into it. I would only drive Shadow one more time after my return. I held onto the car for perhaps another year or so after the end of my hiatus, purely for sentimental reasons. Finally though, I retrieved Shadow from my friend's place, posted an ad in the local paper, and sold the car cheap. For it was basically just a moving pile of parts now. I made sure to warn the buyer about all the safety hazards I knew to exist on the car now, like the cut emergency brake cable, and possibly bent frame and axle. I urged them to check out the engine too, for though it still ran, it seemed to always be a little too hot now, and its oil pressure too low, even at grandmother speeds. It was burning a bit of oil now, too. And of course there was the broken motor mount, windshield, and more.

Even today I still on occasion have dreams I'm driving Shadowfast again. But thankfully such dreams rarely involve that last run.