Rockecenter grabbed his hat and picked up the heavy case. He stepped over to Bury behind the couch and gave him a kick. “Whether you’re dead or not, your usefulness is ended. Now I’m off to Philadelphia to handle another one of your foulups.”
Rockecenter went to the French doors, closed them behind him and shouted up the drive, “Bring my car and get a tank for protection!”
The general gave a signal. Two soldiers seized Izzy, pinning his arms back and looking around for something to tie him with.
Two more soldiers grabbed Twoey and after a brief struggle had him on the floor.
The general made a gesture toward Heller.
Rockecenter’s car had arrived and Rockecenter went down the steps to it, but he stood there looking up the road.
The soldiers started to grab Heller’s arms. “Oh, he didn’t mean me!” said Heller. “I’m his son.”
“What?” said the general.
“Yes, it’s a fact,” said Heller. “He just meant these two fellows here.”
Both Izzy and Twoey looked at Heller, stunned.
The general stepped toward the French doors as though to go after Rockecenter and ask. But Rockecenter had now climbed into his car and it began to roll.
From where Heller stood he could see through the glass of the French doors that Rockecenter’s car had pulled up again and stopped. He hoped the general would not see that.
“Well, see here,” said the general, “I’ll have to have proof, and more than some phony ID!”
“Ah,” said Heller. “You just grab the phone on that desk and ask for Emergency FBI, Washington, DC. You just ask for agents Stupewitz and Maulin.”
Heller crossed his fingers. Those agents were the first ones he had had contact with on his original arrival in the United States last fall. He had never heard of them or from them since.
The general moved to the desk, his back to the door. If he turned around he would be able to see the limousine. It was waiting for a tank, apparently, for tank engines were roaring outside.
The general got his connection. He asked for agent Stupewitz or Maulin. He waited. Then he said, “Agent Stupewitz? This is General Flood, New York National Guard. We’ve got a fellow here that says he’s Rockecenter’s son. . . . Yes, I’ll describe him. He’s about six foot two, slender, blond hair, blue eyes, probably about eighteen. . . .” He put his hand over the mouthpiece, “What is your name supposed to be?”
“Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior,” said Jet. He could see the tank in place in front of the car. A sergeant was standing by the officer in the turret, pointing at a map.
The general said into the phone, “He says his name is Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior. . . . I’m calling from Pokantickle Hills, the Rockecenter home. . . .”
He suddenly shoved the instrument at Heller. “He wants to talk to you to verify your voice.”
Heller took the phone. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the tank and limousine. He wished they’d get moving. “Hello, Agent Stupewitz, sir,” said Heller. “I just wanted to remind you that we never got a tombstone for Mary Schmeck.”
“JUNIOR! Hey, Maulin, it’s Junior! Grab the other phone!”
“Hello, Junior,” said Maulin. “I’m glad you called. Did you know we never even heard from Bury!”
“Not a squeak!” said Stupewitz.
“How horrible!” said Heller. “It’s a good thing that you told me. I’m of age now and there’s a lot of inheritance around. . . .”
Both agents laughed agreeably.
“And I was just wondering the other day if I had any debts. By golly, I’m glad I contacted you. I am going to need a lot of help to straighten up my affairs. Would you consider a couple of six-figure jobs?”
Maulin said, “We can retire any minute, Junior. We’re just waiting for the chance.”
“You’ve got it,” said Heller. “Do you want me to put this general back on?”
He handed the instrument to the general. He listened. His ears got bright pink. Then he looked at Heller and stood a little straighter. He put the phone back on its cradle.
“I’m sorry,” said the general. “I’m new at these family matters.”
“All’s fair in love and war,” said Heller cryptically. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the limousine and tank were gone. “Now, General, take that Bury there to your hospital tent and if he isn’t dead, do a nice long operation. Plenty of anesthetic because he’s sensitive. As for these other two, hold them very safe.”
Izzy and Twoey looked at him with horror.
“Now, as you know,” continued Heller, “there’s lots of Maysabongo saboteurs about. So let me have a motorcycle so my driver can scout the road. And if there’s nothing else, I’ll go out to my car and try to catch up with Daddy.”
“Very good, Lieutenant Rockecenter,” said the general and barked an order to an aide who was hovering at the door.
PART SEVENTY-ONE
Chapter 2
Heller raced out. There was no sign of the tank or limousine. He spotted the sergeant who had been showing the map to the officer in the tank turret.
“Sergeant,” he called, and when the man came over and saluted, “It’s very urgent that they take a safe route. I trust you gave them good advice.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the sergeant, digging out a map. “There’s reports of Maysabongo partisans in New York. So they’re going west over the Tappan Zee Bridge to the Jersey side and then south on Highland Avenue until it joins the Palisades Interstate Parkway along the Hudson. Before they hit the George Washington Bridge, they’ll go west to Fort Lee and then hit the New Jersey Turnpike. They’ll leave that at Exit 6 and switch over to US 95 and wind up right at Independence Hall.”
Heller sketched it with a pen and took the map.
He ran over to where Bang-Bang sat worriedly in the cab, looking distrustfully at the Army, an organization which, as an ex-Marine, he despised. Heller, arriving from behind, startled him.
Hastily, Heller gave him some instructions and handed him the map. A soldier was wheeling up a dispatch rider’s motorcycle.
Bang-Bang got out of the cab. Heller took the dispatch rider’s helmet and put it on Bang-Bang. Then Heller reached into the cab and hung the satchel around Bang-Bang’s neck.
The soldier jiggled the carburetor primer. Bang-Bang stamped on the kick-start, gave Heller a look of misgiving and then the motorcycle roared away, spreading terror amongst the troops it barely missed as it rocketed for the gate. Bang-Bang was gone.
Heller climbed into the cab, which now looked like an Army car, started up, and with a salute to the officer, sped down the drive and away.
He had expected to catch up with Rockecenter by the time they had reached the Tappan Zee Bridge. But when he went through the tollgate, he could see no sign of the limousine or tank on the long span across the Hudson. He hoped Bang-Bang was riding fast enough. Rockecenter was certainly revving it up.
Heller roared across the three-mile span: the Hudson River sparkled blue below in the July noon sun, a vast waterway stretching to the distant sea.
Reaching the New Jersey side, he turned south on Highland Avenue, actually a highway in its own right. Even though it was Sunday and he was entering the long series of parks which stretched sixteen miles or more along the river, there was no traffic to be seen anywhere: the US was out of gas completely, except for the favored or those with foresight, and they weren’t wasting it on picnicking.
A few miles south of the bridge, the road turned through a rolling, grassy area, a deserted golf course. He was going very fast. The turn ahead was blind. He shot around it.
THE LIMOUSINE AND THE TANK!
They were stopped beside the road.
Rockecenter was out of the car.
One of the tank crew was evidently trying to fix the limousine’s whip antenna.
There was no time to brake or duck.
Rockecenter looked straight into Heller’s face! He raised his hand t
o point and yell.
It all happened in the blur of three seconds. Heller shot past them at eighty miles an hour.
There was another curve in the road coming right up. A park lay all along on Heller’s right.
He rounded the turn, saw in his rearview mirror that the tank was out of sight.
There was an opening into the park right ahead.
Heller stamped on his brakes.
The old cab skidded sideways with a scream.
He dived it into the trees, saw he was covered, and stopped.
He could hear the tank engine roar.
He opened the door and peered through the leafy cover at the road.
He saw the tank. It was some old model, the kind of equipment they give reserve units when the regulars no longer want it. It had wheels, not treads, for fast highway travel. It might be old but it had a big gun in its turret and machine guns pointing out in front. The officer was riding with the hatch open, standing in it, goggled and helmeted and holding a drawn .45. That told Heller all he needed to know. They had orders to shoot him.
The tank went by. Then, here came the limousine. He saw Rockecenter leaning forward and peering ahead, pushing at his driver’s back.
Heller recalled his map. For the next two miles, until they reached Palisades Interstate Parkway, the scenic route which ran along the high cliffs of the Hudson, the road had few curves. He waited.
When he felt sure he would not be spotted, he backed out onto the highway and proceeded south.
There was no sign of Bang-Bang.
Somehow, Heller knew, he had to get those patents back. What Rockecenter would do with them was just put them in a drawer, for he had done that with numerous Earth inventions which would have economized on or substituted for oil. He would order the microwave power units dismantled. He would close off the production of the carburetor and gasless cars. And he would continue the profitable pollution of the planet.
If Rockecenter succeeded in getting war declared, control of all the oil companies, which he had already, would come right back into his hands. And so would the other things he already controlled, such as banking. He still owned all the governments by way of international finance. The only thing Heller would have effected would have been the removal of the threat of nuclear war, by destroying Russia. And maybe Rockecenter would build that up again somehow so he could sell arms once more.
Heller did not care what happened to Rockecenter himself now. The man had committed the cardinal sin of breaking his word and, to a Fleet officer, that ended off any mercy that Rockecenter might expect if it came to a final showdown. They had given him what was really a fair out: he had taken advantage of it like a thief, even to the point of stealing their wallets.
Driving at a good speed, he opened the glove compartment of the cab. No gun. He glanced into the back seat. No gun. Bang-Bang had probably put the regulation Colt .45 Heller had been issued in the shoulder satchel. If the tank stopped again, it left Heller with no weapons. All he could do was hope he wouldn’t have to go barehanded up against a tank.
He turned several curves. Suddenly Entrance 4 of the Palisades Interstate Parkway loomed. He shot out onto its broad expanse.
Too late, he saw the limousine and tank a mile ahead.
The officer must have been looking back. Heller had been seen!
The tank swerved out, let the limousine pass it and fell in behind the car.
Heller was hastily checking his speed.
He didn’t check it fast enough.
A burst of machine-gun fire slashed the trees to his right!
The tank turret was coming around.
Heller braked hard.
BLAM!
The tank shell hit the road in front of the cab and screamed over the top of it in a ricochet.
Heller slewed the cab over into the left-hand lanes.
BLAM!
Another shell hit where the cab had just been!
Where the scenic highway made a close approach to the cliffs above the river, there was a turn. The tank and limousine passed around it.
Heller straightened up the cab and proceeded. He recalled from the map that the parkway had more curves from that point on, closing with and drawing away from the cliffs.
He glanced to his left. The Hudson stretched out majestically. It was bordered for the next nine miles by sandstone precipices, vertical down to the water, from 540 to 200 feet in height where the river had slashed through the lower Catskill Mountains. Across the river, a mile away, lay Yonkers, and to the south, thirteen miles from here, glistened the skyscrapers of Manhattan. The air seemed clearer today: the absence of cars and chimney smoke—plus, perhaps, the spores of Ochokeechokee now drifting around Earth were making some small change in the polluted atmosphere already. It was, in fact, a beautiful clear day. It made Heller cross: Rockecenter was bound and determined to destroy such gains.
He was being alert now for some sign of Bang-Bang. He hoped his friend had gotten well ahead and wouldn’t be spotted by that tank.
He went another five miles. The parkway slid inland from the high cliffs now and was bordered by tall, impressive trees.
Heller was afraid he’d lose them. He speeded up to eighty.
A turn was just ahead where the broad highway twisted once more east, back to the Hudson.
Heller took the turn.
Too late, he saw the tank only a quarter of a mile ahead!
They were only doing about forty!
Heller was closing a lot too fast!
BLAM!
As he saw the turret gun flash, he veered left.
The shell went by with a shriek.
A spray of machine-gun bullets hit his windshield, pocks of sudden white in the bulletproof glass.
He veered to the right.
BLAM!
A shell screamed by on his left.
Suddenly he saw the motorcycle.
It was lying tipped on its side in the left lane!
Had Bang-Bang been caught up with?
Suddenly Heller understood what that motorcycle meant.
The limousine and tank were only a few hundred yards ahead. They were speeding around the turn where the parkway was directly above the Hudson three hundred feet straight down.
Heller stamped on his brakes and spun the cab.
It screeched in a full 360 degrees.
Heller had it in reverse.
He shot backwards.
BOOOOOOOOM!
Bright orange fire erupted from under the highway and bloomed hugely into the sky.
A hundred-yard strip of highway was going up into the air!
The tank was flung, as from a catapult, high out over the river!
As it hit the zenith of its flight, it suddenly exploded as a bomb of its own. Its ammunition and gasoline ripped it into a balloon of fire.
The concussion hit the cab and the tires screeched as it shot backwards.
Then Heller saw the limousine.
It was high in the air, turning over and over.
It spun slowly and plummeted down into the Hudson, hundreds of feet below.
PART SEVENTY-ONE
Chapter 3
The debris was pattering down, hitting the highway all around and the cab.
The column of smoke was puffing, like an expanding balloon, up into the summer sky.
Heller sped the cab forward, avoiding massive lumps of concrete. He came close to the edge of the enormous gash that had been gouged out of the cliffside.
He leaped out of the cab and raced to the edge of the precipice. Some pieces of debris were still striking the water.
The ocean tide apparently had been moving in, for the splashes were drifting a bit northward against the normal current of the river.
Heller was looking for any sign of the limousine three hundred feet below.
Footsteps came running behind him.
Bang-Bang Rimbombo. “I’m glad you saw the bike,” he panted. “It was the only signal I could think of to te
ll you the road was mined ahead.”
“Holy heavens,” said Heller. “I didn’t tell you to blow the whole highway and cliff down! You were only supposed to blast down a barricade.”
“Well, when I opened the satchel,” said Bang-Bang, “those itty-bitty charges looked so small, I had misgivings. I really stuffed them in. I never saw such compact dynamite in all my years in demolition. Jesus, Jet, I’m sorry. I guess I overdid it!”