Man on a leash - By Charles Williams Page 0,71
staring at him in a sort of benumbed wonder, unable even to guess what he might do next. He shifted into reverse and came back, hard, turning the wheel a little more to wipe the door right across the jagged and nearly vertical face of the rock.
There was a screech of rending metal as the door handle came off, tearing away a section of the skin. But his wheels were spinning now, digging in with a whining sound of their own. His angle was too steep, and he was jammed against it. He shifted and shot ahead four or five feet and started back again.
“Good God in heaven,” Paulette Carmody said, and shut her eyes. He tried not to think of that relay himself. They came into it with a crash and another shriek of metal, and he gunned it hard to keep going. The door buckled in toward them; they hung for a second or two, and in this fleeting hiatus in the sounds of destruction marred only by the high whining of the wheels he heard Paulette praying beside him, “—hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come—” Then they were moving again, to another keening of agonized metal, and when they lost contact with the face of the boulder the rod was some four inches in front of him, and he could see the long tear in the material lining the inside of the door. He stopped and looked out the window.
The rod had ripped through the sheet metal for at least five inches in a widening tear that was now nearly the width of the washer, and one side of the washer was already in it. He caught the rod with both hands, palms up in a weight lifter’s hold, braced his elbows against the back of the seat, and heaved. At first nothing happened. He relaxed, came up again, and then put his whole strength into one burst of upward pressure. There was a sound like a breaking guitar string as the washer popped through and the rod bent upward. He tore it through the composition material lining the door, slipped his ring off it, and pushed the end of it from between Paulette’s shackled wrists. It wouldn’t go on out through the hole in the right-hand door, of course, because the nut and washer were still on it and jammed now beyond removal by anything short of a hacksaw, but it didn’t matter.
Paulette Carmody’s eyes were open now, and she was looking at him in a sort of numb blending of awe and gratitude and returning hope. She started to speak; he cut her off with an abrupt, almost savage, gesture for silence, shoved the door open on her side, and waved—get the hell out, run. She looked startled, almost as if she were as much afraid of him now as of the dynamite, scrambled out of the seat, and began to run along the edge of the road.
He shoved at his door. It was jammed. He was about to slide over and get out on her side when it suddenly gave way and fell open as much as swung open. The screws in the upper hinge had been sheared off by the pressure. He shoved it out of the way, got out, and pulled the seat forward.
Kessler had long since figured out what he was up to, and if he were going to blow it at all, he’d do it within the next few minutes. By this time he must have serious doubts regarding that moonshine about the acid, and anyway he’d send it up to prevent their escape. No amount of money was going to save him if they got away to identify him. The sun was gone out of the canyon entirely now, and the light was poor on the floor behind the seats; he could just make out the detonating caps and their wires. They weren’t soldered, thank God; merely twisted. He pulled the first one loose, and then the other. It was disarmed.
He sighed, and his knees felt weak for a moment in testimony to the amount of tension they’d been under for hours now, and then it was gone, and he was plowing ahead. He pulled the two detonating caps free, straightened, and threw them back up the road, indifferent as to whether they exploded or not. They didn’t. He yanked at the webbing holding down the two bundles of dynamite, tore it loose, and set the explosive out