right. That’s too coincidental. He’s behind us again, all right.”
Five “I’m going to pull over and stop on the shoulder of the road,”
Alex said, lightly pumping the power brakes.
“Why? ”
“To see what he does.”
“You think he’ll stop behind us?” Colin asked.
“Maybe.” Doyle sincerely hoped not.
“He won’t. If he really is an FBI man, he’ll be too smart to fall for
that kind of trick. He’ll just zoom on by as if he doesn’t notice us,
then pick us up later.”
Alex was too tense to play the boy’s game. His lips set in a tight,
grim line, he slowed the car even more, looked back and saw that the
rental van was also slowing down. His heart beating too rapidly, he
drove onto the berm, gravel crunching under the wide tires, and came to
a full stop.
“Well?” Colin asked, excited by this turn of events.
Alex tilted the rear-view mirror and watched the Automover pull off the
highway and stop just a quarter of a mile behind them. “Well, he’s not
an FBI man, then.”
“Hey, great! ” the boy said, apparently delighted by the unexpected
turn the day had taken. “What could he be?”
“I don’t like to think about that,” Doyle said.
“I do.” “Think quietly, then.”
He let off the brake and drove back onto the interstate, accelerated
smoothly into the traffic pattern. Two cars came between them and the
van, providing an illusory sense of isolation and safety.
However, within a very few minutes the Chevrolet passed the other
vehicles and insinuated itself behind the Thunderbird once more.
What does he want? Doyle wondered.
It was almost as if the stranger behind the wheel of the van somehow
knew of Alex Doyle’s secret cowardice and was playing on it.
The land was now even flatter than it had been, like a gigantic
gameboard, and the road was straighter and more mesmeric.
They had passed the exit ramp for Effingham; and now all the signs were
warning far in advance of the connecting route for Decatur, and marking
the tens of miles to St.
Louis.
Alex kept the Thunderbird moving five miles faster than the speed limit,
sweeping around the slower traffic but staying mostly within the
right-hand lane.
The van would not be shaken.
Ten miles after their first stop, he slowed down and pulled over to the
berm again, watched as the Chevrolet followed suit. “What the hell does
he want?” Doyle asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Colin said, frowning. “But I just
can’t figure him.”
When Doyle took the car back on the road again, he said, “We can make
more speed than a van like that. Lots more. Let’s leave him in our
dust.”
“Just like in the movies,” Colin said, clapping his hands.
“Tromp it down all the way!’l Although he was not as pleased as Colin
was about the prospect of a high-speed escape and pursuit, Doyle
gradually pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor. He felt the big
car tremble, shimmy, then steady down as it raced toward the performance
peak which was being demanded of it. In spite of the Thunderbird’s
nearly airtight insulation, the road noises came to them now: a dull but
building background roar underlying the rhythmic pounding of the engine
and the shrill, protesting cry of the gusting wind which strained
through the bar grill.
When the speedometer registered a hundred miles an hour, Alex looked in
the mirror again. Incredibly, the Chevrolet was pacing them.
It was the only other vehicle in sight which was using the left-hand
lane.
The Thunderbird picked up speed: one-oh-five (with the road noise like a
waterfall crashing down all around them), one-fifteen (the shimmy back,
the frame sighing and groaning), then the top of the gauge, beyond the
last white numerals and still moving, still increasing speed . . .
The median posts flashed past in a single, faultless blur, a wall of
gray steel. Beyond that wall, in the eastbound lanes, cars and trucks
went past in the opposite direction as if they had been shot out of a
cannon.
The van lost ground.
“We’re really moving!” Colin cried, his voice a mixture of glee and