“Tell me about Paris, McCracken.”
Blaine might have if he’d been able to find his breath. As it was, Arruzi’s arm was coming forward again, the motion itself a blur, and Blaine turned his head away.
The pelota crashed between his spread legs, not six inches from his groin.
“He was just measuring off distance with that one,” Wells explained. “Tell me who else knows about Christmas Eve.”
Blaine caught his breath but didn’t speak.
Arruzi twisted his cesta and whipped his arm forward again.
Blaine saw the blur of the pelota coming straight for his groin and acted when it seemed impact was unavoidable. Using all the muscles in his arms and shoulders to gain leverage, Blaine hoisted his legs high and straight like a gymnast. His boots pounded the wall well above his manacled hands.
The pelota cracked into the precise spot previously occupied by his groin.
Blaine let his legs fall back down, his upper body a mass of fiery pain, ligaments and cartilage extended beyond their capacity.
“I think we’ll go for your arm this time, McCracken,” Wells taunted. “No way to move that now, is there?” He hesitated. “Tell me about Paris.”
Blaine just looked at him again. He felt the sweat sting his eyes and the taste of it was heavy on his lips.
Wells nodded to Arruzi. The player went into his motion.
Suddenly the lights in the fronton died, plunging the entire place into total darkness. Arruzi’s shot caromed into the side wall. Blaine felt the pelota whiz by him en route to the screen that protected fans from errant shots.
Wells was shouting orders, but the darkness had confused him as well and the words came out totally slurred, barely understandable. Blaine seized the chance to free his hands. He’d begun yanking his arms, steel ripping at his skin, when he felt a pair of strong hands steady him. A key was inserted into one manacle, then into the other. In the darkness all Blaine could see was the unusual blue glow of the man’s luminous watch dial. His arms were pulled free of the unlocked slots.
“Get out of here,” a voice whispered to him.
The only illumination in the fronton was coming from two exit signs, and Blaine dashed toward one. Motion flashed before him as he neared the heavy doors and he felt the heat of a body, heard rapid breathing. The man was probably fumbling for a gun, when Blaine crashed into him and followed up with a set of crunching fists that pummeled the man to the floor.
McCracken jumped over his downed body and crashed through the exit doors.
He knew the echoing rattle would give him away and didn’t even bother to look back as he sped into the cold night with only his green fatigues and shirt to shield him against the bitterly frigid air. His stomach still ached horribly and felt like it was being kicked every time his right leg landed. He had emerged at the rear of the building and headed back toward the front, toward the main road on which he’d been brought in.
Doors slammed closed and orders were shouted behind him. He’d been spotted, and the men from inside the fronton were giving chase.
Bullets sailed through the air from behind as the men rushed in his tracks. Hitting a moving target while moving yourself was virtually impossible even for the best shot, especially at night. This comforted Blaine, but he knew it was only a matter of time, and not much of it, before their superior numbers wore him down. Staying ahead of their bullets wasn’t enough. He had to escape them altogether.
The gates leading into the fronton complex had been closed and chained. Blaine rushed at them and scaled the fence to the top. He pulled himself over as bullets whizzed through the air on all sides of him. His poor-fitting army boots would start slowing him down now, and that was the last thing he could afford. He ran up the road the van had come down and prayed for a vehicle with a sympathetic driver or an unsympathetic one he could overcome.
The sky was still pitch black with dawn more than an hour away. Good. Darkness was his ally. It significantly reduced the advantage of the opposition’s superior numbers.
Blaine stayed off the road and ran along its bushy side. The darkness was even deeper here, unbroken by the spill of streetlamps. He’d be harder to spot. A car’s headlights caught him briefly as it swung around a corner. Blaine raced to cut off its angle, flailing with his arms.
“Hey! Hey!”
The car swerved to avoid him and kept right on going. To his rear Blaine heard shouts and screams. He had been spotted by at least two of Wells’s men. The advantage again swung to them.
He angled back into the brush by the roadside and kept following its course. So long as he stayed out of sight he had a chance. Another few hundred yards and he’d reach Route 114, a main road certain to be reasonably traveled even at this hour. One of the cars on it would provide his escape.
Forty yards up ahead McCracken caught the flash of movement on his side of the road. A gun barrel catching the spill of a streetlight. It came again and he stopped in his tracks, aware now of rustling sounds to his rear. They had him boxed in.
Blaine saw a car — no, a truck — bank into the curve before him. The truck was ablaze with lights and it was his last chance. He rushed into the street just as it swung over the slight rise and stood directly in its path. The screech of tires and squeal of brakes attracted Blaine’s pursuers to his position, and they could see him in the truck’s headlights. Their guns shattered the air and the truck swerved to avoid hitting Blaine.
“You crazy bastard!” the driver shouted as he skidded to a near halt by the shoulder.
Blaine was crazy, crazy enough to rush toward the pickup and grab hold of its side as the driver churned dust behind him. It was a few seconds after taking off again that the driver noticed Blaine’s figure hanging at his side, feet dragging dangerously close to the road, and started to apply the brakes again.
The truck’s progress still carried it well beyond Wells’s men who were giving chase. They quickened their stride when they saw the pickup’s brake lights flash once more.
“You fuckin’ crazy bastard!” the hefty driver roared, and he lunged with a pipe wrench, intent on burying it in the bizarre hitchhiker’s skull.
He never even got it started forward.
A stray bullet from one of the pursuer’s guns caught him square in the chest and flattened him. Blaine went for the cab in a crouch with bullets ricocheting wildly around him, coughing up metallic splinters from the truck. He swung himself inside and was revving the engine even before the door closed behind him. A quick shift into first and he screeched away, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake to swallow his pursuers.
Blaine didn’t have time to manage a 180, so he kept the pickup in the direction it was already headed — down the road past the fronton. Apparently, none of Wells’s men had hung back and there were no barricades. Blaine started to relax. Then, as he neared a point where the road forked, he saw two cars speeding from the right. Blaine swung the truck sharply to the left and watched the cars in his rear-view mirror spin around to give chase.
Blaine gave the engine more gas and flew past a sign that said GOAT ISLAND. He followed the arrows and asked the pickup for still more speed. He had been on the exclusive Goat Island once years before for a social gathering. It was a small island, dominated by luxuriously expensive condominiums, harbors, and a well-known Sheraton booked several summers in advance. Hardly the ideal spot to hide out — no island was — but it was all he had. He streamed toward the causeway linking Goat Island with Newport, screeching into turns and corners, the engine screaming as he demanded more of it down the brief straightaways. Behind him the tailing cars held their positions, twin shadows in the night.