Night of Thunder

He moved swiftly, but didn’t try to push it, got to the engine of the truck, and opened the hood. Where others might have seen complexity, confusion, terror, he saw the universe of his upbringing, the nurture of experience, the thrill of God-given genius about to be engaged. Expertly, he reached deep into the engine space beyond the big architectural structures, and into the nest of wires, found the MAP sensor, directly behind the fuel filter bowl. He quickly disconnected the factory connector and connected the Xzilla harness in its place, plugging in the male connector to the harness. He cut away the wires connected to the injection pump and attached the blue wire tap to the wire closest to the engine block. From that point on, it was wire work. He had to know which wires to cut, which wires to reconnect, all of them color coded. Quickly he grounded the engine-ugh, was it really necessary to unscrew the negative terminal connection, no, not really-and then cut a hole through the rubber grommet to the right of the master cylinder assembly, and shoved the wire harness through it into the cab. He dashed into the cab, and didn’t bother to mount the switch but simply began plugging the wiring harness into the module itself, that little green box, where the gods of engine monitoring lived and worked. He turned the key and watched the module’s blinking LEDs finally signal success after running through the sequence, settling in the red, the highest power zone. He turned the key further, and after a grinding clunk and another turn of the key, the engine burst to life.

And, brother, did it burst. The sound was almost like no engine on earth, a guttural blast, full of implications of the explosive, and it rocked the entire vehicle. He could hear the engine revving insanely, suddenly injected with a power beyond measure, almost too much for the confines of the combustion chambers. It was on steroids! It was the Barry Bonds of truck engines!

“Fifty-seven four,” yelled Vern, “a new record.”

Brother Richard goosed the pedal, and the engine howled demonically, yet it didn’t burst into flames.

He had it. He finally had it. And pretty goddamned near time too! Talk about cutting it thin, why the deal was only a day or so away and-

Suddenly he saw the paint on the cantilevered hood begin to bubble and crackle, and that meant flame, invisible to the human eye, had burst out of the engine.

Shit!

He rolled sideways, hit the ground, and kept rolling as he heard the tell-tale whoosh of the fuel in the tank igniting, not exploding-it wasn’t under enough pressure-but flinging a blade of hot-star radiance a good thirty bright feet in the air from under Mr. Penske’s fine vehicle, bleaching the color from the day for just a second. Then the flames settled back into your normal total-toast truck burn, licking and eating and devouring, issuing the rancid odor of scorched metal, melting plastic, burning rubber.

Vern carefully backed out in the Eldorado, threw out his cigarette, turned on the air conditioner to full to evaporate the sweat on the men’s brows. Soon enough they found a main road and were well gone by the time the fire trucks and poor Detective Thelma Fielding showed up.

“Lord A’mighty, that was close,” howled handsome Vern, aflame in delight at the excellent adventure. “You’se almost tonight’s meal.”

“I’m too tough to digest, I’d keep you boys up all night with stomach pains.”

“It ran good for a while, though,” said Ernie.

“Yes, it did,” said Richard. “I think that’s it. I don’t think I had it grounded right. You’re supposed to remove the nut at the negative battery cable and attach the black wire. I didn’t take the nut off, but just wound the black wire around the terminal. Naughty, naughty. Next time, I will take the few seconds to remove the nut. It’s time well spent, and we will be close enough for government work, you’ll see.”

“You sure, Brother Richard?”

“Sure, I’m sure. All on that day, I’d hate to burn like a bonfire ’stead of running like a stallion.”

“Burning hurts,” said Vern. “Case you hadn’t noticed.”

“So I hear. Saw a fellow burn to death once. Lord God, he screamed. I had the distinct impression he wasn’t enjoying himself a bit.”

“Nor will you, Brother.”

“True enough, Brother. Well boys, get that old fraud of a daddy or an uncle or a molester or whatever polysexual archetype he’s playing this week to pray hard for you and me or else we’ll all arrive in hell pre-fried, COD. We’ll be a goddamned bucket of Colonel Grumley’s chicken, extra crispy.”

FIFTEEN