Night of Thunder

“I think I figured Mark 2:11 out. It took a thousand hits on the Net but it’s actually ‘Mark,’ as in military or industrial model designation, capital M, small k, period, then just two-eleven, no colon, and it refers to a.50 caliber armor-piercing munition that-”

At that moment the tree trunk behind which Bob had slithered exploded. It atomized as something weighing 650 grains with a secondary explosive and a tungsten core, traveling at twenty-five hundred feet per second, hit it at zero angle, detonated, and sent a shockwave through it that all but liquefied the wood structure itself. It toppled, but could not find room among the other trees to actually hit ground, and lay suspended at an angle.

“Thanks, Charlie,” said Bob, “I’ll get back to you.” He flipped the phone away, slithered even farther down the hill. Good old Charlie. Better late than never.

Two more.50 Raufosses arrived, but the gunner had no target. This time, not hitting wood, he did not get his secondary detonation, but only plowed into the dirt, kicking up a huge, dusty geyser of earth and leaves, each blast a bit farther from Bob, the thrust of the recoil taking him away from his target with each shot. Bob rolled to the side, came up in a good kneeling position, put the red circle on his target and, guessing that he was body-armored, shot him in the head.

Now, he thought, get to the top, get some rounds into that bird, cripple it, then fall back and live happily ever after. Let the real FBI take over.

Each thirty-pound, twenty-by twenty-four-inch, plastic tamper-evident bag contained approximately twelve thousand bills, as baled carefully in the counting room at Bristol Speedway headquarters. The distribution of bills was predictable, even immutable: 10 per cent of them were ones, 15 per cent fives, 25 per cent of them tens, 40 per cent of them twenties, 5 per cent of them fifties and 5 per cent of them one hundreds. Each bag contained about $226,000 and all thirty-five of them-roughly $8 million in small, unrecorded bills-weighed a thousand fifty pounds.

The Reverend needed men. So he sent only two gunners to the crestline to search for the ranger on the motorcycle, figuring the two could handle it easily enough. That left three to unload and hoist, and one on the roof to stack the bales in a neat pile for easy tossing into the wide-open chopper door. If that goddamned Richard were here, it would help, but the boy had disappeared.

The Grumley inside tossed the bags out to a Grumley beside the truck’s open rear door, and he in turn-husky Caleb, bloody nose and all-heaved it up to the Grumley atop the truck. When all the bags were out, all the Grumleys would climb up top and toss the bags into the chopper hovering above. It seemed to be going pretty well, given that the rotors of the helicopter were tossing up hell and gone, when someone wandered up groggily, holding his ear.

“Pap,” he yelled, “he goddamn hit me three times and the last one bounced off the vest and tore off my ear.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Pap.

“Pap, I’se hurt bad. Git me out of here. That boy can shoot a lick.”

The Reverend made a decision.

“Caleb, you no nevermind that, you git over there, you boys too, you put this fella down.”

So the whole goddamned team quit their loading and ran to the edge of the hill.

Pap waited as the guns blazed, the helicopter hovered, and nothing seemed to be happening except time was passing. What was taking so long?

“I’m getting worried hanging here,” said the helicopter pilot through the phone. “They git heavy guns up here, they can bring this thing down in a second. You said wouldn’t be no shooting.”

“Some damn hero trying to win a medal,” Pap said. “Hold her just a second.”

He looked about. Richard would sure have been a help around now. But no Richard.

Suddenly the boys was back. They’d dumped their mags, filled the woods with slugs, tore shit out of it no human man could live through, and left Caleb to hold the fort.

So it was Pap himself who climbed up top the truck from the hood, and started lifting and tossing the bales into the chopper. Hard to believe, each chunk of weight was about a quarter mil in swag, untraceable, immediately spendable, investable, hell, a feller could have himself a great weekend in Vegas with just one of ’em. And goddamn, he was getting two, the boys one each and-

He found superhuman strength in the power of his greed and tossed them aboard. The pilot helped by walking the chopper down the length of the truck so the distance wasn’t far, and the thirty-five bags went aboard fast. Then each scrambled in, all helping to get the wounded man aboard.

“Where’s Caleb?”

“Sir, he ain’t coming, don’t believe. We seen him go down just a second ago. We ought to-”

But the old man didn’t need to be told. He twisted from the news, looked through the entryway from cargo hatch to cockpit where a pilot looked back at him, and gave the thumbs up.