Storm Front

“I’m going to need you to come up here and grab the steering wheel,” Storm said. “Keep us straight as best you can. It’s going to battle you and try to tug you to the left. But if you get to the side of the wheel, left becomes up and right becomes down. You can use gravity to keep it down. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yeah, got it.”

Cracker got himself in position, then put both hands on the wheel. The Lincoln pulled into the left breakdown lane to pass the one car that had separated it from the Jaguar. It was the move Storm had been waiting for.

“I’m letting go now,” he said.

The wheel tugged left, but Cracker had all the leverage he needed to hold it in place. Storm grabbed the car seat, twisted his body so he was facing backward, then perched himself on the side of the door, so that both the seat and his torso were outside of the Jaguar.

With both hands, he heaved the car seat at the windshield of the Lincoln, putting as much strength as he could muster into the throw.

It hit the windshield dead center, creating a huge crater. The Lincoln swerved violently, rocking on its suspension, and Storm briefly hoped it might spin out. Instead, it righted itself by side-swiping the green Toyota, which sparked a chain-reaction accident behind it — but did not, unfortunately, slow the Lincoln.

Storm focused on the pickup truck, assessing the damage he had caused. The force of those thirty pounds hurtling backward had not broken the entire windshield, as Storm had hoped — the shatterproof glass did its job and held — but it did punch a car seat–sized hole in the middle. That would have to do.

Storm retreated back into the Jaguar, which was being held steady — or at least somewhat steady — by a very determined Whitely Cracker. Storm seized the cigar lighter and the first Poland Spring bottle and lit the piece of shirt sticking out the top. He hoped Volkov appreciated this tribute to Vyacheslav Molotov, the Russian foreign minister who introduced the world to the crude, homemade bomb that still bore his name.

Storm waited until he was sure the wick was lit, then leaned back out of the car and tossed his creation toward the hole in the Lincoln’s windshield.

Unfortunately for him, because he was on the left side of the car and facing backward, he was using his less-accurate right arm. He missed. The bottle bounced harmlessly off the top of the Lincoln’s cab and did not ignite until it hit the pavement, well behind the pickup.

There was no more gunfire coming from the Lincoln. Perhaps the car seat had injured or killed the passenger as it hurtled through the pickup. Or maybe he was just reloading.

Storm lit the next wick, then tossed. It missed wide right. Attempt number three splattered into the grille plate and burst into a fireball, but it was like hitting a charging rhino with a BB gun. The Lincoln was not affected.

Attempt number four hit the windshield in front of the driver but bounced the wrong way and, more to the point, did not go off until it struck blacktop.

Storm had two more chances. Worse, there was once again sniping coming from the Lincoln. The shooter was leaning out his window and squeezing off rounds in steady succession. The first six missed. The seventh struck the Jaguar’s right rear tire just as Storm got the next shirt lit.

Storm was thankful he was inside the car when it happened. The wild lurching of the Jaguar might have thrown him had he been trying to hang on outside.

As it was, he was tossed against the side of the vehicle, taking a chunk out of his forehead. It was not a serious wound, but it was a bleeder. Storm cursed as blood poured into his eyes.

“Oh my God, are you hit?” Cracker said.

“Just drive,” Storm growled.

The Jaguar was now on its rims on both sides in back, pouring a steady stream of sparks behind it. The engine was working double to maintain the speed requested of it by the cruise control, its twelve cylinders firing furiously.

Storm looked down at the second-to-last Molotov.

“Come on, Derrick,” he urged. “Let’s do this.”

He twisted himself out of the car, exposing more of himself so he could get his left arm free. He focused on the hole in the wind-shield, except it wasn’t a windshield anymore. It was a catcher’s glove. And he wasn’t a grown man anymore. He was a twelve-year-old pitcher, in his backyard, standing on the makeshift pitchers’ mound his father had created for him.

“Keep your eyes on the mitt,” his father always told him when he was struggling with his control. “Don’t aim. Just throw.”

The old man had kept him on target in so many aspects of his life.

This would just have to be one more.

He whipped his left arm, following through as best he could with the throw.

The bottle traced a straight line toward the pickup truck, spiraling gently as it sailed in the air. Throwing a two-inch-diameter bottle through a hole no more than two feet wide from out the window of a fishtailing car traveling at fifty miles an hour was, Storm knew, a nearly impossible task.