Read Online Whiskey River by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online Page B

windows were down now except mine. Something buzzed past the car on the passenger’s side, a hornet in January. Kramm nestled the Thompson’s butt into his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The pounding shook the car, spent shells bounced against the seat and floor, brimstone fouled the air.
    I heard two spaced shots in reply, then I saw a spot of bright light flickering, the reports hammering behind the flashes like an out-of-sync soundtrack. My eyes were growing accustomed to the moonlight. The bursts came from the backseat of a long, light-colored sedan with dark fenders and running boards.
    Something thudded against the side of the Hudson. I felt a hot wind on my face and my window disintegrated. I slumped down in the seat. For the next few moments I heard more than I saw.
    Springfield leaned out his window and fired his .45 pistol, the shots pounding at a stately pace. I heard a burp that had to be Jack’s goosed Luger disgorging the contents of its clip in a heartbeat. The other cars in our party joined the fight with automatic and single fire. A shotgun boomed. I hoped everyone knew where his friends were.
    Jack said, “What color’s that Packard?”
    “If you’re thinking of buying it, you better wait till the owner stops shooting at us.” Kramm rattled the Thompson’s breech. It had jammed.
    “Don’t Pete Rosenstein own a yellow-and-black Packard?”
    “Black and tan.” Kramm paused. “Holy shit, no wonder I couldn’t do anything to it. That car’s armor-plated.”
    “It must weigh three tons.”
    “Pete always did think with his prick.”
    “Next swing I make I want you to shoot at the ice under that Packard.”
    “It won’t do nothing. It’s froze two feet thick.”
    “Hang on. Don’t fire till I say.” Jack threw open the throttle.
    I barely got upright when the Hudson swung into a sharp turn and I felt the wheels on my side leave the ice. They came back down with a bang and my head hit the roof. I snatched hold of the leather strap by my window. The lights of Monroe—or maybe they were the lights of Leamington; I had lost all bearings—went past in a streak. Our slipstream stiffened my face and numbed my ears.
    We flashed past something metallic on my side. I hoped it was one of our cars, but I knew better. I heard shots, warped and curved like a train’s whistle as it rackets past, saw muzzles flare. We executed a sliding turn, changed gears, and made another pass. As the other car swelled inside the frame of the windshield I recognized it as the two-toned sedan with the backseat gunner. A medieval-looking louvered visor covered the radiator.
    “Now!”
    Kramm had cleared the breech. Now he braced his foot against the hump in the floor over the driveshaft and stuck his entire torso through his window. I heard the clattering reports, the clinking of the spent shells striking the Hudson’s roof. He fired two long bursts and pulled himself back inside.
    “What the hell, everybody dies.” Jack turned again. A spray of ice crystals coming off the tire chains caught the moonlight in an iridescent gusher.
    I saw then what was happening. In his attempts to outmaneuver the lighter Hudson, the driver of the lumbering Packard had forgotten where he was. The armor-plated car’s front tires, unchained, had locked and the car had slewed over the edge of a dark patch over a shoal. As we powered past within a hundred feet, drawing machine-gun fire which at that range was haphazard at best, Andy Kramm thrust himself half out of the Hudson again and hammered at the thin ice under the Packard.
    At first there was no effect. The bullets vanished into darkness as if poured down a hole. Then a pattern of fine cracks starred the dark patch, etched white on black, spreading outward.
    “Shit!”
    Kramm fell back into the seat, the Thompson across his lap with its breech locked open. It was a bad time to run out of ammunition.
    But bullets were still hitting the ice. As we sped away from the Packard,