The Road to Gandolfo Read Online Free PDF Page B

back.
    An
officer
!
    MacKenzie kept the bike at top-throttle and exhausted the clip of the .45. He careened up and over a mound of dirt and sand and cascaded onto a sloping hill of grass. As the bike was in midair he glimpsed the blurs of screaming heads beneath him and wished to hell he had more ammo. He twisted the handlebars violently so he could angle down and zoom diagonally back toward the road.
    Goddamn! He hit the surface again! He’d broken through the barricade! He was barrel-assing onto the Peking highway!
    The flat concrete was a joy. The spinning wheels of the motorcycle hummed; the wind rushed against his face—clear, intoxicating blasts of clean, dustless air which forced the smoke of his cigar into whirling pockets around his ears. Even the goggles were clear now.
    He took the next nine miles like a star-spangled meteor through an unknowing Chincom sky. Another mile and he would turn into the northern side streets of Peking. Goddamn! He was going to make it! And then, by Christ, the Commie bastards would find out what an American counterstrike was!
    He raced the bike through the crowded streets and careened off the curb at the entrance to Glorious Flower Square, the final stretch to the mission which stood at the end of the small plaza, fronting the street in alabaster, Oriental splendor. There were, as usual, crowds of Pekingers and out-of-towners milling about, waiting to catch glimpses of the strange, huge pink people that came and went through the white steel doors inside the medium-sized compound.
    It wasn’t much of a compound at that; there was no brick wall or high metal fence surrounding the mission. Only a thin latticework of decorative wood, lacquered against the elements, enclosing the clipped grass lawn that fronted the steps.
    The protection was in the windows and doors: iron grillwork and steel.
    MacKenzie revved the bike’s engine to maximum, figuring the noise would part the throngs of onlookers.
    It did.
    The Chinese scattered as he raced down the street.
    And Hawkins damn near fell off the bike’s saddle at what he saw in front of him; what—in a sense—was rushing toward him at goddamn near fifty miles an hour on that short stretch of pavement in Glorious Flower Square.
    There were
three sets of wooden barricades
—elongated horses—in front of the closed latticework gate! Each horizontal plank was a foot or so above the other, forming areceding escalator wall of thick boards backed up by the delicate, filigreed fence.
    Standing in a line at port-arms were a dozen or so soldiers, flanked by two officers, all staring straight ahead. At him.
    This is it, thought MacKenzie, nothing left but the gesture, the motion—the act itself.
    Total defiance!
    Goddamn!
If he only had some ammo left!
    He crouched and headed the bike right into the center of the barricade; he twisted the bar accelerator to the maximum and pressed the foot choke all the way down.
    The speedometer’s needle wavered in a violence of its own as it quivered and shot up swiftly toward the end of the dial; man and machine burst through the air corridor like a strange, huge bullet of flesh and steel.
    Amid the screams of the hysterical crowds and the scattering of the panicked soldiers, Hawkins yanked the handlebars furiously back and slapped the weight of his body against the rear of the saddle. The front wheel rose off the ground like an abstract, spinning phoenix-followed by a mad extension of tail and rider—and crashed into the upper section of the barricade.
    There was a thunderous shattering of wood and latticework as MacKenzie Hawkins shot up, into—and through the tiers of obstructions, a maniacally effective human cannonball that dragged the rest of the weapon with him.
    The bike plummeted down into the path of washed pebbles that led to the steps of the mission. As it did so, MacKenzie was hurled forward, somersaulting over the bars, rolling on the tiny stones until he thudded into the base of the short