Throttle (Kindle Single) Read Online Free PDF Page B

drugs”—the pigs were always doing that, it was what they lived for) had given Lemmy a skate when Lemmy explained it was more reliable than a road flare if you broke down at night. Maybe the cop knew what he was looking at, maybe not, but he knew that Lemmy was a veteran. Not just from Lemmy’s veteran’s license plate, which could have been stolen, but because the cop had been a vet himself. “Au Shau Valley, where the shit smells sweeter,” he’d said, and they had both laughed and even ended up bumping fists.
    Little Boy was an M84 stun grenade, more popularly known as a flash-bang. Lemmy had been carrying it in his saddlebag for maybe five years, always saying it would come in handy someday when the other guys—Vince included—ribbed him about it.
    Someday had turned out to be today.
    “ Will this old sonofabitch still work? ” Vince shouted as he hung Little Boy over his handlebars by the strap. It didn’t look like a grenade. It looked like a combination thermos bottle and aerosol can. The only grenade-y thing about it was the pull ring duct-taped to the side.
    “ I don’t know! I don’t even know how you can— ”
    Vince had no time to discuss logistics. He only had a vague idea of what the logistics might be, anyway. “ I have to ride! That fuck’s gonna come out on the other end of the Cumba road! I mean to be there when he does! ”
    “And if Race ain’t in front of him?” Lemmy asked. They had been shouting until now, all jacked up on adrenaline. It was almost a surprise to hear a nearly normal tone of voice.
    “One way or the other,” Vince said. “You don’t have to come. Either of you. I’ll understand if you want to turn back. He’s my boy.”
    “Maybe so,” Peaches said, “but it’s our Tribe. Was, anyway.” He jumped down on the Beezer’s kick, and the hot engine rumbled to life. “I’ll ride witcha, Cap.”
    Lemmy just nodded and pointed at the road.
    Vince took off.
    It wasn’t as far as he’d thought: seven miles instead of nine. They met no cars or trucks. The road was deserted, traffic maybe avoiding it because of the construction back the way they had come. Vince snapped constant glances to his left. For a while he saw red dust rising, the truck dragging half the desert along in its slipstream. Then he lost sight even of its dust, the Cumba spur dropping well out of sight behind hills with eroded, chalky sides.
    Little Boy swung back and forth on its strap. Army surplus. Will this old sonofabitch still work? he’d asked Lemmy, and now realized he could have asked the same question of himself. How long since he had been tested this way, running dead out, throttle to the max? How long since the whole world came down to only two choices, live pretty or die laughing? And how had his own son, who looked so cool in his new leathers and his mirrored sunglasses, missed such an elementary equation?
    Live pretty or die laughing, but don’t you run. Don’t you fucking run .
    Maybe Little Boy would work, maybe it wouldn’t, but Vince knew he was going to take his shot, and it made him giddy. If the guy was buttoned up in his cab, it was a lost cause in any case. But he hadn’t been buttoned up back at the diner. Back there, his hand had been lolling out against the side of the truck. And later, hadn’t he waved them ahead from that same open window? Sure. Sure he had.
    Seven miles. Five minutes, give or take. Long enough for a lot of memories of his son, whose father had taught him to change the oil but never to bait a hook; to gap plugs but never how you told a coin from the Denver mint from one that had been struck in San Francisco. Time to think how Race had pushed for this stupid meth deal, and how Vince had gone along even though he knew it was stupid, because it seemed he had something to make up for. Only the time for make-up calls was past. As Vince tore along at eighty-five, bending as low as he could get to cut the wind resistance, a terrible thought crossed his