Night of Thunder

Then he said, “All right, can you patch through to your command center? I’m going to try to reach them from my end. I’ll try and get a Bureau SWAT team deployed from Knoxville by chopper, and then we’ll move on site fast as we can. Ten-four.”

“Well?” said Bob.

“Come on,” said Nick, “we don’t have time. I’ll explain on the run.”

Bob threw on a light khaki sports coat to cover the gun in Kydex and mags arrayed in clip holders along his backside.

“It’s the concession money,” said Nick. “All of it, cash, small bills, a week’s worth of souvenirs and baseball hats, plus tickets for tonight, hot dog money, beer money, all the money from that NASCAR Village operation. He says it’s a six to eight million take. Now I should say, if you rob a bank and get two million, you’ve really only stolen $200,000 because you’ve got to move it to an overseas cartel, they’ve got to launder it and get it back to the U.S., and they’ll only pay out one on ten. That’s universal-except for this. Eight million small bills-maybe eight hundred to a thousand pounds of deadweight-is eight million. No one for ten. Straight one-for-one. You can start spending immediately, no one can track it.”

“It’s in an armored car?” asked Bob.

“More like a truck. They gather it up during the race and haul it to speedway headquarters. But there’s no vault there. So they bale it up and load it aboard that armored car. When the race is over, that vehicle, with a driver and three or four guards, moves out into the traffic and begins the long crawl to Bristol where it’s vaulted at one of the big downtown banks. The traffic jam, that’s supposedly the security. No one would hit an armored car in a traffic jam, because there’s no way out. But I’m guessing they’ve figured some way-”

It was suddenly clear to Bob.

“I see it. No, they don’t take the swag. They blow open the car, kill or incapacitate the crew. It takes ten seconds with an Mk.211. They set up perimeter security to deal with the cops who will have to fight the tide of panicked fans in the thousands to even get there. This team changes tires fast. Why? Because they ain’t driving down no road. The roads are jammed. They go off-road, they just mounted some kind of powerful off-road, heavy-tread tire. They go off-road, they grind through the most open area, which is that NASCAR Village, they just smash through it, nothing could stand up to the power of that truck. Maybe they’ve amped the engine somehow, to get a lot more power for a few minutes before the engine seizes or catches fire. That’s something the driver could do; he could figure it out.”

“Yeah, but where does that get ’em?”

“It gets ’em to the mountain. The hill, whatever. Up they go, and for that ride they’d need the best driver in the world, someone who’d won hill-climbs and truck demo derbies, the whole nine yards. They crank up that hill five minutes and fifty dead citizens and cops after they first hit the car. Up top, that’s the only safe place for that chopper pickup I came up with earlier. The chopper comes down the mountain range, way out of reach or even sight of any police firepower on scene, it picks them and the dough up, and they’re gone in seconds. They run through the dark low without lights, and nobody will follow them, because a) they can’t see ’em, and b) even if they could, they’re afraid of that.50 caliber, which will easily take a chopper down.”

Nick took up the narrative. “They chopper out of the area, land, split the swag, and they’re gone by dawn. We won’t even find where they’ll land.”

Bob made his choice at that moment. He knew where they’d land. But he had business there too.

“I have to move,” said Nick. “I’m going to try and get a chopper in here and get out there. You don’t have to-”

“Oh, yes I do. You need guns. I’ve got one.”

THIRTY-TWO

The race was over. It was a jim-dandy. Junior won, just beating Carl by shedding him in a pile of the lapped but persistent tail-enders on the last half of number five hundred, when Junior went low, slipped through a gap between Food City and Bass Pro Shop, buzzed dangerously around the blue-green Dewalt reading the apex of the curve-which he knew better than his girlfriend’s inner thighs and which he dreamed of more often-and hit the last straight in FedEx’s wake, slingshotting off the suck, and hitting the checker maybe six feet ahead of Carl’s Office Depot. Carl got caught behind Cheerios-damn him!-then caught a gap and some sling action of his own, but just couldn’t overcome Junior. If it had been a five hundred-lap-plus-thirty-foot race he’d have done it. Okay, so? It’s only one race.

The boys were all cheering, all up and down Volunteer Parkway outside the gigantic speedway structure, where the rug merchants all waited for a last shot at the johns and their families. Less sincerely, the Grumleys lurked, waiting for their big moment.

“Where’d USMC 44 finish?” asked Brother Richard.