"The dealer?" Malone asked. The little old lady nodded. "In _your_
favor?"
"He couldn't have been cheating," Boyd said at the same instant. "Why
would he want to give you all that money?"
The little old lady shook her head. "He didn't want to give it to me,"
she said. "He wanted to give it to the man in the cowboy's suit. His
name is Elliott, by the way--Bernard L. Elliott. And he comes from
Weehawken. But he pretends to be a Westerner so nobody will be
suspicious of him. He and the dealer are in cahoots--isn't that the
word?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," Boyd said. "That's the word." His tone was awed
and respectful, and the little old lady gave a nod and became Queen
Elizabeth I once more.
"Well," she said, "the dealer and Mr. Elliott were in cahoots, and the
dealer wanted to give the hand to Mr. Elliott. But he made a mistake,
and dealt the Jack of clubs to me. I watched him, and, of course, I
knew what he was thinking. The rest was easy."
"My God," Malone said. "Easy." Barbara said: "Did she win?"
"She won," Malone said with what he felt was positively magnificent
understatement.
"Good," Barbara said, and lost interest at once.
Malone had seen the lights of a car in the rear-view mirror a few
minutes before. When he looked now, the lights were still there--but
the fact just didn't register until, a couple of blocks later, the car
began to pull around them on the left. It was a Buick, while Boyd's
was a new Lincoln, but the edge wasn't too apparent yet.
Malone spotted the gun barrel protruding from the Buick and yelled
just before the first shot went off.
Boyd, at the wheel, didn't even bother to look. His reflexes took over
and he slammed his foot down on the brake. The specially-built FBI
Lincoln slowed down instantly. The shotgun blast splattered the glass
of the curved windshield all over--but none of it came into the car
itself.
Malone already had his hand on the butt of the .44 Magnum under his
left armpit, and he even had time to be grateful, for once, that it
wasn't a smallsword. The women were in the back seat, frozen, and he
yelled: "Duck, damn it, duck!" and felt, rather than saw, both of them
sink down onto the floor of the car.
The Buick had slowed down, too, and the gun barrel was swiveling back
for a second shot. Malone felt naked and unprotected. The Buick and
the Lincoln were even on the road now.
Malone had his revolver out. He fired the first shot without even
realizing fully that he'd done so, and he heard a piercing scream from
Barbara in the back seat. He had no time to look back.
A .44 Magnum is not, by any means, a small gun. As handguns go--
revolvers and automatics--it is about as large as a gun can get to be.
An ordinary car has absolutely no chance against it.
Much less the glass in an ordinary car.
The first slug drilled its way through the window glass as though it
were not there, and slammed its way through an even more unprotected
obstacle, the frontal bones of the triggerman's skull. The second slug
from Malone's gun followed it right away, and missed the hole the
first slug had made by something less than an inch.
The big, apelike thug who was holding the shotgun had a chance to pull
the trigger once more, but he wasn't aiming very well. The blast
merely scored the paint off the top of the Lincoln.
The rear window of the Buick was open, and Malone caught sight of
another glint of blued steel from the corner of his eye. There was no
time to shift aim--not with bullets flying like swallows on the way to
Capistrano. Malone thought faster than he had imagined himself capable
of doing, and decided to aim for the driver.
Evidently the man in the rear seat of the Buick had had the same
inspiration. Malone blasted two more high-velocity lead slugs at the
driver of the big Buick, and at the same time the man in the Buick's
rear seat fired at Boyd.
But Boyd had shifted tactics. He'd hit the brakes. Now he came down
hard on the accelerator instead.
The chorus of shrieks from the Lincoln's back seat increased slightly
in volume. Barbara, Malone knew, wasn't badly hurt; she hadn't even
stopped for breath since the first shot had been fired. Anybody who
could scream like that, he told himself, had to be healthy.
As the Lincoln leaped ahead, Malone pulled the trigger of his .44
twice more. The heavy, high-speed chunks of streamlined copper-coated
lead leaped from the muzzle of the gun and slammed into the driver of
the Buick without wasting any time. The Buick slewed across the
highway.
The two shots fired by the man in the back seat went past Malone's
head with a _whizz_, missing both him and Boyd by a margin too narrow
to think about.
But those were the last shots. The only difference between the FBI and
the Enemy seemed to be determination and practice.
The Buick spun into a flat sideskid, swiveled on its wheels and
slammed into the ditch at the side of the road, turning over and over,
making a horrible noise, as it broke up.
Boyd slowed the car again, just as there was a sudden blast of fire.
The Buick had burst into flame and was spitting heat and smoke and
fire in all directions. Malone sent one more bullet after it in a last
flurry of action--saving his last one for possible later emergencies.
Boyd jammed on the brakes and the Lincoln came to a screaming halt. In
silence he and Malone watched the burning Buick roll over and over
into the desert beyond the shoulder.
"My God," Boyd said. "My ears!"
Malone understood at once. The blast from his own still-smoking .44
had roared past Boyd's head during the gun battle. No wonder the man's
ears hurt. It was a wonder he wasn't altogether deaf.
But Boyd shook off the pain and brought out his own .44 as he stepped
out of the car. Malone followed him, his gun trained.