And, brother, did it burst. The sound was almost like no engine on earth, a guttural blast, full of implications of the explosive, and it rocked the entire vehicle. He could hear the engine revving insanely, suddenly injected with a power beyond measure, almost too much for the confines of the combustion chambers. It was on steroids! It was the Barry Bonds of truck engines!

“Fifty-seven four,” yelled Vern, “a new record.”

Brother Richard goosed the pedal, and the engine howled demonically, yet it didn’t burst into flames.

He had it. He finally had it. And pretty goddamned near time too! Talk about cutting it thin, why the deal was only a day or so away and-

Suddenly he saw the paint on the cantilevered hood begin to bubble and crackle, and that meant flame, invisible to the human eye, had burst out of the engine.

Shit!

He rolled sideways, hit the ground, and kept rolling as he heard the tell-tale whoosh of the fuel in the tank igniting, not exploding-it wasn’t under enough pressure-but flinging a blade of hot-star radiance a good thirty bright feet in the air from under Mr. Penske’s fine vehicle, bleaching the color from the day for just a second. Then the flames settled back into your normal total-toast truck burn, licking and eating and devouring, issuing the rancid odor of scorched metal, melting plastic, burning rubber.

Vern carefully backed out in the Eldorado, threw out his cigarette, turned on the air conditioner to full to evaporate the sweat on the men’s brows. Soon enough they found a main road and were well gone by the time the fire trucks and poor Detective Thelma Fielding showed up.

“Lord A’mighty, that was close,” howled handsome Vern, aflame in delight at the excellent adventure. “You’se almost tonight’s meal.”

“I’m too tough to digest, I’d keep you boys up all night with stomach pains.”

“It ran good for a while, though,” said Ernie.

“Yes, it did,” said Richard. “I think that’s it. I don’t think I had it grounded right. You’re supposed to remove the nut at the negative battery cable and attach the black wire. I didn’t take the nut off, but just wound the black wire around the terminal. Naughty, naughty. Next time, I will take the few seconds to remove the nut. It’s time well spent, and we will be close enough for government work, you’ll see.”

“You sure, Brother Richard?”

“Sure, I’m sure. All on that day, I’d hate to burn like a bonfire ’stead of running like a stallion.”

“Burning hurts,” said Vern. “Case you hadn’t noticed.”

“So I hear. Saw a fellow burn to death once. Lord God, he screamed. I had the distinct impression he wasn’t enjoying himself a bit.”

“Nor will you, Brother.”

“True enough, Brother. Well boys, get that old fraud of a daddy or an uncle or a molester or whatever polysexual archetype he’s playing this week to pray hard for you and me or else we’ll all arrive in hell pre-fried, COD. We’ll be a goddamned bucket of Colonel Grumley’s chicken, extra crispy.”

Bob drove through the town of Mountain City, sped along a picturesque route toward Virginia, and soon enough found Iron Mountain Armory. Of course it had a sign reading GUNS AND SURPLUS, and of course it was in an old Quonset hut with trees clumped around it with a small parking lot in front of it on Route 91 heading north. The mountains were to its left, casting late-afternoon shadows that buried the place in dimness. But he could make out a large-scale wooden.30 caliber Browning air-cooled mock-up at the apex of the corrugated steel building’s curve. The old trainer showed cutaways displaying red bolt faces and chambers, which must have taught six or seven generations of machine gunners their tricks before going on the surplus market and ending up on every gun store roof in the South. The gun was rotting, though its stout four feet of mock barrel, swaddled in cooling sleeve with the omnipresent grid of round perforations, certainly looked menacing enough. The place, like the old machine gun model, had that beaten-down quality to it, a sense of better times having gone by, interior rot under the paint.

He walked it to find what he expected: ratty old trophies of bucks and bulls long since killed, fish in waxy midleap glowing against polished wood plaques, racks of rubbery rain ponchos, utilities, BDUs, netting, shovels from half the world’s armies, web gear, Chinese knock-offs of current sandbox dutywear, Multicam and digital-camo patterns everywhere, lots of gun safes, sunglass cases for that super-Tommy Tactical look, and behind the counter fifty or so rifles racked butt down for easy examination. The front case had another fifty or so handguns, mostly the black plastic stuff that was taking over the market, little of the blue steel and walnut motif that Bob and his generation had learned to shoot on except in the used box. ARs were the predominant theme, gun safes second, and hunting only a third.

Fella came up to him from the counter, older gent, heavyset, eyes dead, not your natural-born salesman type.

“Help you, bud?”

“Hope so, sir,” Bob said. “You the manager?”

“Close enough.”

“My name’s Swagger. My daughter is Nikki Swagger. If the name’s familiar, it’s because she was the girl reporter from Bristol who had a bad car accident a week back on 421 coming down the other side of Iron Mountain. Someone tagged her and she’s still in a coma.”

“Sorry for your daughter, bud, but what’s it got to do with me?” the guy said. But Bob thought he saw just a flash of dread and the beginning, soon quashed, of a guilty swallow. Maybe the fellow was just a nervous type.

“Well sir, my girl wasn’t into guns or anything, which is why I thought it odd that on her laptop we came up with what appears to be the phone number of this place. I don’t know why she’d call or come by, but she may have. I’m trying to track down what happened that day.”

“The papers said it was an accident. What difference does it make what she did? Accident don’t follow no plan. It just happens.”

“I know, but there are some discrepancies in the official account. I’m just poking about trying to make sense of it all, sir. Sure it don’t amount to nothing, but I have to do something while I’m waiting for my daughter to come back to me.”

“Well, I don’t know if-”

“Here, let me show you her picture. Maybe it’ll jog a memory.”

He pulled his wallet, showed the man a nice picture of Nikki at last year’s graduation, so beautiful, so young, so vulnerable.

The man didn’t really look at it, just said, “No, no, believe me, we don’t get many young women on their own in here, and I’d remember. Sometimes a young fellow comes in with his girlfriend and sometimes the wife comes along to buy the Glock for home protection, but almost never will you find a girl like that in a place like this.”

“I see.”

“I’m real sorry for your troubles, but I can’t help a bit.”

“Uncle Eddie-” came a call from a workroom behind the counter, and a kid peeped out. “You sure on that? I seem-”

“Billy, goddamnit, you git to work. You got a lot of ammo to break down and get shelved. I don’t pay you to palaver.”

“Yes sir.”

“Goddamn kid,” said the man to Bob. “Girl crazy. Catch him reading them dirty magazines one more time instead of breaking down all that.223 and his ass is gone, I don’t care what Margaret says.”

“I see,” said Bob. “Yep, good help is hard to find these days. What about a phone call from a woman? There wouldn’t be a pretty face associated with it.”

“Mister, I get nothing but phone calls, some of the damnedest you ever heard. Can I rent a machine gun? Will you guarantee a deer? How come Wal-Mart in Johnson City has it for $324.95 and you got it for $339.95? Is a nine millimeter more powerful than a.38? What’s the best gun for home defense? Can I buy a gun like the soldiers use? So maybe I got a call from her and maybe I don’t, but I sure as hell can’t answer you one way, the other with certainty. Billy, you get any calls?”