Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(30)

“Wait,” Patty said.

She walked back to the corner and watched the house. No lights, no movement. She came back to the Honda and said, “OK.”

Shorty turned to face the open hatch square on, and he bent forward with his arms spread wide, and he wriggled his fingers under the suitcase, both ends, and he heaved it up at the front, and dragged it forward until it rested at an angle on the lip of the hatch. He grabbed the handle and hauled, intending to balance the case weightless on the lip, so he had time to change his position and adjust his grip, ready for the clean-and-jerk, and the turn toward the bike.

But the handle tore off the suitcase.

Shorty tottered back a step.

He said, “Damn.”

“Proves we couldn’t have carried it anyway,” Patty said. “That would have happened sooner or later.”

“How are we going to get it on the bus?”

“We’ll have to buy a rope. We could wrap it around a couple of times, and make a new handle. So we need a gas station or a hardware store. For the rope. First place we see.”

Shorty stepped forward again and bent down and got his fingers under the case. He grunted and lifted and gasped and turned and set it down on the bike, lengthways, the top corners resting on the handlebar, the bottom edge digging into the padded seat. He nudged it a little and got it balanced. It ended up pretty solid. Better than he thought it would. He was pleased, overall.

He shut the Honda’s hatch, and they strapped their overnight bags on the bike’s rear rack. Then they took up position, Shorty on the left and Patty on the right, each of them with one hand clamped tight on the short length of handlebar visible either side beyond the suitcase’s corners, and the other hand close to it, partly pushing, partly juggling a flashlight. Which gave them twin makeshift headlight beams, and it made steering easy, and it meant they could steady the suitcase between them, with Shorty’s right forearm and Patty’s left at the top end, and with his right hip and her left at the bottom end, assuming they both walked kind of bent over at the waist, which clearly they would need to, because the weight of the load made pushing a whole different thing than before. Getting started required a full-on effort, both of them straining like a strongman show on cable television, and then keeping going afterward required nearly as much, although it got a little better when they bumped up out of the stony lot and onto the blacktop, at the very end of the road through the trees.

More than two miles to go. They entered the tunnel. The air was cool, and it smelled of rotten leaves and damp earth. They gasped and trudged. Through trial and error they learned it was best to keep their speed as high as they could bear, so that momentum alone would carry them through the long shallow potholes. It meant a lot of effort all of the time, but it was better than starting over whenever the front wheels bumped down into a pit. They kept on going, almost running against the weight, very quickly no fun at all, just grinding it out.

“I need to rest,” Patty said.

They let the bike coast to a stop. They nudged the suitcase left and right to perfect its balance. Then they stepped away, and arched their backs, and clamped their palms low down on their spines. They huffed and puffed, and eased their necks.

Shorty said, “How much further?”

Patty looked back, and then forward.

“About a mile and a half to go,” she said.

“How long have we taken so far?”

“Maybe twenty minutes.”

“Damn, that’s slow.”

“You said four hours. We’re about on schedule.”

They took up their positions again, and forced the thing to roll. Like a bobsled team at the top of the hill, going harder and harder with every step. They got it up to speed and kept it there, jamming their forearms against the trembling suitcase, ducking their heads, breathing deep, glancing up again to check their direction. They did another half mile, and rested again. And another. A whole hour had gone by.

“Coming back will be easier,” Patty said. “Without the weight.”

They passed through the section where no trees grew. They saw a belt of sky, full of stars.

“Getting close,” Patty said.

Then she said, “Wait,” and she hauled back on the handlebar and dug her heels in, way out in front, like a kid stopping a home-made cart.

Shorty said, “What?”

“There was a wire. Like at the gas station. For ringing a bell. Laying across the road. It probably rings in the house.”

Shorty hauled the bike to a dead stop. He remembered. As fat and rubbery as a garden hose. He searched ahead with his flashlight. They saw nothing. They rolled on, half speed, which was a pain through the potholes, with one beam ranging far, and the other sweeping close.

A hundred yards later they saw it.

Fat and rubbery and laying across the road.

They stopped four feet short.

Patty said, “How does it work?”

“I guess inside there are two metal strips. Somehow held apart. But when a wheel goes over, they get pressed together and a bell rings. Like a push switch.”

“So we can’t let a wheel go over.”

“No.”

Which was a problem. Shorty couldn’t lift the quad-bike. Not at either end. Maybe an inch for a second, but not enough to ease it over the wire and set it down again.

“How much further?” he said.