Red Thunder Read Free Page B

there as when she was.
    "We'll just dump him in the back," I said. "I'll ride with him. He
barfs, I'll clean it up." Dak waved it away, and I looked at the wallet
again. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, all platinum, all made out
to one Travis Broussard.
    "Cajun," Kelly said, peering over my shoulder.
    "Huh?"
    "The name," she explained. "There's some Cajun families from the
Florida panhandle, I think." I didn't know what difference that made,
unless he lived in the panhandle. That would be too far to drive him. I
found the driver's license, and as I pulled it from its pocket another
card fell to the sand. Alicia picked it up. I pointed out the address
on the license to Dak and Kelly.
    "Is that far from here?"
    "Forty-five minutes, maybe half an hour this time of night. Out in
the boonies, though. Don't look at me that way. I'll take the dude.
Won't even charge him for my gasoline."
    Alicia whistled under her breath. "Look at this," she said. "The guy's an astronaut."
    "Let me see that," Dak said, and grabbed the card. Then Alicia
played keep-away with her flashlight for a moment until Dak and I
overpowered her.
    "This expired three years ago," Dak said. But before that it had
been a gate pass to the Kennedy Space Center, and identified Broussard
as a colonel and a chief pilot in the NASA VentureStar program.
     

3
    THE QUICKEST WAY from the beach to Rancho Broussard involved twenty miles or so on the Florida Autopike. Dak eased
Blue Thunder
onto the ramp and allowed the Pike computer to interrogate his precious
baby. There are several things about the Autopike that just rub Dak the
wrong way. The most basic is simply that he hates to surrender control
of his rig. "You go driving, you should have at least one hand on the
wheel, like God intended."
    I didn't argue with him on that one. There was still something
profoundly creepy about cars that steered themselves, at least to folks
like me and my mother. We could barely afford the thirty-year-old
Mercury that Dak and I were always rescuing from a one-way trip to the
junkyard. That Merk was not Pike-adaptable without spending about ten
times what the old wreck was worth. Poor folks like us ride the
Autopike about as often as we take the ballistic Orient Express to
Tokyo.
    The other thing Dak hates about the Pike is... well, let's face it,
nobody likes to get passed, right? Nobody our age, anyway, and for sure
nobody driving a rig as gaudy as
Blue Thunder.
But ol' Blue
was built for power, not for speed. We were banished into the D lane,
the outer one for vehicles that cruise at about eighty-five or ninety.
What we call the "blue hair" lane, for all the old ladies in their
well-preserved Caddies and Buicks. Now you can see them by the
thousands in the D lane, going places they were too timid to drive to
before the Pike opened. It's a drag to be tucked in among them while
you watch the soccer moms in their minivans pass you in the fast lanes.
    Dak pulled into one of the brightly lit authorization booths. Kelly
and I scrambled out of the bed and set Colonel Broussard on his feet.
He needed support, but he could stand. We shoved him into the narrow
backseat as the Pike computer checked some eighty or ninety
roadworthiness items every time you entered, from airbag sensors to
tire pressure. We hopped in behind him.
    "Is this my car?" Broussard asked.
    "Just take it easy, sir," Kelly said. "We'll have you home soon."
    "Okay."
    "If he barfs in my car, man..."
    "Please state your destination," the computer said. Dak told it the
exit number, and the computer told him what the fare would be.
    "Do not attempt to leave the vehicle while it is in motion." I heard the doors click as the computer locked them.
    "Do not attempt to steer the vehicle until you are told it is safe."
I could see Dak idly spinning the disconnected steering wheel.
    "Do not unbuckle your safety belts at any time. The next rest
wayside is thirty minutes away, so if you need to use the facilities,
press the REST button