The Driver (31 page)

SATURDAY, APRIL
1, 2006
HOLLAND TUNNEL WESTBOUND
MILEAGE
1.4
2141
HOURS EST

“Last chance,” said Nine.

“To back out?”

“To confess.”

“I wish we were running against Rawlings. Or Collins.”

“Rawlings made his choice. Collins you can call anytime.”

“You?”

“I've never done a bad thing in my life, until now. Too late anyway, tunnel exit's in sight. Mr. Roy, you know the way.”

Nine and I had driven this and the upcoming stretch of road hundreds of times, but never as we were about to.

“Mr. Goodrich, stand by for this trip to become a lot less fun.”

I never wanted to be a pioneer, but Digonis and Stander could tell us no more about evading modern law enforcement than we already knew. Times had changed.

My high-speed driving protocols had been tested on 3446 at an overall average of 80.5 mph. Our clock never stopped, and with a total of 28 minutes for fuel and bathroom stops, achieving 34:46 required cruising at 90 mph or more. Every minute below the target average required a proportional higher sprint above, once as high as 145 mph, somewhere in the California desert.

And not one police car noticed. Not one civilian called 911.

Now, these protocols had to function at cruising speeds of 95 to 100 mph—starting in 15 seconds and ending when we were jailed, killed, or had arrived in Los Angeles.

“Cory,” I said, “you know the drill. If we miss one, call it out!”

Outbound from Manhattan, the Holland Tunnel would emerge onto Fourteenth Street in Jersey City, a four-block-long stretch of gas stations and warehouses at whose western end, four lights from the tunnel exit, lay the first of fewer than a dozen navigational decisions between New York and L.A. We had to earn time credit for trade against traffic and weather, which meant slicing across Fourteenth Street's six lanes to avoid locals who might block us behind one or more red lights, each representing a time loss of one to two minutes.

We were already six minutes behind schedule. I couldn't halve that in the next four blocks, but—if I chose my lane poorly—I might double it.

“All windows down!” I called out. “All eyes open!”

Street racing—i.e., one or more untrained drivers drag-racing over short lengths on city streets—is dangerous and irresponsible, but it is not as dangerous as “urban racing,” a subset of the former I'd only ever seen on rallies, where one or more cars weave through traffic over various distances. I was totally opposed to street racing and urban racing, but having practiced the latter throughout Italy to great effect, and in light of a pressing engagement on the Santa Monica Pier, I would make the only exception on the entire run.

“I've got the right!” Nine yelled.

But there was an exception to the exception. Police officers are trained to spot erratic or dangerous behavior. Tailgating, multilane passes, shoulder passes, high beams, honking, and passing at a >2X speed differential would attract their attention, especially in urban areas. Stealth was key. Stealth was safe.

“I've got the left!” I yelled back.

Hence the hazy, nonelectronic half of our high-speed driving protocol:
Drive as fast as possible—without inciting a 911 call.

We burst out of the tunnel entrance. “Ramp check right!” I yelled—the instruction to check any merge for police—but Nine's head had already snapped right as mine went left.

“Ramp's clear!” he yelled back.

“Street's clear!” I veered right and lunged through a gap in traffic that centered us down Fourteenth Street's six lanes—an urban-racing position as powerful (yet still vulnerable, due to its visibility to police hiding to either side of the perpendicular streets) as a cornered rook. We darted forward, passed the first intersection, then the second, accelerating past 60 mph—twice the local limit—toward the fork between Route 1/9 and the I-78 extension.

“Scanners up?”

“Scanners up!” Nine responded, turning both volume knobs to maximum, the car suddenly filled with metallic hash and terse chatter, both scanners picking up overlapping dispatchers' instructions, tense voices, and the sirens from two police chases currently in progress.

“We're here,” I said, “and they're after some idiot with expired tags.”

INTERSTATE
78
WESTBOUND
APPROACHING DELAWARE RIVER
MILEAGE
62
2230
HOURS EST (APPROX)

“Thermals clear!” Nine leaned forward, his face lit by the pale white light cast by the copilot's night-vision screen above the glove box. The rest of our cockpit glowed red, AI having replaced all of the white interior lights such that—like a submarine or flight crew—we could leave them on without affecting our outward visibility.

“Lean back, Mr. Goodrich. If the road's straight and flat and there's no median wall to hide behind, a police car's going to look like a big white blob.”

“Sorry, I just can't believe this thing is legal.”

“Ramp check!”

“Thermals clear.”

“Now, Nine, aren't you glad we don't have to wear goggles the whole time?”

“I guess those are for the budget illegal cross-country guys.”

“Nine, once we cross the Delaware,
after
the tollbooth, kill the rear brake lights.”

“Got it…ramp check!” Nine had begun calling them out himself. “Ramp clear!”

I knew we were doing well, but we were too busy with our protocols for on-the-fly calculations. We'd know more when we hit the first waypoint in Columbus, Ohio, over 460 miles away.

“Mr. Goodrich, please activate Scanner Bank number two, Pennsylvania.”

“Bank two Pennsylvania active; bank one, New Jersey, locked out.”

We crossed the Delaware River at approximately 10:35
P.M
. (EST).

We were consistently cruising at 95 mph or more.

And no one noticed.

 

The Weis called 30 minutes later. Nine listened intently, silently performing one thermal and one ramp check while I awaited what could only be the weather update I feared. “Ten-four, The Weis, I'll inform Aliray. Out.”

“Before the bad news, did he ask about our average? It's way up, right?”

“He doesn't want numbers until we hit Diem/Turner's figures. The bad news is the weather's getting worse. They're grounded, but he thinks they can take off and meet us somewhere southwest of St. Louis. But the storm's headed our way. It's starting to rain in Indy.”

Indianapolis was 650 miles away. Every mile the storm advanced eastward was one less mile of dry road we desperately needed to cross as quickly as possible before dawn. The M5 could easily cruise at 150 mph in the wet, but not in the United States, at night, for four hours.

We were meeting or slightly exceeding the driveplan, but that would soon end. Running at eight-tenths my skill and six-tenths the car's capabilities, we were now in a race against that storm. We needed to cover maximum ground on dry road surface. We needed to increase our average and build time credits before it was too late. We needed to meet the storm head-on as far west as possible. We needed to cross Ohio—and meet the most feared highway patrol in the country—before the storm hit the state's western border. If we failed, the run was finished.

“Nine, fire up the Garmin's XM NavTraffic.”

The M5's engine, previously a low throb, rose in pitch.

“Frequency of reporting, Mr. Roy?”

“Every 10 minutes, and kill all the rear lights.”

“Not just the brakes?”

“Pennsylvania's dead tonight. Why advertise? Let's go dark.”

Our overall average was in the upper eighties, and rising. Our running projection was below 33 hours, and still dropping.

INTERSTATE
81
SOUTH
APPROACHING HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA
MILEAGE
163
2340
HOURS EST (APPROX)

BEAR LEFT AHEAD ONE-QUARTER MILE.

“Easy,” said Nine, “this is your exit.”

“Are you sure? I don't think so.”

“You programmed this thing.”

TAKE RAMP LEFT.

“Check it now, Nine, before it's too late.”

“What? You don't trust your own programming? Just take the turn.”

Fifty feet down the ramp to I-83/I-283S, we knew it was wrong.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

“There's cars all over this road! Hit the brake lights! We've got to get out and turn around!” I downshifted for the first time since the start line and accelerated toward the next exit, its ramp just visible approximately one mile away.

“Aliray, easy into the turn, easy, easy!”

“Prepare for heroics.” I stopped at the bottom of the ramp, poised to run the red, make a left, and double back, but a police car stopped perpendicular to watch the strange blue car with the three antennas and glowing red interior. “If only he knew. I love you, man, but seriously, if we miss the record by five minutes, we'll know why.”

“Sorry.”

“I was kidding. It was at least half my fault.” We were back en route in four minutes. Stander said a time of 32 could tolerate one mistake. We'd just made ours—less than 5 percent into the run.

The storm's eastward march accelerated.

I held the car steady at 120 mph, west toward the Ohio border.

SUNDAY, APRIL
2, 2006
INTERSTATE
70/76
WEST
VICINITY OF SOMERSET, PENNSYLVANIA
MILEAGE
306
AFTER MIDNIGHT

Nine and Cory were silent as the M5 snaked through the low hills of western Pennsylvania at 105 mph, the absolute safe limit given the dark road's increasingly damp surface. Ramp checks were infrequent, the exits too far apart. Our Xenon lights reflected a ghostly blue-white against the mist. Nine peered at the thermals for stray deer that could kill us all. The V1, Blinder, CB, and scanner volumes were all at maximum. We hoped to hear signals blocked by the terrain, or at least verify that all our gear hadn't broken at once. We'd seen only a handful of cars, almost all in the opposite direction, and I exploited this by running the world's longest racing line on a public road, surpassing 85 miles. We tried to stay calm after our overall average rose to 90.3 mph, but its significance made our optimistic, gloating smiles hard to conceal.

Our running projection was now 31:38—
if
the Garmins could be trusted. At this pace we would gather enough time credit to defeat the storm.

The silence was suddenly pierced by the primary scanner: PASP D2 159.075:
“Dark-colored BMW, late model, high rate of speed, no taillights, approaching the 106, 107—”

“All lights back on
now
!” I yelled, letting off the gas until the car slowed to 79 mph, then set the cruise control. This wasn't Gumball. There were no exits, no parallel roads, no other cars to claim we'd been mistaken for, and no time-killing hideouts with newspapers and table service. “Nine, distance to the West Virginia border?”

“Too far to make a run for it. Next turn is…the I-76/70 split, in 28 miles.”

PASP D2 159.075:
“…he's gonna call back with a better description—”

I shook my head. “
Who
the hell could
that
be? We haven't seen anyone. It can't be a local running behind us, not in these conditions.”

“In this weather no police car can overtake us. They have to deploy ahead and wait until we pass, or set up a roadblock, but they don't know enough about us at this point. On this road at this speed, we're sitting ducks for the next half an hour. Nine, we have to make a unanimous decision. You know the options.”

Nine zoomed out on his Garmin. “The next town big enough for a police department that's gonna care is…Donegal, about 15 miles.”

“That's it. We roll at 79 to Donegal, then go all out to the West Virginia border. We need to get some distance from our mysterious caller.”

“I concur.”

“Cory, you're entitled to a vote.”

“You might not want to hear this, guys, but I say you drive all out
right now
.”

“Do it,” said Nine. In the rearview mirror I saw Cory smile.

 

Donegal and the rest of Pennsylvania were eerily quiet. We entered West Virginia with the Garmins optimistically displaying an overall average of 91.4 mph, our running projection now 31:15, We didn't get excited, for not only was the storm ahead of us, we were about to enter Ohio, the most feared state in the nation for speeders, highway scofflaws, Cannonball Run and U.S. Express drivers. The Ohio State Police massacred them year after year, such that drivers planned longer routes that avoided the state altogether. Zanesville, Ohio, was where Diem/Turner received the only speeding ticket of their record-setting run. Had it not been for a mandatory visit to night court, they might have achieved 31:45 or better. Cory had actually interviewed the ticketing officer, now retired, and confirmed that Interstate 70 remained a heavily patrolled corridor. The rain over Indiana had worsened. The 227 miles across Ohio represented our last chance for big speeds before sunrise.

We approached the border on cruise control at 79 mph—14 mph over the limit—but the speed trap I'd anticipated (and even waypointed in the Garmin) was unmanned. The brisk night air and long straightaways gave us our first demonstration of the thermal camera's true power, allowing for hill-to-hill sprints at 140 or more, sometimes increasing our average by as much as one decimal point. The fuel gauge was low. I had made my final contribution to our precious time credit before our first driver swap. I had been driving for just over five hours. I'd probably lost five pounds.