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| BACK to Me and my Shadow supercar: Driver logs | An introduction to J. Staute and Shadowfast |
Once upon a time I accidentally aroused the ire of one of my hometown's most infamous bad guys.
And that's saying a lot, since there were quite a few well-known bad guys from my neck of the woods.
So many in fact that during my first stay in Texas some ex-convicts Steve and I regularly associated with for a while suddenly went pale when they learned where we came from, and after that made themselves scarce from our company.
And no, I never did find out exactly who or what had scared them so about our Tennessee origins.
My own involvement in this particular mis-adventure seemed to have started when my friend Ben and I stopped by to see this major bad guy in person. Though my friend knew something of the guy's 'bad news' status, and tried mightily to impress it upon me before we met him, to me the guy was just the owner of a wrecked Camaro my friend was hoping to purchase parts from.
Fortunately we were in Ben's 1967 Camaro he was fixing up, and not Shadowfast.
This happened only around a month or two before my final run in Shadow. And sort of helped prepare me for that, I guess. I was off both V.I.P. convoy duty and training for a whole month. So I'd looked up an old friend and was accompanying him on this parts run.
After arriving at the guy's house we noticed the fellow had a shiny new Pontiac Firebird Trans Am too, besides the wrecked Camaro.
The wrecked Camaro had been a famous local fast car before the crack up, not only according to my friend but other sources as well. So I was actually much more familiar with the car's reputation than that of its driver.
The Trans Am was a blazing red 1973 model with 455 Super Duty cubic inch motor-- one of the very first ones delivered in early 1973, apparently.
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Roddy Grooms seemed like an exceedingly strange person to me, with some sort of nervous tic which was disturbing to witness in action. He'd supposedly killed several guys and only spent a brief time in prison for any of it. But that didn't impress me as much as it did my friend. I knew quite a few folks with similar pasts, and had worked closely with at least one of them for months. To me the best stories were about his wrecked Camaro. But his new Trans Am caught my eye now. After a most unsatisfying talk between Ben and Roddy regarding Camaro parts (my friend didn't get any), we all gravitated to the subject of the new Trans Am. Roddy seemed surprisingly ambivalent about the car. Like he was disappointed in it or something. |
I thought it looked terrific, and loved many aspects of the car. Unfortunately I knew I couldn't afford a new car, period. Plus, even if I could, I'd likely get killed in it. For my present lifestyle demanded the tough and gritty Shadowfast. A less substantial, more showy car would only deliver me to my grave.
Of course, if I changed my way of living, things might be different...but that decision was not entirely mine to make.
Yeah, I already had the best damn car around, and well knew it. But those Trans Ams were just so gorgeous...
I mentally drooled at the power the 455 Super Duty might possess, and longed to test drive the car. But surely that was out of the question.
Imagine my surprise when Roddy asked if we wanted to take her for a spin!
My friend Ben took the wheel for the departure leg, and me for the return. My friend was much more conservative than I, plus maybe a bit intimidated by Roddy. So his drive resembled that of a trek to a church picnic.
No, I didn't hot rod the car either at first, simply due to it belonging to someone else. But after I asked and got Roddy's permission I felt it OK to try a few things.
The surprised disappointment began from the first moment I put it into gear. I then realized that maybe my friend had been pushing the car harder than I thought.
The Trans Am was an automatic, as Roddy said his wife had insisted upon it. That was one of his beefs with the car. His Camaro had been a four speed.
But me, I found auto trannies better anyway for rough driving. So that part was fine with me. What wasn't fine was the power.
455 cubic inches. Super Duty. I wondered if the idle was set too low on the car; or the trans was in need of tweaking. For while idling the car couldn't pull itself up a very slight incline at all, where in the same situation I had to hold Shadow back with the brakes.
Was it a difference in low end torque? I wondered.
In hindsight it was likely a difference in pollution controls and overall vehicle weight between the cars. For instance, the Trans Am looks to have weighed maybe 3500 pounds empty versus Shadow's 2800.
The performance situation didn't improve any on the highway, as I had to push the gas pedal remarkably deep for the response I got.
As we didn't really have any good curves to try out at high speeds in our little joy-ride I didn't get to try the car's cornering performance. But maybe that wouldn't matter much if the low and mid-range power of the car was so sluggish. Maybe this car mainly excelled at the top end? I definitely had no chance to test that.
So in the end I basically agreed with Roddy about the Trans Am. I mean, it was new and pretty and much more comfortable than Shadow. But I would have been ill at ease much of the time driving such a car.
It looked a lot faster than it drove. At least at low to medium speeds.
Roddy said he'd probably buy himself another vehicle and give the T-A to his wife. The way he talked money was of little consequence to him.
Though maybe there were hints to the fact, I don't think I truly realized Roddy was a bonafide drug dealer at the time. Though I did find myself wondering if he was on some sort of drug during our meeting with him.
It turned out to be lucky for me that I'd met Roddy that day-- and not been driving my own car.
Although I would be unaware of the connection until much later, I inadvertently caused Roddy quite a bit of trouble one day, only a few after my friend and I had been at his house.
But he wouldn't know it was me for quite some time. All he knew was his men gave him a description of Shadowfast being in the vicinity. An all blacked-out Mustang with a roll bar inside.
It happened bright and early on a Sunday morning. Circumstances had forced me to make an early junkyard rendezvous for an important part. Unbeknownst to me, a close associate of Roddy's happened to be there too-- but for a darker purpose.
We were all standing inside the junk yard's 'front office': basically a small cinder block walled warehouse with a counter near the front and an all-purpose garage/workshop deeper inside the building. There were multiple large sliding doors in and out of the place, and various tables and pegboards near the counter covered with old and nearly worn out tools. The yard owner and customers like me often used those tools to go remove parts from junkers out in the yard.
Roddy's buddy was trying to fence stolen cars to the yard owner. He wasn't too picky either, as he also asked me if I'd be interested in a hot spanking new 'Cuda with a 340 engine for just $500. Thanks but no, I told him.
The junkyard owner wasn't interested either. But it increasingly seemed like they weren't going to give him a choice in the matter.
Yeah, I could have just left. But I knew Reggie the yard owner, and his wife and little girl. I also knew Reggie was trying to stay clean because he'd been in prison before. Although Reggie wasn't bad in a fight (I'd heard), this was three guys, one of them pretty big. Way unfair odds in my book.
Plus Reggie flashed me a look indicating he'd appreciate some help, not once but several times. At least that's how I took it.
I was pretty sure that subtlety or gradualism wasn't going to cut it in this situation. I couldn't afford to warn these guys I might intercede without likely guaranteeing Reggie and I would be on the losing end of what came next.
I'd been in similar spots in my home county, and knew the toughies would just expect me to quietly slink off or merely stand and watch. For that's what most people in these parts seemed to do in such circumstances.
But I don't always do what's expected of me. As the persuasion got a little harsher on Reggie I whipped around with a pair of three foot long bolt cutters that'd been laying on a table nearby to hit the biggest guy in the bunch.
My aim was off due to having to aim blind in my turn, so I only hit him in the shoulder. But I followed that up with a continued twist to bash a second man of the three.
I fully expected Reggie to join in at that point, but instead he turned and ran.
Holy crap! I was so screwed!
Now it was me or them. Three of the suckers! Luckily the second guy I'd struck was backing off, but the first guy-- the biggest guy-- looked little the worse for wear from my initial blow, and the third-- their apparent boss-- pulled out a pistol.
I continued flailing the bolt cutters at them, mostly missing as they retreated and gathered their wits for a counter-attack.
Then they shot me. I was stunned by my sudden mortality. What the hell had I done?
But there was no pain. And the bad guys weren't looking at me. I followed their line of sight to see Reggie standing there with a 12 gauge pump shotgun, smoke drifting from the barrel. The gun was pointed at the gang, but so far as I could tell no one was shot.
I was alive!
Reggie later told me his first shot had been in the air to get everyone's attention.
"Get the f*ck off my property right now or so help me I'll blow your goddamned heads off!" Reggie ordered the gang.
With little more than muted mumbling they backed off, returned to their car, and left. Their chief wasn't about to challenge Reggie's 12 gauge with an itsy bitsy pistol.
Once we were sure it was over Reggie expressed some annoyance with me over the incident. But it helped that I had a couple family connections to the local law, and so my presence at the event would allow Reggie to extricate himself from repercussions in later explanations-- and likely avoid future hot car deals too.
This kind of stuff was normal in my hometown. So I didn't give it much thought afterwards.
A few nights later I'd pulled over into a large parking lot to check something-- I can't recall what now. I put Shadowfast into park but kept him idling. I had my window down.
I'd parked not far from a group of cars mainly consisting of 'regulars' in this particular lot: commuters to one of the few main job sources in the region, a chemical plant some 30 miles away. The workers would park here and catch a bus.
I liked to park in groups for cover, as it wasn't unusual for someone to be after me, whether I was currently aware of it or not. So I especially used groups of parked cars in and around my hometown-- and especially when I was near the most popular urban road around, as now.
Unfortunately this tactic wasn't entirely fool-proof. For on occasion there could be others lurking in the group as well for various reasons. Although I always scanned for such folks before parking, it's not all that difficult for someone to escape notice, even by pure happenstance.
This was one of those times.
Suddenly I heard someone say "Give me your money or I'll shoot".
I looked up and recognized Roddy, who was standing beside Shadow with a snub-nosed pistol stuck in my face. The muzzle was maybe a foot from my nose.
I was already hunched over because of things I'd laid out in the floorboard before me under the lot's lamp light. So Roddy couldn't tell the difference when I fished my thick electrical cable club out from under my seat with my right hand, while also opening an interior storage panel in my car door with my left. I passed the club to my left hand and into the storage compartment, staying in the crouched position all along. So to Roddy it appeared I didn't move much at all after hearing his demand.
"What?" I stalled, while getting my club into position.
"Give me your goddamned money or I'll shoot!"
"I'd be careful with that thing if I were you," I said.
"What? Why, you crazy mother-f*cker!" Roddy laughed. "I'll shoot your ass! Give me all your money!"
Money was awfully hard to come by in those days, and I was pretty young. And maybe a little too willing to resist such demands.
"Do you hear that?" I asked him, as inside I tapped the exposed thick copper wire ends at my club's far end against the thin exterior sheet metal of my car door. My little storage compartment simply opened up into the naked interior space of my door.
"What's that?" Roddy's smile got a little less enthusiastic.
"That's my sawed off twelve gauge," I lied. "I always wondered what it'd be like to shoot someone with it through the special place I made for it inside my door." I tried my best to look happy.
"You're a goddamned liar!" Roddy challenged me.
I smiled back as if he were pointing a daisy at me.
"I figure you might live long enough to get to the hospital," I continued. "After all, it's not like I got a solid slug in it right now. Just a load of shot."
Most civilian shot gun shells of that period came in two basic types: gigantic lead slugs which could be used to cut down small trees, and scatter-shot, or lots of small metal ball bearing-like projectiles, which scattered to impact a much wider area than a single object could, and thus make it easier to strike down small game like birds or rabbits.
Of course at this range scatter-shot wouldn't have a chance to spread out, and would act more like a slug, ripping through the thin sheet metal of a car door and gouging out a pretty big hole in any human torso which happened to be positioned only a couple feet farther away.
I don't know if any male born in my hometown could reach adulthood without becoming aware of those things.
Of course Roddy was in no danger, since my club was certainly no shot gun. This was one of the extremely rare instances where I tried bluffing my way out of a bad situation.
I hate bluffing.
Roddy's face oddly alternated between nervousness and an excited smile. He changed the subject, still pointing his pistol at me.
"Hey! Don't I know you?"
"No," I answered for some reason.
"Yeah, I know you from somewhere, I'm sure."
The apparent stand off continued for another minute or so, as Roddy seemed to get ever more confused trying to figure out who I was, and I didn't make it any easier for him.
Finally Roddy's on-again-off-again smile broke into an open-mouthed string of hysterical laughter and profanity and he ran away, waving both hands-- including the one with the gun-- in the air. Part of the time he seemed to be ranting about how crazy I was.
It was probably dumb of me to refuse him my money like that. But I was a product of my times and circumstances.
Roddy may not have remembered where he'd originally met me in that event, but he'd sure remember my car afterwards. In Roddy's warped perceptions the blacked out Shadowfast and its driver seemed to be becoming an ever larger thorn in his side.
And Roddy wasn't accustomed to suffering thorns.
Some days after that I turned to find him in his Trans Am to my left on a fairly long five-lane highway in my hometown. Making motions with a free hand like he wanted to race.
I shook my head "no" in an exaggerated fashion to make sure he'd see it under the circumstances, at night, but on a well lit highway. He kept motioning insistently, and occasionally surging forward with his Firebird, but I wasn't taking the bait. This particular highway was nowhere near long enough for a serious race, and I figured Roddy wasn't thinking straight. Or else had something bad planned for me. So I didn't cooperate. In another minute or two we came to a major intersection and we both turned left onto the main drag in my hometown where everybody cruised at the time. Again Roddy kept urging me to race him, now displaying obscene finger gestures and such to try angering me.
On the new road there were lots more witnesses to all this, due to its popularity as a hang out. Many cars were parked in various lots adjoining the road, merely watching traffic or shooting the breeze with one another. Very few of these folks knew me personally. But maybe several had heard of Shadowfast. Part of the reason for my anonymity was this concourse was frequented mostly by the high school crowd, from which I'd graduated some time before.
I'd faced down the ultimate in peer pressure years before, so Roddy's juvenile antics had little effect on me. I definitely wasn't going to play his game, whatever it was.
And my days of impromptu racing for fun were long past. I considered myself a serious driver these days. Especially now that Shadowfast himself was so armed and dangerous, in road war terms. I couldn't afford to get caught up in some silly altercation where someone got hurt and then my special devices on Shadow discovered. The courts would have a field day.
We approached and then passed the parking lot where only weeks before Roddy had shoved his gun into my face.
Once past that, Roddy stopped his motioning and dropped back to behind Shadow.
I'd only come out to relax. I rarely got a chance for recreational driving in Shadow anymore-- something I once loved to do, especially at night and during storms. But I almost never got the chance these days.
And here Roddy was spoiling my latest try for a break. He kept following me mile after mile after mile.
For quite a while I made no move to try losing him, as I wasn't in the mood. Plus, I wondered if he had a police car waiting somewhere to try catching me breaking the law. I'd heard that Roddy had powerful connections with the local cops, despite his drug dealing and car theft operations.
Heck, during my high school days one of my friends had been the local police chief's son, and often entertained me and others with tales of all the corruption going on with local officers.
So for a while I just took Roddy for a ride. In a huge rambling tour of our native county. I had plenty of gas; enough for Shadow to visit an adjoining state and come back again tonight, if I so wished.
I tried to enjoy myself, but the nagging lights of the firebird in my rear view pretty much prevented that. In just about any other case I might have stopped and confronted a follower like this in some well-lit public place. But it'd been in a well-lit public place Roddy tried to rob me at gunpoint. So I didn't figure it wise to give him a second opportunity.
Eventually I tired of the game and decided to end it.
Hmm. The low traffic rural two lane we were on at the moment had plenty of high speed straight-aways, but also lots of family driveways which spilled onto it. And several other significant road intersections as well.
So I led Roddy to the interstate.
I got on at normal speed to gauge traffic, with Roddy close behind.
Hmm. How best to deal with this guy, I wondered? Best to do it quick to minimize the risk to others, I decided.
Then it occurred to me that if I simply had the spare time I might could wait him out. His smog-controlled 455 likely sucked gas like a demon, and all other things being equal would have to refuel long before Shadow. But even a 455 could stay on the road for hours. And Roddy could have topped off his tank just before this trek. Plus I didn't want to drive all night.
Sure, I could make him suck gas faster in a high speed chase, but that wasn't really necessary. Not to mention the danger to others.
So I looked for a decent strobe lights opportunity.
We were doing about seventy by that point, and were now about a third of the way towards the next nearest metropolitan area. I figured I could lose him soon here and easily double-back for home. Pretty straightforward.
So I made no suspicious moves whatsoever until I was ready to spring my distraction.
We came up on the exit I wanted. I didn't use my turn signal. Shadow could stop and turn on almost a dime, compared to most other cars. So I waited until we were almost at the turn off and flipped on my strobes for a second, then off again. Roddy immediately jammed on his brakes as I watched his reaction in my rear view. He'd been momentarily blinded by the strobes. There was no other traffic around, so I hadn't endangered any innocents.
Roddy's hard stop gave me extra stopping room too, which I used to slow down dramatically, then let off the brakes and make a power swerve onto the exit now almost past us.
He would probably have been surprised to know how close our cars came to one another during that moment, as I used the extra room his braking provided for my getaway.
Immediately after flipping off the strobes I also switched on Shadow's stealth lighting mode. Of course back then the word "stealth" wasn't widely used. So I thought of it as a cloaking device.
In stealth mode all Shadow's normal exterior lighting-- including brake lights but excluding strobes-- would remain non-functional except for those lights facing forward. So even if Roddy could see anything immediately after the strobes assault, there'd be no red tail light trail of any kind to follow. And as the rest of Shadow was flat black, it wouldn't give much visual purchase either in the darkness. The strobes were merely a guarantee of success: the frosting on the cake.
Of course, I was no beginner at this. I blasted off the interstate at relatively high acceleration to minimize visual exposure time as well. Then slammed on the brakes where the exit spilled onto another highway. Then massively accelerated again to build still more distance and uncertainty into the equation. Within another mile or so I slammed on the brakes once more and pulled off into a good hiding spot, to see what came by.
I waited, idling, all lights off, stealth circuit still working so accidental brake light activation wouldn't give me away, listening to a music tape for twenty minutes to make sure Roddy was good and lost. Then I went home.
From Roddy's point of view suddenly he was dazzled by brilliant white flickering lights, and when his sight began returning again I was nowhere to be seen. Vanished. Into thin air.
He could have continued miles on down the interstate to no avail. Or even by some small miracle guessed my strategy and used the emergency lane to back up to the same exit and take it-- only again to fail to find me. For he simply couldn't do all this rapidly enough to succeed.
I knew the effect well, for I'd used it many times on others. And even tested it on myself, with me in a regular car following dad driving Shadowfast. Man, were those strobes something! Especially at night, and when you weren't expecting them.
Unfortunately this incident just incensed Roddy, who was apparently getting into trouble on several different fronts at the time, according to what I'd later learn.
He began asking anybody and everybody about my car and its tricks after that.
Luckily the only people who knew the juiciest details were family and close friends. And even they were unaware of many features of the car.
But Roddy's connections with the local outlaws and police did provide him with some significant tidbits, stemming mostly from the experiences of others who'd come up against Shadow and lost.
Roddy had other connections too. Plus plentiful cash to fund some shenanigans.
Basically Roddy enlisted some other hot rodders to help him. Even a few who'd lost tussles with Shadow and I before, and wanted to see us brought down.
I did get a hint or two that something was brewing, but not enough to avoid the trap. Later I'd learn Roddy had promised significant rewards for everyone involved if the plan worked. Some of it in drugs, some in cash, some in hot cars.
Not far from my parents' house was a four way stop intersection with no red light. I'd passed through it hundreds of times.
It was just a week before I'd be heading back to my convoy job. As I neared the intersection I noticed a pickup truck that'd been parked at a house only yards from the intersection began easing up to its particular stop sign of the bunch.
It purposely neared the sign at a snail's pace, allowing me to stop first, then continue on with the right of way.
I'd experienced this many many times at this intersection. Sometimes I was the one timing my stop to encourage others to take the first crossing.
I began crossing the intersection at a normal pace, with the truck's front end only maybe eight feet or so away.
Suddenly the truck's driver floored it, and for a split second I couldn't believe what was happening. But then I immediately floored it too to try to avoid a collision.
But even Shadowfast couldn't get out of the way that quickly at point-blank range. At least not with my slight hesitation in the mix, damn it.
I didn't have time to consider a nitro boost. But even if I had, the result would likely have been the same, only with more tire smoke involved. It just happened too fast.
But you just don't expect complete strangers to try ramming you in such a situation. I could plainly see the driver's face, and so far as I knew I'd never met the guy before.
Though Shadow amazingly managed to get his entire front end and middle past before impact, the truck successfully rammed us smack on the driver's side rear wheel.
The good news was that was probably the best and toughest spot for us to take a straight on truck ramming in the side, with the wheel and rear end behind it taking everything full on, and Shadow's tight suspension minimizing damage to the quarter panel by making sure the body closely followed behind the rear axle's path sliding across the road.
So the hit didn't disable Shadow whatsoever. But it did put a nasty looking crater in the rear fender above the rear tire.
Somehow despite the truck's forward acceleration and connection we sprang lose again along the way so that the damage was limited to just above the wheel, and did not continue on through to the remainder of our tail as we passed.
Thinking on this again decades after the fact I'm struck by that curious lack of damage beyond the impact point. By rights Shadow's entire rear end on the driver's side should have been decimated, including the accompanying portion of the custom rear spoiler and the bumper.
The truck barreled on past us and then the driver jammed on his brakes.
I stopped too, angry of course, but also knowledgeable that sometimes people mistakenly pressed the gas for the brake-- and sometimes equipment simply breaks at a bad time.
The truck driver acted normally enough as he approached, asking me if I was OK and apologizing.
So when his whole demeanor changed once getting in reach of me I was surprised for a second time.
He abruptly began punching me like he was a boxer in training. I blocked as best I could, but he was a better fighter and had maybe an extra hundred pounds of weight and a foot of height on me too.
Plus he was taking me wholly by surprise.
What the hell was going on? I pleaded with the universe.
We sort of went around in a wide circle for a moment as I tried to mount a defense against the unprovoked attack, but I was already hurting.
He then knocked me down and I took the opportunity to roll under the rear end of Shadow, to frantically undo the two spring-loaded release latches for my crash bars there.
The truck driver painfully kicked at my lower body maybe three times as I worked at getting the bars free. I tried protecting myself as I could, but wasn't wholly successful.
I was afraid he'd pull me out from under the car before I could get a bar. And he almost did. But just after he'd gotten a good hold and started to yank my crash bars fell onto my chest and I surprised him with a steel-reinforced sweep across his forearms.
These bars were like skinny crow bars with some fancy bends on both ends.
He staggered backwards cursing and nursing his arms and I scrambled out as fast as I could in an effort to keep him off balance, continuing to sweep the bars dangerously before me, forcing him back step by step as I got to my feet.
I had murder in mind at that moment, as I knew it was going to be him or me, and I didn't dare give him any further chances in the bout.
After I was back on my feet again I accelerated my aggression to manic intensity, catching him with several blows about the chest and shoulders and hips, pretty much all of them obviously painful.
Finally I caught him a couple times in the head and face, and he went down, bleeding pretty heavily.
He was now crying and pleading with me not to kill him, trying to protect himself from further bar strikes by basically curling up into a fetal position. He was huddled on the ground with his back towards me, peeking through his fingers.
"If you try anything at all I will kill you," I warned him. I wasn't about to take any extra chances with this son of a bitch.
"Why the hell did you jump me?" I demanded.
He then explained he'd been hired to attack me and my car. And who had done the hiring? It was Roddy.
Bastard!
The mugger-for-hire turned out to be a bouncer in a local bar. Who'd thought I'd be an easy couple of hundred bucks. He'd meant to disable Shadowfast but failed. He was also supposed to cripple me up for a while. Not necessarily kill me. But make sure I remembered the moment. If I lived through it.
Now the question was, what to do with him?
I couldn't think of anything fancy or poetic with my adrenaline still racing. So I stood over him with a single bar raised and ready for action, as I instructed him to spread himself flat on the ground, crawl over to his truck, and then underneath it.
He was scared of what I was going to do next, but I told him I just wanted to have him underneath the truck where he couldn't make any sudden moves while I thought for a minute. Plus I encouraged him by pointing out that he'd be better protected against my bars by being under the truck.
This gave me the chance to retrieve some spare automotive electrical wire and pliers from my trunk.
Then I made him a proposal.
"I tell you what: I'll leave it up to you. I can either keep cracking your head with this, or you can tie yourself up real nice and tight to your truck. Either way I can then leave in peace. Which do you want to do?"
I had to repeat myself twice as the guy may have been a little out of it due to a mix of fear and injury. From the fairly sparse trickle of blood on the road though I was pretty sure he wouldn't bleed to death. Not externally anyway.
I cut some generous portions of wire off the coil with my pliers and handed them to him one at a time. I showed him where I wanted him to tie his first hand, and reminded him that his knots better make me happy.
Then I personally tied his other hand, keeping the bar close by just in case.
When finished he was on his back, half-way spread-eagled under his truck with one hand tied to the rear end of his drive shaft (it was a two wheel drive) and the other to a leaf spring. His two hands couldn't meet to untie him. Yeah, I left him his mouth free to try it that way. Since I wasn't any more anxious to report this to the cops than he was. By this time a couple curious kids had shown up to gawk at the scene.
"As soon as I leave you're welcome to try using your teeth to get free. But just in case you can't I'll put in a call to the cops that somebody up this way needs some help. I'll wait about ten minutes before I make the call. Allow the cops another ten minutes to get here, and that leaves you twenty minutes to scram," I instructed my would-be mugger.
I started to get back up and head for Shadow, but then turned around with a parting comment.
"Oh, and by the way: if you ever come after me again I'll finish the job. You understand?"
He mutely nodded his head.
To his credit, the guy never tried anything with me again. Hopefully he gave up his strong-arm on the side gig altogether after that.
I was never contacted by the police concerning that incident. Never saw any mention of the guy and his truck in the paper in the weeks following either.
But keeping this out of the accident reports meant I couldn't get the mugger's insurance to pay for the damage he did to my car. And I had only liability myself. So repairs came directly out of my own pocket, as usual.
Frantically using the twin bars together to rearrange the guy's attitude had pinched and blistered my hands something fierce. Some were blood blisters. Apparently I'd deposited more of my own blood on the bars than my opponent had. But still, I wouldn't have traded sides with him.
I was sore all over for days afterward. Real fights are like that: you're much more tensed up the whole time than you realize until later. It's like a major workout, even if it only lasts a few minutes. I was heavily bruised, with a tooth or two loose as well. By some miracle my glasses hadn't even come off in the brawl! But the frame had been bent a little.
Luckily for me my younger brother was a talented bodywork man in training, and dad and I had basically built up a pretty decent auto workshop as one byproduct of our putting together Shadow. So I used the incentive of substantial pay for a quick fix to get him to repair Shadow's fender, and then ran around with friends in other cars for a few days while it was being done.
Though I was hopeful Roddy would leave me alone now, I knew I couldn't count on it. I'd have to be extra careful for my remaining time in town this trip.
It would take years for me to find out what was going on behind the scenes in this regard, after this altercation.
In the days that followed I made sure to get more target practice than usual with my own armory of firearms.
In the months since dropping out of college I'd stayed at my parents' house during my hometown stays, and rented motel rooms when necessary for some convoy trips and other tasks. But usually I stayed at an apartment I was splitting with a couple other convoy folks, in the same town as our employer's office.
Those stays were much like sequestered jury duty stays, based on what my dad told me about those. Not much fun at all.
Anyway, it turned out staying at my parents at this time had protected me somewhat from Roddy. I would later learn that had I been staying elsewhere I would have had to contend with at least another mugger or two of the type I faced down at the intersection. Or maybe serious vandalism or damage to Shadow.
But at my parents' house neither Roddy nor his cronies wanted to try anything. Partly because my family was generally well liked in the community. Plus I had three brothers and we all of us had male friends with which we constantly orbited in and about the house. I also had one sister who worked closely with the local cops on certain cases and could call in armed backup even from afar at a moment's notice. At least half of everyone described owned at minimum one gun apiece (including my sister), and knew how to use them.
My parents' place was also pretty busy. We all of us pretty much came and went at random, and there was almost never a moment when the house was entirely empty or everyone there asleep. It was very difficult to catch us totally unawares, or to construct a fool-proof assault on the place.
We were pretty security-minded too. So catching an out of the way window or door open or unlocked was virtually impossible. Indeed, the better suited a given entry-way was to secret break-in, the more likely that aperture had metal bars, dead-bolts, multiple locks, and even multiple cross-bars across its inner side.
Though it may sound odd to say, even with Shadowfast at my disposal, my oldest younger sister was likely considered by far the most dangerous one in our clan by most locals. I guarantee you lots more of them had met or heard of her than they had me. But that's a whole other story in itself. Maybe someday she'll write up some of her own adventures. But if she does, expect them to be much more gruesome than mine.
Of course my sister had one advantage here reputation-wise: unlike me, she didn't have to keep her exploits secret. Because she was the straightest of straight arrows, and worked from inside the establishment, rather than outside like me.
My parents' place was also pretty close to the middle of town, and only a few blocks from city hall, the court house/jail, and the offices of both the city and county police. I could literally walk from the police chief's office to my parents' front door in about 15 minutes or so.
And lastly, my dad's brother was an important judge hereabouts. Roddy may well have found himself standing before him several times in the past.
So I was safe while I was there.
Shadowfast too was safe there, due to the round-the-clock schedule we kept, and the relatively large number of friends and family which usually populated the spot. I learned later that Roddy and his gang had hoped to bypass Shadowfast's tricks by simply stealing him if possible. Or sabotaging him while he was parked and defenseless. But that simply couldn't be done at my parents' place.
Failing that, they tried luring me out to various ambush sites with phone calls relating to old business ventures I'd once engaged in. But I was pulling convoy duty these days, raking in some good dough, and so had no need of such extra income sources. I didn't think it too odd to get the calls, as occasionally such out-of-date proposals came my way normally. But I did find it unusual to get several in the same week.
Thwarted in most other ways they were forced to simply keep an eye on me from a distance, and hope to mount a swarming attack on me if and when I left town for some reason. So their chance came when I headed back to work at the end of my hiatus.
As I mentioned before, Roddy had rounded up everyone he could who had faced me and Shadowfast before, and knew something of my car's trick gadgets and other unusual capabilities. And encouraged them to brainstorm up some counter-measures and various concepts for traps and ambushes.
The gang then bided their time until observers reported me leaving the house and then getting on the interstate. At that point the trigger was pulled for everyone involved.
Unfortunately for that bunch Shadowfast was at the ultimate peak of his powers then. I'd spent much of my savings from my previous job to add a nitrous oxide system to his already formidable array of road war weapons, as well as made a few other changes for good measure. I may also have been in my best driving form personally.
Keep in mind I was just heading back to work. Not setting out on a high-speed run. I was figuring on a leisurely drive to music back to my shared apartment, in preparation for a convoy exercise the next day.
I didn't even have my CB antenna mounted. Or my police scanner on.
It'd been a while since my last Roddy-related trouble. And I hadn't really taken much notice of being watched at the house and around town. They'd done a pretty inconspicuous job on that. But of course I'd also been pretty lax alert-wise. Heck! I was on vacation!
It was my 180 degree rear view mirror which saved me.
I'd grown accustomed to checking my wide-angle mirror almost as frequently as I looked out the windshield.
This time I noticed a non-descript car moving up fast on my left in the passing lane, with the guy on the passenger side manipulating something that looked way too much like a gun...
Their over-eagerness gave them away. But damn if it didn't almost work anyway.
For the first car wasn't alone. It turned out that the cars immediately behind me and ahead of me were in cahoots with them. They'd boxed me in without me realizing it.
My by now deeply ingrained habit of always leaving plenty of maneuvering space between me and the car in front of me had hampered them a bit. But they tried fixing that by suddenly slowing down drastically ahead just as the shooters came up beside me.
Of course running ambushes like that are pretty tricky timing-wise.
I'm not sure exactly which enemy move initiated my own defensive maneuvers-- the over-eager passing lane shooters or the car ahead suddenly trying to squeeze me-- but instead of slowing down as expected I swerved over into the emergency lane to my right, hit the gas, and shot right past the car in front.
I heard a small explosion and saw a puff of smoke exist for just an instant outside the shooters' car, in the vicinity I'd just vacated. They'd missed us (Shadow and I) completely.
Once well past my ambushers and straightened out again on the highway I gave Shadow more gas and unrolled lots more distance between us and them. I reached up and turned on my CB to get only static.
Damn! I hadn't screwed on the antenna!
Well, I was probably out of danger anyway I figured, so long as I kept putting more pavement between me and them.
Civilian traffic forced me to weave in and out, switching lanes to get around slow pokes. Given the circumstances I occasionally used the emergency lane too when necessary. Though in Tennessee in those days you had to be extra careful in the practice. For the emergency lanes weren't meant for high speed use. The width of their useful pavement could fluctuate dramatically in spots, even leaving sharp-edged holes like traps awaiting the unwary. I'd once forced an enemy into hitting such a hole which was well-known to me but not him, in order to end some trouble. But even where the pavement was good there could be errant gravel from the land alongside the highway, or various auto debris like blown tire strips pushed there by traffic flow. The gravel could cause traction and steering problems; the rubber strips that and more, depending on their bulk and composition.
There could also be metal car parts or objects which had fallen off truck cargo beds there.
Luckily at that time I didn't face anything significant along all those lines.
I was staying at around 100 to 110 mph, as it didn't appear my stalkers were anywhere near to catching up to me. Heck, they weren't even in sight anymore.
I knew this stretch of interstate almost never displayed a trooper presence. So I didn't switch on my scanner either (my scanner utilized a different antenna arrangement from my CB and AM/FM radios). I figured I'd lay down a bit more distance just to be on the safe side, then jump off an exit to have a bite to eat while my pursuers had themselves a wild goose chase.
Of course, I didn't know that my foes were counting on me doing just that. Recall I was dealing with an enemy here who had enlisted help from drivers with previous experiences involving me and Shadow. Put a dozen or so of such folks together and you get a decent idea of my usual strategy and tactics on the road. Yikes!
They wanted me off the interstate. Into territory and circumstances they could better control.
Heck, if nothing else they could drastically slow me down if I was off the main highway. Allowing more of their gang to arrive on scene.
Shadow's distinctive look was also hurting me. It was easy as hell to pick him out at a distance in broad daylight. Combine that with extensive radio-based coordination and maybe a couple dozen converging vehicles and you get one surprisingly robust ambush scenario.
Roddy and his gang had been hoping all along to spring their trap in daylight, in order to at least partially neutralize the value of my strobe lights, as well as make several other of Shadow's stealth features work against me rather than for me.
Of course that also meant they badly needed to have me in hand before nightfall.
Alas, none of this was in my thoughts as I exited the highway to hit a fast food joint and relax.
I guess I should explain that little incidents like the pin and shoot weren't that unusual for me in those days.
If I told you the name of my native Tennessee county, and you asked those in the know about what it was like in the 1970s, you'd fast lose any skepticism you might have towards the events related here. Yes, perhaps that's sad and tragic. But none-the-less a fact.
Here's one example among many: one husband-wife squabble would get out of hand in my county some years after my supercar days-- leading the husband to pack so many explosives in his wife's car that when it blew up later in a discount store parking lot, the authorities literally couldn't find anything left of the woman at all. She'd been vaporized.
The husband still went to prison though.
Anyway, I pulled into a place that offered me a good vantage point from which to watch the interstate (but drivers there couldn't see me very well) and walked into the building to get a burger, fries, and shake to go. I figured it'd be a few minutes before the three car pin team went by.
I got back into Shadow and started munching down. Sure enough, within minutes here came the vehicles which had tried to kill me. I sat there in amusement chewing my food as they approached...
...then stopped chewing when they all every one got off the same exit I had.
What the hell?!
I didn't panic. After all, it could just be a coincidence. They might be giving up the chase.
But I cranked Shadow back up again just in case. And looked forlornly up at the CB radio in my overhead console for which I still hadn't remounted the antenna.
I reached back and switched on my hidden police scanner. Luckily it was configured with local crystals, as for my convoy job there seemed little need for such gear.
I watched in amazement as the pursuit gang headed straight for my present location after getting off the interstate.
Hellfire! No way they could have seen me get off here! Or seen me sitting here!
Then it hit me. Radios. Spies. I wasn't just dealing with those three cars here.
Holy crap.
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