Blood risk

slipped his hands around the log again, found as good a hold as he was going to get on the surprisingly smooth, round pine trunk. Perspiration ran from his armpits down his sides; his shirt soaked that up. "Ready?" he asked.
        "Ready," Shirillo said.
        They heaved, gasped as all their stomach muscles tightened painfully. Tucker felt his back pop like a glass bottle full of pressurized soft drink, perspiration fizzing out of him. But he did not let go, no matter what the cost in strained muscles, raised the log a few inches, scraped sideways a frustratingly short distance before they had to drop it. This time Shirillo sat down on the log to regain his breath, panting like a dog that has run a long way in mid-June heat.
        "No loafing," Tucker said immediately.
        He felt as bad as the boy did, perhaps even worse-he was, after all, five years older than Shirillo, five years softer; and he had twenty-eight years of easy living to put up against the boy's twenty-three years of rough ghetto upbringing-but he knew that he was the one who had to keep the others moving, had to generate the drive, share some of his fanatical determination to see them through. It was not the getting killed that Tucker feared so much. More than that he feared failure. He said, "Come on, Jimmy, for Christ's sake!"
        Shirillo sighed, got to his feet and straddled the pine once more. As he bent to get a grip on it, Harris opened up with his Thompson, filling the woods about them with a manic chatter. Shirillo looked up, could not see anything because of the Dodge and the angle of the trail beyond that, bent again and took hold of the log, put everything he had into one final, frantic heave. Together they muscled the tree farther around than they had the last time before they were forced to let it go. Dropped, the tree landed in the baked roadway with a soft, dusty thump.
        "Far enough?" Shirillo asked.
        "Yes," Tucker said. "Move ass now!"
        They ran back to the car. Shirillo slid behind the wheel and started the engine. That was enough of an alert for Harris, who had not used the Thompson for almost a full minute. The big man jumped up and got into the back of the Dodge again. Tucker was sitting up front with Shirillo and was fumbling with his seat belt. He clicked it together as Jimmy pulled out, turned to Harris and said, "Get any tires?"
        "No," Harris said. The admission bothered him, for he respected Tucker and wanted the young man to return his respect. If this job had gone right, it would have been his last; now, because they'd botched it, he would need to work again, and he preferred to work with Tucker more than with anyone else, even after this fiasco. "The bastards caught on too quick, shifted into reverse before I'd nailed any tires." He cursed softly and wiped at his grimy neck, his voice too soft for Tucker to hear the individual words.
        "They coming?" Shirillo asked.
        "Like a cop with a broomstick up his ass," Harris said.
        Shirillo laughed and said, "Hold on." He tramped the accelerator hard, pinning them back against their seats for a moment, cutting into a long, shadow-dappled section of road.
        "Why don't they let us alone?" Harris asked, facing front, the Thompson across his lap. His face matched his body: all hard lines. His forehead was massive, the black eyes sunk deep under it and filled with cold, solid intelligence. His nose, broken more than once, was bulbous but not silly, his mouth a lipless line that creased the top of a big square chin. All those harsh angles crashed together in a look of bitter disappointment. "We didn't get their money."
        "We tried, though," Tucker said.
        "We even lost Bachman. Isn't that enough?"
        "Not for them," Tucker said.
        "The Iron Hand," Shirillo said. He took a turn in the road too far on the outside: pine boughs scraped the roof like long, polished fingernails, and the springs sang like a bad alto.
        "Iron Hand?" Harris asked.
        "That's what my father used to call them," Shirillo said, never taking his eyes off the road ahead.
        "Melodramatic, isn't it?" Tucker asked.
        Shirillo shrugged. "The Mafia itself isn't a staid and sober organization; it's as melodramatic as an afternoon soap opera. It's all the time playing scenes straight out of cheap movies: bumping off rivals, beating up store owners who don't want to pay for protection,