Blood risk

small man.
        Jimmy went around and got the last two bags, carried them with little trouble, dropped them into the open trunk of the stolen Chevrolet and slammed the lid while Bach-man scurried for the front door.
        "Relax," Tucker told the men lined against the car, though none of them had moved.
        No one responded.
        Bachman started the Chevy, raced the engine once, shifted into reverse, squealed backward, angling the car downhill.
        "Easy!" Tucker shouted.
        But he didn't need to caution Merle Bachman, for the small man always gauged the situation properly and performed at the optimum safe speed. He was a good driver.
        Harris came off the stone wall, grunting, the sound of his heavy breathing magnified by the mask. While Bachman was backing the Chevy, Harris came around to Tucker and said, "Smooth."
        Again Tucker said, "Hold the celebrations."
        Bachman put the Chevy in gear, touched the gas lightly and started downhill toward the second curve, shimmering curtains of heat rising from the roof and trunk of the car.
        "Get the Dodge," Tucker ordered Shirillo.
        The boy went after it.
        Pete Harris was the only one still watching the Chevy, thinking about all that money in the trunk, thinking about retirement, and he was the first to see that it was going to go sour. "Oh, shit!" he said.
        He had not even finished the exclamation when Tucker heard the hot cry of the Chevrolet's brakes and whirled around to see what had gone wrong.
        Everything had gone wrong.
        Before Bachman had covered little more than half the distance to the bottom curve, a Cadillac had rounded the limestone down there, coming up. It was a match for the Caddy they had just hit, and it was moving too fast, much too fast for these road conditions. The driver pulled the wheel hard to the left and tried to run the bank; that was hopeless, because the shoulder of the road down there turned swiftly into the stone wall that continued unbroken to the top of the rise. A tire blew with the force of a cannon shot. The car jolted, bucked up and down like an enraged animal. Metal whined as a fender was compressed into half the space it had formerly occupied.
        Still braking, the Chevrolet wobbled crazily back and forth as Bachman fought to regain control, veered suddenly and purposefully toward the outside.
        "He can't get around a car as big as the Caddy!" Harris said.
        Bachman tried it anyway. He was still in the middle of a job, still calm and greased, quick and calculating. He realized that he had only one chance of pulling this off successfully, and no matter how infinitesimal that chance was, he took it. The Cadillac had come to a complete halt now, pretty badly crumpled on the one side, and the Chevy plowed into its rear door like a pig nosing in the turf, reared up and caught its front axle on the top of the ruined door, simultaneously sliding to the left toward the three-hundred-foot chasm. The back wheels jolted off the berm and swung over empty air, spinning up clouds of yellow dust. For a second Tucker was sure the Chevy would break loose and fall, but then he saw it would hold, halfway up the other, larger car like a dog mounting a bitch. Bachman had tried it; he'd lost.
        Completely undamaged on the passenger's side, the front door of the Cadillac opened and a tall, dark-haired man got out, dazed. He shook his head to clear it, turned and stared at the demolished Chevy angled crazily over him, bent forward with his hands on both knees to be sick. He seemed to think of something more important than that natural urge, for he straightened abruptly and looked into the front seat, reached inside and helped a young woman climb out. She appeared to be as uninjured as he, and she did not share his sickening intimation of mortality. She wore a white blouse and a very short yellow skirt: a big, lovely blonde. Her long hair flapped like a pennant in the breeze as she looked up the road at Tucker and the others.
        "Here!" Jimmy Shirillo shouted. He had turned the Dodge around and was facing uphill.
        "Get in the car," Tucker told Harris.
        The big man obliged, the Thompson held in both hands tenderly.
        "Don't force me to shoot any of you in the back," Tucker said, backing to the open rear door of the Dodge.
        Baglio's men remained silent.
        He slid into the car, still facing them,