Triple Threat

a curve a half mile ahead. If they didn’t slow by then the two vehicles were going to sail into space in the finest tradition of hackneyed car chase scenes.
    Oh, hell. That wasn’t all: A new risk, a bicyclist. A woman, it seemed, on a mountain bike. She had one of those pistachio-shell-shaped helmets, in black, and a heavy backpack.
    She had no clue they were bearing down on her.
    For a moment the pickup wiggled out of control then straightened its course. The driver seemed to be looking back at Pellam more than ahead. He didn’t see the bike.
    Seventy miles an hour. A quarter mile from the curve.
    And a hundred feet from the bicyclist.
    “Look out!” Pellam shouted. Pointlessly.
    The driver of the pickup began to brake. The Ford vibrated powerfully. They slowed a few miles per hour.
    Maybe the curve wasn’t that sharp. He squinted at a yellow warning sign.
    The diagram showed a 180-degree switchback. A smaller sign commanded that thou shalt take the turn at ten miles an hour.
    But they’d be on the cyclist in seconds. Without a clue they were speeding toward her, she was coasting and weaving around in the right lane, avoiding rocks. And about to get crushed to death. Some riders had tiny rearview mirrors attached to their helmets. She didn’t.
    “Look!” Pellam shouted again and gestured.
    Whether the driver saw the gesture or not Pellam couldn’t say. But the passenger did and pointed.
    The pickup swerved to the left. Another squeal of brakes. The camper rode up higher on the hitch. It was like a fishhook. As they raced past the bicyclist, her mouth open in shock, she wove to the side, the far right, and managed to skid to a stop.
    That was one tragedy averted. But the other loomed.
    They were a thousand feet from the switchback
    Pellam felt the vibrations again, from the brakes. They slowed to sixty-five then sixty. Downshift.
    Five hundred feet.
    They’d slowed to fifty.
    Danger Sharp Curve.
    Down to forty-five leisurely miles an hour.
    The switchback loomed. Straight ahead, past the curve, Pellam could see nothing. No trees. No mountains. Just a huge empty space. The tourist marker at Clement Pass said the area boasted some of the most spectacular vertical drops in Colorado.
    Forty miles an hour. Thirty-nine.
    Maybe we’ll just bring this one off.
    But then the grade dropped, an acute angle, and the wedded vehicles began accelerating. Fifty, fifty-five.
    Pellam took off his Ray Bans. Swept the pens and beer bottles off the dash. Knocked the boom box to the floor. Kathy continued to sing. The song “Grand Canyon” was coming up soon.
    A hundred feet from the switchback.
    With a huge scream the pickup’s nose dropped. The driver had locked the brakes in a last desperate attempt to stop. Blue smoke swirled as the truck fishtailed and the rear of the camper swung to the left. But the driver was good. He turned into the skid far enough to control it but not so much that he lost control. They straightened out and kept slowing.
    They were fifty feet from the edge of the switchback. The speed had dropped to fifty.
    Forty-five…
    But it wasn’t enough.
    Pellam threw his arms over his face, sank down into the seat.
    The pickup sliced through the pointless wooden guardrail and sailed over the edge of the road, the camper just behind.
    There was a loud thump as the undercarriage of the Ford uprooted a skinny tree and then a soft jolt. Pellam opened his eyes to find the vehicles rolling down a gentle ten-foot incline, smooth as a driveway, into the parking lot of the Overlook diner, sitting in the middle of a spacious area on an outcropping of rock high above the valley floor.
    With a resounding snap the camper’s front bumper broke loose and fell beneath the front tires, slicing through and flattening them, a hard jolt that launched the boom box and possibly a beer bottle or two into Pellam’s ear and temple.
    He winced at the pain. The truck rolled leisurely through the lot and steered out of the way of the Winnebago, which hobbled on, slowing, toward the rear of the diner.
    Pellam’s laughter at the peaceful conclusion to the near-tragedy vanished as the camper’s nose headed directly for a large propane tank.
    Shit…
    Hitting the useless brakes again, couldn’t help himself, he squinted. But the dead tires slowed the camper significantly and the result of the collision was a quiet
thonk
, not the fireball that was the requisite conclusion of car chases in the sort of movies Pellam preferred not