Free A Clear and Present Danger by Buck Sanders Page B

dangerous friction that could flip the fast-moving vehicle.
    Fully half a length in front of the only car threatening his victory, Slayton took the chance of torquing into a bank turn.
     For a suspended second, he thought he might lose control. The vibration was terribly strong, sweat streamed off his face,
     his arms, and his hands. But he held on, turning, turning… and he imagined that he heard the laughing woman, the beautiful
     laughing woman.
    He felt the tremendous rush of free air as he zoomed past his competitor, to the clear command of the track. Gently, Slayton
     worked the LeMans up into the safety of the oval bank. No one would catch him now. He punched the accelerator… one hundred
     and twenty, one hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty-eight miles per hour. Then he topped one-fifty, leaving more than
     a dozen lengths of space between his LeMans and what would be the second-place driver.
    At the end, he climbed out of his car more wobble-legged than he had ever remembered. It had been a grueling race, one in
     which he had had to battle for all the concentration he could muster, for he had wanted to think only of the face of the laughing
     woman.
    He had set a record that day, he learned as fellow drivers and racing association officials pummeled him on his back and shouted
     their congratulations. Slayton was floating somewhere above the praise, his perspiration-blinded eyes searching the stands
     for the vision of that titian-haired woman who had laughed at his stomach exercises.
    He took a few unconscious steps in a remembered direction, and suddenly saw her. She waved to him with unrestrained enthusiasm.
     He ran toward her. She leaned out of her box and nearly fell to the tarmac. A man caught her just in time—her father, as it
     happened.
    Slayton could say nothing. She shouted something like congratulations to him. Dazed and smiling, he moved as close to her
     as the confines of her spectator’s box would allow. She pecked his damp cheek. And then he found his voice.
    “Wait here,” he said. “I’d like to meet you after.”
    “Well, the boy speaks!” the older man with her remarked.
    “I’ll be here,” she promised.
    And she was.
    It was an awkward first hour. Slayton found it difficult to lurch into conversation with Jean Marie, though with her father
     the talk was a breeze. He was a race fan, and Slayton found himself discoursing on the finer points of racing cams and splinter
     carbs, all of which the woman he loved found less than enthralling.
    But finally her father left, a private sort of laughter trailing behind him as he walked away, and Ben and Jean were alone.
     He began compulsively telling her about himself, as if there was not a moment to lose.
    …
Did he know even then, that first time he spoke with her?
    He told her of his wartime experiences, how he had grown sick and ashamed of the profiteering he saw all about him, by the
     immorality of the war itself, by the tragedy he could see that the war would bring to the lives of its veterans; he told her
     about his father, a police captain in Ann Arbor who had died of a heart attack while he was somewhere over Vietnam dropping
     a payload of destruction in the name of democracy, how he had loved the man, how they had built an impressive collection of
     Hudson automobiles and vintage Packards and Cadillacs. He told her how his prize possession was an ivory 1952 Nash-Healey
     two-seater designed by Pinin Farina; how he had joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War when he returned home to Michigan,
     then dropped out when he realized that his radical friends seemed to have no vision beyond their next television appearance;
     how he had amassed a huge collection of literate mystery novels during the time he studied langauge, diplomacy, and politics
     at the University of Michigan.
    She told him less about herself. But enough. She was a serious student of music, a substitute flautist with the National Symphony
     in Washington,