The Spanish Connection by Nick Carter

waved to Parson in the rearview mirror.
    I saw the Simca following me, its headlights shimmering in the falling snow.
    The twists and turns were quite sharp, requiring constant braking and downshifting. I was beginning to enjoy the challenge of the roadway when I felt the first sogginess in the brake system.
    I was coming down through a valley of black mica upthrust where the road had been blasted in a V groove. At the end of it I could see the pavement make a quick sharp right turn.
    In the middle of the straightaway I started to brake and felt slippage. I thought I had inadvertently come across a frozen spot in the road, and tried again. But it was not a frozen spot at all.
    Once again I applied the brake to get some traction for a downshift, but the brake did not seem to transmit any power to the wheels.
    I pushed frantically on the shift stick but I was traveling too fast now to engage, and I could not get down into the lower gear.
    I had the brakes down to the floorboard as I went into the graded curve, but it was much too fast a speed. Luckily the curve was very well graded. I made the turn. But immediately I was faced with a quick S-turn to the left, in the opposite direction, and I pushed on the brakes again, hoping that the roadway would give me traction here. But I could feel nothing but soggy ineffectiveness.
    Nothing.
    I thrust the wheel over hard and made the turn. The roadway straightened, but pitched downward as the highway went into a long flat traverse across the face of a high cliff-like slope. At the end of the traverse I could see a hard-angled switchback with a large highway sign of warning ahead of it.
    I pushed down the brakes again, but got no response at all. I shoved on the gear stick, but could not get it down a notch. I began to twist the wheel back and forth, trying to get a snow-plowing type of friction to reduce the speed of the Renault so I could get the damned thing down into a lower gear.
    No luck.
    I saw Parson's lights behind me, and I wondered if he was watching me in the S and puzzling over my unaccountably bad driving.
    I flashed the lights two times as a kind of signal for help.
    The curve came closer and closer, and I was doing absolutely no good at controlling the Renault's speed. I thought of going across the inner drainage ditch, but decided that the chance of smashing the axles and tearing the wheels off was too great to risk. Besides that, I might wind up smashed flat against the schist cutbank that rose from the ditch with the steering wheel growing out of my back.
    The tires screaming, I thrust the wheel around to the left to take the turn too fast. I smashed into the rising cutbank on my right. The Renault caromed off the cutbank and went directly toward the outer rim of the road, which had about a foot of rock piled below a white-painted wooden guard rail that continued for twenty feet or so.
    I slammed sideways into the guard rail, tore off something from the side of the Renault, and then caromed back toward the cutbank. But I pulled hard and straightened out the car again.
    Ahead of me the roadway continued to descend rapidly. A hundred yards away I could see the roadway turning sharp right, with another wooden guard rail protecting the turn, and a very large sign in front of the turn.
    I could never make that turn.
    I heard the thunder of an engine next to my ear and I turned quickly.
    It was Parson.
    He was gunning the Simca past me, and shooting down the roadway ahead.
    I wondered what in hell he was trying to do. I thought of yelling out to him, but did not.
    He cut in front of me and I almost screamed at him to get out of my way or be hit.
    I was pushing on the stick shift again, trying frantically to get down a notch, but it was useless.
    Parson was directly in front of me. I almost closed my eyes, waiting for the crash.
    It never came.
    Suddenly my front bumper was tapping Parson's back bumper. I saw the red brake lights of Parson s Simca blink on and off and on and