"Sorry," Danny mutters. Of course. He hopes Dale will be able to keep a lid on these monsters. Watching Kaiser Bill rock an ancient Mustang belonging to a fool kid who failed to back up in time, he is extremely happy that the bikers don't have any blunt instruments.
Through the vacant space formerly occupied by the kid's Mustang, a police car rolls toward Danny and the Kaiser. As it makes its way through the crowd, a woman wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and Capri pants bangs her hand against the passenger windows. When the car reaches Danny the two part-timers, Bob Holtz and Paul Nestler, jump out, gape at the Kaiser, and ask if he and Pam need help. "Go up and talk to the chief," Danny says, though he should not have to. Holtz and Nestler are nice guys, but they have a lot to learn about chain of command, along with everything else.
About a minute and a half later, Bobby Dulac and Dit Jesperson show up. Danny and Pam wave them through as the bikers charge into the fray and drag chanting citizens off the sides and hoods of their vehicles. Sounds of struggle reach Danny over angry shouts coming from the mob before him. It seems that he has been out here for hours. Thrusting people out of the way with great backswings of his arms, Sonny emerges to stand beside Pam, who is doing her best. Mouse and Doc wade into the clear. A trail of blood leaking from his nose, a red smear darkening his beard at the corner of his mouth, the Kaiser strides up beside Danny.
Just as the crowd begins chanting, "HELL NO, WE WON'T GO! HELL NO, WE WON'T GO!" Holtz and Nestler return to bolster the line. Hell no, we won't go? Danny wonders. Isn't that supposed to be about Vietnam?
Only dimly aware of the sound of a police siren, Danny sees Mouse wade into the crowd and knock out the first three people he can reach. Doc settles his hands on the open window of an all-too-familiar Oldsmobile and asks the small, balding driver what the hell he thinks he is doing. "Doc, leave him alone," Danny says, but the siren whoops again and drowns out his words.
Although the little man at the wheel of the Olds looks like an ineffectual math teacher or a low-level civic functionary, he possesses the determination of a gladiator. He is the Reverend Lance Hovdahl, Danny's old Sunday school teacher.
"I thought I could help," the reverend says.
"What with all this racket, I can't really hear you too good. Let me help you get closer," Doc says. He reaches in through the window as the siren whoops again and a State Police car slides by on the other side.
"Hold it, Doc, STOP!" Danny shouts, seeing the two men in the state car, Brown and Black, craning their necks to stare at the spectacle of a bearded man built like a grizzly bear dragging a Lutheran minister out through the window of his car. Creeping along behind them, another surprise, is Arnold Hrabowski, the Mad Hungarian, goggling through the windshield of his DAREmobile as if terrified by the chaos around him.
The end of the lane is like a war zone now. Danny strides into the screaming mob and shoves a few people aside on his way to Doc and his old Sunday school teacher, who looks shaken but not at all injured. "Well, Danny, my goodness," the minister says. "I'm certainly glad to see you here."
Doc glares at the two of them. "You know each other?"
"Reverend Hovdahl, this is Doc," Danny says. "Doc, this is Reverend Hovdahl, the pastor at Mount Hebron Lutheran."
"Holy moly," says Doc, and immediately begins to pat the little man's lapels and tug at the hem of his jacket, as if to pull him into shape. "Sorry, Reverend, I hope I didn't hurt you none."
The state cops and the Mad Hungarian manage at last to squeeze out of the crowd. The sound level decreases to a mild hubbub — one way or another, Doc's friends have silenced the loudest members of the opposition.
"Fortunately, the window is wider than I am," the reverend says.
"Say, maybe I could come over and talk to you someday," says Doc. "I've been doing a lot of reading about first-century Christianity lately. You know, Géza Vermès, John Dominic Crossan, Paula Fredriksen, stuff like that. I'd like to bounce some ideas off you."
Whatever Reverend Hovdahl intends to say is obliterated by the sudden explosion of noise from the other end of the lane. A woman's voice rises like a banshee's, in an inhuman screeching that shivers the hairs on the nape of Danny's neck. It sounds to him as though escaped lunatics a thousand times more dangerous than the Thunder Five are raving through the landscape. What the devil could have happened up there?
" 'Hello boys'?" Unable to contain his indignation, Bobby Dulac turns to stare first at Dale, then at Jack. His voice rises, hardens. "Is this shit for real? 'Hello boys'?"
Dale coughs into his fist and shrugs. "He wanted us to find her."
"Well, of course," Jack says. "He told us to come here."