Impact | Book 6 | Dig

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Blood splashed from Christian’s chest as she pumped more ordnance into him.

  “Holy crap!” he shouted.

  He and Butch clawed their way from Christian as Haley continued to dump ammo into the corpse propped against the wall. It only stopped when she’d run out of bullets.

  The three of them stood frozen, as if someone had taken a picture of them. Haley with a pistol pointed at Christian. Butch hunkered down on the far side of the dead man, ready in case he wasn’t truly dead. And Ezra, crouched a few feet away from the bullet-riddled body. Covered in blood.

  He was about to speak when Haley snapped out of it. She turned to Ezra for a moment, then flung herself at Butch.

  “I thought he was going to kill you!”

  Butch laughed with obvious relief as she choked him with affection.

  “He almost did.”

  Chapter 16

  Boulder, WY

  Grace pulled her truck to the gas pump. Carson was parked at the island ahead of her. On the drive in, she didn’t see anyone in the town, though she knew someone was in the shipping containers.

  “I’ll go inside. I’ll pretend I need to get gas, all right?”

  Asher hooked the door handle. “You want me to go with?”

  She thought about what could go wrong. “No, if necessary, you drive everyone out of here.” Grace tossed her keys at him.

  He nodded grimly.

  It didn’t seem civilized to carry her rifle inside, but she kept her police pistol in its holster on her belt. It was better than going in unarmed. She paused for a second at the blue Toyota sedan parked near the front door to be sure no one was in there, then she went for the shop. When she pushed through the doors, a wave of cool air hit her. “Ahhh,” she said reflexively.

  A man’s voice greeted her. “It’s a hot one.”

  The guy stood behind the counter. His blue shirt alerted her to his allegiance. Still, she was supposed to be an innocent passerby.

  She smiled at him as she walked toward the drinks. “Just passing through. It’s nice to catch some cool air.”

  The man looked outside. “Day-aam, is that your truck? It’s got no windows!”

  Grace walked aimlessly through the aisles, not sure how to play it. If he was with TKM, he might alert others to her. With recon in mind, she grabbed a random bottle of soda, then went toward the front. “I work for the park service, as you can no doubt tell by the uniform. My truck got the brunt of the asteroid when it sailed over Yellowstone.”

  He leaned against his window, looking at the truck. “I ain’t never seen a truck as beat up as yours. It looks like you even got bullet holes, or something. But that’s ridiculous, right?”

  She laughed it off as she strode up to the counter. “No, those are from rocks. The shockwave was incredibly powerful. Didn’t you get the same thing here?”

  “Nah, we only got a little earthquake when it rolled in. I drove out to take a look at it, at least until them fellas came and took it over.”

  She looked at him with more scrutiny. He was well-tanned, probably Hispanic, and about her age. His shirt was indeed blue, but it didn’t have any TKM markings. Instead, it had the logo for the chain of gas stations. It was his work shirt.

  Grace let out the breath she’d been holding. “You aren’t with TKM?”

  He laughed. “No. Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, hoping to avoid a more in-depth discussion. Her focus was on finding out where the bad guys were hiding; they weren’t inside the man’s shop. “I only need this.” She placed the bottle of Mountain Dew on the counter.

  He scanned the soda, asked for the money, but before he gave the receipt, he added. “There are some TKM guys around, though. They’ve been all over Boulder since yesterday. I think they bought up all the pads at the Boulder Metropolitan Trailer Park.”

  “Are you serious? Is there a metro area here?”

  He cracked up. “Nah. It’s what we call the dump. Boulder has like ten people living here, or at least before they came along and kicked everyone out.”

  “TKM kicked your townspeople out of your homes?”

  “No, I don’t live here. Almost no one does. I live in Green River. Though, I admit I did stay here overnight. The roads are clogged down south. No way for me to get home.” He winked at her. “Don’t tell my boss, okay?”

  It explained the blue car parked out front.

  “I won’t,” she assured him, already anxious to get back outside. If TKM was operating in the trailer park, she and her people could get the drop on them. The gas station was no longer a potential trap for her. It would be a sneaky beachhead for their takeover of the town.

  She headed for the door but paused before pushing it open. “Hey, why do you think TKM is even here? Isn’t it a little out of the way for anyone to buy up real estate like they did?”

  The man shrugged. “They come in here and buy stuff, but they aren’t very talkative. I’ve heard them mention stuff about the rock sitting out in the valley, and I’ve heard them talk about the shipping containers they brought in on flatbeds, but that’s about it. Why they’re doing anything is above my pay grade.”

  Grace smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He looked out the window. “Oh, it looks like we have a lot more business all the sudden.”

  She pushed through the doors. Carson stood by his truck. Rocky had arrived, too. He stood next to his door. Both of the men had their hands high in the air. As she stood there, Carson nodded to her, then off to her side.

  “Oh crap,” she blurted.

  Men with guns stood at the corner of the building. They covered all three trucks, and one man had a rifle pointed directly at her.

  Her brilliant attack plan was already a failure.

  Soda Ash Plant, WY

  “What do we do now?” Haley said, catching her breath.

  There was no way to clean off all the blood soaking into his shirt, but soon it wouldn’t matter. They’d done their job to perfection and took out half of the shipping containers. The advancing forces were pressing closer. The sounds of their engines vibrated the metal around them.

  “We’ve got to run for it,” he said.

  “We could surrender,” Butch said, still holding Haley.

  Ezra gave him a look.

  “What?” Butch went on. “It isn’t really a surrender if the people coming in are your friends.”

  He was right, to an extent. “Butch, my man, I trust you with military matters completely, but this is a case of getting to my daughter. She’s to the north of here. If we get captured, there’s likely to be some debate about our status. Here we are inside a TKM shipping container. How do we explain that?”

  Butch freed himself from Haley and proceeded to rip his shirt off. All the weapons he’d carried in were spread out on the floor from the fight. Before he could remove it, however, Ezra stopped him.

  “No, wait. Hear me out. We’ve got to head back to the plant. Get our stuff. Head back through enemy territory. It’s the only way I know we’ll get to her.”

  The big guy immediately put his shirt back on, eliciting a sigh of disappointment from Haley.

  “Come on,” Ezra prodded, stepping closer to the exit. He halted when a truck sped by, turning away from him. “Shit! They’re here already.”

  “You sure about this E-Z?” Butch asked, closing the distance with Haley at his side, single rifle in his arms again.

  “I’m sure. Let’s go!” He ran outside before he could be talked out of it. Maybe surrender would get them in front of a sensible leader who would release them to go find Grace. Or maybe they would put him in a cage for the next ten years. There was a lot of killing going on. There would be a reckoning afterward.

  The green truck which had sped by was now two containers down the row, a passenger hung a rifle out his window as if searching for men to shoot. If the guards he’d ambushed were still inside those cargo containers, they should be all right.r />
  “Go for the tall building!” he yelled behind him.

  Butch and Haley ran together. The large man had smartly tossed away his extra rifles, so he only had the one. Haley held hers to the side; he wasn’t sure if she still had the pistol, though it was definitely out of ammunition.

  Bullets struck randomly around them as they ran.

  A pair of shooters were on the roof of one of the low, squat metal structures at the plant. They acted as overwatch while the three of them ran in. Though he didn’t say it aloud, it was why he had his friends keep on those blue shirts. The TKM men aimed at the trucks speeding behind them.

  He only looked back once, as they rounded the corner to safety. A few dozen trucks and Jeeps had pulled up to the shipping containers, obviously using them as cover while they cleared out the remaining men inside the miniature forts. Gunshots roared furiously back there, suggesting they might have made the right call running when they did.

  “They’re shooting into the slits,” Butch remarked, panting as he came around the last corner of the building.

  “Really?” Haley asked with concern.

  Ezra couldn’t say he blamed them. “They’d been shot at as they drove up. I’m sure they lost good people. They weren’t taking any chances to open the doors. It was far safer to shoot inside and kill the defenders.” It bothered him somewhat that they were the reason the TKM guards couldn’t surrender. It also bothered him he’d almost been shot and killed. In the end, he wasn’t sure how to feel inside.

  Haley gulped. “That could have been us.”

  A woman responded. “Yes, it could.”

  It was the same redheaded woman in the black catsuit. She walked up to the little rectangular building like she was on her way to class. “Are there other survivors?”

  He might have ignored her, or shot her, except there were six soldier-like men in her wake, all with weapons drawn.

  “We don’t know,” he replied, heart pumping at all the lies he was about to tell. “Christian fell. We saw him go down before we escaped from the carnage. A couple of the other bunkers made it out, but I’m not sure if they made it all the way back to this point.”

  She looked around. “I don’t see anyone. I think we can safely say they didn’t.”

  Ezra tried to be helpful. “We can check. Cover them as they come in.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” she said dismissively before giving him what was clearly a once-over. “Your blood-covered shirts tell me you three are tough as nuts. I want you to follow me for a job I have—”

  He was done being led around. “No, we’ve got plans. Sorry.”

  Nerio laughed in a way he didn’t find funny. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly. I’m in charge of this whole plant. I have work that needs to be done by people like you. Unless you don’t want your million bucks?”

  Ezra paused. “A million bucks?”

  She walked up to him, leading him to think she was going to shoot him, which made him flinch. However, she got up in his face and smiled wickedly, then she knocked on his forehead like it was a door. “Hello in there? We’re all going to be millionaires if we help our boss get his ore onto the railway cars. How could you forget something so obvious?”

  He cleared his throat. “I, uh, didn’t forget, ma’am.” He wore the shirt of TKM. He couldn’t exactly refuse payment. Money was presumably the motivation for all the men playing war at the soda ash plant, but the promise of said money was also a talisman against getting shot by unstable leaders. If he refused the bounty, he was no longer of any use to the cause. They wouldn’t simply let him walk out the front gate. “It’s just that we almost died—”

  “Died, shmied,” she sing-songed. “You made it out alive. Hell, you can have the shares of all those dead men out there. I really don’t care about Petteri’s money. But you will come with me.”

  She left no ambiguity.

  The men with guns made it final.

  Anticline Ranch, WY

  Dorothy’s drones were a godsend as it gave Petteri a real-time basis from which to decide when to enact the most important piece of his plan. He had to start the ball rolling while the train station was still under his control. Based on what he’d seen with trucks reaching the line of shipping containers, it might not be for much longer.

  Mr. Aarons and Dorothy both sat at the conference table, ready for his orders.

  “I’ve seen enough. The drones have identified Asher Creighton and Grace Anderson as being present in the town of Boulder. I’d expect my contingent of guards to take care of her when she gets inside my trap, but I’ve come to expect the unexpected from those two. Our flank is in danger.”

  “Shall I send reinforcements?” Craig Aarons inquired, reaching for his radio.

  It was a smart play for his chief strategist, and someday he might tell him he’d done a commendable job defending the dig site. However, he brushed off the idea with a dismissive wave to maintain his firm grip on events. “No. I need all the men you’ve got left to protect the dump trucks. I’m going to send them on their way.”

  “To the rail yard?” Aarons asked.

  Petteri curled his lip in mischief. “I want you to announce to our troops the way must be secured by your teams. Every bridge needs to be guarded. Every inch of highway needs to be swept clean of terrorists. Then, we’ll need to load the dump truck ore onto the hopper cars as fast as possible. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “It’s very clear, sir. Hold open the road to the soda ash plant for as long as possible. Spare no troops to get it done.”

  “Good,” he went on, “because that’s for enemy ears to hear.” He looked over to Dorothy, noting her concerned face. When he caught her eye, he motioned to the laptop. “How are things coming with the space program? Did you create what I needed?”

  The confusion washed away. “I did indeed, sir. You’re not going to believe this.” As she’d done many times before, she spun her laptop so it faced Petteri. She paused as she observed Mr. Aarons approach.

  “This is for him to hear, too,” Petteri said in a soothing tone.

  “Very well,” she replied, pressing buttons.

  A voice recording of a woman kicked off. “I don’t care what you have to do. I need those ships on the move to the coordinates I sent you.” The voice was clearly Nerio’s, accent and all.

  Another woman replied, “I can have all of them launched within the hour. You’ll have the agreed upon payment in my Swiss account?”

  “Of course,” Nerio’s voice answered, “as long as they blow up what needs blowing up.”

  Dorothy stopped the recording. “I have five minutes of juicy stuff and about thirty seconds of small-talk. I thought it was appropriate to show these two had a familiarity with each other. It’s why they’re working together to sabotage TKM. They even talk specifically about crashing your maintenance drones to nuke cities.”

  “Nerio is working for the other side?” Aarons said in wonder.

  Dorothy was going to reply, but he cut her off. “Mr. Aarons, I’m sorry to do this, but could you step out? This is a critical juncture in our operation, and I don’t want Nerio to be a distraction for you. Come back in five minutes, please.”

  He looked surprised at first, but then resigned to doing as he was told.

  “I’ll be outside,” Craig said, walking out the door.

  Petteri had a few seconds to appreciate his own cunning, crafted on the fly. Aarons would have no idea it was all a forgery. He would unwittingly be a part of the conspiracy against Nerio. He would swear he heard intelligence implicating the woman. Way down on his list, he thought, he also was glad Aarons wouldn’t be in on the con. The fewer people he had involved in a critical aspect of his operation, the better.

  When sure the room was clear, he turned back to Dorothy. What she’d created was brilliant, but he always tempered his praise. “This will work. Nice job. Is the other woman who I think it is?” She’d been a guest of his for several days recentl
y.

  “Yep. I used the voice of Diedre Creighton to good effect, since she was already employed at mission control. You and I both know she’s not there, but who’s to say she isn’t hacking in as we speak?”

  “A nice touch,” he said in an agreeable tone. Of the several cons he had running at the same time, Dorothy’s was the most rewarding. Over the next five minutes, she explained her software specs, how she’d gotten the voices of the women, and how she’d simulated the entire conversation across several states. Anyone snooping for the truth would be hard-pressed to identify the fake.

  “Thank you,” she said, sounding most grateful.

  The recorded voices would pin the upcoming nuclear attack on Nerio, while also implicating Diedre and, by extension, her brother and that insufferable park ranger. With a little extra effort, he could lasso in the Crow Nation and everyone else currently shooting at his people. Instead of being liberators for the people of Wyoming, they would be cast as money-grubbing terrorists intent on destroying every rock but their own. By doing so, they would ensure their lone surviving piece of asteroid would drive up the value of the rare earth minerals inside to untold trillions.

  No one would have a clue it was actually his plan for TKM.

  At exactly the five-minute mark, Aarons returned.

  “Please, sit back down,” Petteri said, not giving a hint as to what the man had missed. He cleared his throat. “Now, getting back to my dump trucks. Take everything I’ve told you to say publicly and ignore it for the time being.”

  Petteri rubbed his hands together, knowing they were about to be impressed by his brilliance.

  “I’m going to tell you both what’s really been going on at this dig site.”

  Chapter 17

  Boulder, WY

  Twenty men came out from behind the convenience store wielding every type of rifle and shotgun she could imagine. They were all dressed like normal people, however, without the typical blue shirts of other TKM employees. She kept her hands up until she saw a familiar face.