Impact | Book 6 | Dig

by Isherwood, E. E.

  When the two men climbed into the cab, she was prepared to swear to it.

  “Mr. Runs Hard! I know where my dad is.”

  Shawn stopped firing his rifle and glanced over his shoulder. “Where?”

  She motioned toward the red truck. “The last tractor-trailer. He took it over. I saw him push the driver out just now.”

  Shawn laughed with a little disbelief. “Is your dad an action hero? It sounds far-fetched.”

  Grace didn’t back down. “We’re firing guns at trucks from a gas station in western Wyoming. An asteroid full of money is being controlled by a madman. What part of this sounds normal?”

  He flashed a good-natured smile. “I was only asking. It’s my job to be sure. I believe you.”

  They all watched the truck. At first, it slowed way down, as if the driver couldn’t get the engine working. However, it soon sped back up to racing speed, which brought it alongside the next truck in short order.

  Instantly, the overtaken truck started to swerve. Its tires shredded as someone on the red truck fired at them. It was difficult to make out from where they were, but it appeared as if there was someone in the shipping container. The two men in the cabin of the truck kept their heads down.

  “It’s them for sure,” she said with pride. “He said he was traveling with two other people. The guy is in the cab with him. The woman is in the back. She’s the one ripping that second truck a new one.”

  In a span of ten seconds, the stricken tractor-trailer had to brake and then stop. The front wheel was nothing but bare metal. It threw out sparks and it screeched loud enough to be heard from where she was perched.

  “Okay, I believe you,” Shawn declared.

  He tapped his son. “Logan, I need you to run down and tell the others for me. The red truck is our friend. Shoot everything except the red one. Got it?”

  Logan pulled his rifle off the wall, acknowledged his father, then noticed Grace. He started to head off for the ladder, but then he stopped. “I’ll make sure no one hurts your dad. I know what it’s like.”

  She smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  Grace braced her rifle, facing Shawn Runs Hard. “Tell me how I can help.”

  Chapter 20

  Outside Boulder, WY

  “Wow!” Ezra exclaimed after watching Haley shoot like a wild woman at the semitruck next to them. He’d pulled alongside the other vehicle, expecting to ram it off the road, but she’d done the job for him by shooting several tires flat while staying safely inside the shipping container.

  “Only ten more to go,” Butch said in a calm voice. “Or maybe nine.” One of the trucks was already on fire, seemingly shot by someone at the gas station far in the town.

  “Stay focused,” Ezra replied, taking his cue from the veteran.

  “We’ll go for that one, next,” he said, pointing to the closest flatbed ahead of them. Like all the others spread out to the sides, it had pulled into the rocks off the highway. The men inside were no doubt laying down fire toward Boulder.

  Ezra pointed to the shiny green sleeper cab. “I’ll pull us along its right side. We’ll use it as cover, so we don’t get shot by our friends. Get ready to cover me as I get out.” His pistol was lying on the highway behind him, and the cabin wasn’t large enough to wield his rifle, so he planned on getting out with it, and then he’d have it ready. Butch, however, had more room to use his rifle. He had it pointed at the floorboard as they rolled over the dusty rock.

  “Careful, E-Z. Those boys in the container might be able to get you.”

  He hoped and prayed the men inside the shipping containers would have no sense of what was happening behind them. As long as they hadn’t seen him run the other truck off the road, or throw Nerio and the driver out the door, he figured he was fine. Of course, she might have radioed to all the trucks, or perhaps the helicopter had been watching the entire show.

  He had no time to argue with himself. He shifted down as he pulled alongside the green machine. He was surprised to see the driver already out of his truck, standing behind his front tire.

  The guy saw him and waved him down. “They didn’t tell me I would be shot at!”

  Ezra hopped down, casually unfurling his rifle. “What did you think was going to happen? You, uh, we’re carrying metal gun platforms into battle.”

  The man looked like a professional trucker. Faded baseball cap. T-shirt with the American flag on it. Old jeans with a wad of keys looped under his belt. Ezra didn’t want to hurt him. He was old enough to be his father and wore a friendly face.

  Bullets snapped off the rocks twenty feet in front of the truck. In response, the man crouched as low as possible. Ezra used the distraction to put his rifle next to the man’s chest. “I don’t want to hurt you, bud.”

  The guy’s face turned to ash. “What is this?”

  “It’s all a friggin’ misunderstanding. All of this. TKM has been lying to the world about what they’re doing with the asteroid pieces. They aren’t trying to help us. They’re trying to mine the ore and make money off our plight.”

  “I see,” the driver said robotically.

  A series of pops went off from behind Ezra. Pieces of rock and dirt spurted up near his feet, as if someone was firing at him from above.

  On instinct alone, he threw himself against the side of the truck, next to the older man. At first, he thought the guy was going to use the moment to fight back, but Butch had appeared at the front bumper of the green truck. The driver was focused on the big man.

  Butch yelled over, “They see you from the doors of the container. They don’t have the angle as long as you stay down there.”

  Bullets smashed into the front lights of Butch’s position, underscoring that while they might not be able to shoot Ezra, they did have the angle on him.

  A shape flashed in his peripheral vision. Ezra cocked his head back to see what it was, catching a quick glimpse of a young woman jumping from one flatbed to the next.

  “What’s she doing?” Ezra murmured.

  He was compelled to crane his neck and watch. Haley used her pistol to shoot the man standing at the door. The guy had never expected someone to come at him from the other trailer. He’d been focused on Butch and Ezra.

  The wounded man dropped his weapon and fell hard to the trailer’s surface.

  Haley then stood at the edge of the door, firing around the corner. She expended all her remaining rounds into the container, screaming like a feral hellhound the entire time. When her weapon clicked empty, she dropped it, ripped the rifle from her back, and sidestepped to the nearest gun port. In one quick motion, she shoved the barrel into the port and pulled the trigger five or six times. When done, she moved to the next one.

  “Holy shit,” Butch said with admiration at the woman’s tenacity.

  A man stumbled out the front of the container, gun in hand, searching for Haley; Butch put him down immediately.

  Haley got to the third port on the side of the metal frame, put in more rounds, then took a breath. She looked back to Ezra, wiping sweat from her forehead. “Is Butch all right?”

  He laughed tentatively. “Yeah, he’s fine. Are you?”

  There was plenty of gunfire roaring around them, but none of it seemed to come from inside the container on the green truck. Haley had taken out all eight men, minus the one who came out the front. She squatted at the edge of the trailer, getting a better look at the prisoner. “I’m good,” she chuffed. “Is that the driver?”

  Haley hopped off the trailer in one smooth motion. Her blonde hair was matted and sloppy, with flecks of dried blood melting again on her sweaty face. Her shirt was still drenched in death from their previous shooting incident.

  The driver threw up his hands while gazing at her in fear. “I surrender, y’all. I surrender!”

  Haley ignored the man and ran to Butch.

  Love made people do wild and crazy things. He’d been sure Butch and Haley were interested in each other for the last several days, but Ha
ley’s banshee-inspired killing spree sealed the deal. Those two were going steady.

  Ezra moved away from the driver, intending to get Butch and Haley back in the truck. Maybe he’d congratulate them on finding each other. However, the moment he moved, a bullet struck the driver directly in his American flag shirt.

  “Holy shit!” he blurted.

  The bullet came from behind them. He turned and looked through the open space behind the cab. A redheaded woman was lying on the ground, a few hundred yards out. She had a freakishly big sniper rifle in front of her.

  Nerio looked down her scope while giving him the finger.

  Haley wasn’t the only woman who could go full banshee.

  Boulder, WY

  “Did you see that?” Grace asked everyone around her. Her dad had put his truck next to the other one and climbed down between the two. At the same time, a woman had jumped over and apparently shot everyone inside the shipping container. The woman then hopped down and hugged a huge man next to her dad. They were partially visible from her vantage point.

  Shawn whistled. “I take it back. Your family is full of superheroes.”

  “Yeah,” she said, appreciating what had taken place. She’d never seen her dad as a hero, not an action star, anyway, but doing what he did while people were shooting guns back and forth qualified for all kinds of medals.

  However, before she could dwell on it for too long, she noticed her dad and his friends duck down. They pointed behind them, out into the wasteland south of the town. It took her a few moments to orient on the tiny shape far out there. “I think it’s the woman who fell out of the truck!”

  “How can you tell?” Asher asked, squinting where she’d been looking.

  She smiled at him. “Trust me. When I saw her fall out, I was thinking she was dressed in black, like that woman back in Rawlins. It wouldn’t be my bad luck unless she was now harassing my dad.”

  “Nerio,” Shawn remarked. “Her name was Nerio. She tried to kidnap my son. If she’s out there…” The Crow leader looked into his small rifle scope, but seemed immediately disappointed. “I can’t hit her from this far.”

  “Can the Lahti?” she asked.

  Tom somehow heard her. She figured he’d be deaf by now. “Not likely. You see what I have to use for iron sights.” He gestured to the metal prongs sticking out the left side. “What’s worse, I’m down to about twenty shells. It would take me half that to dial in at such a range. Even then, I might not get her.” He looked over to Shawn. “I’ll try it if you want.”

  Shawn didn’t give the order.

  “I have an idea. I’ll be right back.” She motioned for Asher to follow. As she went down the ladder, she cobbled together the basics of a plan. When she reached her truck, parked under the awning of the gas station, she knew exactly what needed to be done.

  “I can tell by the way you’re walking you’re going to do something with your trademark Grace Anderson defiance.” Asher kept up with her as she walked up to her driver-side door.

  She put her hand on the handle. “Ash, you don’t have to go with me…”

  Men ran back and forth around them. They’d fire a few rounds, then move somewhere else. It seemed very professional, despite their not being military men. There were also only a few injured, which pleased her.

  Asher didn’t flinch. He backpedaled along the side of the truck, almost like he was doing a dance, then disappeared around the back. She met him as they both climbed inside.

  “You aren’t going to try to talk me out of this?” she asked with surprise.

  He chuckled knowingly. “I don’t even know what this is. All I know is…ugh, it sounds sappy to say. I just want to hang out with you, no matter where you’re going. And, if I’m being honest, I’m trying to work up some brown-nosing points with your dad so he’ll give me his blessing to begin courting you. I figure watching your back is the best way to do it.”

  They both laughed.

  “For your sake, I hope he says yes after all your effort,” she snarked.

  She spun the wheel left and right to get off the parking lot, then she gunned the motor and accelerated toward the semitrucks. Her windows were down; the acrid smell of gunfire came in with the hot, dry air. There were also bullets flying around them. The first one popped into the hood.

  Asher was as low as possible in his seat.

  “We aren’t stopping for anything,” she said to reinforce her sense of bravery.

  Lots of pops and pings zipped into her truck, but she reached the line of tractor-trailers in seconds, and the spigot of gunfire turned off. The men inside the boxes didn’t have the angle to shoot at her. She lifted her head as she drove by the pair of trucks where her dad was last seen, hair blowing like mad. Grace waved toward where she figured he was. For good measure, she sounded the horn to get his attention, though it came out as a wheezy blubber, rather than a proper honk.

  “Jeez, even the horn is busted on this thing,” she remarked, rubbing the dashboard in sympathy. “I’m sorry for treating you like this, buddy.” It had never crossed her mind that the truck could have a name or personality, but she suddenly thought of the Chevy Suburban as a stubborn mule. Nothing could make him quit.

  The truck might not have had a working horn, but the engine was still in prime condition. The speedometer reached sixty-five as she sped by the disabled flatbed and continued on toward the woman with the big gun.

  “Might want to buckle up,” she cried out to Asher.

  He scrambled into a sitting position so the belt would secure him.

  A familiar voice came from behind her. “Let me get belted in before you wreck us.”

  “Logan?” she shouted at him in shock. She was only surprised for half a second, though. It was her own fault for not checking for him before she started the truck.

  “Hi!” he beamed. “I did my job for Dad. Now I’m going to help you.”

  There was no turning back, even if she wanted. A bullet went through the front glass of the windshield, directly in the middle. It left a two-inch hole and passed out the windowless back.

  Logan unbelted a second later and fell to the floor. “On second thought, I’ll take my chances down here.”

  A second shot went into the motor. She had no idea where, but the jarring impact rattled the steering wheel. She stayed as low as possible, fearing the next bullet would have her name written on it. But she had to look over the top of the dash in order to keep her aim true.

  “Almost there,” she declared.

  Another blast crumpled the metal support on the left side of the windshield, a couple of feet in front of her head. The jolt also created a series of deep fissures across the lower half of the windshield.

  She looked ahead.

  The sniper left her rifle on the ground as she stood up.

  “Here we go!” Grace declared.

  Nerio wasn’t more than a few yards off the highway. She bounced on her feet, looking like a goalie who was trying to guess which way to jump. Grace slammed the brakes a second before leaving the pavement, trying to create confusion in Nerio’s head about where she was aiming. She used that final second to jerk the steering wheel hard to the left, which gave her a bit of extra turning power.

  The black-clad woman made her move.

  Grace felt the thump.

  Chapter 21

  Outside Boulder, WY

  “What in the—” Ezra was struck dumb as he realized it was his daughter behind the wheel of the wrecked SUV barreling down the highway. “Grace?”

  The universe seemed to stand still as he watched her go by, hair blowing behind her. She looked over once, for an instant, as if to assure him she was going to take care of something for him. But what?

  “She’s going for the sniper,” Haley offered.

  “That woman isn’t firing at us anymore,” Butch added, in a voice suggesting it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “I know,” Erza said dryly.

  They watched the next few se
conds as Grace’s SUV swerved around the out-of-commission flatbed a hundred yards away, then continued accelerating from there. The eight guards stood on and next to the flatbed, trying to get into the action at the town. However, they also got interested in her truck as it sped by.

  “Shoot those men,” he ordered, pointing to the guys at the disabled flatbed, already lining up his first shot. “They’re aiming at my Grace.”

  Ezra’s attack didn’t seem to strike any of them, but the guys retreated into their box, or under the safety of the trailer itself, which was enough for him.

  “Watch it,” he willed Grace. “You’re going too fast.”

  As Grace neared the sniper, the woman popped off the ground. Nerio scooted from side to side, awaiting Grace’s arrival, until she lunged to her left.

  The SUV struck Nerio. She flew ten feet in the air, twirling a few times, as if dismounting a trapeze. Unlike her deft landing out of the semitruck, her second one was terrible. She slammed into the dusty rocks face-first as Grace skidded to a stop.

  His full attention was on his daughter, at least until a round tore a hole in the side of the red truck near Ezra’s head. He ducked immediately.

  “We’ve got company!” Butch yelled, pointing to the closest flatbed down the line. Two men squatted next to the flatbed, as if considering whether to shoot or run at him. He and his friends were easy targets from fifty feet away.

  “Under the truck!” he yelled.

  Ezra desperately wanted to see what happened to Grace, but he was pinned down by the pair of men. Perhaps they’d figured out he wasn’t with TKM. Whatever it was, he needed them gone before he could properly observe behind the battle. To test the waters, he leaned out from behind the big rear tires of the semi and took a quick peek.

  Neither of the men saw him.

  He looked over to Butch, who huddled with Haley almost between the two sets of rear tires. “I’m going to try to hit them. Can you fire while still under the truck?” From his position, he was unable to tell if there was enough clearance under the engine and front bumper.