“They moved,” she said breathlessly to Asher.
“Are they safe?” he asked while smashed against the car with her.
“Can’t tell. They must be over here with us.” She’d motioned for them to come over right as the woman fired her guns. She prayed they’d made it to safety.
The machine gun cranked over another time, and about five long seconds of bullets streamed down into the parked coal hoppers. They all had a distinctive metallic ring when striking and bouncing against metal. However, they also had unusual angles around the reinforced sides and ends, sparking worry one of those bullets might ricochet and somehow tag them beneath their protective shield.
For a few seconds, the machine gun went quiet.
“Maybe she ran out of ammo,” she said with a hopeful voice.
“I really doubt—” he said, before halting. In the distance, a boom went off, sounding like the thump of an airburst firework.
“What now?” she lamented.
The boom resonated again. This time it was followed by a change in pitch of the helicopter rotors. It was enough to get her to check around the corner. “She’s moving!”
The explosion happened a third time. She caught sight of a puff of white smoke at the truck she’d spotted earlier. Even from a quarter of a mile away, she saw a man aiming an impossibly large rifle in their direction. He had it propped on the hood of his blue pickup truck.
“Jeez, she brought friends.”
As Grace watched, her initial impression quickly changed. The man with the rifle shifted his stance, aiming the weapon at the helicopter now veering away from the trains, over the fields. He fired again, but then pulled the gun off his hood and disappeared out of view.
“I think maybe he was firing at the woman,” she ventured, afraid she saw it wrong, but praying she was right.
The aircraft swooped in a long arc around the mystery truck, as if wary of being targeted again. However, after going around it once, the pilot went back into hover mode, changing the orientation so the woman’s machine gun faced the truck. From there, it was obvious what was about to happen.
“Why doesn’t he fire again?” she wondered, mostly to herself.
Asher came around to join her. He leaned on her back, looking over her shoulder. “Would you stick around if that thing was on top of you?”
“But he was fighting back,” she replied.
The woman’s gun chugged out rounds for a solid ten seconds. The report came on the wind as the truck’s tires exploded, every bit of glass shattered, and the fuel tank was penetrated, sending the back end up in a fireball. A much bigger explosion erupted from the first, creating a blackened mushroom cloud.
The hovering copter had to back up midair to avoid being tagged by the smoke. However, it stayed for twenty or thirty seconds, as if waiting to see if anyone walked out of the firestorm. Eventually, it tilted forward, beginning its advance back to them.
“Shit, she’s not giving up.” Frantic to make sure her friends were in secure hiding places, she tried to find Shawn, Logan, or Diedre, but they weren’t anywhere in sight.
Asher pointed. “She’s there! My sister is under one of these coal cars. You can see her shirt about five cars up the line.”
“Do you see the boys?” she asked, aware the helicopter was seconds from being above them.
“No, I—” He hesitated. “It’s turning away!”
She peeked out. The helicopter had banked again, out over the farm fields. The engine sound was different, too.
“It’s smoking,” Asher declared.
The rotor wash made it difficult to spot, but the more she studied the retreating bird, the easier it was to see the black smoke pouring out one side. Unexpectedly, the pilot adjusted his route so the woman could turn her machine gun back to them.
“Get down!” she ordered, falling to the rocks.
The bullets came in before the brrrrt. Pinging ricochets struck multiple cars, train engines, and the metal buildings of the train yard. Men and women cursed from almost every direction.
She realized Asher had fallen on top of her, though she doubted his body would stop one of those military-grade projectiles. She also figured out they were both on the wrong side of the coal cars, now that the woman was out over the field. The machine gun bursts stopped and restarted three or four times as they lay there.
“Good God,” Asher stated. “I think she’s pissed about her broken helicopter.”
Finally, the rotary machine gun went silent.
“No kidding she’s upset at us,” she said, testing a laugh.
The whump whump rotor noise faded completely before Asher shifted to let her up. “Thanks for looking out for me,” she said softly, getting to her feet.
“Anytime,” he smiled, brushing coal dust from his NPS uniform shirt and pants.
By the time they’d emerged from their refuge, Logan and his dad had come out from under the train engine.
“You guys were under there the whole time?” she asked with mild horror. “We thought you were in the coal area, where it was safer.”
Logan smiled, but Shawn was less enthusiastic. He leaned heavily on his boy due to his injured leg.
Diedre rejoined their small group. She came from farther up the line of coal cars.
Grace pointed to the burning truck. “If it doesn’t look like the chopper is coming back, we should go out and see if there are any survivors. Whoever they are, I think they probably saved our lives.”
“We better hurry,” Shawn said quietly. “Or, rather, you guys better hurry. I’m going to stay here with Logan. He’s going to help me see if they have a first aid kit inside. Right, son?” It wasn’t a question.
Logan nodded his head as he helped Shawn walk toward the train shed.
Diedre flashed a smile to her brother but then moved to follow Shawn. “I’m beat up, too. I need to see what they have for pain management.”
Asher seemed torn. Follow his sister or follow her? Grace wouldn’t blame him for tending to his family, but she also didn’t want to go out there alone.
“We’ll make it quick, all right?” she said, hoping to convey confidence.
It seemed to make up his mind. He turned to Diedre. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
She waved over her shoulder with her good arm but kept walking.
“We’re going to take our guns,” Grace assured him. “You can never be too careful.” She climbed onto the flatcar, anxious to see the damage done to her beloved NPS truck.
Near Columbia, MO
He judged they’d have about thirty seconds before they made it directly under the span of the highway. He had the throttle all the way forward, which pumped fuel into the Suzuki outboard to give the full 350-horsepower kick required for life-saving maneuvers.
Butch had fallen next to Haley, using his arm to push her down with him. They were on the floor between the two rows of seats. The big guy looked up once he was certain the young woman was going to stay there. “You want me to return fire?”
There wasn’t time to adjust their gear, get him in position, and fire back. They had twenty seconds until they made it under.
“No!” He veered left, taking them in a more direct path upriver. It kept them a bit closer to the men, but it exposed them for less time.
One of the guys fired straight down at them.
Then another.
The rifle cracks echoed under the girders holding up the highway.
“And…we’re clear!” Ezra ran the boat under the deck, making it impossible to be seen from above. However, he didn’t dare stop. He kept the accelerator smashed forward as he willed his pleasure boat to shoot out of the other side like a cannonball.
“E-Z, I’m getting my rifle.” Butch shifted, reached for his gun, then put his hand on Haley’s back. “Haley, stay where you are!”
“No worries there,” she yelled over the growl of the maxed-out motor.
The pontoons skipped over the eddies and currents swirling a
round the concrete bridge pylon. He ignored the larger pieces of trash and driftwood that still sullied the brown water. There was no time to worry about dodging obstacles. He thought back to all the times he’d gone as fast on Kentucky Lake. He’d never done it with Susan in the boat—she hated going fast—and he only did it when the surface of the lake was glass smooth.
By the time they came out of the shadows of the big bridge, Butch was finding a position to aim his Bushmaster rifle out the back of the boat.
“Anyone who pops up, you pop them,” Ezra shouted.
“On it,” Butch said, finally settling into his stance.
Meanwhile, Haley found Liam and dragged him into her protective custody. Ezra had enough time to wonder if the cat and dog got along well enough to huddle under her without fighting, but Butch fired his rifle before he could finish his thought. In spite of the young woman’s protective efforts, Liam yelped in response.
“They’re coming to this side,” Butch said, as if reporting the news.
“Keep their heads down!” Ezra suggested.
His rifle barked several times in a row. A shot. Two-second pause. Another shot. Butch was a professional, but he’d never trained in hitting small targets while bouncing around in the back of a boat. It would have shocked Ezra if he scored a hit.
At the same time, he nudged the wheel left and right, giving them a slight wiggle in their escape path. He didn’t know if it was enough to throw the enemy off their line, but it had to be better than nothing. The boat was going too fast to make dramatic changes in direction. He didn’t want to bleed off too much speed, either.
Ezra almost jumped out of his seat when the depth finder exploded.
“Damn!” He flinched.
He flicked the wheel reflexively, adding an evasive turn a bit to the left. The depth finder had already been hit once by a bullet the other day. Now it was gone; the rifle round had shattered it completely. There was only a fragment of the black casing stuck to his dash.
Butch fired several more times, but as he gained distance from the bridge, he recognized it was increasingly unlikely anyone was going to hit their targets. However, Ezra didn’t slow down, even when they turned a corner in the river, hiding the bridge from them.
“Are we safe?” Haley asked, sticking her head up.
“I don’t think so,” he replied, not sure if he should talk to her the same way he did with Butch. If Butch had asked, he would have told him there was another bridge a few miles ahead. Butch would recognize they couldn’t slow down, not for a second, since it was imperative they beat the trucks to the next crossing.
Ezra glanced down to the girl, hugging her two furry friends. He held out a hand to help her off the all-weather carpet. “Come on up. You can sit back in your seat.”
He watched as Butch and Haley returned to their original spots. It gave him the few seconds necessary to decide which way to go with her.
“Haley, I’m glad you came aboard with us, but this trip is going to take all of us working together to make it out the other side. It looks like the goons from St. Charles aren’t going to let it go. I bet one of those men was the same guy who’s been chasing us since Bass Pro.”
“We got away, didn’t we?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not.” He decided to tell her the truth. “We have four more bridges to go under before we make it to Kansas City. They might be waiting for us at each of them, but I think we can beat them to the next one. We’re going to try, anyway.”
“And the ones past it?” she pressed.
He thought about it for a few seconds, legitimately unsure what to say. If they didn’t slow down, they’d burn through their fuel long before they made it to the second and third bridges. If they did slow down, the TKM trucks would easily beat them to the next bridge and they’d be shot at the instant they came over the horizon.
“Let’s take it one bridge at a time.”
CHAPTER 4
Sidney, NE
By the time Grace and Asher got their weapons prepared, Robert had driven a truck out from the train shed. He honked and stopped to pick them up. “Come on, we’re going to put out the fire.”
The pickup truck carried a tank of liquid with an industrial hose attached to it. It made sense a professional repair shop would have an equally professional fire suppression system. She hopped in after Asher, though they had to share the passenger seat.
Robert drove them on the gravel entry road, passing her truck, which now had a few new holes, and beyond the long line of coal cars. She finally saw some of the waiting diesel engines on the outside track; engineers sat inside or crouched behind their drive wheels. After having a front-row seat for the helicopter raining hellfire onto the train shed, she didn’t blame them for laying low.
By the time they arrived at the burning truck, the giant fire had died down to a smaller but white-hot inferno consuming the entire vehicle.
“You guys check for survivors while I unspool the hose and get started.”
“Got it,” she and Asher replied together.
He parked about fifty feet from the blaze. Probably a smart way to keep from having his own vehicle catch fire. However, it meant she and Asher needed to jog in a wide semicircle around the fiery wreck to see if the man with the gun was hiding nearby, or dead inside the blast zone. Bullets had created fist-sized divots in the gravel and in the dirt next to the road, making her wonder if fire or machine gun was the quicker way to go.
The roadway sat a few feet above the fields, requiring them to look down both embankments to see if anyone was hiding. It didn’t take long to determine no one was there.
“What the hell?” she said, after meeting Asher back on the road. “Where’d he go?”
Glancing around, they were a quarter mile from the rail yard. She saw for miles in every other direction, over the prairie grasses and farm fields. There were no bushes, trees, or clumps of weeds where a person could hide. Even if there was, they would have seen a man running from the explosion. So would the helicopter.
“Do you think…” She almost hated to voice the horrible thought. “Do you think that machine gun turned the man into a fine mist?”
Asher turned up his lip. “God, I hope not.”
“Well, he isn’t in the truck. There’s nothing left there. He isn’t a pile of goo. And he didn’t run away.” She waved to the windswept fields around them. “So where’d he go?”
They looked at each other, then she turned to go back down the slope next to the road. Asher did the same on his side.
She went a few yards closer to the truck, but ran into the divots of the machine gun. It didn’t seem likely the man would have made it through them. If he was avoiding them, he would have gone the other way, so she walked for several yards alongside the road, going away from the rail shed. She paid careful attention to each tuft of tall prairie grass or weedy patch, but none of them were tall enough to hide a person. However, where the weeds and greenery was thickest, she noticed a small drain pipe coming out from under the roadway.
“Ash! I’ve found something!” She trotted over to the pipe, waving to Asher as he came across the white gravel road.
By the time he made it to her, she was crouched next to the pipe. It didn’t seem large enough to fit a person, but she checked anyway. “Oh. My. God. Look!”
She pointed to the bottoms of a pair of boots, toes down, barely inside the hole. They wiggled from side to side, indicating the owner was alive.
“Hey, mister! We’re here to help you!” She motioned for Asher to grab a shoe. She also waved over to Robert, who was spraying a white mist on the fire. He waved back, acknowledging her efforts.
The man had somehow shimmied himself into the hole, but he might have stayed in there forever if she hadn’t noticed him. He seemed unable to move backward. He spoke, too, but it was so muffled and quiet it was impossible to hear what he’d said.
“Pull!” Asher blurted.
The man’s legs slid out. His voice became l
ouder. He was thanking them over and over.
When they pulled half his body from the drain, she recognized the navy-blue material of his TKM shirt. They hesitated for a moment, but the man was able to get his arms free, allowing him to pull himself from his predicament.
She and Asher fell back, reaching for their rifles.
When the man came out, she could confirm he was with TKM, but it wasn’t only due to the shirt.
“Misha?” she snorted, pointing her gun at his face.
He sat in the grass, hands up. “Hello, my friends. I wonder if I—”
“You aren’t my friend! You want to kill us!” Grace sensed her cheeks burn red with anger. His people had shot up Asher’s sister. Shawn Runs Hard. The whole city of Denver. She’d seen all the death up close.
“Is true,” he said in his Russian accent. “But I could call your attention to my saving your life. I used big-ass rifle, no?” He pointed back toward the truck.
It took a few seconds for the words to register. “You saved us from the nutjob in the helicopter?”
“A woman, yes?” he responded.
“She was a woman. Black hair. Likes to shoot machine guns.” Grace hated engaging with him, but there was no denying what he’d done.
“Nerio Torres. Her husband was pilot. They have been sent out here to finish the job I would not do. Kill you two.” He pointed at her and Asher, though it was no surprise.
She reoriented the rifle on him. “And why the hell are you here?”
He lowered his hands, as if unafraid of being shot. “Put guns away. I will explain. I am here to save your lives.”
Boonville, MO
Even going full throttle didn’t seem fast enough to Ezra. He glanced at the map, estimating they had about ten miles between the two bridges. If the men got in their trucks and intended to meet them, they’d be able to go three or four times as fast as his group traveled on the water. His only hope of beating them was they were going almost fifty miles an hour on a straight shot, while the men had to take a longer route with multiple roads.
Impact (Book 5): Black Page 3