Fifteen minutes later, the bridge appeared in the distance.
“Are you sure about this?” Butch asked, cradling his rifle.
Haley had asked about using her new rifle, but she’d never fired it. He thought using it would expose her to needless danger, with very little upside. Wherever the men appeared, they would have the concrete railing of the bridge decking to hide behind. They, on the other hand, would be exposed to the world as they splashed on the water. He wanted her to take cover and reduce her risk as much as possible.
“I think we beat them. I don’t see any trucks up there.” He hoped it was all worth it. Their fuel was down to a bit over a quarter of a tank. The last ten miles had burned through a full quarter tank by itself. They’d been forced to slow down and speed up twice when they had to get through short stretches of trash-filled water.
They now faced due west on the wide river, and the concrete span ahead was easily visible since they were on a straightaway. The shifting breeze created a little chop on the water’s surface. It wasn’t glassy as he preferred. Still, it wasn’t enough to slow him down, especially while going in a straight line. He kept the motor’s RPMs maxed out.
“Don’t see ’em yet!” Butch yelled. He’d taken up a position at the bow. He crouched behind what was left of a handrail designed to prevent passengers from falling over the sides and front. It would do nothing against bullets, but at least it hid him from view.
They were about a half mile away when a truck stopped on the bridge. It was easy to spot as there were no trusswork or supports above the roadway. From the side, the span appeared as a flat concrete slab with four pylons pointing into the water. The blue pickup truck drew his eyes to it; there were no other vehicles crossing.
“We’re going for it,” he declared, unwilling to give up the miles of gas they’d burned through.
“Give ’em hell!” Butch screamed into the wind.
As they closed the distance, two more trucks came from the left side and skidded to a stop. Men got out and shuffled around the edge of the bridge, but some of them disappeared almost immediately, as if they had other places to go.
“What are they doing?” he asked.
Haley was on the deck again, holding Liam beneath her. Victoria, the orange tabby cat, was in her cage under Butch’s seat.
Please, Susan, help us get through this mess.
With the wind and engine noise, he couldn’t hear the gunfire from the men on the bridge, but he figured out they were firing when three-foot spurts of water erupted in his vicinity. At first, the bullet impacts were fifty or even a hundred feet away, but they dialed in on him as he approached. By the time he was a few hundred yards away, the shots were almost on top of them.
Butch returned fire as the first bullet plinked against the aluminum of one of the pontoons. He fired several shots toward the middle guy, hitting the concrete rail and causing him to duck down. The other two shooters kept firing, though one had to duck down for an unknown purpose.
A few seconds later, as the shots were hitting the boat all too frequently, the second guy had to drop down.
“They’re reloading!” Butch yelled.
The middle shooter popped up and leaned over to shoot almost straight down at them. Butch had already been zeroed in on his location. When the man presented a target, Butch put one into his head, causing the man to slump over and drop his rifle.
“Nice!” Ezra cheered. He figured they’d make it to the safety under the bridge, but the rifle picked up speed on its fall, and Ezra reacted a fraction of a second too late. The flying object slammed into his replacement canopy, ripping the tarp as it struck the back railing, then bounced into the water. “Holy hell! It almost took my head off!”
Butch looked at him. “You good?”
“Not really!” he replied. Ezra ran his fingers through his hair, marveling at how close he’d come to a freak ending. However, when the boat crossed to the far side of the bridge, the missing men appeared above them.
This time, the men were ready.
Another hail of bullets came down on the boat.
Denver, CO
Aarons came back armed to the teeth. He stood outside Petteri’s office with two other men. As expected, he’d taken the reprimand seriously. Since he didn’t know Nerio’s game, he’d instructed Aarons to let him know the instant the Venezuelan woman reentered the building.
The sound of gunfire alerted him to trouble out on the streets.
“Aarons, would you come here for a second?”
The man came through the door. Petteri didn’t know him personally, but Howard had mentioned him several times over the years, and they’d been in the same room on occasion. The guy was in his forties. He’d done a few tours in sandy wastelands throughout the Middle East. Special forces trained. Aside from the beard, which Petteri couldn’t stop hating, he looked the part of a mercenary. The man’s tall height and stout build reminded him of a high-school linebacker who’d gone off to war and come back a veteran.
“Sir?”
“Why is there shooting still going on? It sounds close.”
Aarons’s eyes darted to the exterior window, then back to him. “We’ve managed to secure a single street leading out of the dig site. Most of our men are guarding it, and we’re getting dump trucks in and out, but it has weakened our lines in other parts of the perimeter.”
“And the other mining companies keep coming at us? Haven’t they gotten the point?” He only had to look out the window to see the bodies of dozens of non-TKM employees who got the message delivered via high-velocity slugs.
Craig Aarons stiffened. “We’re losing men…and women. For each one of us who goes down, there are two of the bad guys who stand up. We’re holding our own, mostly because of the big payoff the men have been promised, but…”
Petteri didn’t like where the conversation was going. “I see. And what can you tell me about the breakout last night? How did Mr. Gagarin get out of his confinement?”
Aarons didn’t know. He saw it in the operative’s eyes.
Petteri continued. “He had help, didn’t he?” It wouldn’t have been his new security chief. The man was new to Petteri, but not new to the TKM organization. He’d seen Howard take care of disloyal employees. In the old days, before the rock fall, “taking care” of personnel meant escorting them from TKM property. More recently, taking care of problems had gotten a lot bloodier. The paychecks had also gotten several zeros fatter. There was no way he’d take the risk of crossing Petteri on day one of his promotion.
“It looks like it, sir. The door was unlocked from the outside. Maybe he got the jump on a guard, and the guard is afraid to come forward…”
They were Aarons’s guards. Petteri was tempted to chew him out for not knowing the answer to such a basic question. However, if it was someone from the inside, there might be a more logical explanation.
Petteri had a pistol pointed at Misha the previous night. Nerio licked her lips as if about to watch a prize fighter take down a hated challenger. However, before he could pull the trigger, she’d put out her hand and asked him to spare the hitman. Petteri could have shot anyway, being the boss of the woman, but Nerio’s big green eyes were very persuasive, and he fell prey to her charms. In the end, he’d decided it didn’t matter to him if the guy was alive or dead, as long as Misha was out of play.
Or so he thought.
“No, I think it’s a lot more complicated. Keep doing what you’re doing. Please shut the door on your way out. I’ve got to make a phone call.”
Nerio had released Misha. He was sure of it. Earlier, he’d made the claim the hard-driven woman enjoyed playing with her food. However, what he couldn’t figure out was whether he or Misha was the target of her whims.
“Dammit, Nerio, I brought you in to clean things up, not make more of a mess.”
CHAPTER 5
Sidney, NE
“We saved Misha?” Grace could barely utter his name. She was shocked at the sight o
f the man who’d been dragged out of the drainage pipe. He picked around the edges of his ruined truck, as if everything was normal. The side of his face and neck were still burnt from where she’d torched him with the bear mace, and the rest of his skin looked sooty and red, as if the explosion had taken a toll. Injuries or not, they’d taken his pistol and a knife.
“He saved us,” Asher replied dryly, swishing the words in his mouth as if they tasted bad.
Misha paid no heed to their dilemma. “She did number on my truck. Ammo for big-ass gun is gone. Lucky I threw spare magazine in grass, as with rifle.” He pointed to some thick, reedy grass, not far beyond the drainpipe, then hurried over there. A six-foot-long rifle sat where he indicated, but it was unlike anything she’d ever seen. It was oversized to the point of being cartoonish, and it had two legs for a bipod, each of which sat on what appeared to be foot-long sleds.
“What the hell is that?” she asked.
“Lahti 20-millimeter anti-tank rifle. It weighs one hundred pounds and, according to book, requires two people to operate. Lucky for you, Misha can do it alone.”
“Where did you get such a weapon?” Asher prodded.
Misha picked up the loose magazine box. “Very rare. This model is from World War II, but TKM has endless resources. I simply took it from one of their supply trucks. I knew Nerio was coming here, in TKM-surplus helicopter, and knew this was only weapon guaranteed to stop her.”
Grace whistled, impressed at what he’d done.
“If I were back at a full-service TKM depot, I could have gotten a true anti-aircraft weapon; a Russian-built, shoulder-fired Willow would have been een-credible.”
She had no idea what he was talking about.
Misha stowed the mag in his belt. “I know what thoughts go through your heads. Why is Misha helping? Why is he shooting big-ass gun at helicopters?” He ran fingers through his buzz cut, then turned to face Grace. “When we spoke at the roadblock in Billings, you wished me luck in finding my family, even if it meant it would put you in danger. Since then, I have been trying to call back to Bryansk to confirm my wife and mother are okay. We all share apartment, you see. Two days ago, I find out from friend there had been a fire in complex. Wife and mother are dead.”
She sighed heavily, unsure if she should sympathize with the man, but certain it was okay to feel compassion for the dead women.
Misha studied her. “You are only one who cared about my family. Petteri Tikkanen gave order. He had them killed.”
“Did he say he did?” Asher replied, clearly drawn into the man’s story.
The hitman shook his head. “Not in many words, as you say. He threatened, then withdrew his threat. But I know it was not a random fire. I provided very well for my family. They lived in nice, new apartment. It was him. In fact, he called me to Denver, by myself, yesterday. I almost did not go, but I let myself believe he was not the one responsible. When I got there, he nearly killed me for showing up.”
“Why didn’t he?” she asked.
“No way to know. He put me in custody of strange woman. Another of his hitmen. I assumed he subcontracted the dirty deed to her. That is the Petteri way. But she did not kill. After bragging she was going to finish my job for me, she left to go to her targets.” He pointed between her and Asher. “You two.”
When they didn’t respond, he added. “I am Russian. I know many tricks. I escaped from simple cell to follow her.”
“Lucky for us,” Asher commented, sounding equally grateful and wary.
The fire at the truck was almost completely subdued. Robert and his white foam had made short work of it. Misha looked over her shoulder to his truck. “I had many weapons stolen, ready to help you, but they were in bed of truck. Now, I only have this…” He pointed to the rifle on sleds. “With a few rounds. And the pistol you took from me.”
Asher pulled at her elbow. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
She let him guide her onto the roadway, out of earshot of the Russian agent.
He made sure they were far enough before talking quietly. “What are we going to do with him? I don’t trust any of this. TKM is sneaky. They sent actual hitmen to kill me in your park. That’s not normal, Grace.”
Normal was a word long buried under the rubble and ash of the fallen asteroid. Misha the assassin was the last person on earth she expected to pull from the drainage tube, but…
Grace shifted her weight to one hip, giving her a better view of her captive. Misha stood with his arms folded across his chest, but he also had a foot on the Finnish rifle, standing proud, as if he’d shot a lion on safari with it.
“Maybe he’s the guy we need to survive. Whatever his game, there’s no way he could have faked shooting at the helicopter and getting shot at in return. If he’d meant to see us dead, he could have let the woman—Nerio, I think he called her—kill us with her machine gun.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Asher said dryly, though not with much conviction.
She reached for his hand and held it for a second. “I don’t trust him, but he’s here. If the woman comes back, I’d rather we have someone who can help defend the train. You’ve seen Shawn. He’s not going to be much use. Logan has heart, but he’s got to keep an eye on his dad. Even you are going to be distracted by Diedre.”
“Where do you think Robert will take us?”
She gave him a funny look. “You don’t think he’ll take us east? I just assumed…” She’d been so focused on her own problems, she’d forgotten Robert had brought along a boxcar full of family and coworkers who’d escaped from Denver. They had as much right, if not more, to decide where they went. Their objectives aligned with the engineer’s while they fled north to get out of Denver, but now?
She sighed as if the whole train was on her back.
Asher reached out and held her hand. “We’ll get through this. All we have to do is explain to Robert why we need to get where you want. If he says no, we still have your truck. It isn’t a big deal.”
Her mood came out of the clouds. “Wouldn’t it be funny if we got stuck transporting Misha in the Chevy he shot up? I’d make him sit in the cargo bed. Behind the partition.” Shawn’s brother had made the nice wooden bulkhead to keep out the wind created by all her broken rear windows. By putting the Russian behind it, he’d effectively be out of sight.
They both glanced toward the rail cars and the shed. From where they stood, the NPS truck was prominent on the flatcar. Diedre, Shawn, and Logan stood close to it, watching her and Asher gawk at the wrecked truck. Asher waved; Diedre waved back.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she suggested. “Get the train moving. We’ll try to convince Robert to head east…”
Misha’s feet crunched on the gravel, announcing his approach. “You will not care to go east. We have to go to the rock at Yellowstone. I have friends there.” He carried the big rifle with two arms, but he couldn’t fire it without setting it on the ground. It was simply too long.
“Yellowstone?” she groaned. “Why in the hell would we go back? We’ve spent the past week getting away from there.”
Misha chuckled. “I thought I just said you must go to Yellowstone if you want to live through this. Me and my friends are the only ones who can help you.”
Boonsville, MO
“Stay down!” he yelled to Haley.
The men on the deck of the bridge had divided into two groups. Three had lined up along the front to shoot as they approached. The other three crossed the lanes of traffic and waited for them to emerge from underneath. The cracks of three rifles were answered by pings of metal and splitting of wood. They’d hit the boat.
Ezra’s heart seemed to stop inside his chest, and he feared he’d be frozen with panic, unable to move. To counter the grip of doom, he spun the wheel, changing his course violently to the left. It bled off lots of the speed, as he’d anticipated, but it also made them a more difficult target to hit. Splashes erupted off to his side, where the boat was originally headed.
He kept going toward the left shore once he was aimed in that direction.
Butch readjusted as fast as possible. More shots came in, some hitting the boat, some splashing into the water, while he aimed upward and in reverse. When he squeezed off his first shot, his rifle was held awkwardly in front of him as he lay on the deck. There was nothing to balance it on.
Haley seemed to curl up into a smaller ball, hugging Liam against her chest.
The engine struggled to build up speed again, but once he heard the familiar roar of maximum RPMs, he cut the wheel to the right, trying to zig and zag. Each second took them farther from the shooters. Each change in direction caused Butch to lose his balance while firing from his back.
Two more shots hit the boat, splitting a seat cushion and puncturing the wooden deck. The back of his head felt huge and exposed. At any second, he could get split open by rifle rounds fired by the bastards in blue shirts. However, he kept his eyes forward, his mind focused, and put all his energy into planning escape maneuvers on the open water.
“Holy crap!” Butch shouted. “I almost hit one of them!”
“Keep it up!” he called back.
Another volley of shots zipped toward the boat. Most of those went into the water, some twenty or thirty feet away.
“We’re getting there,” he said to himself before making another course correction. When he checked over his shoulder, the entire span of the bridge was in his field of view. His swerving propeller wash painted an uneven brown trail back under the deck. Looking up, the two men from the front side arrived to join their mates.
Butch saw the same thing. Instead of carefully aiming his rifle, he put out as many rounds as possible in an effort to get the five men to stay low. His intense attack continued for ten or fifteen seconds until he got through his entire mag. “I’m out!”
They had thousands of rounds of ammo, but there was no time to reload. He reached for his rifle and chucked it toward Butch.
Impact (Book 5): Black Page 4