“Aww,” Haley complained in a mocking voice, “I thought we connected out in the water.”
Butch froze. “No, I didn’t mean—”
“Relax,” she chided, “I’m only playing with you. You didn’t freak out. There’s nothing more important when helping a swimmer.” She leaned over and used her hands to wring out her long hair. “I did four summers at the local pool. I’ve seen it all.”
“I bet,” Ezra replied.
“Let’s get farther inland,” Butch added, slipping a little on the wet rocks.
They walked up a gentle hill for a few minutes before finding a place to catch their breath. A line of skyscrapers stood at the top, as if they’d once stood vigil over the flowing Missouri River. Now, they looked out over the black lake.
“What do you say we go up there?” Ezra pointed to the first building. It was about twenty stories tall and appeared to be missing most of the glass along its face. The light of the dig site behind them reflected off its few remaining windowpanes.
They’d gone to the third floor before Ezra declared they’d climbed high enough. He pushed through the fire door of the stairwell, taking them into a vacant office space. “I was hoping to see my boat before it went under. I’m sure it’s gone.”
“Lead on,” Butch said, holding the door for him and Haley.
He sat next to an open window, careful not to fall out. When he searched for his boat, it was nowhere to be seen.
“It must have floated away,” he commented, wondering if it was really going to sink after all.
From their vantage point at the edge of the lake and thirty feet up, they had a commanding view. The half-submerged rock seemed to be a hive of activity relative to the rest of the city. The spotlights on the cranes and on the towboats hovering near the rock were dialed up to eleven. Giant hydraulic jackhammers cracked into the rock from their spots on flat-bottomed boats. The split ore fell into open-topped barges moored up against the round island.
“They’ve got their model of efficiency going.” Ezra admired how the company set things up, though he was seriously considering using his new position to fire rounds on them. The rest of the city was cast in total darkness, as if the power had been knocked out. There would be no way for them to see where he was. But firing from such a distance would only antagonize them for no good reason. The smart play was to focus on their own issues. “Let’s rest here until sunrise,” he suggested.
“That won’t be long,” Butch replied, sounding more like himself.
Ezra didn’t mind. “I don’t know about you guys, but I need a few minutes of rest. This has been one of the craziest nights of my life, and I’m including the one where an asteroid shockwave blew my boat onto dry land.”
The youngsters understood what he wanted.
Ezra curled up in a corner, silently saying goodbye to his beloved boat. It felt as if one more piece of his life had died, and he needed time to process the loss. He couldn’t tell if it was moments or minutes later, but the first ray of sunshine soon appeared in the window. Even grieving needed to be cut short in the new reality.
Denver, CO
Petteri watched the sun come up from the tenth floor of his temporary headquarters in Denver. He pined for the warm tropical safety on Isla Soccoro. Armed shooters would have a hard time reaching the island, then they’d have to deal with his Mexican navy commandos working as guards. Still, he was glad Mr. Aarons came through for him.
The situation outside wasn’t to his satisfaction, however. When the light of the new day reached into the canyons of Lodo, he’d expected to see his dig site running at full tilt. At the moment, there were no trucks loading ore. Several piles had been placed next to the rock, ready to go, but the dump trucks were gone.
He picked up the phone and dialed his dig supervisor.
“Hello? Cassens, here.”
“Cassens? This is Tikkanen. I’m looking at your operation from up here. Where the hell are my trucks?”
The man cleared his throat. “We’ve been trying to get them back all night. Some of them were commandeered on the outskirts of the city. It scared off most of our drivers. Uh, but not all of them. Small groups have made it through. They have armed men riding with them.”
Petteri wasn’t surprised by the news. He’d asked his men to perform miracles in a city about to crush them. The guns had come out on the streets, giving his people some extra breathing room. But the noose was tightening around him. The mayor had even sent her hit squad after him. Maybe she wanted to put a stop to his men shooting up the town from their dump trucks.
He chuckled at how everything spun round and round in their little battlespace.
“Sir? Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes,” he said curtly. “Tell your dump truck drivers to get one more load if they can. Let them know they can split half of what they carry with anyone willing to protect it through enemy territory.”
“Wow,” Cassens let out.
“Indeed. Now listen. For everyone else, I want them heading to the dig site south of Yellowstone.” He glanced at the paperwork on his desk. It showed the nearest train route, which was about fifty miles south of the fallen piece. “We’re going to bring in hopper cars and consume every ounce of ore before anyone else gets to it.”
“We’re giving up on this one?” Cassens lamented.
“No, of course not,” he exaggerated. Fear would spread like a disease among those remaining on the streets if they knew his true intentions. “We’re going to do the same thing here in Denver. The train tracks are a few blocks over. We’re going to set up a short relay with the dump trucks left in our possession. I need you to give me the time to set it up.”
“Ah, very good, sir. I’ll make sure my guys know about it.”
He hung up the phone, wondering if he really could pull it off. It had been an idle boast designed to drag things out with his men, but the train line wasn’t far from the rock on the street. If he could pull it off, it could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The threats presented by the city were numerous, but the new day presented new opportunities for building his company’s wealth.
Petteri got his secretary on the phone. “Get me the heads of the three largest rail companies. I’ve got an offer they won’t want to pass up.” He’d already had TKM swoop up all the contract freight cars for a thousand miles, but he needed more than those machines. He needed the manpower.
“I’m not done with Denver just yet,” he said to the window.
CHAPTER 19
Rawlins, WY
Tyressa was a strong-willed woman who seemed to carry sway over her wounded husband. She ordered him into her brother’s truck, along with her son, who fought hard to stay with Grace and the train. In the end, the matriarch won all the arguments and the two men drove away while under her watchful eyes.
The Crow caravan planned to travel ahead on the interstate, while she, Asher, and Misha continued to shadow the train engine. The decision to keep possession of the engine was part of their plan to draw Nerio into a trap. It was also pivotal to bringing back ore for the Crow nation. Robert assured them they could pick up new hopper cars in the towns ahead, and he’d been right. They’d made it to the little town of Rawlins, Wyoming, where a train yard contained hundreds of them.
Grace had parked near a Walmart while waiting for the engine to arrive. The coating of dust from the black snow and rain covered many of the cars and most of the buildings. They hadn’t seen it as much in Cheyenne and Denver; those cities were too far east of the fires and debris thrown into the skies above Yellowstone. It signaled they were getting closer the source. “Want anything from the Supercenter?” she joked with Asher.
“Does Supercenter sell rounds for my big-ass gun?” Misha asked from the back seat.
She and Asher shared a confused look.
“I have no idea,” she finally said.
“They sell guns, I know that,” Asher added.
“We should stop and get
some more,” the Russian countered.
Asher laughed. “How many guns do you need?”
“In Russia, I would say all of them. All guns. Here, in America, I also want all of them. Can never have too many guns.”
It was Grace’s turn to chuckle. “You’d fit right in on my street back home in Kentucky.” She also turned serious. “But no, we can’t go shopping. We have to watch Robert bring the engine through town. That’s our job right now.”
Misha almost sounded pouty. “Fine.”
After a period of silence, Asher spoke up. “How about Logan’s mom? Talk about a scary mother. She’s like the First Lady of the Crow Nation. It’s got to be a trip.”
“I liked her,” Grace said. “I can see why she and Shawn found each other. They’re both cut from the same cloth.”
Misha became interested. “What does this mean? How are they cut?”
She snorted. “No, it means they’re the same in how they act. They shared the same life experiences.” Before she knew it was happening, she dwelled for a bit on her own family. Her parents each had their strengths and weakness, though Mom seemed to have more issues than Dad. She was the worrier. Dad was the doer. No one would have ever said they were cut from the same cloth.
“You all right?” Asher said, tapping her elbow.
She snapped to attention. “The train is coming.”
Everyone watched as the orange engine arrived at the train yard. Robert went the quarter of a mile to the opposite end before stopping. She put the truck in gear, then drove off the highway and into the railyard. There were no fences or trees, and most of the land was flat, making such maneuvers possible. Trees and houses of the town lined the sides of the long switching yard, but there were few people around.
Grace parked the truck on a service road next to the yard. The three of them gathered their rifles, she and Asher put on their hats, and then they walked together over several empty sets of tracks until they reached Robert. He was messing with a switch to get a junction to change.
“Do they let you do that?” she asked, looking around the train yard.
“Sure,” Robert replied. “These remote yards don’t have the manpower to micromanage everyone. They assume we engineers know what we’re doing.” He looked around with concern, as if maybe he didn’t believe what he was saying.
They watched as Robert got the tracks changed, moved his engine in reverse, then linked up with a row of about ten coal hoppers. The man was obviously an expert at what he did.
A horn signaled the arrival of another train from the east.
“We have company,” Robert called out from his position behind the engine.
“Do you need any help?” she asked. They remained next to the switching boxes at the track junction, but she had no clue what anything did.
“No, I’m good. We’ll be up and rolling by the time the traffic goes by.”
She and Asher stood closer to Robert’s engine. The arriving train grew louder, a deep resonance echoing in her chest. Whatever it was, it sounded powerful.
Robert joined them. “It’s a big one. Multiple engines.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It’s an acquired skill.”
Many of the adjacent residential backyards were lined by tall wooden privacy fences, as if they didn’t want to see the train yard, but one only had a low chain-link fence. Three little kids stood up against the barrier as horns blared, announcing the train’s entrance to the yard.
“She’s not stopping,” Robert called out over the growing excitement and noise.
He wasn’t lying. There were more than a few engines at the front, each pumping horsepower down to the tracks. However, there were two extra cars at the head of the train, in front of all the engines.
“They ran into our lost cars,” Grace said with amazement. The boxcar was at the very front, burned down to its metal frame, but still rolling along. The flatcar was behind it. Both were pushed by the first engine in the line, suggesting the train wasn’t stopping for anything.
The engineer sat on the horn as the two cars and the front engine whizzed by Grace and the others. She imagined he’d done it to be a jerk, or to warn people up ahead, but she saw the kids jumping for joy in the gaps between the cars. The engineer blew the ungodly loud airhorns for the youngsters.
There were eight engines daisy-chained together at the front of a long procession of uniform-colored coal hoppers. Each car seemed to rattle and squeak as they rolled by. The thunderous shaking had to be rattling walls in the houses set next to the tracks. There was no way she’d consider living so close to a rail line, though she’d never thought about it until that moment.
“How long is this thing?” she asked the wind.
It went on and on. She figured there were hundreds of cars. At some point as she watched, Robert came over and tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m ready when you are!”
She flashed the thumbs-up sign. As soon as the train cleared out, she would cross the tracks to get back to the truck. They’d be on their way again.
However, the train wouldn’t end.
To her imagination, it took an hour for the train to travel through the town. When she finally saw a flash of red and orange signifying more engines, she figured the end was near. “Jeez, five more engines!” she shouted to Asher as the noisy diesels approached.
As before, the engineers up in the cabins must have noticed the children. The horns went off for a good ten seconds right as it passed Grace and her friends. She had to cover her ears.
The powerful motors shook the rocks beneath her feet. When the last one rumbled through, she confirmed those children were there, still cranking their arms up and down to get the engineer to let go of one more horn blast.
However, her attention went to a strange person standing by a tree next to the children’s house. A dark-haired woman had something black and shiny sitting on a low branch. It took Grace a couple of seconds to recognize the threat and decide what to do. Asher and Misha waved to the children, thinking they were waving at them. Unaware of what was coming.
She launched herself at the pair.
“Down!”
Kansas City, MO
“Sorry about your boat, E-Z,” Butch said, once he was sure he was awake.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad we got off before it sank. Thanks belong to Haley for being your swimming instructor.” He looked over to the young woman. She was sitting up against a wall on the far side of Butch. Awake. Her tight-fitting stretch pants and shirt were dry, meaning they’d been in the building for a few hours, at least.
She smiled at them both.
He continued. “I’ll get over losing Susan’s Grace. Honestly, it would probably have been better to ditch her before we tangled too hard with those TKM shooters on the bridge. It was needlessly risky for me to get in a shootout with five men.” He wasn’t sure if he’d ever let go of the images swirling in his mind. Shooting those men had been necessary, especially handlebar mustache guy in the truck, but he didn’t have to enjoy it. The truth was he’d been willing to take too many risks with their lives for the sake of the boat.
A rifle shot echoed in the morning air.
“What was that?” Haley asked, sitting up.
“Dunno,” he replied, shifting so he could look out the broken window. There was nothing left in the interior of the office; it hadn’t been as obvious when they’d arrived in the dark. Now, in the morning light, it appeared as if the rock had come down in the river, splashing water or blowing air into the skyscrapers of downtown. The burst of energy pushed everything inside the building toward and out the south-side windows.
“Well, hell’s bells,” he said to himself, getting a look at the scene outside.
The people who’d lined the shores around the bend had come upriver overnight. There were hundreds of them on the bank of the lake, many with weapons. After the first person shot at the rock in the middle of the lake, it seemed to signal oth
ers to do the same. In seconds, it looked like a civil war battlefield.
Fireworks guys were out there, too, launching them on a dry slab of concrete at the water’s edge. The shots weren’t as impressive in daylight, but the shooters’ aim was more exact. The big mortar rounds thumped on the shore, then exploded on or above the mining operation.
The TKM miners didn’t shoot back, as best he could tell. Men scrambled down from the tops of cranes, hopped inside the thick-hulled barges for cover, or got inside the captain’s perches of towboats. As Ezra knew from his own experience, there was no fighting back against a raging mob of thousands of citizens.
In minutes, the towboats shucked off their ropes and departed from the unnatural island. The men hiding in the hulls of the cargo haulers made desperate runs to catch them before they left, or they dove overboard to try to swim for it. All the while, bullets plinked around them.
A few were struck and killed.
Others were injured.
“I guess the people of Kansas City have been planning this attack for a while,” Ezra remarked, as if watching a dull stretch of a baseball game.
“Does no one like TKM?” Haley asked seriously.
Butch made a pfft sound with his mouth. “They go around shooting up towns and looting stores. They probably wanted to take all this ore without giving any of it to the people who lost their homes. I bet the same thing is happening back in Paducah.”
Ezra dipped his head, afraid someone in the crowd might have spotted him. “Are you saying you want to go back home and liberate our own asteroid piece?”
“If it would make me rich, sure. Why not?”
Haley perked up. “You think we could get rich?”
Butch nodded. “Why else would they be mining it? Wasn’t that the whole point of bringing in asteroids from deep space, or wherever they got it from?”
For a few moments, Ezra worried the kids would run down the steps and join the crowd.
Impact (Book 5): Black Page 15