“Hey, look! It’s your freaking boat!” Butch pointed to the lake.
“Sure is,” he said sadly. Susan’s Grace had been salvaged by the people on the shore. He thought it was still leaning to one side, but it could have been a result of all the people on the deck. Fifteen of them stood and sat wherever they could. The engine was working again, too. The boat moved slowly out toward the abandoned rock.
“Double sorry,” Butch added. “It wasn’t going to sink after all.”
“No, but there was something wrong with the motor when we were out there. I know that for a fact. If I’d had time, and wasn’t getting shot at by those men, I might have fixed it, too.” They watched as the boat inched closer to the black orb half-submerged in the water. From their vantage point, the asteroid piece was at least a quarter of a mile away. His double-pontoon boat seemed like a tiny pebble floating next to the giant orange barges left moored around the boulder.
“Well, I guess I’m glad the boat isn’t lost, after all. Maybe when this is all over, I can come back and lay claim to it.”
“I’ll come with—” Butch began.
He was interrupted by a cracking boom from out at the dig site. The top half of the rounded island disintegrated in an instant, sending rock fragments in all directions, like one of the massive incendiary fireworks they’d been setting off. Instead of harmless flames, it sent pieces of rock into the air.
“Oh my God,” Haley gasped.
Susan’s Grace had been too close. The pieces of rock splashed on top of it, sending it and all its passengers directly to the bottom. The big barges also went down in tremendous splashes.
Debris skipped over the water like a thousand Frisbees tossed at the crowd.
Some pieces were higher in the sky, arcing his way as if fired by giant catapults.
Belatedly, he realized they were in serious danger.
CHAPTER 20
Rawlins, WY
Grace shoved the two men as the bullet cut through the air inches above her head. It clanged off a rail car behind them.
Asher fell flat on his face, losing his hat, but Misha rolled with the shove, putting himself behind the equipment box at the junction of the tracks. Once she saw the logic of it, she yanked on Asher’s collar to drag him over.
Another bullet cracked off a metal bar ten feet from their hiding spot.
She listened as the kids in the yard screamed and ran. When the air settled, Misha’s radio came to life. It was still on from when he’d communicated with Robert.
“Hiya, friends,” Nerio laughed. “I guess I need some new tricks. Your gal pal saw me before I could open up that Russian brain of yours.”
Misha nodded grimly to Grace. “Spesseeba. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Now you have to get us out of this.” She laughed nervously.
Nerio continued. “This is where it ends. You’re getting too close to the train depot at Green River. I know you’re going to the dig site with your native allies. I can’t allow that. This was supposed to be a fun diversion for me as I cleaned up messes for Petteri Tikkanen.”
Misha glanced between her and Asher. “Did you tell your friends to come back and help us if we called for them?”
She pulled out her phone, surprised she hadn’t thought of it immediately. When she turned it on, it immediately meowed at her; her voicemail system was telling her a message was waiting.
Misha gave her and her cat ringtone a sideways glance, which she ignored.
The call was from the same number as before. Assuming it was her dad, she swiped to covertly listen to it. “Hi, honey. I got your voice message. I won’t go into Denver. We’re on the river, though, heading west. I’ll try to get to where you said. TKM has been after us. They almost killed me.” He sounded shaken. “I have to go. I love you.” He hung up without clapping, which could only mean he was in a tough spot.
“Grace?” the Russian complained.
“I’m calling now!” she responded.
Shawn had given her his number, so it was in her phone ready to go. However, the call went directly to his voicemail, suggesting he was out of cellular range. She hung up, knowing there was no point in leaving a message asking for rescue.
“We’re on our own,” she advised.
Misha fidgeted with the TKM rifle they’d liberated from Denver. “This is cheap Chinese garbage. I need proper Kalishnikov.”
“Can you fire it?” she asked, halfway tempted to yank it out of his hands and shoot it herself.
“Of course. I simply wish for better.” He sat up on one knee, aimed toward the base of the tree, and fired a few rounds. The loud bangs forced Grace to protect her ears.
Misha ducked down as return shots came at them.
“They are both there,” the hitman said dryly. He picked up the radio. “Where is fancy helicopter? You are both on ground.”
Nerio laughed in a carefree manner. “Oh, this is rich. We don’t need a helicopter or a machine gun when we have you in the open. One move from your hiding spot and you’re dead. Alejandro and I can wait. Your people aren’t around. If you try to run, I’ll simply use my little tool to track your radio signals.” She paused. “Oops,” she added, obviously playing with Misha.
Misha set the radio on the rocks, then stepped on it.
“Wait!” Grace yelled as he cracked it to bits. “How are we going to talk to them?”
“Safely,” he replied. He yelled over the top of the switching equipment. “You two will have to come and get us!”
Nerio yelled back, not upset in the least. “Maybe some of these children could persuade you? I’d hate for something to happen to one of them. You never know when the next train is going to come by.”
The distant horn of a train caught Grace’s attention. Was it the one that had gone through, or was it another coming from the east?
“She wouldn’t,” Asher exclaimed.
“Dang it,” she replied. “I bet she would.” She hoped the kids ran inside and told their parents about the gunfire, but no one had come out to see what was going on. As odd as it was to think it, she believed the train yard was normally a loud and chaotic place. Maybe no one would even realize those loud noises were gunshots.
The train horn seemed to get louder.
“We have to take action,” she said, aware it wasn’t a plan.
Kansas City, MO
“Up against the wall!” Ezra shouted.
He, Butch, and Haley scooted up to the outer wall of the building. The glass was already busted out, so he didn’t worry about being hit by flying shards, but he assumed they’d be hit in the back by the incoming rock if they tried to go deeper into the building. As long as the rocks didn’t break through the concrete…
Butch and Haley held hands during the two or three seconds before the rocks arrived. They came through the windows and hit the outside of the building, rising and falling in intensity as the pieces rained down. Some of them shot through the open window, skipping across the empty floor toward the far side. A few ricocheted off the edges, deflecting in odd directions, including a few small chunks that splattered over them.
Mercifully, the debris storm ended as quickly as it started. A few smaller chunks fell from the air or from upper floors, but soon it was over.
Haley shook pieces out of her hair.
“Dare we look up?” Ezra asked rhetorically. They peeked over the edge of the windowsill. He wanted to see what had happened, but he was terrified of what he was going to find.
“Oh man,” Butch whispered.
The top half of the rock was almost completely shredded.
“They must have blown it up rather than let the people have it,” he surmised, based on how events had played out. Which side was helped the most? It might have been his own arrival which got the ball rolling on the evacuation by the TKM miners. Or maybe he gave away the attack plan when the crowd on the shore was forced to fire at him. There was no way to ever know.
What he was certain of wa
s the mining company had killed a lot of the men and women who’d been standing in the open at the edge of the lake. The rocks had struck anyone unlucky enough to be in their path. Looking down, he saw about half the people on the ground, and the other half warily crouched or kneeling next to their fallen friends.
“This is a war crime,” Butch said with rising anger. “We have to tell someone.”
Haley pulled out her phone, perhaps hoping to record what she could, but her face said otherwise. “It got wet. I think it’s toast.”
Selfishly, Ezra thought about how he wouldn’t be able to call Grace. A few seconds later, after hearing people cry three floors down, he got his head back in the moment. “We saw it. Those people saw it. We can back them up when it comes time to take those miners to the woodshed.”
“So, what do we do now?” Haley asked.
Without hesitation, Butch replied. “I say we blow up something of theirs. Preferably with a lot of their men standing around. In Iraq—”
Ezra interrupted before he got too far into it. “Right now, we have to get out of here. I wish we could help those people, but look at us. We have nothing. The only thing I can think about right now is getting to Grace. The people we’re dealing with, this TKM outfit, are not people to be trifled with. She warned me not to trust them. Boy was she right. But she’s tangled up with them, too. She’s going to one of the dig sites in Wyoming.”
Butch huffed. “Well, as long as I get to blow up their stuff at some point, I’m still with you, E-Z. You know that.”
“Me too,” Haley added. “I’m with your daughter. I don’t trust anyone working with TKM now.”
He sighed, knowing what he was asking of them. “All right. We’ll go down the steps and slip out the other side of the building. We’ll walk to the west and hope we can find an abandoned vehicle. Without my boat, we’re stuck depending on other transportation.”
The wailing from outside became louder.
“Now. We’ve got to move.” He hunched over and got away from the windows.
The others followed.
He desperately wanted to hear Grace’s voice.
Denver, CO
Each passing hour of the morning brought worse news for Petteri. When he received a call from his Kansas City team, he knew what was coming.
“Yes?” he said into the handset.
“Hello, sir. This is Clay Frontman with the Kansas City recovery team.”
“I know who you are. Tell me the news.”
The man hesitated. “Well, sir, we were attacked by tens of thousands of armed terrorists. They lined both sides of the river for miles around. They tried to send boats after us. We shot back, as you instructed, and I’m sure we put a dent in them, but there were too many.”
“How much of the rock did you get?” The Kansas City operation was one of his favorites. The rock had bounced in from a spot in nearby Kansas, settling into the mud of the Missouri River. Its impact created the lake, which was a stroke of luck as far as he was concerned. No other mining company had the resources to buy up shipping and dredging equipment and mine on the water. He figured they’d get the whole rock before anyone even knew what he was doing. But here he was, listening to another failure.
The man didn’t sound happy. “We got about thirty percent.”
It was more than he’d expected. Secretly, he was pleased at the efforts of the KC team, but he wasn’t going to say it. “And have you made plans for the other seventy percent?”
“That’s just it, sir. We’ve had to abandon it. The people came and tried to take it over.”
He sighed in disgust. It was happening everywhere. The PR efforts and charitable donations had only gone so far. As the nation became fixated on what his company was doing at those dig sites, it was harder to convince them he was doing anything but fleecing them. It was an eventuality he always assumed would arrive. But he’d convinced himself it would take a lot longer.
“Sir, there is, uh, one other thing.”
“Go ahead,” he said flatly.
“Some of the men took it personally when the threat of an attack became apparent. They wanted to show the Kansas City terrorists they would not be chased away without taking a toll on them.”
He wasn’t in the mood. “What did they do?”
“They used up all the mining charges in one big blast. We saw it. The explosion chopped off the top half of the rock and shotgunned it out into the crowds.”
“You killed them?” he said with shock. It wasn’t an act he necessarily disavowed. Deep inside, he was pleased his men took it to heart when the TKM brand was attacked. But in this instance, with all the other pieces of rock in similar degrees of jeopardy, he couldn’t condone the team’s action. Rather than yell or scream, he hung up the phone.
Shooting picked up outside his window.
He got up to take a look.
“This is not going to end well.” While he’d been distracted with other things, the war in the streets of Denver raged on. He admitted, after the fact, the sound of gunfire was a monotonous bore. It was only when he truly listened that he appreciated how close it had come. And none of his trucks were at the dig site. He suspected his dream of bringing in rail cars and ferrying dump truck loads back and forth was evaporating, too. A few men in blue fired their weapons, but they always ran backward, toward his building. Toward him.
He shuffled back to the desk and hefted the phone. He touched the button to call Mr. Aarons.
“Sir?”
“Where’s my helicopter? I’m leaving.”
“I can have it here in ten minutes. It’s on station at a secure location.”
He was pleased at least one thing was being done correctly. “Gather my computer, the server drives, and my assistant Dorothy. I want everything on the roof by the time our ride gets here. You and two of your men are coming with me. Get as many of the rest of them out of Denver and up north to Yellowstone.”
“Sir? Did you say Yellowstone?”
“Yes. The TKM dig site by Yellowstone. It’s going to be my new base of operations.”
“Understood,” Aarons said, a second before Petteri hung up.
He’d have to put out a press release saying he had no idea his people were going to blow up the rock in Kansas City. He’d offer the standard help, recovery efforts, whatever. If he did nothing, it would stir up local mayors and governors to rally against him. Far from being an act of defiance against the terrorist hordes, it would become a rallying cry against him and his company. It might already be too late to head it off.
That being said, he looked down on the partially reduced ball of ore sitting in the street with a new perspective. He wondered if he should ask Mr. Aarons to dedicate a team to wire it up for a second big bang. If one group blew up a rock without him knowing about it, who’s to say two groups wouldn’t act without his express consent? A big explosion could be his personal goodbye to the mayor of Denver.
As he laughed to himself and considered acting out his rage, he realized there was an even better way of torching the rock.
He ran back to his phone.
CHAPTER 21
Rawlins, WY
“All right, super soldier. This is where you earn your keep.” Grace faced Misha, hoping her words would inspire him into action. Instead, he scanned the rail cars, the engine, then the yard containing Nerio’s tree. When he was done, he looked back to her.
“You and him must shoot over switches. I will run for train cars. Then I attack her from other direction.” He pointed behind them. Robert’s engine was about thirty feet away, but the line of coal hoppers was less than fifteen.
She patted Asher on the shoulder. “You got that? We’re the diversions. We’re going to shoot when he says.”
“I hear you,” he replied, not sounding too happy about it.
“Okay, in three, two, one,” Misha counted down, then leaned back as if ready to run. She and Asher stood halfway up, then aimed over the top of the switch boxes.
&nb
sp; She lined up the tree where she knew Nerio was standing, but she accidentally saw one of the little kids in the window of the house. The small girl popped up, then dropped back down, perhaps thinking it was a game to play with the strange people in her yard.
“Wait!” she cried out before Asher could fire.
Nerio had no qualms about using her weapon. Several cracks of her gun were followed by metallic zings as bullets hit the hoppers. She spun around, expecting Misha to already be on the far side of the coal haulers, but he was on the ground almost where he’d started.
“Misha!”
He grasped at his neck as if he’d been hit.
“Help me get him over here,” she said with excitement.
She and Asher pulled him over the rocks. His hand was bloody, and the big Russian man groaned in pain, but the wound didn’t seem life threatening. It was, however, on the same patch of skin where she’d burned him days earlier.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He forced out a smile. “My neck stings like hornet bite. She shot me before I could get safe. Why did you not fire?”
She’d almost forgotten about it. “The kids! There are kids in the window next to the tree. I didn’t want to hit them.”
Misha rolled his eyes.
Nerio cried out. “Misha, I’ll give you one more chance. Kill them yourself and I’ll let you go. But you have to get the engineer and any passengers, too. I don’t want any witnesses.”
Misha checked his hand when he pulled it off his neck. He also showed the wound to Grace and Asher. “What do you think? I am okay?”
The bullet had grazed his neck. No arteries appeared severed.
“You’ll live through this battle,” she said dryly.
A bullet whizzed off the switching equipment.
“Come on!” Nerio screamed. “I don’t have all day!”
Misha looked at her with a serious gaze. “Will you trust me to shoot with delicate touch?”
She waved for him to try it. “Please don’t hit the kids.”
He wiped the blood on his shirt, then got the weapon ready at his chest. After sucking in a few deep breaths, he put the gun up on the equipment, aimed, then rifled off five or six shots. When another came back, he ducked down.
Impact (Book 5): Black Page 16