Impact (Book 5): Black

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “No. I can’t.”

  “No one saw me take it,” she insisted.

  He held up his hands. “It isn’t that. I don’t mind you having it. I’m glad, actually. I want you to keep it.” Ezra chuckled. “I’ll probably get the insurance money on my boat. I’ll just have to explain how we got it all the way to Kansas City and then tell the tale of how it was driven into a fiery explosion by strangers. There are probably lots of small pieces on the bottom of the river I can use as evidence.”

  “I think I’d take the gold,” Butch mused.

  She spun on the big guy. “You want it? You can buy yourself a new hat.” His black Stetson had stayed on throughout the whole day, and even survived his swim in the water, but it was starting to look dirty and worn out.

  He stood back. “Why would you give it to me?”

  Ezra began walking. For the next several minutes he listened as the pair argued over who should keep the valuable rock. Later, they disagreed about how much it was worth. Lastly, they huddled around Ezra when he suggested they better cash it in before everyone else in Kansas City ran to the gold dealers with their new finds. Too much gold at one time was going to crater the value. They didn’t seem to believe him.

  The bridge ended on the far side of the Kansas River, which ran into the lake portion of the Missouri River. After walking another mile or two, they appeared to be entering the residential area of the metropolis.

  “Wait,” Butch signaled, stopping on the shoulder of the highway.

  “What do you see?” Ezra asked.

  Butch got them off to the side of the road before speaking. “You aren’t going to believe this. There’s a roadblock up ahead.”

  Ezra sighed. “It’s TKM, isn’t it?”

  Butch tapped his rifle stock. “This nightmare is never going to end. Are they everywhere?”

  Haley pointed behind them. “They’ve probably kept the traffic from going back in there. Once we get past them, maybe we won’t see them anymore.”

  “As long as those crowds don’t show up,” Ezra remarked.

  Butch wiped sweat off his brow. “What’s the plan, E-Z? We going in swinging, or should we go around them this time?”

  Ezra sat there thinking about it. They were almost to safety. However, after being tracked by TKM from St. Charles, then almost getting shot at their clandestine dig site, he was worried they still were high on the priority list for the powerful company. He’d witnessed an atrocity back in the city. Could he make someone pay for it?

  Ezra rubbed his hands together. “I have an idea.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Rawlins, WY

  The streak of white was Calvin’s beat-up old pickup truck. It cut through the fence on the far side of the yard, swerved toward Alejandro, and crashed into the tree, pinning the man in place. The airbag deployed, masking the driver.

  Nerio fumed. “You bastards! How?” She stepped around the big tree trunk, spraying gunfire at Misha with her pistol. The Russian had been focused on the wreck, perhaps deciding if the stricken husband needed a few extra bullets in his head. When Nerio began her barrage, he was caught flat-footed for once.

  He fired back, but fell to the ground, trying to avoid getting hit.

  Unsure what to do, Grace bent over and scooped up a large rock. Without thinking, and with little aiming, she winged it at Nerio. Precision throwing wasn’t really in her wheelhouse, so it came as a shock when the rock whizzed near the woman’s head. However, instead of hitting her, it sailed through the side window of the small home.

  “Great. After everything, I’ll be the one who hurts the kids.”

  Nerio stopped firing and turned to face her. “You think you’re funny?”

  “I do!” she bragged, falling back behind the fence. If she could distract the woman, Misha might have a chance of scooting over to her. Why he wasn’t already on his feet was a mystery.

  “We’ll see.” Nerio pulled a small canister from her gear and tossed it toward Misha. The little can bounced through the fence and started spewing out white smoke.

  She retreated behind her tree, tossing a second object after the first. The metal orb struck the rear fence too, then fell to the grass, perhaps ten feet from where Misha was on the ground. Unlike the other, it didn’t start smoking.

  “It’s a grenade!” Asher exclaimed.

  “Run, Misha! She threw a grenade!”

  He didn’t get up, but he tumbled sideways in her direction. He made it into his second roll when the grenade exploded, sending up a fountain of grass and dirt and blowing the fence outward.

  Misha yelled some Russian words she assumed weren’t very nice, but he continued toward her. By the time he was a few feet away, he was crawling on his hands and knees. Bloody splotches were all over his right side.

  “You’re hit!” she bleated.

  “I think I took grenade in teeth.” He smiled, revealing a small hole in his cheek. He spit on the rocks a second later.

  The smoke wafted all over the yard, making it impossible to see Nerio’s position or what had become of her husband. However, the shrill scream of a woman came from the far side of the house, followed by a few gunshots.

  “What happened?” Misha asked, sitting against the privacy fence, exhausted.

  “Someone crashed into that man. They drove right into him.”

  “Your friends?” the Russian asked.

  She knew the truck, and assumed it was Calvin inside, but she wasn’t ready to say for certain. How would he have found them? The Crow tribe members were supposed to be well ahead of the train. Misha had wanted it that way, he said, so they could deal with Nerio his way.

  Misha gave up his guns to her and Asher. She wrapped his bloody arm as best she could, tearing part of Misha’s shirt into a dozen bandages. While Asher watched the smoke clear and stayed alert for more tossed grenades, she wiped blood from the right side of Misha’s injured neck and torso. She judged the man was suffering from shock. He sat next to the fence with a blank stare.

  Tires screeched, signaling a vehicle leaving.

  Misha snapped awake. “That’s Nerio. She’s abandoning her position.” He struggled to stand, then made his way to the broken fence.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, not willing to expose herself to possible gunshots.

  “Trust me,” he said, limping across the back yard, heading for the crash scene.

  She and Asher followed, noticing the group of kids still inside the house. They were getting the show of their lives, for sure. She waved to them, which elicited immediate and excited replies.

  “Are you cops?” one of them asked through the window she’d broken out with her rock toss.

  “No. We’re park rangers.”

  “Wow!” a few of them replied.

  The smallest girl, perhaps six or seven, came right up to the windowsill. “I want to be a park ranger when I grow up. You’re awesome!”

  An older redheaded girl added, “I want to be the lady with the black outfit and pretty red hair. She was cool!”

  Grace didn’t want to explain the difference in motives to the children. All they knew was that guns were employed by both sides. Who was in the right wasn’t their concern. However, she didn’t want them to see the injured man on the other side of the yard, so she stopped. “Are your parents home?”

  The kids shook their heads no.

  “Can any of you call 9-1-1? We need an ambulance.” She was thinking of Misha, but Alejandro would also need help, as would the driver of the truck, more likely than not.

  The kids retreated deeper into the house, laughing and yelling excitedly at the game they were playing with Grace.

  She walked the rest of the way to the tree. Alejandro was in worse shape than she could have imagined. The front of the truck had caught him square against the side of the tree. Everything below his belt was smashed.

  “She took your stupid boy. I don’t think she’s going to be too kind to him,” the injured Hispanic man spoke in accented Engl
ish.

  “Boy? Who are you talking about?” After she’d said it, she knew. It was Calvin’s truck, but the older man probably wasn’t the one behind the wheel.

  Alejandro had no more to add. He passed out after laughing at her obvious disappointment.

  “Logan,” she said with dismay.

  Kansas City, KS

  Ezra walked alone down the last few hundred yards of the highway before the roadblock. There were three of the TKM-blue SUVs parked end to end, blocking all three lanes of the highway heading into the city. He had to cross from the outbound lanes over to the side with the barricade. When the men noticed him, he raised his hands as high as possible, but didn’t stop walking.

  “I’m unarmed!” he shouted.

  “Where are you going?” a man asked from behind his truck.

  “Denver,” he lied. It wasn’t his destination, but it was somewhere the men would recognize as being behind them, assuming they knew some basic geography. Given his low expectations of the type of people hired by TKM, he figured he ought to add some details. “It’s eight hundred miles in that direction.”

  “How did you get through the city?” the leader asked.

  Ezra scanned the roadblock to see how many men were there. He figured at least three, if each of them drove their own vehicle, though there could be a lot more if each SUV had been filled to capacity. If that was the case, his walk might have been for nothing.

  “If you mean how I got past the giant explosion set off by TKM, then the answer is easy. I was one of the lucky ones who survived.”

  He was about twenty yards from the trucks. Close enough to see the young guard holding a small carbine rifle on the hood of his ride. A second man appeared behind the truck on the left. Were there only two?

  The man craned his neck, as if looking beyond him. “Not sure what you’re talking about. We’re here to keep people out of the city. It’s for your own protection.”

  “So you’re letting me come out?”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t have orders for what happens when someone comes the other way. You’re literally the first one I’ve seen today.”

  He shrugged. “Surely I can’t be the first one. What about your friends? What’s the protocol for when an inconvenient person comes out of the no-no zone?” His intention was to engage the other men at the roadblock, and he wasn’t disappointed. Man number three came out from the truck on the right.

  “We’ve had a few over the past week. None of them looked like you, however. They was wrecked. Beat up. Injured. You look like you’ve been up to no good in there. Mind if we check you for contraband? Weapons?”

  It’s what he’d been expecting. “Be my guest. I do need to be very clear, however. I’m not a threat. I have no weapons. Please don’t shoot me.” It was for his own safety. He expected them to be trigger happy and anxious to outdo each other on the Rambo scale. Unlike the men who’d shot up his boat, the guys at the roadblock were probably aching to get into a fight.

  That was a pro-tip given to him by Butch.

  “We’ll be the judge of whether you’re dangerous.” The three men came out from the safety of their trucks. The first man carried his carbine. The other two had semi-automatic pistols.

  He laughed.

  “What’s so damned funny?” the leader asked, not sharing his mood.

  “Oh, it’s hard to explain. I had a run-in with guys like you back in St. Charles. I stayed out of the way while your team members looted the gun counter at a Bass Pro. Then I tried to avoid being shot by more of your men when they stormed a camp full of families. This morning I watched as your friends blew up the asteroid sitting in the river. It killed a crap ton of Kansas City, uh, people.” He wasn’t sure what to call them. To put an exclamation point on his speech, he laughed even harder.

  The carbine guy lowered the rifle, clearly settling into the role of controlling his prisoner. “Still don’t understand why that’s so hilarious to you.”

  He snorted, then pointed at their trucks. “Because you forgot your roadblock has two directions.”

  Butch and Haley stood behind the men, aiming rifles and looking as if they might pull the trigger on the spot.

  The men dropped their weapons.

  His plan for a two-pronged diversion had finally worked.

  Denver, CO

  Petteri allowed himself a moment of reflection while the helicopter blades got up to speed. The city of Denver was crumpling in around him like a wet paper bag. His men had fought off the uprising of citizens as much as they did battle with elements of the city police force and other mining companies. When enough steam gathered against him, he simply didn’t have enough men to hold the line. Even promises of untold wealth couldn’t change that reality.

  The executive helicopter lifted off the roof, taking him, Dorothy, Mr. Aarons and his two extra guards to safety. He leaned to see out the window.

  “Will we ever see the ore?” Dorothy asked sadly.

  His team had done their best. It was no longer a curved ball of rock; one side had been chiseled down by several feet and the ore evacuated on dump trucks. But it was a small portion of the greater treasure. He estimated his people had gotten ten percent at best. It pained him to admit they would never get the ore. There was a way to rephrase what was about to happen.

  “Dorothy, the rock down there still has value to TKM. You are about to see how.”

  Petteri pulled out his smartphone and dialed a familiar number.

  Stricker picked up after two rings. “Ah, Mr. Petteri. How good of you to call.”

  “I’ve made my decision.” He sighed for effect. “TKM will surrender the dig site in Denver to the US government as payment for your trouble.”

  “Excellent!” Stricker bubbled.

  “But that’s not all.”

  “Oh?” the man on the phone said cautiously. “I must remind you the president wants this—”

  Petteri laughed in a jovial way. “This isn’t about being difficult. This is about helping the nation. I’ve tried to get my relief trucks into the cities to help the people survive. My teams have made some progress, but even I have to admit I might have bitten off more than I could chew. My fondest desire is knowing Tikkanen Mining has done a small service in keeping people alive until your government forces could get in there and finish the job.”

  He set up his final gamble with his losing hand.

  “I want to offer you the entire dig site in an additional city. Consider it a down payment for all the work you’re going to do with the recovery efforts. Denver was, um, a mutually agreed-upon fee from TKM.” He chafed saying the words but couldn’t get around the fact he’d been played. “However, to show you we are in this together, to the end, we’re giving the second rock as an outright charitable gift. No strings attached.”

  Petteri looked over to Dorothy. Her jaw had come unhinged. Probably due to her never imagining he contained an ounce of charity in his body. Stricker sounded equally as surprised over the phone line.

  “Hello?” he prodded.

  “I’m here,” Stricker replied. “That is very generous, sir. Perhaps, with this new understanding, we could work out an equitable transfer regimen? Say a period where my department takes over, looks at what’s involved, then we get the rest of the agencies in there. I could even cut you in on my operation; say, ten percent of my take.”

  He couldn’t pass on an opportunity for free money. “How about fifteen percent? I’ll even leave some of my equipment at each of the dig sites.”

  Petteri smiled wickedly at the destruction down on the streets. There was some abandoned equipment scattered on the roads. He hadn’t been lying. But men and women from the city also stood near the giant rock. Stricker would have to deal with them to get to the equipment, and the rock itself.

  On the brighter side, Stricker was being Stricker, as he expected. The man no doubt wanted to handle things through his department so he could skim billions off the top and into his own offshore accounts
. It would consume Stricker’s attention. It would further delay a proper takeover by government authorities, giving Petteri the necessary time to do what he needed to salvage his own investments.

  “My dear Mr. Stricker, I think we have ourselves a nice little quid pro quo.”

  The helicopter left the Denver dig site, heading north.

  All his resources were going into the remaining piece south of Yellowstone.

  CHAPTER 24

  Rawlins, WY

  Grace hoped to get more information out of the man pinned to the tree, but he wouldn’t wake up. She didn’t need any of her medical expertise to judge he might even be dead. She asked the question, though she didn’t expect the guy to respond. “Why would Nerio take Logan to Yellowstone?”

  “As a hostage, I guess,” Asher replied.

  “That is right,” Misha added. “She has boy to prevent Crow people from attacking.”

  Grace laughed to herself. “Hostage-taking might work in whatever crap-hole she comes from, but I don’t think Nerio knows a thing about Native Americans. Stealing their boy will only make them angrier. They aren’t going to roll over and take it.”

  Misha leaned heavily against the tree.

  “What about you? Are you going to survive this?” The ex-hitman had been shot in the neck, sprayed with shrapnel from a grenade, and he seemed to have a new bullet wound in his left arm, a little above his elbow.

  “I am okay,” he said with a hoarse voice. “You saved my life when you distracted Nerio.”

  She smiled proudly. “It was just a rock.”

  He bowed a few inches. “You have skill for taking simple and making into weapons. Bear spray. Flamethrower. Truck. Now rock. Maybe you should sign up for being assassin.”

  Asher piled on. “Yeah, they’d never see it coming.”

  She found the humor in it, but it was tempered by the loss of Logan. As she watched and waited for the paramedics to arrive, a couple of pickup trucks skidded around the corner in front of the house. More followed. Seconds later, there were twenty cars and trucks lined up.