Impact (Book 2): Bounce

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Butch seemed to relax a bit, leading Ezra to speculate he’d done the right thing by softening his promise.

  Colby and the others talked about it for a few minutes, but Ezra figured out quickly they were going to do it. In the end, there were no better alternatives.

  In the air at the Mexican-US border

  Petteri looked up from his tablet when a voice came on the transport plane’s intercom. “This is the captain; we’re crossing into US airspace. We should be in Denver in about two hours.”

  “Howard, have we had any trouble with the authorities of either country?”

  His trusted lieutenant sat a few rows ahead of him; he hated having anyone sit behind him whenever he could help it. The small section of seats set behind the flight deck had been turned into his team’s workspace. The man stood up and looked back. “No. The transport wasn’t asked to give out our flight plan. The entire aviation system in North America seems to be down.”

  “But planes are still flying, correct? We aren’t going to get shot down?”

  “There are lots of planes in the air, as best I can tell, but other than a few airports on the coasts, most of us are flying with visual flight rules. The area control centers are offline as well.”

  “Which means?” he replied gruffly.

  “The centers are how we’re tracked between airports. If they aren’t requesting information from us, it means they’re down. We’ll have to see if Denver International is offline, but at this point I think they are.”

  “So, we have a window of opportunity here,” he said with recognition. “Tell the team in Mexico City to get their contingent airborne as soon as they’re able. If we have no one keeping track, I want to move up our timetable. Dorothy is working with our remaining flight ops teams to locate the most valuable locations for mining. If we time it right, we can have the teams in the air when she tells us where to send them.”

  Dorothy was a few rows ahead, though he didn’t want to disturb her yet. She’d directed them to the biggest asteroid piece in Denver, and now she was working out where the other fragments dropped. He’d also tasked her with learning more about the impact in the Yellowstone area. She had another half hour before he pressed her for some answers.

  Howard fell back into his seat, hurriedly executing the boss’s orders. Everything was going remarkably well. Even the text alerts announcing news stories with his company’s name had been almost completely positive. The video feed showing the loading of rice and recovery vehicles back at Isla Socorro was being broadcast on all the big networks.

  Petteri peered out his private window, trying to look north toward where he was going. Big black clouds peppered the horizon in that direction.

  “We’re going to survive this,” he whispered.

  Chapter 17

  Beartooth Pass, WY

  Grace nervously drove the straight section of road until she reached the next switchback. The road turned left around a sharp curve, before heading farther down the mountain. She navigated through, but the next straightaway hugging the steep mountainside was a good place to use the CB. She was dying to know if Tessa and Chester were doing all right. Not only were they responsible for watching over the rear of the convoy, they had a killer on board.

  “Tessa, this is Grace. You listening? Come in.”

  They’d traveled a fair way down the mountainside. She knew that even without being able to see more than a hundred feet up and down. The convoy had gone around four or five switchbacks, bringing them a good way lower in elevation. What she couldn’t figure out was why the snow kept increasing.

  “This is Tess. We’ve got some issues back here. Cars are having trouble with the deep snow, even with the rope trick. I’ve even nudged a few to get them moving again. My bumper probably looks like a pretzel.”

  Grace laughed. “You should see mine. It’s hanging off the front of my truck.” She went on like the next topic was no big deal. “I wanted to check on your passenger. How are his wounds?”

  “Oh, much better, I think. He isn’t here right now, or I’d ask him.”

  She pressed the mic button immediately, panic in her veins. “He’s not there? Where’d he go?”

  Tessa waited about ten seconds, which spiked Grace’s fear response even further, until the woman spoke. “A guy got stuck a few turns back. He got out to help, then stayed with them, I think. Hey, what’s this burning car? It looks like it fell from above.”

  The two other rangers had made it to the turn where she’d gotten out to look over the edge. That meant most of the convoy already made it through without other cars dropping on them. Her concern went elsewhere.

  “Tessa. Chester. Listen. That man was the guy who wanted to kill us yesterday. Those burns were from when Asher and I fought him off. He threatened to shoot you in the back if I didn’t get you two out of the truck when we were stopped at the pass!” Her breathing became labored and fast as anxiety percolated to the surface. She’d already been white-knuckle driving down the mountain, but losing Misha seemed a lot more dangerous.

  “But you and he talked so nice. Are you sure it was him? He had nothing but good things to say about you while we came down the hill. He was even glad to help out with the ropes around the tires.”

  It didn’t surprise her they were doubtful. The man was obviously skilled at manipulating people. She checked over her shoulder, looking at the opening where a door should have been. The truck was moving so slowly someone could jog along next to them and hop inside. There would be nothing she could do to prevent it. “I’ll get back to you,” she replied, hanging up the CB microphone.

  Grace gave the truck some more gas, out of fear someone would catch up.

  “Whoa! Too fast!” Asher held on to his armrest like he was going to blow out the window.

  “Dang it,” she replied, slowing back down. “That maniac is out there. He could be in the car behind us. It doesn’t make any—”

  Ahead, another switchback turned to the right, but it was obviously the last one at the bottom of the valley. The landscape around the road had a few pine trees, signaling they’d come out of the higher, treeless elevation. She also saw the creek running in the middle of the V-shaped valley. It was the same area of wrecked cars she’d seen from above. The lone headlight shone nearby.

  “Jeez. Look at them all.” She pointed to the creek. A quick count of black smudges gave her evidence of at least twenty cars. One of the closest wrecks was the red sports car that had passed her back before Gardner Canyon. She also caught a glint of chrome from the wheel of a white SUV. It was someone she’d seen, too. “These were people I rescued from the tourist village. The red car left us in its dust. That white one was the first guy we stopped back at the intersection. He was in such a hurry.”

  She didn’t dare stop. The white pieces of an RV were strewn in the black snow alongside the road near the curve. The rear of it had exploded like a popping balloon, but the front part was intact; it was the vehicle with one headlight still on. It was terrible to imagine how it fell from the pass and broke apart on impact. Even worse, she’d probably seen it earlier in the day. It might even have been the one that had sped by while she was stopped on the pass…

  “You can’t blame yourself, Grace. Those people had a choice to make, and they chose to go it alone. It’s all the people behind us you have to think about. You’ve helped them get through this nightmare in one piece. Look. We’re down the mountain.” He pointed outside to the creek.

  She tapped her front pocket, forgetting for a second Misha stole her phone. Asher was right, of course. She couldn’t blame herself about cars falling off the mountain. She could blame herself for not doing everything she could to get her phone back. If they were out of the proverbial woods of the mountain pass, it was time to stop reacting to the hitman and start acting like she was going to save herself. Her dad would demand nothing less.

  “The second we get to a town, I’m going to find a police station. Wherever he is in our line, we’
ve got to get that maniac off the road for good.”

  Land Between the Lakes, KY

  Ezra won the rock-paper-scissors to see who would swim out to the half-sunken tug to retrieve the johnboat. After losing, Butch seemed to take it with good grace. “Care to go two out of three?”

  He didn’t, but only because it didn’t matter to him. They both needed to get in the water to wash off the layers of mud tossed on by the dirt bikes. The only real question was who would swim the hundred yards to get the boat. He didn’t think it was a big deal. “Do you turn into a pumpkin if you get wet? I’d think a strapping lad like you would be all over a swim like this.”

  Butch rubbed his chin, surveying the nearby wreck. “On any other day of the week I’d jump in and show you how we did things in the Army, but in this particular case I have a slight issue…”

  Ezra looked at him, then at the boat. There was only one reason why he wouldn’t go out there. “You can’t swim,” he said dryly.

  “Bingo,” Butch agreed. “I tried to learn when I went to Afghanistan, but it turns out the beaches there never reach the ocean. It was always more sand over the next dune.”

  He sighed heavily, mostly to mock the otherwise cocky youngster. “I’ll do this, but you owe me one.”

  Butch brightened. “I’ll take point when we approach the roadblock.”

  His words surprised Ezra. “You must sink like a rock when you’re in the water if you’d rather risk being in the front row of a gunfight than take a little swim.” He had no intention of making a splash in the water the basis for who put their life at risk on the far side of the lake, but he let it go for the time being. He expected the veteran would want to take point, anyway, since he had military training, and Ezra did not.

  Ezra swam and retrieved the boat while Butch stayed in the shallow water and cleaned off the mud. By the time he’d dislodged the little olive-drab boat from the deck of the towboat, Butch had their rifles and backpacks ready to go. Those were the only things somewhat dry, even after their dirt bike trip.

  “We’ve got plenty of gas,” he said as Butch handed the gear to him. “That was my only worry about this.”

  “Only worry?” Butch climbed in, but the big man was shaky and awkward until he found his seat on the middle bench. He didn’t have his cowboy hat on his head; he’d watched him stuff it into his pack.

  The aluminum johnboat was a low-walled watercraft, about ten feet long and five feet wide. The flat-bottomed type was mostly used on ponds, calm lakes, and shallow rivers. If it had been on the water when the shockwaves came through, it would have instantly sunk or been thrown a mile inland. Theirs was saved by virtue of being locked up on the deck of the ship.

  “Well, there might be a few more, but fuel was a deal-breaker. Now that we have it, things should go as planned.” Ezra sat on the rear seat, which let him hold the throttle for the rear outboard motor. The lake was mostly calm, with minimal wave action due to the wind. There were no other boats either, meaning there weren’t any large wakes to fight.

  He had a lot of debris to dodge, however. Once they were out of the bay and on the main channel, he became leery of the floating garbage. Everything from soda cans to grain silos were out there. Striking any of them could permanently damage the propeller of the underpowered motor.

  He pointed to the bridge about a mile away, though Butch was frozen to his seat, facing forward. “I’m going to hug the shore over here, then go alongside the bridge. That will allow us to coordinate with the women when they ride their bikes over the top.” They didn’t have radios or any other way to organize when they would both meet at the roadblock, so they’d agreed on the visual sync-up at the bridge.

  “There they are!” Butch shouted, not taking his hands off the sides of the boat. The women were on the bike path heading for the main span. The maroon-colored cargo barge was no longer blocking the way; instead, it floated in the garbage patch next to the bridge.

  “How did that barge get free?” he wondered aloud. “Is the water still rising? This seems impossible.”

  Another empty barge moved underneath the span of the bridge. It had a few feet of clearance to spare as it went under, but it moved surprisingly fast, despite being no more sophisticated than an empty shoebox floating freely.

  Ezra needed to slow down as he approached the middle section. It wasn’t only the barge floating by; tons of debris rushed through the opening, leading him to wonder if the floodwaters were getting higher on the south side of the bridge, therefore forcing the water to go underneath.

  He backed off the motor entirely when he was in the thickest part of the logjam. The four dirt bikes powered up the eastern incline of the arched bridge, but they waited when they were at the highest point.

  “Why did they stop?” he wondered aloud. The women waved him sideways, like they wanted him to go back the way they’d come. They also cupped their hands and shouted, though they were far enough away he had no hope of hearing their voices. The floating mess around them seemed to crackle and boil as pieces bounced and rubbed against each other.

  “Uh, E-Z. We’ve got a problem here.”

  “Yeah, we can’t get through all this crap without making a huge loop into the middle of the lake. I didn’t realize all this was a solid brick of floating debris.”

  “Yeah. That’s one thing. And check this out.” The current moved them closer toward the middle of the bridge, which gave them a view of the lake beyond. The floating barge was already through and rushing away, appearing a little lower than it was before. Almost as if it had gone down a small waterfall when it came out on the other side of the bridge.

  The current caught them and dragged the boat toward the gap under the bridge, spurring him to give some gas to the motor to try to back out of the floating mess.

  Butch pointed. “We’re getting shoved in there.”

  “Yeah, I see it.” Ezra gave it more gas, but found the pieces of trash floating around him had compressed, creating a mass of garbage intent on fitting through the bridge. The blades of the propeller hit several items beneath the water, while the front of the boat rode up on the arriving driftwood, Styrofoam, and everything else tossed there by the wind.

  He decided to save the motor rather than risk it all to get to shore through the floating garbage pile. He shut it off and tilted it to vertical, so the prop came out of the water. “We’ll go under the bridge and then let the trash spread out. Then we’ll be able to spin the prop again. The delay shouldn’t be a big deal…”

  The mile-wide mass of rubbish compressed down to about a hundred yards as it tried to fit through the gap still left by the Biblical-level flooding. The narrow waterway under the bridge echoed with cracking driftwood and shearing lumber from lost pleasure boats.

  “Hang on,” he shouted to Butch as they started underneath the massive girders of the bridge. The last things he saw were Mary and Jean leaning far over the side of the pedestrian walkway about twenty feet above him. He wasn’t sure what made him think it, but he only had a fraction of a second to say it.

  “We’ll be right back!”

  Chapter 18

  Beartooth Pass, WY

  When she figured she’d gone far enough beyond where the cars crashed into the creek, she pulled to the side of the road and stopped. “I told Tessa I’d call her back. I’m going to tell her to have her gun at the ready. Misha is in these cars somewhere. They need to be prepared if he shows up. She knows that, right? She worked in a police station…”

  “Maybe, but neither she nor Chester look like they’ve ever fired a gun before. Not that I would know how to identify such a person if I saw them on the street, besides the guy we’re trying to avoid. Him, I could easily imagine shooting things.”

  Misha was a big Russian hitman. It was probably a mistake to push Tessa and Chester into a confrontation with him. Still, she didn’t have much choice after revealing who he was. All she could do was warn them about what he was capable of doing. They could use the informat
ion as they saw fit.

  “Tessa? I’m back.” The lightning show had greatly diminished, but a bolt hit out in the valley, causing an echo of thunder in her speaker.

  After a pause to let the sound settle, Tessa replied. “This is creepy, Miss Park Ranger. Did you stop the convoy so we’d get a good look at it? ’Cause I’d just as soon have a full mile between us and this. Chester says this is a bad place.”

  “Crap. Are you stuck back on the switchback with that eerie lone headlight and all the wrecks around it? I’m so sorry.”

  “No big deal. I’m ready to—” Tessa stopped talking.

  “Ready to what?” Grace queried in a friendly voice.

  Asher sat with his arms wrapped across his chest, keeping warm as best he could. “Maybe they got out to check if anyone was alive?”

  She shook her head. “No one could have survived those crashes. I wouldn’t go near them to check.” Grace keyed the mic again. “Come in, what’s going on back there?”

  An unearthly sound resonated in the blackness outside, reminding her of an approaching fire engine, or police car. As it got closer, she realized it wasn’t one horn, but many. The convoy drivers blew their horns in long cries, as if to push the whole line ahead of them.

  In a flash, cars began driving around her parked truck.

  “Wait!” she cried out. “Where are you going?”

  It was impossible to burn rubber on the snowpack, but some of them seemed to try. A big silver Ford truck led the way, and dozens of cars streamed by, sloshing left and right as their wheels alternately lost and gained traction. She was tempted to join them, but once the line was moving, there was no safe way to wedge back in the middle without getting struck from behind.