The technical people were professionals about it, but Grace noticed them smiling and silently high-fiving each other. Their leader knew exactly what buttons to press.
“Finally, I have learned of a missing tribal bus, lost somewhere in Billings. I know many of us have friends and family now separated from us, so I ask each of you to be kind to each other. Take care of your family, then take care of your neighbor, then take care of your community. We cannot let the chaos and danger of the big cities reach us here. My son was brought back to me by my new friends.” He motioned to her and Asher once more. “And while I’m gone, I assure each and every one of you we will do everything we can to recover any tribal members remaining in Billings. Thank you for watching.”
Asher leaned toward Shawn. “May I say something?”
The chairman didn’t seem fazed. “Of course, my friend.”
“I just found out TKM has my sister, Diedre, in a hidden location. I’d like to publicly tell the leadership of that company if anything happens to my sister, I’m holding you all responsible.” He held up his bloody knuckles. “I’m not afraid to do more than punch anyone who touches her.”
Shawn looked over to confirm Asher was finished, then he nodded to the camera. “Thank you again.”
The bright lights went off, and the regular interior lights came back on. Grace wiped her brow; the heat lamp effect had caused her to sweat. “Thank you for being so nice to us.”
Shawn patted Asher on the shoulder but looked to her. “Don’t thank me, yet. I need one more favor from you.”
“Anything,” she said, realizing it might have been a foot-in-mouth response.
“I need you to take me south, to Cheyenne. Billings is closer, and it’s where I would normally go to catch a plane, but after what you said about its condition, I think it would be safer to avoid it. Would that work for you?”
She didn’t mind giving him a lift, but it surprised her he would even ask. He had an entire community at his disposal. “I’d be happy to drive, if you think that would be the best way for you to travel. Wouldn’t your people want to take you?”
“I want my entire tribe focused on getting our lost members back home, not driving me around like a goober.”
Logan laughed. “It’s Uber, Dad.”
“Whatever,” his father snapped, before chuckling at himself.
Grace shared in the laughter; an activity sorely missing from her life since learning about her mother. “You should know my truck has been beat up beyond description. Logan’s uncle said he was going to change my oil, but it has a lot of other problems. Honestly, I don’t know if it will be safe for you.”
Mr. Runs Hard glared at her, thinking deeply. “Where’s your truck right this second?”
“It’s down the street, still at Logan’s uncle’s shop.
He seemed surprised. “Still? How did you get out to the fallen rock?”
“Logan drove us—” she replied.
“Ah, yeah, I should have told you, Dad.” Logan sounded disappointed she’d given him up.
His dad shook his head. “That boy is going to be my undoing. He’s been told not to drive outside of our street, and not without me or his mother along.”
“If it helps, Ms. Anderson watched over me. I didn’t speed or anything.”
She chuckled. “He was a very good driver, actually.”
Shawn rolled his eyes. “Logan’s uncle is my brother-in-law. I’ll have to talk to him about being casual with his pickup. Do you know if he’s done fixing it?” He looked at his son.
“He already had it on the rack before we left. She’s right, you know. Her truck looked like it had been rolled back and forth in the hands of giants. It was totally junked up.”
She feigned being offended. “I call it giving her character, not being junked up.” Grace smiled. “But, yeah, it’s a mess.”
Shawn Runs Hard picked up a nearby phone and dialed a number. He became animated a second or two later. “It’s me. I hear you have a ranger truck in your shop. Uh-huh. Right. I’m going to travel with them for a few hours. Make sure it won’t break down on the way to Cheyenne.” He glanced at a silver watch on his wrist. “You have one hour.”
Shawn held the phone away from his ear, while the man on the other end screamed at him. He hung up the handset and winked at her. “He said I gave him plenty of time.”
Grace summoned a smile, though she didn’t feel it. “I don’t think you know how much of a miracle you just asked for.”
Chester, IL
Ezra gave one quick glance to the happy red and white bobber attached to his keychain. Of all the times he’d powered up the motor with Susan, he never could have dreamed there’d come a time she was gone, and he was on the run from pirates. Yet…
He shoved the throttle to feed gas to the overpowered Suzuki sitting behind him, and the boat dug into the water in a most satisfying manner, but he also noted how the extra hundred pounds of gasoline robbed them of a little giddyup.
Susan’s Grace came out of the hiding spot at about twenty miles per hour. He leaned into a sharp right turn, heading upriver. The pirate towboat was a hundred yards away, making slow and steady progress up the river, too. He glanced over his shoulder to confirm what he expected.
“They’re watching for us,” he yelled to Butch. Pontoon boats were commonplace on the waterways, especially Kentucky Lake, and for the most part they were so similar to each other it was difficult to tell them apart. However, Susan’s Grace had been rolled onto shore, smashing the overhead sunshade and flattening the glass shield normally in front of the driver’s position. Those cosmetic changes made his boat stand out.
“Dang, dude. I wish you were wrong about that.”
The three-story towboat couldn’t have been going faster than ten miles an hour in the rush of the current, but all the men had gathered on the top deck. Ezra could have imagined a booze cruise during a different time; it might appear the ten or fifteen men were having a party. However, instead of drinking beer, the men lined up along the railing with their weapons.
“Oh, crap. Duck!” Ezra crouched low. There were no obstacles on the open river, save for a couple of pylons for the highway bridge ahead, so he was willing to one-hand the wheel while on the floor.
Butch crouched next to him, rifle in hand.
“No, don’t bother!” Ezra exclaimed over the sound of the outboard. “Stay hidden!”
The gunfire sounded like distant fireworks. Pops and bangs of different calibers echoed over the open water. Ezra held his breath, knowing with all his heart their only chance was to gain distance on the pirates and get out of effective shooting range.
Seconds later, he’d begun to think they’d made it, when his depth finder computer screen exploded, as did the back of his seat. Several more rounds impacted the pontoons, zinging metallically as each one went in.
He went all the way to the deck, almost willing to let go of the wheel. It would make him a smaller target, though he worried about the motor leaning one way or the other in the choppy water, which might take them off course.
Moments passed as more rounds zipped into parts of the boat all around him. It was a heavy downpour of bullets, proving the bad guys had zeroed them in. However, the frequency of hits soon ebbed to nearly nothing. Ezra listened intently, almost like trying to determine when microwave popcorn had finished popping. One more hit the boat’s outer railing about five seconds later, then it stopped for another ten seconds. Hand still on the wheel, he glanced over to the giant of a man sprawled flat on the blue all-weather carpet of the deck. “Should we look up?”
“Maybe a few more seconds?”
He thought that was a good idea. If he was watching a movie, he expected he’d lift his head and the master sniper on the other boat would be waiting for him. It was far better to stay low and get out of range.
When they went under the tall span of the highway, he finally got the nerve to look. At first, he peeked, but quickly sat up higher. “They’
re fighting the men on shore.”
Butch took that as his cue to raise his rifle onto the back of his seat. They both noted a bullet had mangled a six-inch chunk of the corner. Eventually, Butch observed what was happening behind them. “You’re right, E-Z. Good call.”
The towboat had veered to its left, away from the shore. The men on the top deck shifted positions so they were behind some of the sonar equipment, hiding from Francis and his shooters.
“You know, boss, if we wanted to stop, we have them in an enfilade. We could bang out some rounds and shoot them in their exposed sides.” Butch lined up his shot, but the boat bounced and shifted from side to side as Ezra continued up the river.
“No, the men of Chester did us a favor to get us on our way. They have stout trees to hide behind. We have nothing. The smart play is to keep going.” He again noted a sluggishness in the handling of his ride, and it wasn’t due to a little extra weight. “Besides, I think we have another problem.”
Butch spun around to face him. “If you say we’re going to sink, I want you to drive to shore. It’s right there. A hundred yards from us.” The tree-stripped shoreline went by at thirty-five miles an hour.
“No, don’t worry. We’re not sinking. But something’s definitely wrong.” Ezra worked with the steering wheel, testing if there was any extra play, and he adjusted the trim up and down for the same reason. The fuel gauge looked good, and the motor sounded healthy, suggesting the gas tank wasn’t ruptured, but there was an unusual sensation in the boat’s performance he couldn’t put his finger on.
Ezra looked back as they went around a bend in the river. The last glimpse of the pirates showed them making a wide turn toward the Missouri side of the river. He’d hoped they’d turn around and go south to avoid Francis and his men, but the river was wide enough they could get around them. The old man’s plan had allowed him to get away, but it hadn’t stopped their pursuit.
We have to stay ahead of them.
He needed to make good on his thought, but he also had to ensure the boat was up to specs. Once he was certain they were out of sight, he let off the throttle and brought the boat to an idle speed.
“What are you doing?” Butch asked immediately.
Ezra held up his hand, silently asking him to hold on. As they bobbed in the water, he tried to solve the riddle. Was it a broken control on his dashboard? His depth finder took a direct hit. Maybe some of the other electronics were fried.
Without engine power, the boat spun around and went back down the river.
“Ezra,” Butch said with a complaint in his tone.
“Just a second. I think I see it now.”
“What? What the hell is it?” Butch gripped his rifle like a security blanket.
It was obvious once he knew what to look for. He gave the motor some gas and confirmed a slight pull to the left. Reassured he knew what it was, he hit the throttle again, pointed the vessel upstream, and then resumed course. After he got them back up to a fast cruising speed, he checked on his passenger. There was no easy way to tell him what he’d discovered, so he simply said it.
“Yeah, we’re sinking.”
Denver, CO
Petteri’s people had done well setting up the hasty mining camp inside the stone walls of lower downtown Denver. After the terrible tragedy with the PWI workers, he went around reassuring the local TKM employees their safety was paramount. He also congratulated them for setting up the tents far enough away from the rock so as to be safe from explosions and other problems. The most distant tent was his personal office and the intelligence-gathering team.
“Show me what’s on the news right now,” he said to one of his employees.
Four large flat-panel televisions hung from frame mounts along the back wall of the tent. Most displayed imagery of other dig sites, since he liked to keep an eye on as many as possible, but the closest one now displayed a news service.
The female news anchor smiled at the camera before reading her lines. “The stock market is closed for another day, after losing half its value as a result of the catastrophe in America. Overseas markets are also closed after suffering devastating losses.”
He flicked the channel.
“…we’ve seen this time and again, Barbara. First, in Venezuela, then during flu scares in China. Society can only suffer so much before a population descends into a dog-eat-dog mentality. What we’re seeing in Nashville and St. Louis are almost certainly being repeated in the interior states. We simply haven’t been able to get reliable reporting from places like Colorado, Nebraska, or Wyoming.”
Each nugget of chaos worked in his favor. The longer the American government remained frozen, the more time he had to shift resources around the broken country to seize the pieces of his asteroid. The lack of communication and unfettered chaos also made it possible to “help” a few PWI employees disappear without anyone asking any questions.
He hit the clicker again.
The scene was from a weather channel. It appeared national guard units were helping old people out of a retirement center. The chyron at the bottom of the screen said it was taking place in Connecticut. His heart leapt, knowing even a state far from the blast zone was so unsettled. It meant relief was still a long way away.
It gave him more than enough time, he figured, before he’d convert TKM from part of the problem back into part of the solution. Sure, he’d shoved a few trailers of supplies in the faces of the locals when appropriate, but that was mostly for show. It was a small degree of credibility added to his public perception ledger. When the world went back and tried to figure out who did what, they would see his company was the first one trying to get aid to those who needed it. It would make them less likely to scrutinize what he did in the messy middle of the disaster.
One last channel click brought him to a member of Congress standing in the hallway of some posh building. He wasn’t one of the officials in Petteri’s pocket, so he listened to see what the rest of the government was saying.
“I assure my constituents in Colorado, I’m doing everything I can to get a relief force to you, but there are a number of hurdles necessary to clear before we do. One, there are so many people affected all across the country, it is hard to find transportation. Commercial planes are still grounded. Military craft are in high demand. I’ve been told we have some new guidance coming down from Homeland Security. Once I hear what they have to say, I’ll be able to give you an estimate for when help will be sent to you. For now…all I can say, my fellow Coloradans, is you must shelter in place to stay safe, but help will be there soon.”
Petteri guffawed, knowing how wrong the senator was. However, he tempered his laugh a little and looked around the room, inviting his employees to share in his sense of humor. “How is it we were able to bring in relief supplies on almost the first day, and this guy can’t get any help here days later?”
The others figured out it was safe to laugh with him.
Outside, the loading of his dump trucks had resumed. He’d given permission, through Howard, to ignore the bodies of the dead PWI workers. If they got loaded onto trucks with the ore, it was unfortunate, but necessary. The only thing of importance was clearing the rock, so they could remove the hazardous asteroid from the city. That was what he told his workforce, anyway.
The truth was far more lucrative.
CHAPTER 19
Crow Agency, MT
“Wow. This is amazing.” Grace stood in front of what had become of her NPS Chevy Suburban. “I didn’t think anything like this was possible.”
Shawn Runs Hard draped his arm around his son’s shoulder, obviously proud of what his brother-in-law had done to ensure the truck would make it to Cheyenne. “Cal is the best repairman in Montana. If anyone could have done this in one hour, it was him.” He used his free arm to wave over a skinny man in brown coveralls. “May I present my miracle worker, Calvin Tames Horse.”
Calvin took a bow. “It’s been a challenge, but also an honor.”
; “I’m blown away,” she gushed. “My dad is a mechanic, actually, but I’ve never seen him do a repair job like this.”
The truck’s body was still a mess. The sides looked like they’d been dragged along a rock-strewn path, and the hood and roof were pockmarked with small dents, as if they’d gone through the world’s most violent hailstorm. However, the front seat windows contained glass again, and there was a black replacement door for the one she’d lost. None of the windows in the cargo area were repaired, but the mechanic had installed a plywood partition behind the rear seats to effectively seal off the passenger compartment.
Asher went right to the glass pane next to the driver’s seat. “We would have been cruising in style through that snowstorm if we’d had these windows.”
“You drove through the snow with the way it was?” Logan said, impressed. “I was cold driving on the highway today.”
Grace puffed her chest. “Yeah, we’ve been through all kinds of nightmares with this old girl.”
Calvin banged on the hood. “Old? This girl isn’t old at all. She’s last year’s model. The engine was fine, so it didn’t take much time. I have a buddy who installs auto glass for a living. He drove down from Hardin and had them installed in record time. I used Lexan for the small window in the wooden bulkhead; it looks nice, but it scratches easily, so try to take care of it. Obviously, you can’t open it.”
He moved around to the replacement door, dragging Grace and the entourage with him. “This baby looks like garbage, I know. It’s not from the same model truck, so I had to cut and grind like crazy to stuff it in there, but it’s going to be better than having a huge hole for a door. You can cut it back out with an off-the-shelf grinder when you return to civilization.”
“Awesome,” Logan replied. “I was afraid of falling out the whole time we drove from Billings.”
Impact (Book 3): Adrift Page 15