They both stood there, frozen, as they got a good look at it. The dull metal was pockmarked with black spots, it had been dented and scraped, but the white letters of a name were clear: Petteri-2.
Asher spoke at barely as whisper. “It’s TKM’s asteroid transporter. Diedre said they were dropping nukes into the approaching rock. She didn’t say anything about the spaceship coming down with it.”
Another voice broke the tension. “Whoa! We heard about this on the news. Captain Davis was the guy who saved the planet. That’s his ship!”
She let go of Asher and spun around. “Logan?”
He grinned sheepishly. “No one checked the cargo area after you loaded up. That big medical bag was like a pillow. I really have to pee though!”
Grace was speechless. Behind the boy, about a hundred yards back, his father came stumbling out of the terminal, looking around for her and Asher. When he saw them, he waved and shouted, “There’s no one inside!” Then, he seemed to notice his son. “Logan?”
The boy’s father spoke a different language, presumably Crow, but she didn’t really need a translator to understand the curse words intended for his boy.
She wanted to cuss to the world, too. Having to care for Logan added one more stress to her day; a day which included learning her mother was gone. “Jeez, speaking of getting lucky. I wish I got lucky once in a while. Trouble seems to always come back at me like a boomerang.”
St. Louis, MO
“We either turn around or go forward. Those are our only options.” Ezra had no idea which was the better course of action. Ahead, it was impossible to move forward due to the wall of debris blocking their way. Behind, pirates. If they went downriver, they’d be forced all the way back to Chester, nearly sixty miles, to get more gasoline. Floating downstream would make it easier to save fuel, but, again, pirates.
“I’ve got to tell you, I think we need a third choice. You know? Maybe we abandon the boat and try to find a car or truck. Even bikes would be better than being stuck on this river.”
Ezra idled the motor as Susan’s Grace floated free in the current. Water poured out from the jumble of debris rammed against the bridge, creating a whitewater rafter’s dream for a few hundred yards. He surveyed the shoreline on both sides of the river, deciding the St. Louis side, on the left, was more inviting.
“I’m going to pull ashore over there.” He pointed to a long incline made of cobblestones at the edge of the brown water. It ran north and south on the shore, creating what looked like a mile-wide boat ramp underneath the Arch. It provided a nice, clear spot to beach his boat. “Let’s get out and check around.”
“Aye, aye,” Butch replied.
He swung the vessel around, facing toward the western shore. The left pontoon obviously rode lower in the water. After convincing Butch they weren’t going to sink, he’d kept a close eye on the situation. As they neared St. Louis, it was apparent to him one side was lower than the other. He sighed. “I guess she’s a goner anyway.”
They held on as the boat cut through the chop. As they neared shore, he goosed the throttle to lift the front end. It allowed them to hit the rocky bank with enough momentum to keep from being washed back off. As soon as they made contact, he raised the trim, hustled to the front, then jumped off with a guide rope. Even if they were abandoning it, he didn’t want it to wash away.
“Landfall,” he said dryly, hating what he was being forced to do.
Butch grabbed his backpack and the rifle, but stood at the edge of the deck before jumping down. “Are you sure about this? I was halfway kidding about a third choice. I don’t get paid by the hour, you know, but if you wanted to go back downriver, I’d be fine getting some more windshield time with you.”
“Yeah, I appreciate the offer, but the thing stopping me is those pirates. The people of Chester put their skin in the game to get us out of there. It wouldn’t be right to go back and say we gave up. Besides, pulling up on the cobblestone shore gave me an idea. What if we could find someone with a boat trailer? They could pull us out of the water, then deposit us somewhere upriver, beyond this mess.” He thumbed sideways to the clogged river.
“That’s about as likely as me voluntarily going for a swim.” He chuckled. “But you seem to have good luck from time to time. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a boat trailer right around the corner.”
They both glanced to a white stone staircase going up the thirty-foot hillside below the Gateway Arch. Climbing up would allow them to see what was going on at the Arch grounds, but it would also give them a better look at the river. Ezra scrambled back into the boat to collect his rifle and backpack, as well as the bobber keychain. No sense making it easy for any of the fishermen to walk by and hop in.
“You ever been to St. Louis?” Butch asked, evidently trying to make small talk.
The energy of the water streaming through the blockade of barges and other metal objects created a low-pitched whine, almost sub-sonic in nature. The howl ate at him, sounding like there was an injured animal in the water, so he was anxious to talk over it. “I did some traveling for the Post Office, but I never had the pleasure of coming here for business. Passed it on the highway a few times driving to other places, but never visited downtown. Looks like a nice area, present situation excluded.” They’d walked up the bank of the shore, along a giant flood wall. Bits of driftwood balanced on top of the wall, suggesting the water had splashed to that height.
“Hey, there’s someone up there.” Butch peered up the staircase.
Sure enough, Ezra saw the men at the top. They appeared to be gawking at the half-mile-wide river.
“Let’s go see what they see,” he replied, hitting the steps two at a time. Butch ran past him, skipping steps, too. Ezra managed to keep pace for a short distance, but soon reverted to trotting up one step at a time. His fitness level wasn’t great to begin with, and the last few days of foul sleep and constant tension had drained him.
When he reached the top, he turned to look out on the river. It was worse than he’d imagined when seeing the blockade from below. From his new position, it was clear how the whole mess began. A pair of old bridges had collapsed upstream, perhaps aided by the runaway barges, and the strong current then brought them downriver. However, the modern interstate bridge remained standing, and it acted as a catching glove for the others. From there, with portions of three bridges working in concert, almost every piece of floating debris became trapped, including the barges, towboats, and shipping containers he’d seen earlier.
Ezra whistled in amazement.
A man’s voice startled him back into the moment. “By order of the Metropolitan Police Department of the city of St. Louis, you are hereby ordered to surrender all weapons.”
The guns were the only reason he and Butch were still alive. Ezra wasn’t about to give them up to anyone. He reached for his rifle strap out of habit.
Denver, CO
“Sir, we’ve got the Yellowstone location on flying drone’s video feed.” Howard clicked on one of the big televisions, then he gestured for the technicians to leave the tent. “Clear the room, please.”
The men and women left him and Howard alone. Howard changed the channel until he came to what looked like a black-and-white security camera video. It showed a piece of the asteroid, perhaps half as big as the one there in Denver. The construction company working around the rock were in yellow vehicles, typical of any road work crew in America. However, he also noted the PWI trucks hovering at the edges of the scene, as well as the armed guards standing by those trucks.
Howard coughed to get his attention. “The team is in place. We don’t need your approval for this operation; it’s on my watch. However, if you wish to call it off, please let me know.”
Petteri was impressed, as always, with Howard. If the lawyers ever asked, he could say with a clear conscience he did not order whatever came next. True to his wishes, he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, though he had an idea.
“Just show me,” he said, keeping it vague whether he was ordering or calling off whatever was taking place on the screen. He put all his trust in his assistant for such matters as security.
“Very good, sir.” Howard held a phone to his face. “You are a go.”
They watched for a couple of minutes, but nothing happened. Trucks arrived at the asteroid, excavators loaded debris into dump trucks, and then they drove away. Based on the volume of the rock, it would take hundreds of loads to get it all, but each truck carried untold riches away from his property. “I want those trucks tracked down afterward, okay?”
Howard acknowledged him.
The screen changed abruptly. There was no audio, but the tempo switched from a hurried extraction operation to a literal evacuation. Men flung themselves into trucks. Tractors sped away from the rock. The guards on the perimeter hunched over and aimed at someone off camera.
“Here we go,” Howard advised.
For about sixty seconds he watched as the men with guns fought and fell over on the rocky rise next to the bulky black asteroid. The PWI guards were picked off one by one, and their trucks were shot up, until there were only a couple of men left.
“There you go! TKM is now back in possession of this dig site.” The ex-major tapped the screen, pointing to the black rock.
“Well, I don’t know how you did it, but congratulations.” Again, his obfuscated language was designed to fool any eavesdroppers. It was blatantly apparent how he’d done it: with lots of guns.
A couple of men walked in front of the asteroid as others scurried up the hill toward the wrecked guard trucks. He may have seen someone shoot at men who surrendered, but those messy details were none of his concern. The only thing that mattered was a favorable outcome.
“Sir. It looks like we suffered no casualties. My team leader said they had no idea we were coming for them.”
He chuckled, reveling in his unending good luck in his recovery efforts. “Tell your man I personally appreciate his hard work and expertise. We may need him again, soon.”
“It’s Misha Gagarin, sir. I flew him in from Billings for this operation.”
“Misha, huh? It looks like he’s more than made up for his slow reaction to our other, uh, problems, hasn’t he? Still, good work deserves praise. Let him know I’m watching.”
Howard sighed in a disturbing way. Almost like he was burdened with passing along bad news, rather than good. “Sir, he’s going to ask about his family. What should I tell him?”
“Oh, yeah. Where do we stand with that?”
The man gulped. “Well, in a recent phone call you told him his wife and kids were safe. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to, uh, confirm that’s precisely true. Local police reported finding a dead woman in the apartment listed as his current address in Bryansk.”
Petteri didn’t let the news get him down. At the time, he was so angry with Mr. Gagarin, his whole family needed to die. If some of them were terminated, but not all of them, it was a compromise he could live with. “I did tell him his loved ones were safe, didn’t I? It doesn’t matter. He’s doing good work for us now. By the time he learns the truth, we’ll shove one of those dump trucks of riches at him and he’ll forget he even had a family.”
“So, we operate like nothing happened?” Howard asked.
“Of course. What do you think we’d do, tell him we had his family killed by accident, but we’d still really like him to help us out? I know you’re joking, Howard.”
“I am, sir. I’ll keep him so busy he won’t have time to worry about anything else. When the time comes, we’ll probably need to clean up a few dangling issues anyway.”
He smiled. “Taking out the trash, huh? I knew there was a reason I paid you so well. Hey, if Mr. Gagarin isn’t able to use his dump truck, I’d just as soon give it to you!” He was feeling giddy after regaining two of his dig sites.
All he had to do was confirm Mr. Stricker’s gun restrictions were being enacted. Then he’d set up the meet and greet between him and Dorothy. He wanted to see it happen, if it could be arranged. It would be a lot like the destruction he’d watched on the video screen a few minutes earlier. He couldn’t deny he, like all the other Joe Schmoes out there, enjoyed watching train wrecks, too.
“Now, show me the next site.”
CHAPTER 21
Cheyenne, WY
It was not a happy reunion. Grace and Asher stood by one of the police cruisers as Shawn Runs Hard laid into his son. She pretended to focus intently on the wreckage strewn across the landing strip, though there wasn’t much to look at.
The dull gray metal remains were rectangular, with a smooth outer shell. The side facing her was intact, but the ends were frayed and mangled, like someone had broken the piece off a much larger ship. She took it for granted the far side of the craft was exposed to the elements, too, but she didn’t see the need to go look. She was far more worried about Shawn and Logan.
“We have to find a plane so those two can get where they’re going.” Grace turned away from the spaceship fragment. “Then we can get on with our trip. My dad sounded like he was going to take some time to drive his boat across the country, but I want to be in Denver well before him.”
Asher checked his watch. “Yeah, I think we still have enough time to make it to Denver before the sun goes down, but we should leave right away. It’s two hours, at least, depending on traffic.”
The rest of the airport remained silent, reinforcing what Shawn said when he came out of the terminal. If there was no one inside, where would they find a plane for her Crow friends? It still mattered to her to have TKM lose the legal battle for the piece of asteroid on the reservation.
She snapped her fingers, then ran over to Shawn. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt, but it looks like this airport is shut down. It couldn’t have helped them to have this big wreck blocking their runway. I’m thinking Denver will be in better shape.” Asher had mentioned the airport in the Mile High City was immense. If anyone was still operating their planes, it would be them.
The father looked at his son for a few seconds, though no longer with anger. After a moment of consideration, he turned to her. “I do need to go to Washington to help my people…but having my boy here changes everything. I’m thinking of borrowing a truck and taking him back to Crow Agency myself. From there, I can find another way east.”
“Are you sure? We don’t mind taking you.” She wanted to be polite after all he’d done for her, but she also preferred to get back to her own mission.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said to her. “Let’s drive into downtown Cheyenne and see if we can find someone to explain what the heck happened to their airport. I’d like to know if air traffic was shut down all over the country. It would save me the trip of going to Denver, or anywhere else, and not being able to catch a flight.”
“Makes sense,” she agreed, starting the walk to the truck. When they got there, Shawn chose to sit in the back seat with Logan. Obviously, he wanted to keep a close eye on the young man.
She drove them off the airport property and into a residential part of the city, but Shawn directed them to the downtown area. When they reached what she guessed was the main part of the city, he motioned for her to pull over.
“Why stop here?” she asked. The downtown reminded her of Billings. There were few buildings taller than five stories; most were one or two. However, they were spread out, with wide streets separating them. She’d stopped in front of a long brick building.
“This says it’s a police station,” Shawn replied.
The reddish-tan brick building was unusual compared to the rest of the city. It took up one city block and wasn’t higher than four stories. The first floor was made up of small glass cubes, which probably let in a lot of light. The second floor was solid brick, with no windows. The top two levels were designed to look a bit like a castle’s ramparts. It was made of twenty-by-twenty-foot compartments, though every other one was empty along the outer wall, creating
an architectural style that was a mixture of medieval fortress, prison, and art museum.
Shawn jumped out of the truck, ran around the hood, then went up a small staircase to the front entrance. He pushed into the glass door, intending to go inside, but bounced backward and fell to the pavement. Logan laughed.
Grace held back her chuckle. The bigger problem was the locked door. Why would a police station be closed? She scanned up and down the street, searching for anyone who could give them a clue about what the heck was going on. As before, there was no one.
Shawn banged on the doors but not with much zest. He seemed to wilt at not getting the answer he’d hoped. After a short time, the man came back down the steps at a slow pace.
Grace rolled Asher’s window down to talk to Shawn. “Hey, were there any signs up there? Do we know what’s going on?”
He shrugged. “There’s nothing at all. It’s locked. They’re gone.”
Asher wasn’t paying attention; he tapped his watch and seemed consumed by whatever he saw in his tiny rectangular smartphone screen.
Grace made up her mind not to lose the momentum, so she spoke with her park ranger voice. “Sir, I’m going to need you to get back in. We’re driving until we find a living person, no matter how far we have to go.”
The drive on the highway from Crow Agency had been lonely from the get-go, but she tried to remember the last time they’d passed another vehicle. Grace couldn’t say for sure. An hour, perhaps.
Once Shawn was secure, she smashed down the gas pedal. In her mind, it was important to show she had the situation in hand, though her spiking adrenaline and shaking hands belied the truth.
The boomerang of bad luck kept slicing directly toward her face.
St. Louis, MO
Ezra turned around slowly. The voice demanding the surrender of weapons had come from a nearby police truck. An officer in a light-blue shirt stood at his open door with a bullhorn, aiming it toward various parts of the park-like grounds underneath the six-hundred-foot Arch. A small crowd had gathered behind it; a second officer took guns and tossed them into the rear cargo area of the SUV.
Impact (Book 3): Adrift Page 17