by Mich Moore
a stop, the second shock wave hit them, smacking the RV again and sending it skidding another two hundred meters across the rough terrain. Everyone inside was rendered unconscious.
They began to come to an hour later. Brady, who sustained a bad gash to the forehead, did another head count and reported to Hillerman in sheer amazement that not only had everyone survived the ride across the prairie, but once again there had been no serious injuries, only a few bruises and scrapes.
The motor coach had landed on its side, hiked up against the base of a lone hill. Its body was covered in dents and deep scratches, but the walls and all of the tires were intact and firm.
The team climbed out through the exposed driver's side door and sat down in a small clearing nearby to discuss the situation and vet their options. It was nearly nine o'clock. During the meeting, Derek gave Hillerman and Broussard generous shots of morphine. The badly wounded major managed to fall asleep while Broussard remained alert.
It was Bautista who asked the one question that had been secretly haunting them all.
"Did we just set off a nuclear bomb?"
Z, who was staunching the flow of blood from a cut on his cheek with a handkerchief, answered it. "No. They're illegal according to the Denver Pact. Most likely hybrid blue-junior bombs."
"Blue-junior bombs?" Roger asked.
"Bunker busters streamlined for a drone. Sometimes they cap those with a low-yield nuclear warhead for that razzle-dazzle. I can only imagine that the large object that we saw was some sort of Advance South machine and that the guns determined it to be too large a threat."
"You think it worked?" Herschel asked.
"I believe it worked."
"But why? Why did they send so much firepower for us? Even if they thought we were smuggling weapons or food, that would be a police action."
Z shook his head. "That I do not know."
"You think they know about the DATs?" Roger asked.
Z wiped some blood out of his eye. "Again, I do not know."
The AIs were sitting nearby. David's comm screen began to glow. "$ are we =***."
Brady deliberately ignored him. "Folks, let's move forward. Agreed?"
Everyone agreed.
"Here's my take on what should happen next. We're still about fifty kilometers from the border. Trying to walk there is probably a bad idea for a couple of reasons. The clock is still working against us and we've got wounded. Why don't we get the RV back on its wheels and see if the DATs can pull us out of here?"
Herschel cocked his head to one side. "You mean like sled dogs?"
"Exactly like sled dogs. We strip the RV, make it as light as possible, put only necessary personnel inside, and then away we go. Those who can jog along will get short rides every couple kilometers or so."
Roger made a face. "Lieutenant, how fast do you think we'll be going?"
"Oh, maybe twenty clicks per hour."
"That's not fast enough."
"Sorry, but that's what we got. You got a better idea?"
"Yes," the engineer replied. "Two of us go back to the cattle trail and scope things out. Maybe that semi rode out the blast. We'll siphon gas from another car. Hotwire it. If we can get the trailer open, we could all ride in that. It would be a lot faster."
Brady turned to Z. "What about it, Z? Is it safe to go back there?"
"No," the physicist replied. "It won't be entirely safe for quite some time. But ... "
That was all the Roger needed to hear. He tagged Herschel. "Let's go. We can't wait for optimal conditions." He pulled out his phone. Once again it was not working. The other phones were dead as well, but the walkie-talkies were operational.
Bautista examined three cell phones. "The bomb probably took out all the towers for kilometers."
Brady was staring off in the distance. "I'm thinking that we should maintain a course of north-northeast. Right through those two tree lines. The ground looks fairly level for the next ten kilometers."
Kuiper looked unhappy. "The talkies have a range of sixty kilometers. Why not call Redstone? Have them send out a rescue party."
Brady's expression was stony. "Koop, we're behind enemy lines. Planning a manned rescue operation takes time. We could be waiting for days."
The scientist exploded. "That is completely unsatisfactory! You get Fields on the line right now!"
Brady sighed. "I'll ask Mr. Chang to make the call. He's the direct liaison."
"You do that!" the scientist snapped.
Herschel stepped into the conversation stream. "In the meantime, we try for the truck, right?"
Kuiper begrudgingly gave his consent.
"Okay. Give us one hour, there and back. We'll call you if we find it."
Brady and the others nodded.
"Wait." Broussard was awkwardly punching in numbers into his calculator watch with his good left hand.
"If the truck has been destroyed, then all we've got is the RV here. If we get the DATs commanded into seventh gear, we can cut our time to the border almost in half."
Kuiper's face brightened considerably. "Then please give them the command."
"I could, but with their comms screwed up, I wouldn't be able to definitively confirm that they had received it. And we could find ourselves in an even bigger mess."
The air went out of the group.
Broussard thwarted their disappointment. "In order to do it right, I'm going to need to give them commands from the mobile mission control."
"Neal, those computers were on the bus," Brady said. "There's no way they could have survived."
"The casings on that equipment are made of titanium, basically what you'd find in a jetliner's black box. If they didn't suffer too much damage, they should be viable."
"Great. But what about your arm?" Roger asked with genuine concern. "Can you keep up?"
"I'll do my best."
Broussard, Roger, and Herschel looked to Lieutenant Brady for approval.
It was obvious that Brady was not endorsing their plan, but he gave them what they wanted. "All right. One hour. And each of you takes a walkie-talkie." He remembered something. "Oh, and see if you can find any cargo straps. We can use them to make the harnesses for the DATs. There might be some in the semi if you can get into it. And watch it. That guy said he was carrying a load of live alligators."
Herschel was tucking his loose shirt back into his pants. "Those 'gators have given up the ghost by now."
"No doubt, but be careful anyway."
Broussard nodded. "The straps are a good idea." He glanced around. "Anything else?"
Nobody responded.
"Okay, I guess we're off."
The three men struck out for Don Daley's big rig. The moon was directly overhead and throwing down enough light to allow them to follow the swath of scraped dirt and smashed brush that the RV had made as it was being swept across the fields. As they jogged along, Broussard complained about his wounded arm. After about a kilometer, he wondered aloud if he should not turn around and go back. Roger and Herschel were at the point of agreeing with him when they came upon the silver Peugeot, twisted into a tragic figure eight, and then the shredded cab section of the Daley's Mack truck. Broussard scrambled inside the innards of the cab, rooted around its various busted compartments, and then produced a flask of brandy. "I saw this earlier." He twisted off its cap and poured the bottle's contents down his throat. The three men waited while the alcohol settled into his belly. The Lincoln Hills engineer made a thumbs-up sign. "Better."
They hurried on and soon came upon the final resting place of what appeared to be the remainders of the transport vehicles.
Two of the buses, minus most of their roofs, lay in the dust nearby like beached whales. The Mack's trailer was buried in about thirty centimeters of dirt and listing starboard. It had sustained surprisingly little damage from either the AS attack or the knockbacks from the bombs.
Gales of heavy dust blew in from the west from time to time, partially obscuring the landscape.
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bsp; Herschel, who had been running hard in the lead, stopped to catch his breath. "I'll see if I can get inside the trailer, look for straps. Roger, see if you can find any water or food. We're still a long way from home. Neal, you've got search and rescue duty for mission control. Use your radio when it's absolutely necessary. Somebody could still be monitoring us."
The three men spread out. Herschel headed for the trailer's carcass. He received a pleasant surprise when he walked around to the rear doors. Either the bomb's blast or the fast ride over the ground after the blast had somehow unhinged the steel door's thick locking system, leaving the two doors free to hang wide open.
The engineer poked his head inside and then quickly pulled away.
"Hey! Come here! There's something moving!"
Broussard and Roger came running.
"Alligators?" Roger asked.
Herschel stepped back inside the trailer's black maw. A thin flashlight beam appeared and played around the interior. "Yeah," he called back. "A couple of the crates popped open. They're loose. Are these guys man-eaters?"
Roger and Broussard looked at each other.
"Don't know," Roger answered. "My advice is to avoid them."
The flashlight's beam flicked in wide semicircles.
"Pay dirt!"
Herschel appeared at the doors, draped in red nylon ropes. "I found some straps."
Loud hissing noises rose up behind him.
"Wow," Roger said. "How big are they?"
Herschel hopped down. "Big enough." He took out his phone and made a note of the trailer's coordinates. "We'll let Redstone know when we get back. They won't last too much longer out here."
Herschel and Roger pushed the trailer's doors closed and wrote, "WARNING! LIVE CARGO: ALLIGATORS" on