“Now, the billion-dollar question is whether TKM has assets arriving at all these locations.”
Dorothy laughed. “I’m good, but I’m not that good. I’ve spent all my caffeine energy dialing in the pieces you asked for. I don’t know squat about what you’ve got on the ground at each of these. I have, however, talked to your friend at Homeland Security several times. I deflected when I could and reassured him you were doing everything possible to send rescue equipment, but I don’t think it’s the real reason he keeps calling me.” She ended with a sigh of frustration.
“And why is that?” he asked cautiously.
“It’s because he has the hots for me,” she said with an obvious mix of pride and disgust. Her open-ended statement also practically begged him to reply.
Petteri needed to get over to Howard as soon as possible. He’d know where things stood regarding getting his men into position. They had Denver locked up tight, but it was only one small percentage of his asteroid. He needed to get a grip on the pieces all across the middle part of the USA. He didn’t want to indulge Dorothy on what sounded like a personal issue, but he also couldn’t afford to discount one of his surprisingly useful acquisitions.
While he considered his reply, another thought jumped in his head. A weird, out-of-the-blue leap of logic which characterized some of his more brilliant insights over the years. What if Stricker was trying to weasel his way into Dorothy’s good graces to get leverage on him? What if he’d succeeded in recruiting her and she was bringing it up now to throw Petteri off the scent? What if the government was fighting back, using both of them in ways he’d never see coming? What if…
Suddenly aware how paranoid he was getting for no good reason, he let go of the ridiculous speculation. Still, he couldn’t write it off completely, so he had to dig a little into her mindset. Petteri clenched his jaw, hating how off-topic he was about to go. “Please. Tell me what you’re feeling.”
Chapter 7
Billings, MT
“There!” Logan shouted. “BLM headquarters for Billings. I see the sign.”
She pulled the truck up to the rock garden serving as the front yard of the building. The property sat in an upscale office park, and the place was designed to look like a stone lodge found in Yellowstone National Park. The lights were off, due to the power failure of the town, and there weren’t any cars moving in the front parking lot.
“You guys want to wait here?” she asked, not sure whether it was smarter to leave them, or bring them. She was far outside her element, though after seeing the men shot in the fast-food lobby, she thought sticking together was the right call. Safety in numbers wasn’t only a cliché for horror movies.
“Hell no,” Asher replied. “Now isn’t the time for you to be alone; not after whatever you saw back there. That, plus what those men were about to do to our resident thief.” He thumbed back at Logan. “We all need to stay close.”
“I agree,” Logan added. “I promise my stealing days are over. Please don’t leave me alone, okay?”
“Fine,” she sighed with relief. “Follow me.” She’d never put the pistol back in its holster after stumbling away from those dead firefighters. Grace grabbed her hat, then lifted the gun from the center console. She held it close as she got out of the truck and walked toward the entrance.
When they all gathered up, she first motioned to push through the two glass doors, but she halted at the sight of broken glass. “Crap. Someone’s already been here.” Her stomach turned to jelly, imagining a bunch of dead BLM officials inside their offices.
Before she could change her mind, Grace took a few steps forward.
“Wait!” Asher cautioned. “Let me go first.”
She laughed with a nervous energy. “How does that make any sense? May I remind you your uniform is only for show.”
Asher glanced over to Logan. “The guy is supposed to go first.”
The dirty kid nodded. “I think that’s right. Bros before hos.”
Grace sighed with disbelief. “I don’t think you know what that means. Look, guys, I appreciate it, but right now I’m the only one who has any training with firearms. Doesn’t it make sense to have the best shooter at the front, rather than who has the most testosterone?”
Logan put up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m cool. As long as I’m last, I’m happy.”
Asher rolled his eyes, then looked at her. “I was only suggesting I’d go first if asked. Entering buildings is city stuff. You know, the stuff I’m good at. But the main thing is I’m not hiding behind you; I’m trying to be your partner.”
She let go of some of her nervous energy with quiet laughter. “I guess I understand. You didn’t seem like the macho type.”
He reached over and held her wrist for a moment. “I know you saw terrible things in that food joint and you don’t want to talk about them. Since I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you so quiet. Remember, though, you’re not in this alone, all right?”
“Thanks. I’ll tell you later what I saw in there, I promise.” She quieted to a whisper. “I don’t want to scare anyone.”
They both knew she was talking about Logan.
Louder, she added. “Let’s go. The offices should be through here.”
Grace, gun in hand, led them into a darkened corridor. They passed a conference room well-lit by an outside window, but it was empty. When they went through another set of doors, they entered an open floor plan office area with lots of cubicles. The first desk was a mess, with all the personal knickknacks tossed on the floor and the computer removed. A quick scan of the other desks showed a similar fate.
“This town is coming apart at the seams,” Grace stated to herself.
“You can say that again,” a female voice replied from a central cubicle. The woman stood up to look at Grace, but not all the way. Her stance suggested she was ready to duck back down again.
“We’re with the NPS, ma’am. We’re here to rescue a Felicia Nicktov and take her to the airport.”
The woman hesitated before nodding repeatedly. “That’s me! I’m Felicia.”
Grace looked around, expecting others from the office to be there as well. Was Felicia by herself? If so, how did she avoid the looters? She waved the woman to come closer.
“I’ll be right there.” Felicia was dressed similarly to Grace, with dark blue pants and a tan shirt. Her upside-down triangular shoulder patch carried the words Bureau of Land Management, which was a sister organization inside the Department of the Interior. The interdepartmental link was probably why the police officer dispatched her to retrieve the woman. It wasn’t only to save his own men, it was also a professional courtesy.
Felicia’s dark hair was cut short, appropriate for a middle-aged woman working in an office, but her face was bruised on one side, like she’d been in a scuffle.
Asher saw it, too. “Are you all right, ma’am? Are you hurt?”
“Help me escape and all will be well. They’re still in the building, I’m pretty sure.”
“Who?” Grace asked in a hushed tone, aware their voices could be carrying into the hallways.
“The people who tore the place apart, of course. There are armed men working in gangs. They chased away all the other workers and made off with the equipment. I stayed in my office, hoping they’d at least leave me alone.”
“Did they?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
“Yeah, actually, they did. But they stripped the rest of the place down to the wires. Loaded it all up in a big truck. They said they’ve cleaned out every building in this office park and even had the gall to tell me to my face they’d come back for my computer when I was done with it.”
“Wow,” Logan blurted out.
He caught Felicia’s attention. “What’s a kid doing here? Don’t you know it’s dangerous for civilians to be out and about?”
Grace couldn’t agree more. “We’re taking him home on our way to the airport.”
The BLM manager looked back and forth be
tween her and Logan. “I’m sorry, I’m under a deadline. I have to get to the airport immediately. Didn’t the police tell you?”
Grace shrugged involuntarily. “They didn’t tell me anything but to pick you up and take you north to the airport. Are you really in that big of a rush?”
The woman nodded rapidly, as she’d done before. “If I don’t make it now, there might not be another plane for a week. I’ve got important information I have to share with my bosses. Information that could impact the entirety of Billings, and much of the American West.”
Grace turned to Logan, not sure what was the right thing to do.
Grand Tower, IL
Despite the imposition on his journey, once underway with his four new passengers, Ezra found comfort that he’d chosen correctly. Susan was up above, undoubtedly pleased he was working hard to help his neighbors survive a disaster. She would counsel him to not worry about the delay getting to Grace, but he was also certain she would pull him aside and add, just don’t make a habit of it.
He laughed to himself, thinking about the woman he’d loved for the past twenty years of his life. Their beloved boat drifted downriver toward Cape Girardeau. A fate he could not have ever predicted a few days earlier.
They’d brought aboard the teen girl with the broken leg; her mother accompanied her as support. They’d also taken on an elderly woman who’d been tossed around by the waters, leading her family to believe she had internal bleeding. The dirty man who’d waved them down turned out to be her husband, and he came along with her. The four passengers sat near the front of the boat, while he and Butch remained in the back.
“How long do you think it will take?” the injured girl asked after they’d been on the water a short time.
Since both women seemed to be in a great deal of pain, he decided against a bouncy high-speed journey, but he did use a minimal amount of thrust while floating downriver. It would save gas as a side-effect, certainly, but he wasn’t too worried about a delay. The current was already moving extremely fast due to the higher-than-normal floodwaters. He looked at the speedometer, knowing it was adding the surface speed of the boat in addition to how fast the current carried them.
“It says we’re doing about twenty. Figure an hour to get to Cape, tops.”
Ellsworth, the dirty man who’d flagged them, spoke up. “Anything is better than waiting for help to arrive on the shore. We really appreciate you taking the time to carry our wounded.”
“Our pleasure,” he replied, meaning it.
Ellsworth sat close to Butch so he could speak with Ezra. “That used to be our town.” He pointed to the Illinois side, though Ezra had seen the remains of the town when he picked up his passengers. Being out on the water gave him a frontal view of the flat area of stripped trees, telephone poles, and other hints it used to be a thriving little village. None of the buildings were left intact.
“I’m sorry. We’ve seen the wreckage of flooding all the way down past Cape. In fact, we came from Kentucky Lake, originally. The dam broke and drained water down into the Ohio. I bet people farther south are worse off than you are, honestly.”
“I don’t see how,” he said, upbeat despite the situation. “The river has destroyed towns and cities, but it also rearranged the landscape, like the Tower Island Chute.” He gestured south of his washed-out town. A flipped-over barge partially blocked what looked like a side channel to the main river. Lots of loose barges, old shipping containers, and giant trees floated back there. There might have been enough room for his boat to enter, but he wouldn’t want to risk it. “Up until this flood, it was an oxbow bend; a five-mile-long horseshoe-shaped lake where the river used to flow a hundred years ago.”
“What’s it good for?” Butch asked.
“Tourists,” he chuckled. “The river used to flow around that bend. When it got cut off, it left a four-square-mile island of Missouri attached to the wrong side of the river. It was one of the few places where you could walk from Illinois to Missouri territory without using a boat or a bridge.”
“That’s interesting,” Butch allowed.
“It’s also famous for fishing,” Ellsworth remarked. “At least, it was. Fish are tossed in there each time it floods. Now, since the water is flowing through there again, it might not be so good. Plus, all the new trash…”
They continued downriver, passing the second exit to the oxbow bend a few minutes later. Ellsworth pointed it out, though it looked the same as the other one, a side channel filled with old boats, barges, and pieces of houses. It was as if the old lake acted like a magnet to catch everything floating over it.
Almost an hour later, shortly before he figured they’d see Cape Girardeau come into view, movement caught his eye on the water. A large towboat plied the waves on the opposite side of the river, near the Illinois shore. It was unusual in a sense, since it wasn’t pushing the rust-colored barges like a normal tug. Instead, it was pulling half a dozen smaller watercraft behind it, including a couple of pontoon boats.
“What do you make of that?” he asked Butch, knowing the landlubber probably wouldn’t know if it was normal or not.
It was too far to make out the exact number of boats, or if anyone was standing around on the deck of the tugboat, but there was obviously someone piloting the ship. The boats dragging behind reminded him of prisoners being led to their doom, a vision he didn’t want to believe. The only hint of relief came when he couldn’t see any flashes of red. The red boat didn’t seem to be with them.
Butch chewed on it for a bit before replying. “I’m sure they’re like us, trying to stay upriver from the turbulence down where the rivers meet.”
Ellsworth jumped into the conversation. “We heard on the weather radio there was a cataclysmic disaster down in Cairo, Illinois. Did you see it?”
He shivered. “Oh yeah, we both saw it from real close up.”
Ezra was happy to share the story as a way to keep from endlessly looking over to the towboat. As they drifted downriver, the tug stayed on course going the opposite direction. Five minutes later, his retelling of their journey through the broken dam and ending up at the town of Cairo was finally over. Cape was in sight, and the other boat was gone.
“Thanks, mister,” the young girl said as her quiet mother helped her off the front of the boat.
Ellsworth was already ashore with the older woman. He waved back to Ezra. “Yes, we really appreciate it. If you ever get back to Grand Tower after we rebuild it, I’ll make sure you both get some sort of thanks from the townsfolk.”
He motioned toward the young girl. “Don’t worry about it. I have a daughter, a few years older than her, and I would want someone helping her, too. We all have to stick together when things get rough.”
“Well, fair enough. But we’ll pay for your gas at the very least.” Ellsworth held out two twenty-dollar bills.
It was tempting to take it, but he made himself refuse it. Though it had been soaked the day before, he still carried his wallet with him. He had all his credit cards, a bank ATM card, and a few hundred dollars in cash. The injured might need those twenties at the hospital. “Let’s settle up when we come to visit, okay?”
Ellsworth didn’t drag it out. “You drive a hard bargain, Ezra. Thanks again for the lift. I hope you two find your daughter.”
“So do I,” he replied, reversing the engine to get them away from shore. He got them facing upriver, then eased the throttle up to a fuel-efficient cruising speed again. They’d come almost all the way back to where they’d parked the boat for their walk into town, so he was familiar with the landscape. As before, he checked for the red speedboat during his drive out of town, though it was nowhere to be seen.
He didn’t see it in the hour it took them to return close to where he’d picked up the injured people. However, when they came around a sharp bend in the river, the tugboat they’d passed earlier was adrift in the middle of the channel. A man on the top level of the three-deck tug waved his arms wildly to get their attenti
on.
None of the boats were tied up behind it.
Internal alarm bells went wild in Ezra’s head.
“We’ve got to get around it before his friends come back,” he said to Butch.
Chapter 8
Billings, MT
Grace was back in a familiar spot. She gripped the steering wheel of the NPS truck and drove like lives depended on her. The gas tank was down to about one quarter, and the heater was still blowing at full blast, though the brighter day and warmer temperatures certainly helped offset the chill of the wind throughout the interior.
Logan chose to roll around in the rear cargo area rather than sit in the seat next to the missing door. Felicia wouldn’t sit there, either; she buckled herself behind Grace.
“Logan, I promise we’ll get you home the second we get done at the airport.” Grace had to turn around to see the boy in the way back.
“Works for me,” he replied.
“I really appreciate it,” the BLM agent added. “I’m going to note your names so I can tell someone up the chain of command how you helped me and my office today.”
Grace didn’t want anyone trying to pin an award on Asher, the fake officer. “We’re good. Maybe tell them it was members of the park service. It’ll reflect well on the whole service, you know?”
Before anyone could reply, a shotgun blast went off in a parking lot to the right. Grace ducked out of reflex, but also noticed a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt holding the gun. He’d blasted out the window of a sports car and seemed to reach inside, ready to unlock the door. She and the man locked eyes as they went by, and Grace imagined the guy turning the gun on her for having seen him. However, after a few seconds driving in frozen silence, she let out a huge sigh of relief. “My God, has everyone stopped taking their medications in this town? Why is everything going to crap here?”
Felicia laughed tentatively. “How long have you been in Billings?”
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 45