“You have to warn your friends. TKM is hot to reinforce their town. It’s part of their grand strategy, or whatever. I can’t explain it all. You have to warn them!”
“But what about you?” she shot back. Asher stood close, trying to hear what had her so agitated. “We can’t shoot you.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll…” He seemed to think about it. “I’ll come up with an idea. Just protect yourself. Keep your friends safe. I have to go.”
“I love you, Dad.”
Asher caught her attention and acted like he was about to clap.
She kept talking. “Dad. You owe me one after this…” Grace nodded to Asher and he clapped once.
Ezra laughed. “I love you, too. I’ll bring my next clap to you in person.”
She hung up, stood catching her breath for a second or two, then launched into action. “There’s an attack coming! Get ready!”
Shawn was nearby, talking to what looked to be elders in his tribe. “What have you heard?” he asked, starting to limp her way.
She moved to meet him. “My dad called. He said TKM is coming from the south. Right now.” Grace pointed, now sure the gleaming metal was a semitruck. It was definitely on the highway. A second one came over the rise behind it.
Shawn and the others studied the south for a brief moment, which seemed to be all the time necessary for him to make up his mind. The Crow chairman yelled, “Everyone, get ready for an attack!”
Candy ran up with a pair of rangers. “What can we do?”
They’d asked Grace, but Shawn replied. “If you wouldn’t mind, can you drive out there and warn who you can?” He pointed to the line of trucks and cars hanging out on the gravel road. The TKM prisoners had left on foot long ago, but the remaining line of vehicles had been waiting to go to the west when Shawn said it was time. They’d need to know what was coming.
Grace and Candy shared a moment, as if the other woman wanted her approval to do as asked by a civilian. “My dad warned us about the attack. He’s on that convoy. If you can help Shawn, I’ll try to help my dad.”
The redhead looked at her and Asher. “You two take care of business here. We’ll take care of things out on the road.”
“Thank you,” Grace said, suddenly compelled to embrace Candy. “For everything.”
Candy hugged her back, then ran toward her truck.
Grace stood there for a second, marveling at how everyone was scurrying to their appointed spots. She had no idea what it would be like on a warship, but it might look a bit like the ordered chaos around her.
Her brief reverie was interrupted when the window of the convenience store imploded with a loud pop. Two more bangs rattled the gas station. One hit the wall with a thud. The other slammed off the steel bumper of a pickup truck, then deflected into a metal oil drum being used as a trash can.
As her dad had promised, an attack had begun. However, they’d been given enough of a warning. That trash can might have been someone’s head if they’d all been standing around gasbagging.
She grabbed Asher’s hand.
“Run!”
Outside Boulder, WY
The truck rolled along the highway, heading for the town where his daughter had miraculously appeared, and all he could think about was the clap Grace had sent through the line. He recalled the last real clap he got from Susan. Not the final one they shared, but the happy one she gave him when they were facing down Babs, the neighborhood busybody. Neither of them had any idea it would be the last in their longtime game. He understood why Grace had wanted to pick up where her mom left off, but he couldn’t bear to think she might have given him the final play in their back-and-forth, and that he and his friends would unwillingly be part of how she died.
Not on my watch.
He leaned close to Butch. “I need you and Haley to open the doors of the container in about thirty seconds. I’ll start this party when you do. You’ll want your rifles at the ready.”
Ezra’s mind reeled with what was about to happen. It would be far easier to sneak up behind each of the five men and kill them outright, perhaps using Butch’s knife to do it quietly. However, unlike the men he’d been forced to shoot in Christian’s container, he wanted to give these guys a choice. None of them were real soldiers, and this wasn’t a real war. Each of the civilian guards probably had stories about how they came to be there, and there might even be a father trying to get back to his daughter among them. He needed to give them a chance to exit the mission gracefully. As long as it didn’t unduly slow him down.
He’d moved to the far end of the container, pistol drawn. His heart fluttered like a hummingbird inside his chest. “Listen up!” he shouted. “Anyone who doesn’t want to die in the next ten seconds, walk out the front door and jump off the trailer.”
He pointed his pistol at the nearest man. The guy looked at him for a second, glanced at a couple of the other men, then laughed a little as he faced Ezra. “Are you nuts? There are seven of us against one of you. Don’t you want to get paid? We sure as hell do.”
“Actually,” Ezra countered, “there are three of us and five of you, but we already have guns pointed at your backs.” He motioned to the end of the box, where Butch and Haley guarded the doors. They were in the light, and still covered with splotches of dried blood, which made them appear like crazed serial killers, giving him a spur of the moment idea. “And the blood on our shirts is from the last bunch of guys who refused our offer.”
The lead man’s hands went up. “Whoa! Hey. We don’t want any trouble.” Luckily, the other men followed suit. A standoff would have taken time…and he didn’t have time to give.
Ezra hurriedly went on. “I’m giving you boys a chance to walk out alive. Drop your guns. Jump off the truck. You’ll still technically be in the fight, so you can still get paid. You also avoid the gunfight at the town where lots of people are going to die, so you’re welcome. I have only one demand. DO IT NOW!”
The men dropped their rifles, then filed out. Butch nodded confirmation when they’d jumped.
Ezra leaned heavily against the wall of the container, adrenaline draining. “I don’t know what I would have done if they’d refused.”
“It would have been messy,” Butch agreed.
He came out of the box, ready for the next task. “We have to get up to the cab of the truck. Any ideas on how to do it safely?” They were moving at about twenty-five miles an hour, as best he could guess. The crack of rifle shots echoed out in the rocky scrub lands, as if some of the men in boxes up ahead were already taking pot shots at the town. A civilian helicopter hovered low, a couple of miles out to their side, perhaps observing or even coordinating the attack. The five men he’d tossed overboard were already making their way in that direction, possibly thinking they’d flag down the aircraft.
Time continued to get away from him.
There was no time to overthink it. Ezra moved to the front of the trailer on the driver’s side. “I’m going to go this way. Butch, you go for the passenger door. Haley, you cover us.”
“Will do,” she said, clenching her rifle. “Don’t forget that bitch is up front. You’ve got to take her out, too.”
“Solid copy,” Butch replied, planting a kiss on the cheek of his overly fit partner.
Ezra hurriedly made the easy jump to the back of the red semi’s cab, but getting around the sleeper section appeared daunting. He’d need to grip a handle and swing his way over the cylindrical gas tank, then hold on to the exhaust piping until he could hop to the front step. There was no way to do it while holding a pistol.
“Crap,” he exclaimed, looking around for options. He could shoot out the tires in about five seconds, but he needed the truck to get to town. Disabling it wasn’t what he wanted. He took a deep breath, tucked his pistol in his belt, and lined up his approach. “Here goes nothing…”
He jumped.
Anticline Ranch, WY
After telling Dorothy and Aarons his plan, they both looked at him with indecision i
n their eyes. Was his plan exceptionally brilliant, or profoundly dumb? The former, of course. It took their simple minds time to process it.
“Well?” he asked.
“Sir, we have fifty engines ready to move the ore out on the train cars. We’ve kept the depot open. The tracks are open…”
Petteri rejected him with a brush of his hand. “I know all about the engines. I’m glad the depot is still open. It ensures my plan will work, don’t you think?”
Aarons stood by the map on the table. He eventually pointed to it. “Sir, we’ve noticed it’s very easy to spot vehicle movement on the dusty gravel roads of the anticline. I recommend you send a group of trucks here and here, to confuse the enemy and protect the convoy of ore.” He tapped the map on either side of a hand-drawn X, which marked the location of the asteroid remnant.
“Ah, brilliant tactical thinking,” he exclaimed, before tempering himself. “I was going to mention the same thing.”
The security man nodded.
“Get the trucks moving, Mr. Aarons. All of them. I want every bit of the remaining ore dug up and carried away as they evacuate.” There wasn’t much left on the ground.
“There are two hundred dump trucks, at least. It will take hours to move them all. What if the depot is gone by the time they arrive?”
Petteri shrugged. “That’s your problem, not mine. Make sure it doesn’t fall.”
“You want me to go to the soda ash plant?”
His plan depended on keeping the enemy from taking over the rail yard at the plant. Loading the hoppers would take time. Rolling the trains out would take even more. As long as those operations were ongoing, the enemy would be the cat chasing his laser pointer. Aarons was the only man he trusted to get the job done. On the other hand, he was also the only man Petteri trusted enough with his personal security. That had to take priority.
Petteri pretended to really think hard about it, before relenting. “No, I can’t spare you. You’ll travel with me in my mobile RV command center. However, before we go, I want you to get the decoy convoys set up as well as put your best men in charge of the defense of the soda ash plant. Promise to make those men billionaires if they can keep it open until the ore is out of this valley. If it all gets to my refinery in Canada, true wealth will flow like a volcano into the pockets of our trusted team members.” He looked into Mr. Aaron’s eyes. “That includes you.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
Craig reached the door before Petteri thought of one more thing he wanted to say. “Mr. Aarons?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve decided your beard isn’t so bad anymore. It’s been hard working with you after Howard, and the beard took some getting used to. However, like I said, it’s not bad.” He didn’t actually like it, but events had pushed him far beyond like and dislike. His compliment was one more brick in his ongoing efforts to cultivate a solid wall of loyalty.
Aarons gave him a martial salute, executed a curt about-face, then walked out of the ranch house. With the compliment in his pocket, Petteri was positive the man would go out of his way to prove himself worthy of being graced by someone so important.
All his attention returned to Dorothy. “Things are looking up, dear. Way up!” He was almost giddy looking at the roof and knowing what was in space above them. “What do you have for me from our little side project?”
She pointed to the land-based laptop screen. “The maintenance drones are on the move. They’re spreading out, heading for their re-entry windows. It won’t be long.”
It wasn’t much to look at on her screen. Eighteen little green dots flashed at the ends of dashed purple lines. A computerized sphere representing the Earth sat in the background. Small squares pockmarked the middle of a map of the United States like bad acne. Each square represented an impact point of his lost asteroid pieces. There were far more squares than dots, but he and Dorothy had picked out the biggest and best targets.
“As long as we are on for the fireworks?”
“We are, sir,” she smirked.
“Nothing can stop us now,” he said with relief.
Chapter 19
Boulder, WY
“Mr. Runs Hard, what are we going to do?” Grace and Asher followed Shawn and Logan into the convenience store. They went through the stock room and came out in a small patio area with about ten thousand cigarette butts scattered on the gravel nearby.
“We’re going to use our secret weapon.” He pointed up an aluminum ladder, which had been propped against the back wall.
“Up there?” she asked with confusion.
“Yep. I’ll go last, on account of my leg.”
Logan hopped on. “I’ll go first.”
“Follow him,” Shawn insisted, the playfulness gone.
Once on the roof, there wasn’t much time left for planning. The semitrucks were less than a mile away, though they were no longer advancing only along the highway.
“What the hell?” Asher blurted out, once he’d made it up the ladder.
“It looks like they’re spreading out…” Grace replied, not sure what to make of it. The first truck had turned left and driven onto the flat, rocky terrain out there. The next truck had slowed, and was lining up to exit the opposite side of the highway. Ten more eighteen-wheelers were behind those two.
“This is what I wanted to show you.” Shawn motioned her to the instantly recognizable Lahti anti-tank gun.
“But there’s no more ammo for it,” she said with disappointment.
“You have a lot to learn about the resourcefulness of the Crow Nation. We had three days to create the parts we needed to manufacture a hundred rounds of ammunition. We even made several of these fancy magazines to go with them.” He pointed to what looked like a picnic lunch next to the rifle. About ten shiny metal ammo boxes sat on a colorful blanket adorned with native symbols.
“That’s amazing,” she said in awe.
“And, to cap it off, we brought a bona fide US Army sniper. My nephew Tom here spent four years in Afghanistan. He has experience with old Russian arms, so this Finnish rifle wasn’t hard for him to master.”
A young man squatted near the end of the Lahti, surveying the gear on the blanket. He was darker-skinned than his uncle, with short black hair and a tightly-wound leather necklace. It looked like he’d lived his whole life outdoors.
“This isn’t the most accurate rifle,” Tom replied, without turning around. After peering over the wall a few moments, he cranked a hand-sized wheel on the right side of the huge gun, then picked up a magazine box. He carefully fit it into a matching hole on top of a blocky section of the weapon. She was fascinated by the loading process. Misha had done all that in the back of her truck, where she couldn’t see it. There was a loud click when Tom flicked something near the trigger, then he finally did look back.
“You might want to cover your ears,” Tom declared.
The heavy rifle had been set upon the two-foot high brick outer wall protecting the flat roof. Tom lined up his shot using metal barbs which hung over the left side, then squeezed the trigger. The concussion kicked up dust all over the roof.
“Truck hit!” he cried out.
A car alarm went off on the parking lot below as a result of the ground-shaking blast. She figured it had to be the one belonging to the store clerk.
Tom laughed. “I love setting off alarms with this thing!”
Grace ducked down, sure they would soon become prime targets. Logan and Shawn drew their rifles, anxious to join in. She and Asher needed to do the same, but she hesitated.
Tom fired again. The force of the gun blew her hair back.
“Dang,” she said with awe. “It seems even louder than when it went off inside my truck.”
Tom paused his shooting and glanced over to her. “You fired this from inside a truck? Sweet.”
She resisted taking the credit. “I didn’t fire it. I was driving.”
“On the move? Even more badass!” Tom smiled appreciatively, t
hen looked down the sights again. “Firing!”
The next boom registered out in the field as the exposed gas tank of the third or fourth turning truck exploded. As she watched, the driver threw himself out the door, barely avoiding the plume of fire rushing around the side of his cab.
The truck rolled to a stop on the rocky ground, though it appeared as if the men in the shipping container weren’t going to leave. Their black rifle barrels stuck out from the side, firing like mad.
“Aim for the drivers!” Shawn yelled to the people on the roof with him.
It seemed like a safe thing to say. Grace knew her dad wouldn’t be driving one of the trucks, though she couldn’t say for certain if he was in one of the cabs with the drivers. That prevented her from shooting at all.
“What’s wrong?” Asher asked, immediately recognizing something was on her mind.
“Dad said he was coming to me. That means he’s in one of those trucks. If I fire on them, I could kill my own father.” She looked at all the other shooters, realizing there were already a hundred different guns aimed at her dad.
“Which one are you on?” she asked distantly, as if in a living nightmare.
Outside Boulder, WY
Prior to the asteroid disaster, Ezra wouldn’t have considered himself to be in peak condition. He was in his mid-forties, comfortable in his quiet life at the lake, and content to do low-impact activities with Susan. However, the past week had leveled up his fitness, as well as his mental acuity.
He needed both skills to jump to the handhold, grab it, and not fall off.
“Oof!” he cried out, despite knowing it might call attention to himself.
The side mirror for the big rig was huge, so the driver saw him right away. The TKM guy looked out with surprise at first, but then he began yelling. Red hair flashed on the far side of the passenger compartment. It meant Nerio was already aware of his presence.
Ezra lined up his next acrobatic maneuver. Ignoring the driver, he put his foot on the gas tank, then launched himself forward toward the steps up to the door. If the truck had moved six inches to the right, he’d have gone face-first onto the pavement. At least, that’s what he imagined in the brief moment in the air before he latched on to the door.
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 114