by Doug Ball
Tan ran, flashlight shining.
He found the wall.
As he looked at the track leaving the wall, he saw a path along the face of the cliff that was clear of rocks for three feet out along the cliff base. A quick glance behind the wall registered the entrance to a cave or mine. His mind quickly decided mine and the path was the way in and out with a load of ore.
He ran, yelling into his radio, “He’s on a motor bike heading east. How far am I from the road?”
“We have you about a mile from the road if you follow the cliff base you will come to the road as it leaves a cut. Some local guy with lots of tats has his big honking jacked up truck on the road looking for you. Said you knew him and might need his truck to catch this guy.”
“I know him. Tell him I’ll be at the cut as fast as I can and watch for the bike. Try to stop Usafi, but wait for me if he misses.”
“Will do.”
The message was passed to Tank who promptly parked his truck, lights out, on the spot where the cliff base met the highway. “If Usafi doesn’t see that, he’ll mash the passenger door a bit, but he’ll be stopped,” Tank spoke to the darkness and Abdul who was riding in the back carrying a loaded shotgun. Tank pulled his bat. He was determined to take him alive, hurting, but alive.
They waited, but not for long. First the sound of the scrambler working hard to make the turns and climb on the narrow trail ripped the night’s deceitful peace, followed by the glow of the headlight swinging more and more in the direction of the truck. Tank waited with a baseball bat, an old Louisville Slugger, in his hands, cocked and ready.
Usafi, concentrating on the trail, saw the glow headlights of a vehicle on the road ahead that lit up the next hillside go out. ‘Somebody just parked on the road near where I’m headed. That cannot be a good thing,’ he thought. A picture of the trail where it connected to the road flashed in his mind. ‘I can make it, unless there is more than one vehicle.’ He smiled as he cranked on more speed.
Tan listened as he ran uphill toward the truck. The sound of the bike became more labored and was picking up rpm climbing the slight grade to the road. His knee was a ball of pain that threatened to stop him if it got much worse. He thought, ‘It’s a sure bet I’ll need surgery after this, but better a bum leg than a loose Usafi.’
He figured he was only a couple minutes behind the would-be destroyer of Phoenix.
Tank tensed as the sound grew close.
Usafi pictured the escape route in his head.
Tan ran, a limping, shambling run.
Tank saw the headlight emerge around the cliff not 50 feet away.
Usafi saw Tank, eased the throttle, took a quick look to the right side of the trail junction with the road. The baseball bat registered. He angled to the right off the trail, down the slope, caught his descent, and gave the small scrambler all the gas it had.
Tank saw the move away from him and threw the bat with all the strength he had behind it.
Tan heard the scream of the bike increase to the point it sounded like the cry of a wounded animal.
Usafi felt the bat glance off his left ribs behind his arm and worked with all he had to keep himself and the bike on the route he had chosen until he finally went up the bank to the road, caught a lot of air, landed safely, went up the cut bank on the far side of the road, turned to the right, and regained the road. He twisted the throttle to the stop again causing the bike to scream again.
Tank cussed, opened the passenger door for Tan, got in, and turned on the lights again. “Come on, Tan. Get your butt in here,” he yelled, while he stomped the clutch and shifted into low gear.
Abdul let fly a couple of rounds of shot from the shotgun and stood behind the cab.
Tan heard the cry and pushed himself even more. The loom of Tank’s headlights against the next hill was in sight. The tail light of Usafi’s bike winked out as it went through the next cut. Somewhere the Governor’s Special Investigator found a small piece of unused effort and pushed even more.
The terrorist looked in his mirrors and saw no lights. Even during a long straight stretch of road he saw no lights. He slowed.
Tan reached the jacked up, beat up 4 wheel drive, old truck and climbed in. As soon as he pulled his feet in, Tank hit the gas, popped the clutch, gravel flew, the door slammed shut, and Tank yelled, “Yeehaw. We’ll get that sucker now.”
The truck lurched so fast, Abdul bounced against the tailgate and his lights went out. Tan gulped air as fast as he could.
Tank took the next two corners in a power drift, rocks and sand flew, and the truck labored on.
Tan gasped for air. His lungs were screaming at him in starvation. There was a deep pain in his side. The knee was throbbing. “Slow down. This ain’t dirt track racing.”
“We’re catching up with him. I can tell by the dust hanging in the air.”
“We lose him and he’s off scot-free. No one else is in position to stop him.” Tan called in the situation, location, and direction using his radio.
They replied, “Gotcha covered. Two units heading that way, road block at junction 288 and FR 88. Sheriff’s Deputy driving south out of Young on 288. Two hummers full of armed men behind you a ways. You want a chopper?”
“Yes on the chopper. No, wait, he’ll hear the chopper and kill his lights. Let’s squeeze him. Get all the mobile units you can converging on that junction road block and see what happens in the next five minutes. If we can get him in sight again, we’re in for good.”
“No chopper. Converge at 288 and FR 88. On it.”
Tank squirted the truck around another corner. Usafi’s taillights disappeared a mile or less ahead of him. Tan grew a smile on his face, chugged a bottle of warm water he found lying on the front seat, and said, “You wanna speed this thing up, please?”
“Make up my mind, Boss man.”
Tan patted the gun at his hip, pulled it, and checked. “Seven rounds for you, Usafi.”
The speedometer needle wavered at 60. Tank had both hands on the wheel, willing the truck to go faster and stay on the road. They hit a bad stretch of washboard and started for the edge and the bar ditch. “Whoa, Roscoe, stay on the road,” Tank yelled. With inches to spare the truck dug in and regained solid traction. “That’s my truck, Tan. This baby rocks.”
Tan was not sure of that. He was hurting and being tossed all over the cab. He had given up looking for the seat belt.
The radio voice said, “Road block reports sounds of the motorcycle closing.”
“Tell them to be on the alert. This guy can ride and will cut corners, fly through the air, whatever to keep from being caught.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Tank punched the brakes and made it through another corner by a hang nail. Ahead the tail light of the bike was bright as if Usafi hit the brakes to study the lights ahead of him.
“Damn. Road block.” Usafi quickly checked the angles and car positions. Someone had thought this roadblock through. There was a car across the road he was on, one above the junction, and another pair below. Up looked to be the most open area even though he had little space between the front of the unit blocking the road he was on. “No choice. Up it is.”
He slowed like he was going to stop, watching the men hiding behind the vehicles slowly stand and relax. One of the men yelled into a microphone, “We have him. He’s stopping.”
Fifty feet out, Usafi twisted the right handlebar grip and aimed the bike at the small gap. Past the front bumper of the unit, down into the bar ditch, up out of the ditch and into the air leaping the ditch on the left turn road, landing with his rear tire just barely reaching the road to the left, spun the bike to the left, and away he went. One officer of the six remembered he had a gun and let fly with a blast of BB shot.
Usafi felt the shot hit his back. “Allah be praised. Do not let them slow me down.”
A second shot was fired.
Usafi felt nothing.
Just as the road block units were moving to pursue, Tank
rolled the truck toward them at full throttle, honking the horn frantically as he prepared for the turn. He locked the brakes and slid toward the unit sideways to him which moved just in time as the beat up old truck slid toward him with a slow drift left turn. Tank saw the tail lights of the uphill unit moving away directly in front of him as he entered the intersection sideways, pointed uphill. He stomped the gas hitting the far side bar ditch and leaped out of it as the truck pulled frantically for the road.
“Drive it like it belongs to someone else,” Tan said.
“You betcha.”
“Go get that bike.”
The unit ahead of them was working hard to stay on the gravel road and accelerate at the same time. His tires were meant for a weekender off road vehicle that spent most of its time on the blacktop and had nowhere near the traction that Tank’s hunk of junk had with its big, aggressive knobby treads.
Abdul climbed out of the bed of the truck, recovered his shotgun, and stood ready behind the cab again.
On the second curve the Sheriff’s unit went off the road and laid itself down sideways to sleep until the wrecker arrived hours later. The units behind Tank faded in the dust.
“We’re on our own, Boss. The others ain’t cutting it like this old mountain climber.”
“So, go get him. We are not gonna catch him talking about it.”
Tan’s pains were leaving as his concentration focused on the small red dot of light that appeared now and then ahead of them. Tank begged the truck to go faster and stay on the road.
They rounded a sharp S curve and could see no light ahead of them. Tank stayed on the gas until Tan yelled, “Dust went up that side road.”
Tank locked the brakes, did a three point turn, and followed the dust.
Tan radioed in, “He just turned up a side road to the east of 288.” He searched for a road sign, finally seeing one, “He’s on FR 189 and hauling freight again.”
“Okay. Be advised that road goes in about six miles and then deadends according to the maps. There are a couple of trails that go off from the end. That bike may be able to go a ways on the trails.”
“Gotcha. Get the chopper flying. The sun is pushing the dark away. If he hits the trails and we cannot follow it will be up to the chopper to keep him in sight until we can get a team in there after him.”
“Hey, Mr. Brown, we can put a four man team in the chopper, ready for anything.”
“Do it.”
“Airborne in five minutes.”
“Great,”
Three miles up the road a sharp turn to the right allowed them to catch up a little, but the general trend of the road was hot, straight, and rocky gravel.
The motorcycle was doing all it could under the conditions it had. Twice Usafi thought he was going down and would be walking from that point, but twice he was able to keep the bike upright and moving forward. His back was killing him in three or more spots from the BB shot. All in all he was just about done in.
Tan was fighting to stay in the seat. Twice he had ended up practically in Tank’s lap causing Tank to shove him back to his side of the cab. Tank had a smile on his face that would not quit. “This is just my cup of tea, my man. I love the back country, the dirt roads, the stretching things to their limit. This old truck, man, I never knew it could fly like this and hold its own. I built better than I ever thought.”
Tan started to answer, but seeing the red light take off cross country made him bite the words off unsaid. He felt the truck hesitate as Tank tried to figure out what was going on. “Take him,” yelled Tan, knowing the chopper was not off the ground yet.
Tank lined the truck up on the cycle and kept right on going into the wild country without slowing down to find a path. “This is what I built the truck for.”
Abdul got off a shot and smiled. He was a convicted felon playing with guns and his Parole Officer was in the cab of the truck. “Good times!” he shouted.
The truck took out a couple of small trees before hitting a six inch thick stump, rolling it into the ground with the railroad track front bumper. The truck leaped, front wheels clearing the ground. The terrorist was lined up 20 yards in front of the truck, bracketed by the headlights.
Usafi looked over his shoulder, making his most serious mistake. The bike hit a rock, sending the bike airborne into heavy brush where it stopped suddenly throwing Usafi ten feet over the handle bars. Tan watched as Usafi hit the ground, on his feet, and took off running.
“Did you see that?” said Tank just as the truck hit the brush and came to a stop tangled in the bushes, bike, and tree limbs, high centered on a large rock. Abdul did not stop when the truck did. He flew from the back of the truck and ricocheted off a large tree. The ground caught him as he fell, unconscious.
“Yup,” Tan replied as he jumped out of the truck and once again, chased the Arab afoot.
Beneath the truck, the heat of the exhaust system caused the summer grass and brush to ignite. Slow tendrils of flame work their way up alongside the driver’s door as Tank tried to get the door open with all the brush packed against it. He slid across the seat after grabbing the extinguisher from behind his side of the seat, jumped the back of the truck, and lifting a five gallon can of water he became a fire fighter.
Tan pushed the brush and put the pain out of his mind by focusing again on the running man.
Usafi knew he was in trouble. His gun only had the rounds that were in it, eleven. His body was tired, trembling from exhaustion and adrenaline, and there was no place to go except straight up a steep, small valley with a two foot wide sand bed in the bottom dotted by the occasional large rock that he had to get around. He could hear the stumbling run of Tan behind him.
Tan yelled, “Police Officer, freeze,” not very loud due to his lack of air. The higher altitude and exertion he had already put in did not help any part of what he was trying to do. He thought back to a Marine drill Sergeant he had met in boot camp who told him, “Most men who fail, fail because they quit trying. A man has a lot more in him than he wants to let out because it hurts, it hurts real bad.” Tan hurt, he hurt real bad.
He ran.
Usafi stumbled past three large rocks in a short distance, each taking more that he really had to give. He, like Tan, reached way down inside of himself, lifted up his reserves, and renewed his efforts at running. ‘I need a place to ambush the man behind me,’ he thought.
Tan thought, ‘He’s gonna ambush me shortly.’
The two ran with all they had left.
Tan low hurdled a rock and bounced off another into the side slope. Taking three deep breaths refilled some of the oxygen he needed. Looking down he saw blood on the sand for the first time. ‘One of the shots at the road block?’ Pushing himself up, he turned up the valley, and ran after the sounds of gasping breath and running feet. His heart hurt. His knee hurt. His arms felt like lead weights. Even his hair hurt.
Usafi saw a ridge line ahead. It appeared he was reaching the top of a saddle between two mountains. ‘I’ll slip over the top, behind a bush, and, when the man behind me appears, I will kill him.”
Tan was not moving as fast as he would like, but he noticed that he was keeping pace with his target. He stopped to listen and breathe. The sounds of running ahead of him stopped. ‘Ambush’ rang in his mind. Up the wash he went as silently as possible.
The ridgeline appeared. No sound of running came from that direction, only the sound of someone trying to suck in and blow out air as quietly as possible. Tan did the same thing. He understood.
A bush blossomed with flame. Tan heard the shot and felt the slug tug at his arm. He looked down, dumb struck. A dribble of blood oozed through his shirt sleeve. The bush blossomed again. Air whispered in his ear. He dropped to the ground behind nothing. Someone was shooting at him and it was the man he had to kill.
Usafi cursed in Farsi. Centered the sights of the gun on the top of Tan’s head as he laid in the gravel above him. Taking a deep breath, he slowly eased the trigger so the pall sl
ipped ever closer to the trip inside the weapon all the way to the stop. Nothing. He looked at the gun. The slide was back half way. He hit the back of the slide with the palm of his hand. No movement. He pulled it back to hear gravel grind. In the pushing and pulling, he hit the eject button for the magazine. Anger rose as he watched it hit the dirt.
Frantically, he reached for the magazine and tried to reinsert it into the weapon. His fear and exhaustion got in the way. He dropped it again. Running footsteps caused him to look up just as the gun in Tan’s hand ejected sparks, smoke, and a full metal jacket .45 caliber slug.
Usafi felt the round slide across his buttocks leaving a trail of burn and agony. He jumped up and threw his weapon at Tan.
Tan saw that the man was unarmed and stopped. “Mr. Usafi, you are under arrest for multiple charges associated with the act of terrorism including but not limited to murder, theft, inciting to riot, inciting an uprising, illegal use of explosives, and resisting arrest. Turn and put your hands high up on that tree behind you.”
Usafi followed directions.
Tan did a quick frisk while holding his gun to the man’s ear. He slipped a cuff on one wrist and then pulled it down behind Usafi moving back as he did so, stumbling on a grapefruit sized round rock.
Usafi felt the stumble on his arm, turned, and brought his free arm across the side of Tan’s head. The .45 discharged as Tan fell sideways trying to hold the cuffs and the gun.
He let go of the cuffs.
Usafi kicked the gun out of his hand and ran to get the weapon before Tan could get up. Tan tripped him as he went by. The terrorist landed on his face with one hand underneath him. Tan landed on Usafi’s back, knocking the breath out of him.