“Evasive maneuvers!” she shouted.
Eli sawed the wheel, avoiding the crater as another rocket hit nearby, then another, then two more. Quinn climbed out her window and fired her rifle at the dump-truck which was approaching fast. She watched her bullets bounce off the machine’s reinforced windshield.
Suddenly, the mini-gun fixed to the dump-truck’s hood opened fire. A blizzard of bullets ripped through the Jeep, shattering the back windshield. Eli yelped as glass flew through the air, cutting his ear and the back of his neck.
Quinn watched as the other Jeep was similarly mauled by the incoming fire, forced far out off the road in an effort to avoid the behemoth. There was the whine of an engine and Quinn gaped back to see a motorcycle veer off from behind the monstrosity and laser forward. There was one bandit driving the motorcycle, another riding pillion, aiming a rifle.
“GET DOWN!” she screamed.
Eli did as a flurry of bullets from the motorcycle shooter ripped into the Jeep. Quinn waited for the shooter to empty out his gun and then she fired back through the blown out rear windshield. The staccato echo from her gun was deafening, her bullets thudding into the motorcycle’s driver, his chest exploding. She was shocked when the pillion rider grabbed the driver and tossed him aside, continuing the chase.
The motorcycle accelerated, the shooter redlining the bike, bringing it up alongside Quinn’s door. Quinn reacted, bringing her rifle around. She fired into the motorcycle’s gas tank which exploded in a greasy orange fireball. The bike swiggered, hit a ditch, the shooter, smothered in flames, catapulted into the air as the bike broke apart.
The horn on the dumptruck ripped the air, Quinn reloading as another two motorcycles swung off to attack the Jeep being driven by Giovanni. She watched Mackie shoot at the bikes, obliterating one of them as a shooter on the second bike, a man with a backpack, readied a grenade launcher.
Quinn raised her rifle and squeezed off a single shot.
Her bullet scythed across the baked landscape and hit the shooter in the backpack.
Whatever was inside the backpack exploded, vaporizing the second bike.
A smile pulled up the corners of Quinn’s mouth. She turned to tell Eli the good news, but saw only horror in his eyes as—
WHUMP-BOOM!
Something exploded under the Jeep and Quinn felt her world turn over. She watched the ground fly by under the Jeep, heard the concussive soundwave from the explosion and then the Jeep smashed down onto the ground and rolled a half-dozen times before Quinn blacked out.
BELLS CHIMED on the glider’s flight console. Cody looked up to see something in the distance. A splotch of red on the digital map of the terrain ahead that signaled heat. It was either a fire, or a fireball, Cody couldn’t tell which. He powered up the mapping device, zooming dozens of miles ahead from the glider’s present position. He pinched the screen and swiped away subwindows and now he could see it. So could Hayden. It was the Jeeps. They were under attack.
“Jesus God,” Hayden said.
He peered down and saw real-time footage of the dump-truck, three motorcycles, one armored SUV. He also saw one Jeep being driven away while the other lay overturned, in a heaping wreck, smoke pouring from it.
Cody zoomed in again and it instantly felt like his blood had turned to ice.
Quinn was clearly visible, lying on the ground outside of the smoking Jeep. He couldn’t tell whether she was dead or unconscious, but she wasn’t moving.
Hayden grabbed the flight controls as Cody stumbled back toward Renner, Milo, and the others.
“It’s Quinn,” Cody said. “Something’s happened.”
“Is she okay?” Milo asked, standing.
“I don’t know, but they’re under attack and we’re going in.”
Everyone grabbed their weapons and steeled themselves, feeling the glider’s engines accelerate, the craft shaking, going into a steep dive.
16
Q uinn could feel before she was able to see or hear. The heat from the sand and grit warmed her face and she woke with a start, spitting out dirt. Her heart was beating like a tom-tom, her ears rang, and there were stars in her eyes.
She rolled over and spotted the Jeep, upside down, twisted and smoking, maybe thirty feet away from her. What the hell had happened? She remembered shooting at the pursuers and then everything went to black.
Pushing her hands down into the earth, she fought to stand but her legs were like jelly, like those on a newborn foal. They trembled and knocked together and she fell onto her side and lay in a position that resembled a question mark.
She gulped for air like a drowning woman, hyperaware of the sounds building all around: engines revving in the distance, gunshots, the static squeal of gears grinding on whatever massive machine was churning toward her.
The nerves at the back of her eye sockets fired and a spasm shot through the whole of her body. Quinn blinked and sucked in a breath.
She reached out a hand and clawed at the soil.
She did the same with the other one and now she was levering herself up, loping forward, headed toward the Jeep. She could see that Eli was trapped inside the Jeep, hanging upside down, still tethered to his seat belt. She had to reach him—
CRACK!
A rifle shot echoed behind her.
A single bullet starred the ground between her legs.
She slid to a stop and turned back.
Hand up to canopy her eyes, Quinn saw the shadow of the massive dump-truck.
It was only sixty-feet away from her, idling, wisps of smoke rising up from it like the breath from a dragon. Several bandits had dismounted and one of them was holding a deer rifle, the barrel still smoking.
Pure terror crept into her heart as she realized there was nowhere left to run. She was out of quarters and the game was over. She lifted her hands and prayed for mercy even though she knew none would be forthcoming.
The bandit with the rifle lifted it to his shoulder when a shadow passed overhead .
Quinn saw a flash of light in the sky and instinctively dove to the ground as—
BARROOM!
The dump-truck vanished in a bonfire-bright explosion that propelled Quinn back through the air at least seven feet.
She hit the ground and looked up as—
WHUMP!
The flaming wreckage of the dump-truck sailed right over her head.
BOOM!
Landing a few hundred feet away, vanishing in a fireball that sent up a pillar of flames. The heat from the blast-wave tickled the fine hairs on her arms and made her throat go dry.
Head canted, she saw the glider do a sortie over the battlefield and she sighed ferociously and thanked God for Hayden, Cody, and all the others. Eli was groaning and so Quinn forced herself up and crouch-ran over to him.
“What happened?” he asked.
“The cavalry arrived,” she said.
UP IN THE GLIDER, Cody and Hayden high-fived as they watched the dump-truck blasted up into the air. They’d saved Quinn and were heading down toward the second Jeep, the one being driven by Giovanni. Hayden sighted down the motorcycles and armored SUV in hot pursuit. He was readying to unleash some hellfire on the bandits when a shooter appeared from the SUV and fired a surface-to-air missile. Then another fired, then two more.
Cody spotted the heat trails from the missiles, watching them zoom up into the sky.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Incoming,” said Hayden.
“Incoming … what?”
“Mail, Cody! What do you mean?! Incoming fire! FUCKING MISSILES! WE’VE GOT A LOCK!”
“Shit!”
“What?!”
“What do we do?!”
“Activate the counter-measures!”
“What the hell is a counter-measure?”
Hayden just stared at him, mouth adroop.
“I – I’ve never used those,” Cody said. “I don’t even know where they are!”
Hayden grabbed the controls as t
he missile curled up through the sky, drawing closer. The glider lurched to the left, Milo, Renner, and the others pitching to the ground. Renner turned and shouted, “WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON?!”
“SURFACE TO AIR MISSILES!” Hayden screamed back. “HANG ON!”
Hayden pulled the controls hard left, the glider going into a barrel roll, three-thousand feet off the ground. The glider’s nose tilted seven degrees down and then Hayden banked it again, flying directly at the missiles. He keyed up the glider’s weapons and fired a flurry of balls of plasma at the missiles, hitting the first one, missing the second and third.
The first missile vanished in a fireball as Hayden fired down at the bandits who’d unleashed the missiles. The plasma balls from the glider incinerated the last remaining bandits, but did nothing to stop the fast-approaching missiles.
Hayden turned the glider’s nose up and accelerated. Cody heard the scream of the second and third missiles on the console, watched them turn and follow the glider, closing fast. “WE’RE NOT GONNA MAKE IT!” Cody screamed.
“RENNER!” Hayden shrieked, looking at the rear bay. “GRAB YOUR WEAPON AND STRAP IN! I’M OPENING THE RAMP! TIME TO DO A LITTLE SKEET SHOOTING!”
Cody looked over, fear in his eyes. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!”
“What has to be done,” Hayden replied. “Now put a little HTFU cream on and strap in.”
“What’s HTFU cream?”
“Harden the fuck up,” Hayden said.
Renner grabbed his machine-gun as Milo and the others snatched up their restraining straps and locked themselves in place. Renner, still clad in his purple flip-flops, slid down his black sunglasses and crawled toward the glider’s rear ramp where he snatched up several ruggedized restraining straps made of alien alloys. He fitted them over his torso like a five-point harness and snapped himself in place. Then he leaned back and brought his weapon around as—
Hayden tapped the console, powering the ramp down.
A whirlwind filled the glider’s cabin, the air from the outside gusting through the open rear ramp, creating a mini-cyclone. Renner was lifted off his ass and would’ve been instantly sucked out, were it not for his straps. He squinted, searching the skies and that’s when he saw them.
The two missiles, slicing through the low cloud cover, like sharks through the water.
“Come get some,” Renner whispered to himself.
He squeezed a burst from his gun, watching the rounds rip the air.
“AGHHHH!” he screamed, concentrating his fire, emptying out his gun’s magazine.
Bullets struck the missile’s nose, sending it wildly off course. The thing looked like a bottle rocket as it flared straight up and—
BOOM!
Exploded as Hayden turned and shouted “DON’T BUST MY RIDE!”
“DIVE!” Renner screamed back, fumbling the empty magazine out of his gun, trying to slap another into place as the wind from the rear of the glider howled. “SMASH THE CEILING!” he shouted, urging Hayden to power the glider into another steeper dive.
Hayden did and Renner held on for dear life as the glider shot straight down. Renner lost sight of the last missile for a second. He strained, searching for it, finger curling around his weapon’s trigger and then there it was, only a few hundred yards away!
Renner opened fire, his shots off the mark because of the glider’s dive.
The missile blasted forward and Renner fired again, missing, cursing.
He could hear Cody shouting that the missile was on a collision course and then he closed his eyes and time and sound seemed to slow.
He opened them and fired a single shot.
The bullet lasered forward and struck the missile’s tail but not before it—
BOOM!
Air-burst fifteen yards behind the glider.
Debris filled the air, the blast birthing a sizable blast-wave that slammed into the glider.
Renner watched shrapnel from the blast tear holes in the glider, smoke filling the cabin, lights flashing, bells chiming. The propulsive force of the explosion that followed next snapped Renner from his restraining straps. His body was slingshot through the glider’s cabin and slammed into the control console. Woozy, he turned and stared at the cockpit window as the ground rushed up to greet the glider.
QUINN AND ELI were watching the dogfight the entire time. They’d seen the glider destroy the bandits’ SUVs, thereby saving the other Jeep, and observed it evading the surface-to-air missiles, including the final one that had nearly taken it down.
The glider roared toward the ground and leveled off at the last second, executing a sloppy but serviceable crash-slide, skidding down a length of asphalt, the glider’s undercarriage mashed in along with an undermounted armaments bay, the craft throwing off friction sparks. Plumes of smoke rose from the underside and rear of the glider, but otherwise it looked operational. Quinn, Eli, and the resistance fighter named Dan gimp-ran toward it as Mackie, Giovanni, and Luke emerged from the second Jeep, partially obscured by the banners of greasy smoke rising up from the flaming wreckage of the SUVs.
Quinn held up her hand and smiled. She looked like the walking dead and felt like hell, but she was largely intact and still able to fight. Cody staggered off the back of the glider, pale as a sheet. He moved toward Quinn.
“You should see the other guy,” she said.
“I did,” he replied. “I’m the one who took him out.”
She smiled. “You saved us.”
He leaned forward and hugged her as the others wrapped their arms around each other, even Dan, the resistance fighter they’d taken with them from Shiloh. Hayden asked about Comerford and Quinn shook her head and said he was honorable up to the end, giving his life for her.
“A moment of silence,” Hayden said, referencing Comerford.
All heads were bowed for several seconds and then Hayden looked up. “What’s the good word?”
“They came this way,” Quinn replied. “One of the ones we killed said they’d been tipped off.” She turned and pointed toward the mountains. “They’re probably somewhere up there.”
“Waiting for us,” Milo said.
“They got the high ground for sure,” Hayden said. “But they ain’t got that,” he added, pointing at the glider.
“Is she operational?” Giovanni asked.
“Won’t know for sure until we get her airborne again, but I’m thinking it’s just a few bumps and bruises. Nothing we can’t work around,” Cody replied as Hayden lobbed a roll of duct tape to him.
“I’ll take point,” Quinn said, gesturing toward the Jeep.
“What’s the plan?” Renner asked.
“We track down Xan and make her sorry that she ever fucked with us,” Quinn replied.
“How ‘bout the rules of engagement?”
“Kill anything that isn’t Samantha,” Hayden said.
Renner grinned. “I like those rules.”
“What about Samantha?” Quinn asked. “She’s probably still with them. We can’t take a risk of firing on them until we’ve identified her.”
Hayden took this in. “We’ve still got our eye in the sky,” he said gesturing at the glider. “We’ll let you know if she’s in danger.”
“How?” Quinn asked.
“If we drop the hammer on them like we did before,” Hayden replying, gesturing at the dumptruck, “you’ll know she’s not with them.”
Quinn realized that without proper communications this would have to do. She nodded, then moved toward the Jeep, flanked by Giovanni, and Eli, as the others made their way back to the glider.
17
Back outside the armaments vault, Samantha was standing next to Xan and Quarrels, watching the other men load the last of the weapons and gear into the SUVs. Minutes earlier, they’d heard several bangs out in the distance and flashes of light. This was followed by what appeared to be several explosions, the horizon now darkened with smoke. Nothing was entirely clear, but Samantha knew what it meant. So did Q
uarrels.
“How many people did you leave behind to cover our asses, Mister Rane?” Quarrels asked.
Rane looked over. “Twenty-seven.”
“I’m thinking you’re gonna need a few more,” Quarrels said with a smirk.
Rane moved over and muttered to another bandit who tossed him a set of binoculars which he raised, scoping the land. He reacted, lowering the binoculars.
Samantha felt a hand on her back and peripherally saw Quarrels.
“Start moving back,” he whispered.
“Why would I go anywhere with you?”
“Because it’s like I said before. I’m the lesser of several evils.”
She inched back and Quarrels grabbed her back and helped her around the side of the armaments vault, out of sight of Rane and his men. She tripped and fell to the ground, hands still bound. Her gaze wandered up to Quarrels.
“Listen, kid. You need to make a choice. Us or Rane.”
“I’d really prefer to choose ‘D,’ none of the above,” she said.
Quarrels smiled, removing a square object from his pocket. “In a few minutes, the good Mister Rane is going to realize the worm is about to turn for him. And not in a good way.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
“He doesn’t really need us anymore and therefore he’s going to kill us. Comprende?”
Samantha nodded. Quarrels held up the square object and Samantha could see that it was an explosive of some kind.
“Us or them. Choose your madness,” Quarrels said.
“HEY!” somebody shouted. Samantha looked up to see one of Rane’s bandits. He was bald and clutching a pistol. “The hell are you two going?!”
“Down to the back,” Quarrels said.
“Mister Rane said for everyone to meet up front,” the bald bandit said.
“Well, it just so happens that he gave us a pass,” Quarrels said, surreptitiously pocketing the explosive, taking Samantha’s wrist. “Told me to get the girl out of here.”
“I didn’t hear nothin’ about that,” the bald bandit said.
Syndicate Wars: False Dawn (Seppukarian Book 4) Page 10