White Collar, Green Flame - A Technothriller

by Shain Carter

  Ted, too, stared despondently at the flames. “That’ll never keep them back,” he shouted.

  By this time the other truck had reached the far side of the bridge and was starting across. Two men stood in the bed, bracing themselves on the roof of the cab, with rifles drawn up in a firing position. Both, Dawson could clearly see, were grinning broadly, and he recognized the one on the left as Usef, their driver.

  Dawson and Ted backed away from the bridge, unable to take their eyes off the other truck. Usef fired a short burst with his weapon, and Ted, who was a few feet in front of Dawson, let out a yell and grabbed at his right shoulder. Usef pumped his arms jubilantly in the air.

  The driver either did not see the rocks on the bridge or chose to ignore them. Dawson estimated the truck was going about 30 miles an hour when it hit the first one. The impact knocked the soldiers in the back down, but the truck kept coming. It hit the second stone dead on, riding up and over it.

  Without warning, bright orange flames burst out from under the truck as its midsection passed over the stone. The truck screeched to a stop and was quickly enveloped in the fierce flames. A series of loud reports echoed across the hills as the four tires burst. The soldiers in the back, on their feet again, dove over the sides and into the shallow river below. The driver’s door flew open and a man spilled into the river just before the truck exploded into an immense fireball. The blast tore the truck in half, throwing the back end off into the river and propelling the front section twenty feet along the bridge.

  Ted turned to Dawson. A large red stain covered the right side of his chest. He pulled his hand from his shoulder and stared at it in disbelief.

  “I’ve been shot,” he said, his voice bewildered. Dawson pressed Ted’s hand back against the wound, then helped him back to their truck. Dawson pushed Ted into the bed, raised the tailgate and then stuck his head through the driver’s door.

  “Ted’s been shot,” he told them. Cindy whimpered while Andy craned his head for a better look in the bed.

  “Badly?” Meredith asked. “I should take a look.”

  “No,” Burt told her. “There’ll be time for that later. Get in and drive, Jones.”

  Dawson climbed into the driver’s seat as Meredith surveyed the burning wreckage on the bridge. “What’d you guys do?” she asked incredulously.

  “One of the rocks must have ruptured the gas tank,” Dawson said, throwing the truck into gear. Keeping one eye on the rear view mirror, half expecting the soldiers to emerge from the riverbank and begin shooting, Dawson gunned the engine and released the clutch.

  He drove hard and fast for nearly fifteen minutes before Burt stopped him. “That’s far enough for now,” he said. “We need to stop a minute and regroup.”

  Dawson brought the truck to a stop at the crest of a low rise. It was almost dark now, and the headlights, controlled by a light sensor, came on automatically. The road ahead dropped down for a hundred yards, then dead ended into the road that went to the machine shop in one direction and to the Turkish frontier in the other.

  “It ought to be clear sailing from here,” Burt said confidently, glancing through the back glass at the pillar of black smoke, barely visible in the darkening sky, rising from the bridge. “You two check on the guys in back. Get them comfortable for a long ride. I have to set up a few things in here.”

  Dawson didn’t share Burt’s optimism but said nothing. He and Meredith got out of the cab and walked to the back. All three men were lying down. As Meredith climbed into the bed, Ted sat up. The front of his shirt was now completely soaked with blood. “It’s my shoulder,” he told her. She carefully cut his shirt with a knife she had pulled from her pocket.

  “It went into the fleshy part,” she said, probing the wound gently. “The good news is, I don’t think it hit any bones.”

  Ted grunted and flinched as she lifted his right arm. “It doesn’t feel like good news, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  Using his torn shirt for dressing, Meredith bandaged Ted’s wound while Dawson examined Derek. He was conscience but unresponsive, completely oblivious to his surroundings. He was also shaking uncontrollable, even though the evening air was still warm.

  Meredith finished bandaging Ted and joined Dawson. “Looks like shock,” she said, feeling for Derek’s pulse. “He might have internal hemorrhaging. We need to get him covered.”

  They looked around the bed and found a worn tarp folded neatly next to a wheel well. Dawson pulled Derek into a sitting position as Meredith wrapped him with the tarp. They then turned their attention to Alec. The stress of the last twenty-four hours had clearly taken their toll on him. “I’m O. K.,” he told Dawson in a whisper, “Just exhausted. I don’t even have the strength to sit up. Sorry I can’t be of more help, lad.”

  “That’s alright,” Dawson assured him. “Burt thinks the hard parts behind us. It ought to be a cake walk from here on out.”

  Alec nodded and shut his eyes.

  Burt had the laptop computer out from under the seat when Meredith and Dawson climbed back in the cab. Meredith began updating him on the condition of the three men, but it was clear he was only half listening.

  “They’ll live,” Burt said, cutting her off. “But we have a new problem. We were going to rendezvous with a chopper in the hills south of the research complex. With the bridge down, we can’t get back on the other side of the river, but that in itself shouldn’t be a problem because I ought to be able to radio in our new coordinates. Unfortunately, the radio got left behind.”

  Dawson and Meredith stared at Burt. “You forgot it?” Meredith asked incredulously.

  “No, I didn’t forget it,” Burt snarled. “I had it in my hands when I left the dormitory, in my briefcase. I must have dropped it when I was shot.”

  Meredith and Dawson watched silently as Burt pull wires through the back window and plugged them into his laptop. Finally, Meredith asked, “Is there a Plan B?”

  “Of course there’s a Plan B,” Burt snapped. He continued plugging the wires into the laptop.

  “Head north, towards the border?” Dawson guessed.

  “No, that would be Plan D, as in ‘dumb’. It’s clear that George was able to get word out that we were escaping, since the team investigating the drone crash came directly to us without first going to the research complex. No doubt the Iraqis are expecting us to make a break for Turkey and the road will be crawling with patrols. Instead, we’re going south, to the machine shop. A small Special Forces unit is going to land there to grab the plutonium at 3:15 tonight. Which gives you plenty of time to drive us there, Jones, even with the added challenge of driving without lights.”

  Dawson and Meredith exchanged worried glances. “Burt,” Meredith said hesitantly, “the road between here and the machine shop is nearly impossible to drive during the daytime. How are we going to do it in the dark, without lights?”

  Burt ignored her and turned to Andy. “Get out and smash the headlights.”

  Andy hesitated and looked uncertainly at Dawson.

  “I said, break the lights,” Burt growled.

  Dawson gave a slight nod and Andy’s face brightened. “You mean it?” he asked.

  “Just get out there and break the damn things.”

  Andy climbed over Meredith and Dawson and went out the driver’s door. In a few seconds they heard banging as he hit one of the headlights with a large rock. The glass was surprisingly strong, and it took several strikes to break each light. He came back to Dawson’s door, but before he could climb in, Burt told him to break the back brake lights as well.

  “Which ones are those?” Andy asked.

  “Just break them all,” Ted told him. “I don’t want any lights coming on at all.”

  Andy disappeared, and a few seconds later they heard more glass shattering.

  “Burt, we can’t drive in the dark,” Meredith insisted, “Not on this road.”

  “We have to,” Burt responded. “We’d be visible for miles with our
lights on, and you can bet that anything on the road tonight is going to attract attention. Besides, it will be a piece of cake, even for boy wonder here.” Burt motioned towards Dawson.

  “But he’ll need some help,” Burt continued. “I’ve wired four GPS receivers onto the corners of the truck, and in here,” he patted the laptop, “is a digital map of the road to the machine shop, courtesy of my colleagues at the CIA. They flew a pair of special radar planes over the area earlier this week and downloaded the data to me the other night. The whole road is mapped out - down to every pothole more than three inches deep. By feeding the data from the GPS receivers directly into the laptop, we’ll be able to track our progress exactly. I figure we can average twenty, maybe even thirty miles an hour, easy. That should get us there in less than four hours.”

  Dawson shook his head. “Meredith’s right. We can’t do this in the dark. Even if the map is good to three inches, the GPS won’t give our position to better than a meter. You haven’t seen this road. Being off by a meter is the difference between being on the road or over a cliff.”

  Burt managed a grin. “Commercial GPS receivers are only good to a meter because the military distorts the signal. Uncle Sam figures civilians don’t have any legitimate reason for knowing their positions any more exactly than that. But military receivers can compensate for the distortion, giving them accuracy to less than a centimeter. By having four receivers on the corners of the truck I figure we’ll know our position within millimeters. The weak link isn’t going to be the technology, it’s going to be your ability to use it.”

  As he was talking, Burt had booted the laptop on. The screen now glowed a deep blue, then flashed white, and four tiny, blinking red circles, arranged in a rectangle, appeared in the center. After a few seconds, contour lines filled in around the red circles. The contours clearly showed the immediate area, with the four circles corresponding to the corners of the truck. The road, highlighted in light green, dropped down to the T-intersection, which was at the very top of the screen. Dawson stared at the screen, surprised at the precision of the rendering.

  Ted handed a power adapter to Meredith, and as she plugged it into the cigarette lighter he gave her instructions on changing the image area and map orientation. “You’ll be the navigator,” he explained, “and you’ll need to be constantly giving Dawson instructions.”

  Andy, finished with the lights, came back to the cab. Meredith had already shifted Cindy off her lap and onto the seat, leaving no room for Andy. Meredith motioned him to the truck bed, then settled the computer onto her lap as he climbed in. It was almost completely dark outside, the last remnants of sunset just a dim glow on the horizon ahead. Dark clouds hung low in the sky, lit by an occasional flash of lightening. Dawson shifted the car into gear and they began the journey to the machine shop.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Progress was slower than Burt had thought. Within the first few miles, Dawson and Meredith had developed a workable system of communicating that allowed Dawson to respond almost instantly to what Meredith saw on the screen. But it was the first time in over fifteen years that Dawson had driven, and even under the most relaxed of circumstances this would have been stressful. Their present situation, however, with eight passengers, an inflexible rendezvous time and place, and the handicap of driving blind, made the task all but impossible. And even though Dawson and Meredith were working well together as a team, they were only barely able to keep up a pace of fifteen miles per hour, not the thirty miles per hour that Burt had predicted.

  After five hours Dawson was completely exhausted. His hands ached from gripping the wheel, his mouth was painfully dry and his legs cramped from being held over the pedals, ready to respond instantly to an order from Meredith. He had trouble focusing on the task at hand, and his mind wandered as he waited for commands from Meredith.

  He was thinking about his teaching load the next semester when he suddenly realized that Meredith was shouting at him.

  “Left, Dawson, left!”

  Before he could react, the passenger side of the truck scraped roughly against the side of a steep embankment. The truck careened sharply back onto the road and nearly went off the other side, which dropped steeply to the river fifty feet below. Dawson swerved back into the middle of the road and slammed on the brakes, bringing the truck to a rest.

  Taking a deep breath, Dawson slowly released the steering wheel. The noise and jostling had startled the Cindy, who had been sleeping restlessly. Meredith spoke quietly to her, telling her to go back to sleep. But she struggled to a sitting position.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she announced.

  Meredith looked down at the computer screen. “We’re almost there. Can you wait a few minutes?”

  “No. I gotta pee real bad.”

  Dawson opened his door, letting in the cool night air. “It’s a good time for a break, anyway,” he announced. He looked over at Meredith for the first time since they had started. Her hair was soaked with perspiration, and she was breathing in short, sharp jerks. She met his gaze and nodded.

  “That’s fine,” she agreed. “We just have few more miles to go, and there’s still plenty of time to get there.”

  Dawson stepped out, followed by Meredith. Cindy had to slide across most of the seat to the driver’s side, since Burt was squeezed against the passenger’s door, resting his wounded leg on the dash. As they climbed out he called after them. “Only a minute. You can rest when we get there.”

  Cindy ran down the road and around the corner, where she couldn’t be seen. Dawson watched her disappear, then stretched and sucked in the cool night air. It was refreshing, but not enough to clear his head. What he really needed, he thought, was a drink. He walked to the back of the truck, thinking about the alcohol bottles they had used to burn the bridge. He couldn’t recall if he and Ted had used them all, or if there was still one or two in the back.

  Meredith caught up with him as he reached the tailgate.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” she said, climbing in ahead of him. Dawson was too surprised to respond, then felt ashamed as he realized that she thought he was checking on the three men in the bed.

  There was no great change in the condition of any of them, although Derek seemed to be rallying somewhat and asked about the children. They found some water and gave them each a drink, then made them as comfortable as they could. Dawson glanced around quickly for alcohol, but didn’t see any in the darkness. Thinking back to the bridge outside Anjawan, he was now certain that Ted had left a bottle of alcohol in the truck. He groped through the box with the remaining green flame fuel flasks, but didn’t feel any bottles the right size.

  “What are you doing up there?” Meredith said. She had already hopped off the bed and was walking towards the door. “Burt’s right. We’ve got to keep moving.”

  Dawson cursed under his breath but said nothing to Meredith. He wasn’t sure how much farther he could go without a drink, but after the discussion they had the previous night he wasn’t about to let her know what he was after.

  Cindy had already returned, and they waited for her to climb into the truck first. Before they could follow her in, though, they heard a sound coming up the road behind them. It started quietly, as a distant high pitched whine, then grew louder with alarming speed. They stared back into the darkness. Suddenly, with a deafening fury, a helicopter burst into sight. It was barely 100 feet above the road and travelling fast. Under it blazed an intense search light, trained on the roadway below.

  The helicopter took the curve wide, swinging for a few seconds over the slope below. The pilot corrected his course quickly and brought the craft back over the road. It passed directly overhead, kicking up a whirlwind of dust and sand around Dawson and Meredith. Incredibly, the search beam, which was aimed ahead of the craft, missed the truck completely.

  Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. The whole encounter lasted only an instant. Meredith and Dawson looked at each other, then climbed bac
k into the truck. Burt was leaning forward, watching the empty space where the helicopter had been only seconds before. He stared ahead tensely, but after a few seconds relaxed.

  “That wasn’t the helicopter we were supposed to meet, was it?” Dawson asked.

  Burt shook his head. “No. Definitely Iraqi. I don’t think they saw us. But this shows they know we’ve escaped and that they’re desperate to find us. I’m surprised they’re risking a helicopter, though. They don’t have many left, and it’s very chancy.”

  “Chancy?” Meredith asked. “Why?”

  Before Burt could answer, there was a series of three bright white, strobe-like flashes in the far distance ahead, replaced almost instantly by a gentle orange glow, lower on the horizon than the white flashes, that persisted for several seconds. Dawson gripped the steering wheel and counted slowly to himself. At nine-Mississippi he heard a gentle rumbling. He reached down to the dashboard and zeroed the trip odometer.

  “There’s your answer,” Burt smiled. “We’re in the no-fly zone. Particularly tonight, this area is heavily patrolled by AWACS planes and fighter jets, and an attack helicopter is no match for a fighter jet. Now, let’s get moving.”

  Dawson engaged the engine and pulled the truck slowly ahead. The fresh air and excitement had cleared his head, and he was anxious to complete the final few miles to the machine shop.

  Ten minutes later, Meredith called out that they were approaching a long bridge. Dawson remembered it from their trip to the machine shop a few days before: it was the final bridge to cross, a 500 foot long metal span. He brought the truck to a stop.

  “Keep going,” Burt growled. “You can take another break when we get closer to the complex.”

  Dawson switched off the engine and glanced down at the odometer. “We’ve gone almost two miles since we stopped. That’s about how far away the helicopter was when it was shot down, but I don’t see any burning wreckage. I’m going to check the bridge.”

  Without waiting for a response, Dawson hopped out and quickly jogged the hundred odd yards to the bridge. The night sky was heavily overcast, and even though Dawson’s eyes were well acclimated to the darkness he could not see the bridge clearly. The far end, in particular, seemed obscured by a haze. Dawson began walking across the bridge when the wind shifted direction. Smoke suddenly choked him and burned his eyes. As he continued, the air cleared somewhat and he saw that the deck at the far end of the bridge was completely missing. He slowly approached the edge the gaping hole and peered down into the darkness. The missing section of decking lay in a twisted, smoldering mass in the river below, deep out of sight from the roadway. The flashes they had seen were not of the helicopter being shot down, but of the helicopter launching rockets into the bridge. They were trapped on the wrong side of the river.