Men of Courage II

by Lori Foster

  What he remembered most was the sound. People often said it sounded like a freight train. And they were exactly right. What they weren’t able to convey was that it sounded like a freight train…if you were tied to the tracks and it was rumbling right over you. It changed the rhythm of your heart.

  He and Marty had chased and recorded the twister as intelligently as they could, given the circumstances. But once they’d both realized the magnitude of what they were recording, they’d gotten a bit reckless. And in the end, they’d been trapped right in the path of the beast, with nowhere else to run. It had been Marty’s quick thinking then that had saved their hides…and the precious reel of film. She’d been the one to spy the narrow drainage tunnel that ran beneath the road. Muddy water, muck, tree branches and God knew what else had been clogged inside the corrugated tube, but it had been their only hope. Lying flat in the muck, bodies pressed together, with his video camera tucked hard between them, they’d ridden out the twister as it literally roared directly over them, shaking the ground around them, sounding as if the demons of hell were snapping at their feet.

  They’d hidden behind the mass of debris that had collected from the heavy rains, then watched in nerve-racking terror as the tornado had plucked the entire twisted mass out of the tube as if it were nothing more than a bouquet of pansies. The two of them had been left miraculously untouched.

  Later, after they’d staggered out of the drainage pipe, clinging to one another, the shock of their close call had turned to an almost giddy feeling of joyous triumph. His truck had been shoved almost a hundred yards down the road and was angled off the pavement, half in a ditch, but otherwise unharmed. They’d both worked to push it out and back on the road, then Cooper had discovered a stream running parallel to the road. Nothing more than a ditch normally, but now filled to overflowing with rainwater. Without hesitation, they’d stripped off their sodden, muck-covered clothes and splashed about like two giddy schoolkids on the first day of summer break.

  Only after laying their garments across the hood and windshield of his truck to dry out did they climb in the back seat…where their almost drunken relief at still being alive had led to a decidedly more adult form of entertainment.

  Cooper shoved those thoughts away and climbed out of his truck. Right now his only focus was on finding Marty. He’d already come up with a dozen plausible explanations for that scream Ryan had heard, but that hadn’t stopped the instinctive knot tugging his gut. The one that told him she was in trouble. Maybe the kind of trouble even someone as sharp as Marty couldn’t get herself out of.

  He levered himself up on the front grill so he could see beyond the downed tree. What he found was disheartening. Even if he somehow found a way around this one, there were several more just like it strewn across the road ahead. For the umpteenth time he wished he’d packed all of his stuff—including his chain saw and other survival gear. He hadn’t come to Ohio to chase storms, however, so he’d limited himself to his usual set of maps, a weather radio, his camera and laptop. None of which were going to help him cut that tree into movable pieces.

  Just past the stand of trees lining this section of the dirt-and-gravel road, the landscape opened up to vast, largely empty cow fields on both sides. In the distance he saw some forest growth, but from his restricted vantage point, that was all he got. The road ahead, for as far as he could see, was absent of any kind of vehicle.

  “Where the hell are you?” Since turning on this route, he’d stopped in several hole-in-the-wall towns, scoping out the handful of cars in every lot to see if any sported a rental sticker. He’d stopped in a handful of tiny general stores to ask if anyone had seen a woman fitting Marty’s description. But he’d come up empty. There was only one way she could have been traveling to Denton after turning on 192.

  Of course, it was possible she was stuck farther ahead somewhere, just as he was at this end, but given the rapidly deteriorating conditions, he doubted she’d leave what was already a rural road for one in even worse condition. Besides, there simply weren’t that many roads out here in the western part of the county. According to his map, there weren’t any detours she could have taken.

  What troubled him most was that, by his estimations, he should have come across her already. There had been next to no traffic on the roads. He’d passed a few pickup trucks, but nothing matching her description of a little compact.

  And he only knew that much because she’d groused to Ryan about there not being any “real vehicles” left to rent at the airport. Marty had definitely been the type of woman who valued substance over style. Some things, he was glad to know, hadn’t changed. If he wasn’t feeling so helpless, he would have smiled at that.

  At the moment, however, he was too busy realizing what a fool he’d been, racing down the road without planning anything first, thinking he’d do, what? Just ride out here on his four-wheel drive white steed and rescue the fair damsel in distress? Okay, that did make him snort. If Marty thought for one second he’d considered her a distressed damsel, she’d be the first to remind him about who’d saved whose ass the last time around. And rightfully so.

  “So where the hell’s my white knight when I need her?” Raking his hand through his hair, his amusement faded as tiny seeds of panic began to take root. He stared down the empty road, then at the sky, and knew he was running out of time. “You’ve got to be down there somewhere,” he murmured.

  A lightning strike punched down in the distance, lighting up the sky…and flashing off of something shiny on the side of the road, about two hundred yards down to his right. It had probably been a trick of the light, but there had definitely been a glint of something. And with nothing but grass, mud and gravel clogging the sides of the road, there shouldn’t be anything flashy down there at all.

  Where he was standing now, the right side of the road was a swollen gully, rolling over and through the extended branches of the downed tree. The left side was more passable, but that was the root end of the tree. Which meant he had a messy, slippery climb ahead of him. He looked at the roiling clouds, then at the road behind him. There was no place to move his truck that would be any safer, but it wasn’t like any other traffic was going to be moving through here anyway. The only real question was could he make it down the road and back and still have enough time to haul ass out of there before the oncoming storm front hit?

  But he was already looking for a foothold on the rain-slicked bark, and swearing under his breath. “Yeah, let’s risk life and limb to go chase after a bright, shiny object,” he grumbled, clawing his way up and over the mud-covered, sap-sticky bark. “Because you haven’t done enough stupid stuff today already.” Like purposely positioning himself alone and on foot in a wide open field, with the only nearby ditch presently filled to overflowing with water.

  But he’d seen something, dammit.

  After scrambling down the other side, he immediately jogged to the next downed tree and started the process all over again. Thunder rumbled overhead and lightning strikes continued in the distance. Wind slapped fistfuls of dried pine needles at his face and body as the storm cell crawled closer. But he was too focused on climbing over the gargantuan tree trunk to do much of anything but find his next handhold. A good fifteen minutes passed before he was free and clear. He didn’t waste any more time, but headed down the dirt lane at a fast jog, scanning the gully for any sign of what the lightning might have flashed on. He’d only gone about fifty yards when he spotted the source up ahead.

  Hubcaps. Four of them, sticking straight up in the air. The car they were attached to was submerged in the rushing water.

  No! He was running flat out before he’d even completed the thought. It can’t be her. Sending up one prayer after another, he closed in rapidly on the flipped car. He saw that one tire had blown out, and even with all the rain that had come down, the marks the skidding tires had made in the dirt and the churned-up gravel they’d left behind were still obvious. But what grabbed his full attention was the ups
ide-down rental sticker on the exposed bumper.

  A blown tire. Marty’s scream.

  He was already sliding down the embankment into the thigh-high, swiftly running waters streaming through and around the car. Then he saw the open door. “Oh, thank God. Thank God.” The car was full of water, but it looked like the driver had gotten out. Still, he crouched down and shoved his arms shoulder-deep into the muddy water. Groping around, all he felt was the steering wheel, dashboard and windshield.

  No arms. No legs.

  Relief churned through him so hard and fast, he felt sick with it. Climbing back to the road, he looked up and down the muddy lane, wondering if she’d managed to hitch a ride to the nearest town. For her sake he hoped so. Still, he had no idea if she was badly hurt, or if she was safe and dry somewhere. The idea of her out here alone, dealing with God only knew what kind of possible injuries…

  He blew out a shaky breath, knowing there was nothing else he could do now. There was nothing in front of him close enough to walk to. Depending on when the pine trees had come down, it was also possible she’d been a passenger in any one of the pickup trucks he’d already passed. For all he knew, she could be back in Denton by now.

  “Damn,” he murmured. “Damn, damn, damn.” He didn’t like leaving without knowing for certain what had happened to her. His instincts were still jumping, or perhaps that was just the fear that had clutched at his belly when he’d spied that rental sticker.

  It was funny, all the thoughts that had raced through his mind as he’d run, hell-bent, toward her submerged car.

  Flashes of that afternoon in the back seat of his truck. Memory clips of the other hunts they’d gone on. Of Marty laughing and joking with the guys on the chase crew. Marty, her sunstreaked brown hair in a messy knot on top of her head, wire rims propped on her nose, a dry-erase marker clenched in her teeth as she’d pored over maps and weather printouts, trying to gauge the best route around a storm. Marty, anticipation making her fidget in her seat as she directed him down one route, then across another, as they closed in on another storm cell.

  Marty, staring at him with eyes so blue, so huge, biting the corner of her trembling bottom lip…right before he’d yanked her into his lap and devoured her mouth. Devoured her. Whole.

  Why in the hell had it taken almost killing themselves that afternoon for him to notice her as a woman and not just a crew member?

  His heart still beating a tattoo inside his chest, he asked himself why in the hell, after he had figured it out, he’d let her walk away? Why had he let her pretend that the tornado had been the only important event that had happened between them that day? Or why, despite all those times he’d thought about her since then, he’d never once bothered to contact her? And he was almost physically sick at the thought that now…now maybe it was too late.

  He scraped a hand over his face, swearing beneath his breath, hating how absolutely useless and impotent he felt at that moment. It wasn’t until he turned back toward his truck, that he looked across the field on the opposite side of the road…and noticed two things. First, there was an old barn on the far side of the field. And second, funnels were dipping down from the black ceiling of clouds that had moved far closer, far faster, than he’d realized.

  He’d been so caught up in worrying about Marty he hadn’t paid any attention to the shift in the developing storm.

  He stood, riveted, watching as the funnels grew longer, stronger, then began to join up. He swore under his breath, gauging the distance back to his truck and the distance to the barn. Neither were smart choices in a tornado, but he might be able to outrun the thing in his truck, or at least get to a place where the roadside gully wasn’t full of rushing water. As to the barn, well, there was no other shelter, but he wasn’t going to trust it to hold up.

  Then he saw it. The zigzag pattern of tramped down grass leading from the opposite side of the road, across the field, directly toward the barn. Marty!

  He took off running, stumbling over the rutted ground, staggering through the waist-high grass and weeds, as he made his way across the field toward the barn. All he kept thinking was Marty’s in there. Possibly hurt. Or worse.

  He beat at the tall grass with his hands, using his arms like machetes, trying to clear a path. But the sky was darkening by the minute, making it harder and harder to see what he was running through. Several times he hit divots that almost face-planted him in God-knows-what kind of muck and mire. But he kept moving forward.

  The wind picked up, making forward progress even harder. It was so loud now, shouting for her would be a useless endeavor. He was about twenty yards away when he noticed the burned-out ruins of a farmhouse about fifty yards past the barn. There was little more than a charred foundation left, overgrown with weeds to the point that it was barely noticeable. He immediately slowed down, though, squinting through the growing gloom.

  One thing he knew was that farmhouses out on the plains usually came equipped with underground storm shelters. He stumbled closer, angling himself between the barn and the charred ruins, until…There! Another ten or so yards back behind the remaining foundation was a raised cement box, only noticeable now because the wind was flattening the overgrowth around it. Hallelujah! A storm shelter.

  He looked back at the barn, at the trample pattern in the grass. She must not have seen the shelter. Maybe she hadn’t thought she’d need it. A quick glance over his shoulder had him stumbling momentarily to a complete halt. Four funnels were now one. “Holy mother of—” He stood transfixed by the display, as he always was when confronted with one of Mother Nature’s twisters. His first instinctive thought was that he’d left his camera, all his equipment in his car.

  And then he snapped out of it, swinging his attention back to the trail to the barn, then over, past the ruined farmhouse, toward the shelter. He probably wouldn’t have time to make it to both. But no way was he leaving her in that weather-beaten barn.

  Another glance at the twister showed it pulling down and making landfall. “Christ almighty,” he swore, then took off toward the barn. He spied the chain and lock on the wide double doors and veered toward a gap in the barn wall. The wind gusts were almost too much to withstand, and he was forced to grip the planks on either side of the gap, just to keep upright. He was too big to squeeze through, but there wasn’t time to find a bigger opening. He stuck his head in and wedged his shoulder and upper body into the open space for leverage.

  The sky was almost black now, so despite that half the roof was gone, it was still too dim to see much of anything. “Marty!” He had to shout at the top of his lungs just to be heard over the noise of the wind. “Marty, are you in here?”

  He heard a scrambling sound from the near corner, then a shout. “Cooper?”

  Hearing her voice gave him a moment of almost light-headed relief, but they weren’t out of this yet. “Are you hurt?”

  An instant later she popped out of the gloom in front of him. She was muddy, her face and arms were all scraped up and her hair was a plastered mess against her skull. He hardly recognized her. But he recognized those wide blue eyes. He’d never forgotten those.

  “Come on,” he shouted, reaching his hand in for her. “It’s coming right at us. We have to get out of here.”

  “For where? The ditches are full of water and the ruts in the field—”

  “There’s a storm shelter about fifty yards west of the barn. Behind the burned-out remains of a house.”

  “What? I didn’t see—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Come on.” She got close enough for him to grab her wrist. He didn’t waste any time and tugged her through the narrow gap in the planks.

  The rough wood caught at her wet clothes and scraped off more of her skin, but she didn’t say anything, just worked as fast as she could to get herself free. “Where is it?” she shouted, the wind making conversation almost impossible, even though they were less than a foot apart.

  He kept his grip on her forearm as she finally freed her
self and pointed with his free hand. “That way. Run!”

  And yet instead of taking off, they both turned, almost in unison, still clinging to one another as they fought the wind, but needing to take a look at what was bearing down on them.

  “My God,” Marty mouthed.

  “I know,” Cooper said, more in awe than anything else.

  Then Marty turned to him, her bruised face and wide eyes lit with a wild excitement that only someone who chased down these bastards could understand. “You know, we really have to stop meeting like this.”

  Cooper found himself grinning. This was the Marty McKenna he knew. “Yeah, I’m beginning to detect a pattern.”

  The wind was picking up hail and gravel from the ground, along with stray tree branches. Marty put her arm up to deflect the debris from her face as she looked back one last time. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a camera on you.”

  “Back in the truck. I got a little preoccupied when I saw your car belly-up in the ditch.”

  “You’ve gotten rusty on me.”

  It struck him then, standing in the middle of a cow field, being pummeled with debris, with what looked like a solid F4 gunning straight for them…that she’d summed up with one word exactly what it was he’d been feeling lately, but hadn’t been able to define. Rusty. Huge chunks of his life had been put on hold for the sake of advancing the cause of severe weather research. And with neglect and disuse comes dormancy.

  The wind slammed them both back against the barn wall. With a shared glance, he knew she’d heard what he had. The wood planks were making a new groaning sound as the air pressure inside the structure and out increased and shifted. An instant later, still gripping each other’s arms, they were racing hell-bent for the shelter. One glance at her as they stumbled and fought the wind showed her expression to be anything but tense. In fact, she was grinning. Come to think of it, so was he.

  And suddenly life didn’t feel so dormant anymore. Of course, that was probably a normal reaction given the potentially deadly situation they were in at the moment. But he’d faced down Mother Nature before. More than once he’d felt just like this, heart pounding its way out of his chest, adrenaline spiking off the chart.