by Scott Blade
They barely lit the crawlspace.
I saw two things. First the bunker wasn’t a bunker at all. It was too small and there was no food stored in it. Plus there was nowhere to go to the bathroom. No kitchen facilities. No visible power source.
There was barely room to stretch out and sleep.
And the second thing that I saw made me smile ear to ear. It wasn’t a bunker because it was a weapons cache.
Chapter 50
Another explosion rocked the concrete walls and the dim lights went out.
I waited in the thick darkness. The fire above me tore and chewed and devoured huge chunks of the barn. I heard a section collapse.
I had to get out before the rest of it came down. The roof might’ve been blown off by the explosions. Or it might be hanging by a board. I couldn’t wait for the whole thing to collapse on top of me. I could be trapped inside.
So I closed my eyes and pictured the gun collection in my mind. I scanned through it. It was impressive. That was for damn sure. Assault rifles, long guns, handguns, and even some classics lined the walls.
There were magazines stacked on the ground near each gun. Some of them had been fired on a regular basis. Either for fun or target practice or just to make sure that they were kept in good working order.
I chose to grab a good modern assault rifle. The M4 Carbine. The A1 version, an improved version from past M4 design. A great weapon. It came into wide use in 1997. This was the basic design. No scope. No flashlight.
I grabbed the nearest magazine. Loaded it. Readied it for use.
I clicked it to fire a three-round burst.
I picked up an extra magazine and slipped it into my back pocket. I lowered the gun and carried it by the handle and then I crawled underneath the concrete block and prepared to open it.
I planted my feet firmly on the ground and pushed up on the block with my shoulders like I was doing calf raises. I used the muscles in my legs, knees, and calves and pushed.
The block wasn’t weighted down by any obstructions, which was good, and it moved up and slid back. I crouched back down and aimed the gun at the opening in case someone stuck his head in.
No one did.
The smoke was thick and the heat rushed across my face like hot steam.
Up until this point I had felt both unlucky and foolish. Getting ambushed, betrayed, having to hike all the way back, having given up and leaving in the first place, and abandoning Matlind’s quest. But just then something happened that was good.
It started to rain again.
It was subtle at first, but within seconds it was a strong downpour.
The rain was unlike before, when it was cold. Now it was hot, but better than the heat of the fire. The rain came down and put out sections of the blaze.
I smiled. I lifted my head out of the hole, quickly. There was no one there, just traces that were left of the barn and huge dancing flames.
I scrambled out of the bunker and rolled. I came up on one knee and twisted at the hip, covered the path created by the rain. Fire danced around in my cone of sight. But there was no other movement. No bad guys.
The fiery barn walls surrounded me in a 290-degree arc. A single clear path lay open from me to the double barn doors.
The doors themselves had exploded off the hinges and shot outward somewhere. I had no idea where.
I stayed crouched and rushed through the opening while I had it.
At the end I rolled again and came up with the M4 ready to fire at anything that moved.
I scanned through the fog. Nothing moved but the dancing fire.
The fog was thick, but the fire lit a good 30-foot radius.
To my left-hand side was the rear of Grady’s parked Tahoe. I crouched and trudged over to the bumper. I put my back to it and flicked the M4 through the area again.
I stayed low and scanned a third time just to be safe. Then I heard a noise a little way down the track. Like rustling. I backed up to the front of the Tahoe and peered through the glass.
One of Tega’s guys walked up the track. He held his FN-P90 all wrong. He held it one-handed with the stock shoved in his armpit.
He had a flashlight attachment switched on and was using it to search the area around the opposite side from me.
I had no idea what made him veer off so far. Maybe he walked back from Tega’s convoy. Maybe he had run from the explosion and now was returning.
I stayed put. Let him check that side and then come to me.
I didn’t want to fire. I had no problem with shooting the guy in the back. No problem at all. My problem was that I wasn’t sure that the guy was alone.
The M4 was a loud gun. Even with the background noise of the deafening fire, the gunshots from the M4 would be heard by nearby bad guys.
So I waited.
The guy searched the area across from me for 20 seconds or so and then he began approaching Grady’s Tahoe.
He walked at normal speed. He wasn’t really expecting me to be here and then when he reached halfway, his cell phone rang. He paused and reached into his pocket. He let the FN-P90 drop down to one side in his left hand. The light’s beam shined a tight circle at the guy’s feet.
He pulled out his phone and answered.
He spoke in Spanish that I didn’t understand and then he said, “He’s dead, boss.”
He paused and listened like he was receiving orders. Then he said, “I’m looking for his body now.”
He paused again, listened, and said, “I call you when I see him.”
I grinned because the guy had just told me that he was all alone.
He hung up the phone.
I wasn’t a fan of firing a gun for the first time, especially when my life depended on it. That was no one’s ideal situation, but if I had test fired it, the guy would’ve made me.
So, I clicked the M4 to fire a single-round burst.
In one fluid motion, I stood up, knees straight, shoulders loose, ready for the kick. I aimed down the sight and fired four steady shots at the guy.
All I had needed was one.
All four hit him center mass in an uneven circle right in his heart.
An explosion of red burst through his back and sprayed out the front of his chest. The guy flew back like he’d been jerked by a bungee cord, pulled by a high-speed train.
The FN P90 hung in the air in slow motion and dropped to the ground. I didn’t have to touch it to know that it was cold. He hadn’t had the chance to fire it.
I walked over to the guy. Checked him to make sure that he was dead, not that I needed to.
I ignored his pockets. I wasn’t interested in their contents. I ignored the FN P90. I was satisfied with the M4. I lowered it and gripped it by the top-mounted handle. I turned, looked at the fiery barn one last time, and then sprinted back to Grady’s Tahoe.
I dug in my pocket for the keys. I felt a bunch of splintered pieces of plastic. I pulled out the phone that Sheldon had given me. It was shattered. I dropped the pieces to the ground.
The Bluetooth had fallen out of my ear somewhere.
I checked my mom’s phone. It was fine. Then I dug around for the keys again. I found them and took them out.
I pressed the unlock button on the key remote. The Tahoe unlocked.
I hopped in, tossed the M4 on the passenger seat, shut the door, and fired up the engine. I popped it into reverse, backed up, and hit the gas. The tires turned and shot up mud behind the vehicle and then it took off.
Chapter 51
I spun the Tahoe’s steering wheel as I turned the vehicle to catch up to Oskar Tega.
The track curved and pitched. Tall, disturbing pine trees flapped along the sides like they were warning me to turn back. There was no ditch.
The rear tires skidded through the mud, splashing wet, orange muck across the back window. The rain beat down on the roof. The pounding echoed through the interior.
I had the wipers working overtime to keep the rain and the mud off the windshield.
Oskar Tega had left before I escaped the barn, but I wasn’t sure how much earlier or at what speed he’d traveled. Therefore, I had no way of calculating how long it’d take to catch him.
I did know that they hadn’t started the seaplane. Not in this rain. But it would happen soon.
The first opportunity that they had for clearer conditions, they would be gone forever.
I pushed the Tahoe as fast as I could without losing control. I was experienced with driving in the mud. This was Mississippi.
I’d been 15 years old when my mom had taught me how to drive. She used a police cruiser and a dirt road obstacle course. I knew how to drive in these conditions. I was good at driving in these conditions.
My hair whipped across my face as I bounced and shifted in the seat.
I turned a sharp corner and sprung up onto a paved road. Loose items in the front console jittered. Coins fell across the foot well.
Up ahead I saw the tail end of a convoy of F150 pickups. It was Tega and his men. They drove cautiously through the weather. They had given me the advantage.
I sped up. The Tahoe’s engine roared and charged like a chariot of horses. I pulled up onto the convoy several car lengths behind them. Their taillights fluttered in the rain. The red beams were visible every time that the rear truck braked, which was often. Then they faded into the fog.
I stepped on the gas. The engine roared and the gas pedal shook. Thunder roared overhead and then softened into a low rumble.
I reached over my left shoulder and grabbed the seatbelt. I pulled it down and snapped it into the locking mechanism and then I tugged to make sure that it was fastened.
The Tahoe had come with the police interceptor package, which meant that Grady’s vehicle was armored and reinforced and built to withstand damage.
Another great feature was the battering ram on the front grill.
I caught up with the convoy. At first they must’ve thought that I was one of them, the guy that Tega had left behind, probably, because they stayed driving slow. But as soon as I got close enough to see their license plates, the two F-150s hit the gas. The passenger in the rear truck leaned out of his window and started firing at me.
Bullets sprayed and darted across my hood. Two pierced through the window and zipped past my head. If I had had a passenger in the front seat, he’d be dead.
I swerved to the left-hand side of the road and out of the bullets’ path.
The passenger fired again and again in rapid succession. The rain and the fog hindered my vision, which meant that his was also hindered. He continued to fire off course. Bullets whizzed past and into the weather behind me.
The guy followed my high beams, adjusted his trajectory, and fired. The front right-hand headlight exploded in a burst of broken plastic and glass from the bulb. It went dark.
I reacted and shut off the other light. I ducked down behind the wheel and darted the Tahoe back to the right-hand lane.
The guy firing thought that I had stayed in the same place. I heard crackles of bullets spray across the hood again as I traversed into the right-hand lane.
One bullet just missed my head as I swerved to the right. It flew through the interior and shattered the rear window. Cracks from the bullet holes in my front window spider-webbed across the glass until I could no longer see out.
I drove closer to the rear of the back truck and slammed into the back bumper.
I disengaged my foot from the gas and let the truck in front swerve and skid. I braked. In this weather and at this speed, the truck would’ve flipped if I had rammed it and driven full force ahead.
I didn’t want it to do that.
If the truck flipped, it would’ve rolled over my hood and probably crushed my head. That wasn’t the plan. So I let the driver regain control. Then I leaned over the console and grabbed the M4. I lifted it, switched it to full auto, squeezed the trigger, and fired through the windshield.
The glass shredded and then the front half flew forward and broke off. It was tossed off to the right-hand side and the wind tore it off and sent it flapping behind me.
The rain beat down and flew through the opening. The wipers were left mangled. They whipped up and down on the hood like broken insect antennas.
The passenger reacted to the sound of gunfire. He had regained control of his aim and started firing his FN-P90.
The first sequence of shots rang out into the night. Everything seemed to slow. I fired the M4 into the rain and the fog and the darkness.
Moving at a speed that was dangerous in these conditions, I still managed to control both the Tahoe and the M4, even with the recoil. My mom had never taught me to drive and shoot at the same time, but I did it.
I wasn’t just blind firing. The guy in front of me had been. That was one major advantage that I had. My headlights were dark. My vehicle was camouflaged by the darkness and the weather conditions. But you can’t disengage brake lights, not from the vehicle’s interior while driving. They designed cars that way. It was dangerous to be able to switch them off in the middle of driving your car.
The guy firing from the passenger seat didn’t know my exact position. He only knew that I was behind him, but I knew exactly where he was.
I fired the M4 in a tight horizontal arc of right to left—point A to B. Seven rounds rocketed out of the M4.
Once I reached point B, I rested my trigger finger for a second and then restarted the process from point B back to point A. Six rounds spent.
I knew instantly that I had hit the driver in the back because I didn’t make it back to point A.
In a heap of slow-motioned violence, the truck jerked to the left-hand side and the truck’s right-hand tires came off the ground.
A half second later the truck flipped. It bounced and rolled on the pavement.
Glass shattered. The roof halfway crushed inward and then the vehicle skidded along the wet road. Sparks flew from underneath the roof as it slowed to a stop.
At the same time, I slammed on the brakes. The Tahoe skidded and fishtailed violently. The rear swung around to the front and stopped perpendicular to the road.
Quickly, I released the steering wheel, raised the M4, two-handed, and pointed it at the wreckage through the passenger window. No movement.
I pressed the button on the seatbelt’s locking mechanism and the belt shot up and raked across my chest.
I popped open the door and stepped out.
I used the Tahoe for cover and stood on the step bar and pointed the M4 across the roof.
I looked through the sight. Nothing moved from the flipped truck.
I watched the taillights of the front F-150 as they faded in the distance. They hadn’t even stopped to check on their friends. Tega must’ve been in the forward truck. No way would his men have left him behind. He was their paycheck.
I kept the F-150 in my line of sight and walked through the rain toward it.
It was dark except for the brake lights. They were bright like the driver’s foot was pressing down on the brake pedal.
I scrambled to the back of the downed truck.
I checked the passenger side first since I knew that he’d been armed and I had gotten the driver with at least one round.
The F-150’s bed was garbled and crushed.
Glass pebbles crackled beneath my feet.
I peered into the passenger side through the sights of the M4.
A short Mexican guy hung dead from his seatbelt. His head was twisted too far over his left shoulder. He was wide-eyed. His neck had been broken in one swift snap. Must’ve happened when the truck bounced.
The FN-P90 was broken into two uneven pieces. Hard to do. The barrel hung from a shred like torn fabric.
I smiled. At least one down and then I walked around the hood. The underbody was caved in. Engine fluids leaked and seeped out like a waterfall. They pooled on the ground and mixed with the mud and the rain.
The b
attery sparked.
Better make this quick. Don’t want it to explode, I thought.
I scrambled over to the driver’s side.
The driver crawled out of the front. He used his hands to drag himself out across the concrete. Rain fell and beat against his small back. Blood trailed behind him in a curved, smeared pattern back to the truck.
He had no visible weapon.
His left arm was broken. His legs were broken and mangled, tracking behind him like dead weight.
Two bullet holes gaped near the small of his back. He had lost so much blood that I doubted that he’d live much longer.
As I got closer, I realized my horrible mistake.
He had been a she. It was Sheldon.
Chapter 53
Sheldon’s hair was wet and matted from blood and rain. She had hit her head hard when the truck flipped.
I lowered the M4 and held it down and low. I knelt beside her and gently rolled her over. I held her head up and cradled it in my palm.
I frowned. I set down the M4.
I stared at her. I said, “Sheldon.”
She looked up at me. One of her eyes was swollen shut like she had been punched hard.
Her front teeth were missing and blood spilled out of her mouth.
“Why? Why did you do this?”
Sheldon gasped. She stayed quiet.
I said, “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to save you.”
She said, “No.”
“Please. Tell me something. Anything.”
“No. There’s nothing. I’m dying.”
I couldn’t respond.
She said, “Reacher. I’m…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t do that. You can survive. Where’s your phone? I’ll call for help.”
She reached out with her one working, bloody hand and touched my chest. I thought that she was trying to reach my face like my mom had four days ago. Only Sheldon had no strength left and then she said. “Don’t let them on the plane. If Oskar gets them on the plane…you lose.”
She froze suddenly like a block of ice. Her eyes remained wide open, but her lips stopped moving. Her chest stopped breathing and her life faded away.