Alex’s concerned face snapped up after the first shotgun blast. To any innocent observer, it would look like a father was shooting at his daughter. Alex knew better. She saw what he was trying to do, and started planning on how to take advantage of it. Rather than run into the needles, high intensity light, and concentrated air tubes himself, he was sending little steel, tungsten, plastic, bismuth, and tin friends to knock them away just long enough for his daughter to slip by.
Both were worried, as well as not worried, about the timing. Her swinging into the Sherpa’s cab between shots had to be exact, but when to try doing so was severely limited. That was because the shotgun only had five shells in the magazine before it required reloading, and besides, by the time he had used four, the helmeted scumbags would probably be onto the ploy and take the steps necessary to perforate them both.
Alex had enormous faith in her father’s aiming skills. They had stood side by side in shooting galleries and battles alike. He might not be as good a shot as she was at this stage of life, but she knew she could literally bet her life on him.
She did. Dan blasted a second time, scattering whatever junk the others were hurling at her, so she threw herself into the Sherpa’s cab like a hyper-fast caterpillar—right before he blasted a third time. Then both Morgans jumped behind the wheels of their respective vehicles and tromped on the accelerators.
The Honda and the Sherpa leaped forward, tearing up the creosote bushes under their special metal-ringed, run-flat tires that had lived up to their reputations. Alex felt the Sherpa slip, as if she had hit a foot-long patch of ice, but before she could worry about it, she heard the sickening sounds of flesh tearing. She didn’t bother to check that she had run over the busboy. She had bigger concerns to feel bad about.
A big black tactical vehicle came roaring out from behind a rocky bluff some two hundred yards away. To put it more accurately, it came erupting out over the bluff to crush the prairie floor on high-payload, military-grade tires. Gunning its engine, the thing came speeding at them as the Morgans all but stood on their accelerators.
Dan knew what it was: a Guardian MAX, made by the International Armored Group. He ought to know; it was built on a Ford HD truck chassis, and if there was one thing he knew, it was Fords—certainly a lot better than he knew Hondas. These damn Guardians could be armored up to NATO’s highest level of protection for occupants of light armored vehicles and, with their six-point-eight-liter V-ten engines, could eat up the distance between them like a Florida alligator ate retirees’ poodles.
It also could seat five, which probably meant Amina, a laser rifler, a diamond-tipped needle shooter, a hole-puncher, and a driver. Five against two—not terrible odds, but far from great ones considering the condition of the Honda, Sherpa, and their drivers, not to mention their ability to return fire under these circumstances.
Dan stopped himself from thinking about what was behind them, and started thinking about what was ahead. They were in the mouth of one of New Mexico’s infamous “staked plains,” which could be the most rugged stretch of land in the state. These mesas usually led to canyons, but first wove through twisted, curving tunnels of rock that opened and tightened up again with unguessable regularity.
He pictured the seventy-three inch wide CR-V getting through a narrow pass as the eighty-seven-inch-wide Guardian MAX LTV smashed into it. That was the way to go, but the Sherpa had to be dealt with first. The killers in the Guardian seemed to feel the same way. From their vantage point, the Honda was hiding behind the Sherpa like a freshman behind a senior, so they took it all out on the latter.
Through his side-view mirror, Dan could see the gun slots open up on the MAX’s sides and three different weapons appeared. As they tried pelting the Sherpa’s rear with needles, air punches, and high-intensity light, it looked as if the Renault was wiggling its ass at them—until Dan realized that effect was caused by already broken pieces swinging in the wind.
Once more, Dan wished he had a cellphone or Zeta ear-comm to communicate with his daughter, or at least that he had been smart enough to grab some walkie-talkies. But he’d just have to depend on their familial bond, and hope that the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree.
As Dan headed toward a twisted, curving opening in the rocks at the edge of the basin they were speeding across, Alex came hurtling toward him, seemingly unable to prevent what the Sherpa had done twice before—rear-end the Honda. But within seconds, Dan saw the method to her madness, especially when he saw her ram the barrel of the SCAR onto the Sherpa’s passenger side window.
“Dear God,” he breathed. She couldn’t be thinking of doing what I think she’s thinking of doing, could she?
It was exactly what he would have thought of trying if their positions had been reversed. Both knew that if she had managed to get ahead of the Honda, that would have exposed it to unsurvivable hammering from the MAX. There was really only one thing left to do if they wanted to trade certain death for possible suicide.
But was she as good a driver as him? She was as good a sniper—better, in fact—so it was time to stop worrying and start helping. As she emptied the remainder of the SCAR’s most powerful rounds into the Sherpa’s passenger-side windshield, he saw her silently screaming face, but also a growing crack in the windshield glass.
He couldn’t decide whether to breathe a sigh of relief or hold his breath—knowing that when a windshield is labeled “bulletproof,” that usually actually meant resistant to certain calibers, as well as to distant shots, not point blank ones. In any case, attempting what Alex did should not be tried at home.
Dan kept one eye peeled on the rear view mirror so he saw Alex start pounding the center of the crack with the gun barrel and, when that wasn’t as fast or effective as she wanted it to be, neatly and nimbly flip the gun in mid-air so she could grab the barrel and use the butt as the club—while still steering the Sherpa with her other hand. Dan saw her wince from the barrel’s heat, and winced with her, remembering how that felt. But he also knew that she, like him, would not let go. Instead, she started swinging the seven-pound weapon like a cleaver, hitting crack central every time.
Dan shifted his eyes down to where the driver’s side latch for the CR-V’s rear cargo door was. He was certain that Alex had seen it after all those hours in the Honda’s passenger seat. His eyes snapped up just as the SCAR butt broke through the Sherpa window. Then she started chopping with it, making as big an opening in the windshield as possible. Normally, once a windshield’s integrity was compromised, the entire thing would fall out like a dropped net, but bulletproof glass was made of stronger stuff, so she only managed to make a gap of about two feet.
It would have to do. Dan watched Alex slam down on her accelerator again, gripping the steering wheel with both her white-knuckled hands. He waited until the cab of the Sherpa filled the Honda’s rear view mirror like an IMAX movie, then yanked the rear hatch latch.
The tail door popped open, then, because of the rough road, almost immediately bounced back to lock again. Cursing in tense rage, Dan yanked the latch release a second time, then hurled the twenty-five ounce P30 at the door.
His aim was perfect. The gun punched the bottom of the hatch like an angry fist, sending it swinging up. As it rose, it revealed Alex oozing through the break in the Sherpa’s windshield like a python being called by a snake charmer’s pungi.
Dan clamped his hands on the Honda’s steering wheel to make sure the vehicle was in front, then gently braked until the Sherpa’s snout was practically inside the CR-V’s cargo area. Alex scrambled over the Sherpa hood, got her feet under her, and tensed to make the jump from one vehicle to another.
Of course, the Guardian MAX took that moment to catch up.
Almost at the exact millisecond Alex’s toes were about to leave the Sherpa’s steel, the MAX rammed into its back, turning Alex’s jump from a smooth dive to a flailing spin.
Dan bellowed like
a wounded elephant as he watched his daughter’s arms and legs bend, thrash, and flounder, her twisted body seemingly frozen in mid-air in an endless, agonizing eternity in the space between the two vehicles.
Chapter 16
Morgan was halfway out of his seat to try grabbing Alex in mid-air when the Guardian finished the job.
He should have known better. The Guardian rams the Sherpa, the Sherpa unavoidably lurches forward, ramming whatever is in front of it, which was, in this case, a much lighter, much smaller soccer mom van.
The three machines looked like a vehicular Russian nesting doll, then Alex was thrown into the back of the Honda’s seats. Dan felt the stomach-churning thud of his daughter’s limp body in his very soul, then had to grab the steering wheel before he lost all control.
The Guardian’s nose went down, sending the Sherpa’s tail up, the shock wave trying to do the same to the Honda. Dan wrestled the wheel while trying to press the accelerator through the floor boards, his eyes searching both the windshield and rear-view mirror for any sign of escape, or his daughter.
Instead he saw the Sherpa, like a drunken frat boy, shudder and weave. Then, like an angry dragon, it nosed into the rear opening while clawing at the bumpers. The MAX hit it again.
The Sherpa rammed its nose into the ground this time, sending it ass over teakettle into the back of the CR-V. Both the back bumper and the entire rear hatch door were torn off with a metallic scream, sending metal and glass spinning in all directions.
The Honda was shoved forward, its rear wheels leaving the prairie ground, then slammed down again. The CR-V lost little speed because although Dan had not been smart enough to remember walkie-talkies, he had been smart enough for four-wheel drive. Once the rear wheels reconnected with what served as their roadway, the CR-V tried to make up for lost time, which was vitally important because, in the interim, the Sherpa had turned violently abusive.
Rather than somersaulting, smashing down, and coming to a smoking, wrecked stop like a good boy, the Sherpa slid to the side, tripped over some rocks, and rolled. The Honda was being followed by a combination stream-roller and thresher.
To Dan’s infuriated eyes, it was like an up close and personal bird’s-eye view of the record-setting Aston Martin roll in the aforementioned Casino Royale, although 007 hadn’t had his unconscious daughter sliding inexorably toward the thresher’s maw.
The next few seconds were the hairiest Dan had ever experienced. He had to accelerate madly to keep from getting ground up by the Sherpa’s smashing, but he also had to brake to keep Alex from falling out and unavoidably getting chewed up.
He had to speed up, watching Alex tremble back toward the open maw, brake to jerk her back from the abyss, speed up again as more hunks of the Honda’s rear opening were snapped off, then brake again to save his daughter—all in perfect rhythm and with expert timing.
The Sherpa’s rolls slowed, just in the nick of time for Dan to see an opening in the mesa rocks barely wide enough for the CR-V to squeeze through. With something like pleasure, he yanked the Honda’s steering wheel to the right, sending Alex slamming into the SUV’s side wall, and shot through the opening. The tight squeeze sent sparks and scraping sounds everywhere, but then, helping Dan believe in karma, the Sherpa landed, slid, and spun, miraculously slamming across the opening like a closing door.
Dan almost laughed with relief as he saw the Sherpa-sealed entrance to the mesa maze in his rearview mirror. He looked forward to make sure there was nothing he might crash into for the next dozen yards, then reached back, grabbed the nearest part of Alex available—her sleeve—and hauled her between the CR-V’s front seats. He looked down at her, intending to spend only a second, but in actuality waited as long as it took to assess her condition. She was completely out and badly bruised, but breathing steadily.
His relief was nearly dizzying, and he gave thanks as he returned his attention to what served as the road ahead. He wasn’t sure whether it was his gratitude or the area’s actual scenery, but the badlands he now found himself in were fascinatingly beautiful. The multi-colored cairns sloped up from inches to hundreds of feet, each in its own weird and weathered shape. The washes twisted and turned like labyrinths of rainbow-splashed pastels.
Then the thirty-second vacation was over as he heard an explosion behind them. His eyes snapped up to the rear-view mirror, no longer blocked by a rear hatch, to see the Guardian shredding open the Sherpa obstruction like a starving man tearing open a burrito. The MAX barreled through the wreckage and charged straight at the Honda.
Dan jammed the pedal to the metal. With no rear hatch, bulletproofing made no difference. But all the time and labor he had expended on bulletproofing the seats paid off in spades as he heard, but did not feel, needles snapping behind them.
He was sure the air fists were out of range, but the lasers didn’t care about any stinking bulletproofing. So it was back to square one, only with a Guardian instead of a Sherpa, and minus one advantage. They might not be able to drive like he did, but they sure as hell didn’t care about keeping him alive. He had to wonder again why the Peking Panda people had, but then he started playing the CR-V’s wheel and pedals like a virtuoso.
The Guardian didn’t care. Dan would slip around a cairn, but the Guardian smashed right through it. He snuck into another opening too small for the MAX. It smashed into it until it wasn’t too small anymore.
That gave Dan an ever-increasing lead, but still the MAX didn’t care. It was fresh, probably fully fueled, and not missing any doors or weapons. Dan was back down to his Walther, Ruger, blackjack, and boot knife. He drove fast and thought furiously, but every idea he got—like playing joust or chicken with the thing—he knew the MAX would smash through. It was like David versus Goliath again, only this time David was crippled and Goliath was wearing armor and carrying a flame-thrower. A slingshot just wouldn’t cut it.
The Honda turned a final mesa corner, and emerged once again out into New Mexico’s wide open spaces. The MAX, of course, smashed through the stone gateway, reducing it to pebbles. The two vehicles sped out across a rolling basin of soft grass surrounded, as if in mother nature’s coliseum, with a circle of gypsum dunes, canyon pines, white fir, and desert wildflowers in yellow, white, pink, and scarlet—all of it bordered by mountains, topped with a painfully blue sky and pure white clouds.
Dan Morgan felt like a cockroach on a wedding cake—a true trespasser into a sacred place. The needs or wants of the a-holes pursuing them meant little. He glanced at the sleeping face of his daughter, then chewed at his lower lip.
“Well, gonna die anyway,” he muttered. “There are worse places to do it.”
But that didn’t mean he was giving up. He drove until the Honda ran out of gas, which was three-quarters of the way across the huge basin. The Guardian, not surprisingly, seemed to distrust the stop. It slowed, then circled the CR-V. It had only completed one circuit, from twenty yards away, when it opened fire.
Dan grabbed Alex and dragged her with him to the floor under the dashboard as needles, concentrated light, and air fists started sticking, slicing, and smashing all around them. Glass, metal, plastic, and cloth rained down on the Morgans. After the barrage stopped, Dan heard a voice.
“Krelats,” was what was said, but its meaning was clear, especially from the mocking, Serbian-accented voice that spoke it. Imbecile. Buffoon.
Dan knew his Serbian nickname when he heard it. Not bothering to remove his guns, sap, or knife, he sat up, letting all the chips of the Honda fall where they might. Then he stepped out of the SUV. The Honda was quite the worse for wear. The engine was smoking, the windows looked like an acupuncturist had gone nuts on them, the body side moldings looked like “roommate wanted” tear-off ads at a college student center, and the doors looked like the Incredible Hulk had been using them for punching practice.
Dan looked from his labor of love to his new labor of hate. Amina had n
ot taken off her helmet this time. She had replaced it with one that had a flip-up visor, so fairly total protection was just one finger-flick away.
“You don’t, by any chance,” he inquired, “want me to go anyplace with you, do you?”
She looked at him with sneering derision. “No,” she said, but then seemed to consider the possibilities. “I may decide to take along your darling daughter, however. I have friends who are relatives of the people she killed on the train who might like to spend some …how do you say…‘quality time’ with her.”
Dan almost charged, but decided to avoid a summary execution for as long as possible. He saw, beyond the woman, three more helmeted, uniformed people, their visors down, holding their high-tech weapons at the ready in the doorways of the Guardian.
“Speaking of quality time,” he changed the subject with seeming nonchalance, while feeling acidic bile in the back of his throat, “nice wheels. Considering Guardians are only available to law enforcement, government, and military, you wouldn’t mind cluing me in on who gave it to you, would you? For old time’s sake?”
It was Amina’s turn to almost charge, but she managed to control herself, with obvious effort. Then her sneer returned.
“No,” she said, “not for old time’s sake. But maybe, perhaps, for, how you say, a going away present. Or, how we say, ДеатхВисх. A last wish.”
She charged. His Walther was out before she got within three feet. He was expecting to be mowed down, but hoping he could bring her with him. The other Anti-Zeta hired help was obviously sternly instructed. They didn’t even bring their weapons to bear as, suddenly, Amina wasn’t in front of Dan’s gun anymore.
Her foot seemed to come out of nowhere, kicking the PPK from his hand before a second foot swiped across his jaw like a nine-iron. Dan staggered as Amina landed on her feet, a dismissive grin on her face.
They stayed in place, considering one another in the glorious natural amphitheater and sky dome all around them.
War of Shadows Page 11