Impact | Book 6 | Dig

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Butch peered under there. “Yeah, I think I can make the shot.”

  “Is there room for two?” Haley inquired, scooting closer to him.

  “Not really. You keep an eye behind us.” Butch pointed back. “There are ten other gun platforms out there. The men could come at us from any which way.”

  “You got it,” she said, patting Butch on the hindquarters.

  He chuckled as he set up his rifle. “Don’t distract me!”

  Though they were screwing around, Haley and Butch were deadly serious in their intentions. Butch sprawled out on the ground. Their female partner held up her rifle, scanning behind the truck. He was thoroughly impressed.

  “I’ve got them,” Butch said quietly.

  “I’m going for the shot,” Ezra replied, bracing himself for the look-around. “In three…two…one.”

  He raised his rifle as fast as possible. His breath caught in his windpipe when he saw the man aiming right at him.

  Butch fired once, then four more times in quick succession.

  Ezra backed off without firing. The man popped off a round, which penetrated the sidewall of the tire he was using for cover. It violently exploded with a thunderous pop, nearly giving him a heart attack in the process.

  “Holy shit!” he screamed.

  “He backed off,” Butch yelled.

  Haley checked out the blown tire, then looked at Ezra. “You okay?”

  “I’m good,” Ezra replied, running his fingers through his hair, glad it was still on his head.

  She went back to searching for threats.

  “I missed him, E-Z. Sorry.” Butch stayed where he was, but he’d scooted back a foot or two.

  “They have to know you’re there,” Ezra reasoned. “Don’t stay too long.”

  He wished he had one of the grenades used by TKM to ambush Calvin’s convoy. While they were inside the shipping container, he’d noticed boxes of supplies, but he didn’t think to check what was inside. If the guys at the other truck knew there were grenades in there…

  “Guys, be ready to run.”

  “Where?” Haley replied, nervous.

  “I’m not sure,” he said with total honesty. “But they might have grenades, like before.”

  Butch scooted back another foot. “That’s good thinking, but we’re kinda stuck here.”

  Ezra again wished he knew what Grace was doing on the highway, but the threat of being shot from the side, or having a grenade tossed at him, made him stay tethered to the moment.

  The big man yelled, “They’re coming over!”

  His thunderous heartbeat doubled as Ezra held himself against the back of the tire. If the enemy was on the move, he had no choice but to lean out and shoot.

  For Grace.

  He took a few shallow breaths, unwilling to waste another second. He kept one knee on the ground as he slid sideways, revealing himself enough to hold his rifle at the side of the tire. Four men were coming out from the side of their truck.

  Blood pounded through his skull, making it hard to concentrate on what he had to do. He steadied the rifle in front of him, looked into the scope—

  The lead man’s head disappeared from his body.

  “Holy shitballs!” Butch cried out.

  A blue shirt and a set of jeans crumpled to the ground like a rolling pile of bones.

  The other men stopped instantly, looking around for what caused their friend’s decapitation. Ezra used the pause to line up his first shot, but the men couldn’t drop their rifles fast enough. They had their hands up as they stood in the middle of the field.

  “That was a big G-D gun,” Butch cheered. “It was a deal-breaker for those assholes. Not that I blame them.”

  For once, the ordnance advantage was on his side.

  But he didn’t celebrate. Ezra came out of his hiding spot and looked out toward Grace. It wasn’t clear what was happening out there.

  “Get in the rig,” he ordered. “We’re going to get my daughter.”

  Outside Boulder, WY

  Grace hopped out of the truck the second it came to a stop. Her hands were shaking and she could barely suck in a breath; she’d never hit a pedestrian before. Now, she’d done it on purpose.

  “I’m going for it,” she said to Asher and Logan, though they were getting out, too.

  Logan scrambled through the good door, stepping out as she ran by.

  Nerio was a mess. She was on the hard shoulder of the two-lane highway, but looked like she’d been dragged across the rocks by a motocross bike. The truck had hit her hard, but it was the hard landing which seemed to have bloodied her the most. Her sniper rifle was thirty feet in the other direction, and the woman didn’t seem to have any other weapons in her tight-fitting uniform, so she was confident standing over her.

  “You?” Nerio asked when she saw Grace come into her field of view. It appeared as if she couldn’t move her neck as she lay frontside down on the pavement.

  “Don’t mess with the park service, lady. Everyone knows that.” She was feeling cocky. “And you dented my truck. I’m going to have to bill you for it.”

  Nerio’s raised eyebrows conveyed her shock.

  Asher and Logan walked up behind Grace, weapons drawn.

  “You!” the injured woman spit out when she saw Logan.

  He smiled. “Hey, what’s up? The Crow Nation called. That bumper mark in your hip is from my people. Especially my dad. He wasn’t too happy you tried to kidnap me.”

  Nerio stirred, as if sheer force of will could repair her wounds. To Grace’s surprise, the woman did manage to move her neck, arms, and legs, but she wasn’t moving fast. “I’m going to kill you,” Nerio grumbled, looking only at Logan. “You killed my Alejandro.”

  Logan wasn’t a kid who cowered in the face of adversity, but he seemed to feed off Grace’s cheeky attitude. “I guess you shouldn’t have been shooting at my friends. I only drove into your loser husband because you endangered them. My dad would say that makes what happened entirely your fault.” He laughed. “So, you should apologize to yourself.”

  Grace motioned to Logan. “Let’s ease back, okay? We’ll take her to your dad.”

  “Don’t bother,” Nerio exhaled. “My men are spread out as I planned. You can’t penetrate any of my bunkers, even with that big gun of yours. I reinforced the walls to withstand direct hits from armor-piercing rounds.”

  She’d watched as Tom hit the shipping boxes. He’d found out fairly quickly he couldn’t punch through. It was when he switched to softer targets.

  “You should have done the same for your drivers. I bet they’re all dead. The truck engines, too.” She looked back to where the rest of the battle was taking place. Only one of the big rigs was moving, though there was still a lot of shooting from the trailers. The crack-bang of the biggest gun on the battlefield continued to rage, too. The Crow sniper was making good use of his last twenty rounds.

  Nerio coughed up some blood. “Damn you, Petteri. I was supposed to be relaxing at my villa down in Caracas. Come up and take over for Misha, he said. You’ll have more money than you can fit in a bank, he said. Typical lies.”

  Grace wondered if she knew about the hitman. A surly part of her conscience, the section pissed at the woman for shooting at her dad, insisted she rub it in the woman’s face. “You might have taken over for Misha, but he got the better of you. He’s recovering in a hospital at this very moment.”

  The redheaded woman had chunks of her bangs stuck in her eyes, but she didn’t move her hands to clear them. Instead, she slowly turned toward Grace and gave her a glare capable of turning most girls to stone.

  “It’s true,” Grace said in a glib voice.

  Nerio rolled her face into the concrete, seemingly oblivious to pain.

  A semitruck approached from behind Grace, its engine rising and falling as the driver shifted through the gears. Maybe one of the enemy drivers finally figured out it was time to escape. Maybe—

  Nerio rocked to her side, reveali
ng a small pistol in her hand. The front of her top had a zipper down the middle, and she’d apparently pulled out the hidden weapon. “Don’t friggin’ move,” the woman said in her South American accent, pointing the gun at Grace’s face.

  Grace lowered her rifle a little, but not all the way. If she gave up her advantage, a woman with no scruples might shoot her anyway. She had to keep her talking.

  “There’s nowhere to go. You can’t shoot all three of us. We have the advantage.”

  The redheaded woman finally wiped the lost bangs out of her eyes. She half turned, seeing the semitruck rolling down the highway toward her, then she waved at it. “I’m going to get on my truck and get out of this hellhole. Don’t try anything and maybe I’ll let you live.”

  The truck was closing in fast. Grace hadn’t planned what to do with the woman when she drove over her. All she wanted to do was protect her dad. If the standoff led to Nerio escaping, but everyone else she cared about getting to live until tomorrow, she figured it was worth it. Still, she didn’t let her rifle barrel drop all the way.

  “The truck’s not stopping,” Asher commented, as if trying to mediate.

  “It’ll stop,” Nerio said with assurance, again waving her arm to flag it down. She stepped next to the yellow line of the paved lane, giving Grace an idea.

  “Nope, it’s not,” Asher said again, maintaining his poise.

  Nerio turned her head and sized up the truck. She seemed to calculate speed and distance, before turning back toward Grace. “Aw, the hell with it. I surrend—”

  The assassin half crouched, whipped her tiny pistol toward Logan, and fired.

  The truck was seconds away.

  “No!” Grace shouted, hurling herself bodily against the other woman’s wounded side. She was only a few feet away from Nerio, so it happened in a flash. In that brief instant, Logan sent a round into the woman’s chest right before impact.

  Nerio seemed to ignore the penetrating round, perhaps spending all her remaining hatred and focus on the Crow boy. She didn’t expect the shove, however. Caught unaware, Nerio took two steps backward.

  The flat edge of the truck’s bumper caught her square on the thigh. Unlike being hit by the Suburban, she hadn’t prepared to dodge it, so she took the full brunt of the giant vehicle. Grace heard several bones crack, even as Nerio let out a brief yelp.

  “Oh my God!” Grace yelled as the giant machine passed by only a few inches from her face. She balanced on the edge of falling forward until Asher grabbed her police belt and yanked her back to safety.

  In one brief moment, she caught a glimpse of the driver’s hair.

  The operator slammed on his brakes and locked up the tires with loud, big-dog barks. When the heavy machine came to a halt, Nerio’s body slid forward another twenty or thirty feet.

  “Thanks, Ash,” she said with a huge smile. “I know who it is.”

  She ran down the highway to where the driver had come to a stop. The man behind the wheel smiled down at Grace as he opened the door, looking as surprised as she about how they were meeting.

  “Hey, honey,” he said with a friendly wave.

  “Dad!” she cried out with relief.

  Chapter 22

  Outside Boulder, WY

  After Ezra watched the TKM man’s head get removed, the tone of the battlefield changed entirely. Those closest to the victim threw up their hands, desperate not to meet the same fate. The guards in the shipping units nearby also stopped firing, perhaps knowing the trucks were out of commission and they were trapped. Many of the others gave up, too. The ceasefire provided an opportunity for him to get in the semi, quickly turn it around, then race toward Grace.

  Along the way, he couldn’t see what was happening other than his daughter was out of her truck, standing next to highway talking to the sniper. Reading the situation, he judged that he needed to get there as fast as possible. However, when he was about to hit the brakes and stop, the sniper-woman pulled out a gun.

  “Grace!”

  Ezra held his breath as he willed the truck forward. There were four people standing in a clump. It would be dangerous to try to hit the sniper; he might also clip Grace. Events, as always, quickly went out of his control.

  The woman fired her gun.

  The boy returned a shot from his rifle.

  Grace lunged for the redheaded sniper.

  “No!” He crushed the brake pedal, sure Grace and the sniper were both going to be struck by his anvil of steel. The impact barely made an impression on him. Instead, he bounced up and down as the brakes fought to hold the ground.

  “Did I hit her?” he asked, barely aware Butch and Haley were in the passenger seat together.

  Once stopped, he quickly kicked open the door to see what he’d done.

  His little angel stood there, looking up at him.

  Air rushed into his lungs as if a dam had collapsed. Composing himself, he tried to think of something to say that would dispel the fear still draining out of him.

  “Hey, honey,” he said with his friendliest wave.

  “Dad!” she replied.

  Butch and Haley expressed relief, but he was out the door before they could say anything. In his haste, he slid off the top step, clumsily catching himself on the lower one. Then he tried to recover as he stepped down to the pavement.

  “Whoa!” Grace said with surprise. “Don’t get hurt at the victory parade.”

  She held out her arms to meet him and they hugged for half a minute. She squeezed his midsection so hard, he thought she was trying to choke him. When he pulled back to look at her face, she was in tears.

  “I’m sorry I almost hit you. That woman—”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s Mom. I’m sorry she didn’t make it. I’m sorry you lost her.”

  Ezra didn’t know how to react, until he remembered Susan had sent him out west to be with their daughter. To heal their family. It was a miracle to be standing there with her again. Instead of trying to think of a profound response, he pulled Grace to his chest and held her tight.

  After a short period of time, a young man tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me, sir. Sorry for disturbing you, but you two should move in front of the truck, rather than next to it. There are still a few guys shooting from their shipping containers back there.”

  Ezra looked over to the guy. He was a park ranger, like Grace. Or, he remembered, he was dressed to look like one. “You must be Asher Creighton. I’ve heard a few things about you on the calls with my daughter.”

  “All good, I hope?”

  Grace separated herself from Ezra. She looked at Asher, laughing. “You were with me the whole time. You know what I said to him.”

  “Oh, right.” Asher turned away as if embarrassed, but he kept looking at the other person who was with them. He soon pointed to the boy’s leg. “You’ve been shot!”

  They all gathered around a boy they introduced to him as Logan. His left pant leg was covered in blood, but he continued to stand up, and only seemed a bit bothered by it.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve had worse wounds. I fell off a horse once. You know, it’s not true what they say about Crow being natural riders. Calvin Tames Horse, my butt. His instructions sucked.”

  Grace made him sit down on the front bumper, but on the opposite side from the dented and bloody portion. At the same time, Butch and Haley came around, apparently intrigued by the family reunion.

  “E-Z, is that your daughter? I see the family resemblance.”

  Ezra gave him the “shut up” sign across his own throat, which Grace noticed.

  “It’s okay, Dad. I’m fine with it.”

  “You are? You always hated it when people pointed that out.”

  “Not always,” she said in a reasonable voice, also tending to the boy. “Just in my angry teen phase. I’m happy to be your daughter again. Especially today.”

  He’d never heard a better sentence in his whole life.

  “I can’t tell you how
happy I am this is over,” he said with satisfaction.

  Outside Boulder, WY

  “It’s not over, Dad. Not by a country mile.” Having grown up in western Kentucky, she was fond of using the phrase.

  Her dad looked around. “We stopped the men in the trucks. The shooting is dying down. Soon your friends in the town will have complete control of this place.”

  On cue, her phone meowed. Her dad’s friend, a guy bigger than anyone she’d ever met, laughed out loud.

  She answered it. “Hello?”

  “I see you’ve survived the battle. Good job.” It was the same mystery man as before. She looked around the area, wondering if the man was spying on her from nearby. However, when there was nothing obvious out there, she looked up. A helicopter swept low about five miles away. There was also a little airplane flying high above, making no sound that she could tell.

  The man chuckled. “Yep, I’m watching from up here. I can see you, the Native kid, and your boyfriend. I don’t know the others.”

  “What do you want?” she asked, not wanting to give away her dad.

  “You need to move fast. Petteri is sneaking his asteroid out of the valley right this instant.”

  “How do you sneak a five-story asteroid out of a flat valley with no trees?”

  “Who is it?” her dad whispered.

  She held her hand over the mic. “It’s someone who’s been helping us. I don’t know his name—”

  She let go so she could speak. “Who are you, by the way?”

  The man hesitated. “I’m Jake Ray.”

  She’d heard the name before. It was someone Misha had mentioned. “Jake Ray?”

  Asher tapped her on the arm. “He’s the guy Misha told us about!”

  “You’re Misha’s friend. He said we should look for you when we got to the dig site. Did you know he sent us?”

  “I know now. He and I have, uh, done some work together. I gave him some pointers about how to conduct his security at Petteri’s dig site. Let’s simply leave it at that.”

  “Well, Mr. Ray, if Misha trusted you, I’m willing to trust you as well. If you say Petteri is sneaking his rock out of this valley, I’ll believe you. But what can we do about it?”