by Brandt Legg
“I miss her very much, but I’m much more like my father. I think my mother found much of their lives overwhelming. But she did say to me, at least one thousand times, what translates into English as, ‘Rise to the occasion.’ Perhaps it was her own personal mantra, but I often hear her at unexpected times, saying those four words to me . . . and I try my best.”
“I wish I could have known her,” Chase said quietly.
For the next few miles Wen checked out the Antimatter Machine.
“Can you notice a difference with it?” Chase asked, referring to the changes the Astronaut had made to her special computer.
“It’s faster. There are a few more icons. He told me this one is a direct link to Heaven and that it’s cloaked.”
“Meaning the NSA can’t see when you’re connected?”
“Right, and it gives us three more minutes before they can track our login.”
“So twelve minutes twenty-nine seconds? Not twenty-eight, or thirty-two?”
“Those seconds can add up, believe me. I’d be dead a few times without shaving seconds from a situation.”
“I’m sure. I’m just saying, it’s pretty precise.”
“The Astronaut is precise.”
“Strange dude.”
“Wonderfully so.”
“Reminds me of Rain Man.”
“Who?”
“Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, the movie Rain Man . . . ”
She looked at him blankly.
“Never mind,” Chase said. “What about that icon?”
“This one gives us the string to access CISS.”
“All of CISS?”
“Just their Fire Bomber files.”
“But they’re giving us those anyway.”
“Not everything,” she said as an unusually strong gust of wind hit the car. “This lets us see what they decided not to share with us—such as their agents, list of suspects, forensics from the scenes, and more.”
“Are you in there now?” Chase asked, checking the time.
“No, I don’t want to risk it yet.”
“I thought it was cloaked for twelve-twenty-nine and thirty-eight point-five milliseconds,” Chase said, gripping the wheel tighter as powerful winds rocked a semi just ahead of them.
“The Astronaut warned that nothing is ever certain,” she answered, ignoring his usual sarcastic attempt at humor.
“That’s an understatement.”
“Where’s all that smoke coming from?” Wen asked. Traffic slowed as all the other drivers caught sight of the massive columns of smoke.
“Must be a forest fire.”
“Or a bomb,” Wen said, shifting in her seat. “That’s a big fire.” She began searching for information on the Antimatter Machine.
The smoke dominated the southern sky, going thick and black on the horizon to hazy brown, and then dense billowy white monsters that looked as if they could produce a catastrophic thunderstorm.
“The wind must really be fanning the flames,” Chase said as he passed a semi traveling with its hazards on up the steep grade. “It’s completely filling in.”
“Here’s some information,” Wen said, reading from her screen. “The fire is believed to have started before sunrise. The first reports came in at six-eighteen PM last evening, near Gold Hills subdivision outside of Redding. But it exploded overnight.”
“Redding? Is the airport still open?” Chase asked. “Is our plane safe?”
“The unusually low humidity, and winds exceeding fifty miles per hour, combined to form perfect conditions for a mega-fire,” Wen said, reading from a news site. “Oh, and it says here that authorities are using the airport as an evacuation center and shelter.”
“Already?” he asked as they came down the next rise, where the extent of the fire became more clear.
Smoke descended, filling the area like a heavy fog. The smell of burning trees invaded even through the truck’s air conditioning. As they drove around the next bend, it appeared as if a giant bomb had been dropped. The smoke lifted momentarily, revealing lines of high flames in the near distance.
“We’d better turn back,” he said. “It’s not all bad. We can stop at that diner back in Fisher. The Astronaut said they have really great fries.”
The back window of the pick-up shattered.
Twenty-Three
Crystals of glass flew into the bed of the truck and out onto the highway behind. Wen undid her seatbelt, spun around, and aimed her Glock 19 simultaneously while Chase swerved and then righted the truck.
“Was that a gun shot?”
“Yes, and it’s about to be another one!” Wen shouted, firing her gun at a silver Toyota ForeRunner. “Get us out of here!”
Chase cut over to the shoulder, sped up, and raced past the slowing line of vehicles before driving back onto the highway about a quarter of a mile ahead.
“There it is again!” Wen yelled as the ForeRunner pulled out from around a semi and came up fast. “It’s that silver ForeRunner back there.”
Chase checked the rearview mirror. “We’ve got to get off the interstate,” he said, stomping on the accelerator.
“That’s going to happen anyway,” Wen said, glancing at the Antimatter Machine. “About eight miles ahead, they’ve closed I-5 in both directions and they’re going to detour us.”
“Is there an exit before that?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s the one we’re taking. I don’t want to be trapped in a line of cars crawling along at ten miles an hour on some secondary road while Mr. ForeRunner takes shots at us.” Chase continued to weave through the thickening traffic at an increasing speed.
“They’ve got a better engine than us,” Wen said as the speedometer passed ninety. The silver ForeRunner continued to close in on them.
“Everyone has a better engine than this Tonka Toy, but they don’t have a better driver!” Chase laughed like an evil wizard, then winked at Wen as he switched back to the shoulder about a mile and a half before the exit. In his heart, he had always thought of himself as a race car driver.
“The ForeRunner just got cut off,” Wen said.
Chase checked his mirrors and saw several other cars were now driving on the shoulder between them. “That’s the break we needed.” He pushed the truck to its limit, spraying gravel and fighting the wheel to maintain control. They flew down the exit ramp and only slowed to sixty to take the turn at the stop sign, then hit the gas pedal again, heading in the direction of the smoke.
“Is this a good idea?” Wen asked, motioning to the darkening sky.
Chase glanced into the rearview mirror in time to see the ForeRunner come off the ramp less than a thousand yards behind them. “At least we’re still moving.”
“But for how long?” Wen asked. “We’re driving straight into the fire.” She slid an extra clip into her gun and another into her pocket, readying for the inevitable shootout. The road was empty—no one else was this crazy.
“Look up ahead, the smoke is killing visibility. It’s like fog,” Chase said above the roar of the engine. “Soon we won’t be able to see ten feet ahead of us.” The wind and smoke created a storm of blowing leaves and ash. “If we can just find a place to pull in . . . ”
“Hopefully the ForeRunner will sail right past,” Wen said, catching on. “If they don’t, then we’ll be waiting for them.”
“Right,” Chase said, starting to cough.
“Okay.” Wen slapped a clip in a third gun. “We don’t know what they’ve got in that ForeRunner. You’re gonna have to shoot, too.”
Chase nodded. Wen knew he didn’t like guns, but she also knew he liked dying even less. She touched his thigh. They smiled quickly at each other, both knowing they could be done for, both knowing the feelings for each other strengthened their luck, or was it—
“Ah, hell,” Chase said, squeezing her hand. “How the hell did we get into this!”
“I always thought Nuku Hiva was boring,” Wen said, smiling, and also
starting to cough. “How many days can you really spend on a sunny beach in paradise?”
“Speak for yourself. I wish we were there now!”
As predicted, the smoke enveloped them as he drove faster into the blind.
“Damn it,” he barked. “I didn’t count on the smoke also making it impossible for us to see a place to hide. We’re going to have to pull to the side somewhere and hope.”
“They’ll see us for sure,” Wen said, looking back into the gray smoke.
“We’ll just have to be ready.”
They jumped out of the truck, forced their way into the underbrush, and pointed their guns back to the road. Chase wasn’t sure who was getting ambushed—the men in the ForeRunner, or themselves.
Twenty-Four
The ForeRunner passed Chase and Wen’s truck faster than visibility would normally allow—at least forty miles per hour.
“Did they see us?” Wen asked, instinctively whispering.
“I can’t tell,” Chase said, his hand sweaty on the gun. “Let’s get back in the truck and drive the other direction—away from them and the fire—before they figure it out.”
Chase handed the gun back to Wen.
“Keep it,” she said. “You need to get used to carrying one.” She winked at him, giving her most seductive smile.
“O-kay,” Chase said hesitantly, trying not to inhale more smoke. He thought about stuffing it in the daypack slung over his shoulder, but there wouldn’t be time to retrieve it if he needed it. The other option would be putting it in his waistband, but he worried he might accidentally shoot off something important, so he just held it in his left hand and headed back toward the truck.
Before he reached the driver’s door handle, the smoky silence gave way to the rumble of an approaching vehicle from the wrong direction.
“I’m sure that’s them!” Wen whispered loudly, pointing her Glock toward the sound.
“We won’t know until it’s too late.”
“They’ll expect us to be near the truck. Let’s surprise them from over there instead.” She pointed to a drop-off on the other side of the road under a solid stand of trees. “We might even get a chance to see how many there are.”
Chase wasn’t sure about giving up the cover and only means of escape in the truck, but Wen knew a lot more about these things than he did.
Visibility, now less than twenty feet, was both a help and a hindrance. They couldn’t easily be seen, but nor could they see their pursuers.
The silver ForeRunner slowly crawled out of the thick smoke like a serpent ready to strike. It slowed at the side of their pickup truck, idling for a long, evil moment. Two men jumped out of the back, fanning machine guns, looking for targets. With a sudden lurch, the ForeRunner swung in behind their truck and stopped. The driver and another man quickly climbed out and inspected the pickup.
“Should we attack?” Chase whispered.
“Four guys with HK MP7 submachine guns? No. Not until we have to. Nothing personal, but it’s really four against one.”
A sound must have caught the men’s attention, as suddenly they sprayed machine-gun fire in the direction they’d just driven from. In those few seconds, Wen and Chase made a dash for the ForeRunner, diving into the open driver’s side door.
Even as they untangled themselves, Chase pushed the ignition button, hoping one of the men was close enough to make it work. The engine came to life. Chase shifted into reverse and pressed on the gas pedal with both feet.
The pickup truck blocked the wall of bullets that the men unloaded in their direction. Chase couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond the end of the hood, but never eased up on the accelerator. They sailed into the smoke, using the scraping branches and loose, crumbling edge of the road to keep them on the graded surface.
“We should be okay to slow down,” Chase said, concerned they might plow into a tree or an oncoming vehicle.
“What’s to stop them from coming after us in our truck?”
“I’ve got the keys in my pocket.”
“That’ll only slow them down for a minute,” she said. “But the smoke should be clearing as we get back to the interstate.” Wen held up an extra key fob with a car rental company tag she found sitting in the console. “I guess this is how it started.”
“Lucky for us they always give you two.”
“They’ll be behind us any second,” Wen said as the smoke thinned. “And the Interstate is closed.” She pulled the Antimatter machine out and began searching the maps while Chase compulsively checked the rearview mirror. “There’s a network of logging roads all through here. Let’s find one.”
A few minutes later, the Antimatter Machine lost signal.
“There’s one,” Wen said, pointing. “Take it.” She glanced behind to make sure the truck wasn’t in sight.
“It’s more like a trail,” Chase said, but turned anyway.
The winding “trail” turned out to be a Forest Service road and was in decent shape. They put some distance between them and the main highway until the smoke shifted again. As the ForeRunner climbed to the top of a steep turn, flames raced in from the South.
“I don’t think we should attend this party,” Chase said, in his best English accent.
Sparks and cinders swirled with ash through the air, creating a sweeping barrier.
“Turn around and get us back to the main road,” Wen said.
“Behind us!” he shouted.
Wen spun around in her seat and saw a wall of flames chasing them. “We’re totally boxed in!”
“We’ve still got road ahead of us.”
“But we don’t even know where it goes!” she yelled, still unable to get satellite imaging of the area, or even a cell signal. They guessed the fire and smoke had cut off all forms of communication. Wen tried the astronaut’s icon, which failed to do anything other than frustrate her.
“It’s gotta go somewhere,” Chase yelled.
“Yeah, deeper into the fire.”
Chase pushed the forerunner, desperately testing its four-wheel-drive abilities as they bounced along the now rutted dirt road.
“Look!” Wen shouted, pointing.
Chase followed her arm and saw the terrifying sight. The fire had jumped the road and was now about to overtake them on the north side. “If it gets ahead of us, we’re done!” Chase yelled, giving the accelerator everything, fighting to maintain control as the ForeRunner careened across holes, rocks, and knobby roots. Flying cinders and debris landed on the hood, burning like a campfire across the windshield. Through the sunroof, they could see sparks caught in the luggage rack as fire and flame rained around them. Both were coughing and choking on the suffocating heat and smoke.
“We’re going to burn up!” Wen screamed.
Twenty-Five
Halfway to the Pentagon for a briefing on horUS and the bomber, Tess and Travis received an urgent message and ordered the pilot to return to CISS headquarters. Twenty minutes later, they were in Mission Control, watching north central California burn.
“He’s in that?” Tess asked the analyst who’d been briefing them. She pointed at the massive monitor filled with close-up satellite images of what was being called the Redding Complex Fire.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s our best guess.”
“Can we get him out of there?”
“Two IT-Squads en route.”
“ETA?”
“First Squad will drop in twenty-two minutes.”
“Unbelievable!” Travis cut in. “When’s the second Squad getting there, tomorrow?”
Tess ignored his usual sarcasm, knowing he probably felt partially to blame since he was in charge of field operations and they should have had Squads closer. “Are there any local officials who can get in faster?”
“They’re kind of busy evacuating and fighting the fire. You can see it’s a monster,” the analyst said. “Even if we could persuade anyone to lend us people, we don’t know where to send them yet.”
“We�
�re reviewing the satellite feeds,” another analyst said. “Matching data and the computer—”
“When will you have something?” Travis interrupted. “Tell me it will be before my Squad gets there,” he checked the timer on one of the monitors, “in nineteen minutes.”
“That’s possible.”
“Make it happen,” Tess said, but they all knew it might not. There was a ton of data and they still hadn’t isolated Chase and Wen’s exact location since they’d lost them at the Astronaut’s shed. A team had stopped and questioned the couple heading north on I5 who had the tracking chip, but they knew nothing and were released.
The computers were narrowing the real location by going in backwards—the programs could tell them everywhere Chase wasn’t, but there were still quite a few places open.
“Communications are down, and our closest satellites are having trouble seeing through the smoke.”
Travis shook his head. “Even nineteen minutes won’t do it. The IT-Squad could drop miles from wherever Chase is. It’s a damned inferno. They could be bar-b-cued by the time we get to them!”
Tess looked back at the screen. “They could already be barbecued.”
Lenny woke dizzily in an alley, head throbbing like a drummer from a heavy-metal band had taken up residence in his brain. He tried to stand, but his wobbly legs wouldn’t allow it. Taking deep breaths, he slowly attempted to put it back together.
Los Angeles, I’m in LA, Skrunch, the Russian thug . . . Bull—where is Bull!
He scanned the area—a homeless man sleeping on discarded newspapers, a big, unidentifiable rusting piece of machinery, a haphazardly stacked assortment of too many empty beer boxes, and two overfilled dumpsters.
“Oh no!” he yelled, forcing himself to his feet and stumbling to the first dumpster. He twisted and pulled, trying get high enough to see inside, hoping her body wasn’t . . . but he fell back to the ground and threw up, his head protesting the efforts by inflicting more blinding pain and louder drumming. He absently realized his ribs were making it hard to breathe. He wiped his mouth.
