He didn’t, but only because it didn’t matter to him. They both needed to get in the water to wash off the layers of mud tossed on by the dirt bikes. The only real question was who would swim the hundred yards to get the boat. He didn’t think it was a big deal. “Do you turn into a pumpkin if you get wet? I’d think a strapping lad like you would be all over a swim like this.”
Butch rubbed his chin, surveying the nearby wreck. “On any other day of the week I’d jump in and show you how we did things in the Army, but in this particular case I have a slight issue…”
Ezra looked at him, then at the boat. There was only one reason why he wouldn’t go out there. “You can’t swim,” he said dryly.
“Bingo,” Butch agreed. “I tried to learn when I went to Afghanistan, but it turns out the beaches there never reach the ocean. It was always more sand over the next dune.”
He sighed heavily, mostly to mock the otherwise cocky youngster. “I’ll do this, but you owe me one.”
Butch brightened. “I’ll take point when we approach the roadblock.”
His words surprised Ezra. “You must sink like a rock when you’re in the water if you’d rather risk being in the front row of a gunfight than take a little swim.” He had no intention of making a splash in the water the basis for who put their life at risk on the far side of the lake, but he let it go for the time being. He expected the veteran would want to take point, anyway, since he had military training, and Ezra did not.
Ezra swam and retrieved the boat while Butch stayed in the shallow water and cleaned off the mud. By the time he’d dislodged the little olive-drab boat from the deck of the towboat, Butch had their rifles and backpacks ready to go. Those were the only things somewhat dry, even after their dirt bike trip.
“We’ve got plenty of gas,” he said as Butch handed the gear to him. “That was my only worry about this.”
“Only worry?” Butch climbed in, but the big man was shaky and awkward until he found his seat on the middle bench. He didn’t have his cowboy hat on his head; he’d watched him stuff it into his pack.
The aluminum johnboat was a low-walled watercraft, about ten feet long and five feet wide. The flat-bottomed type was mostly used on ponds, calm lakes, and shallow rivers. If it had been on the water when the shockwaves came through, it would have instantly sunk or been thrown a mile inland. Theirs was saved by virtue of being locked up on the deck of the ship.
“Well, there might be a few more, but fuel was a deal-breaker. Now that we have it, things should go as planned.” Ezra sat on the rear seat, which let him hold the throttle for the rear outboard motor. The lake was mostly calm, with minimal wave action due to the wind. There were no other boats either, meaning there weren’t any large wakes to fight.
He had a lot of debris to dodge, however. Once they were out of the bay and on the main channel, he became leery of the floating garbage. Everything from soda cans to grain silos were out there. Striking any of them could permanently damage the propeller of the underpowered motor.
He pointed to the bridge about a mile away, though Butch was frozen to his seat, facing forward. “I’m going to hug the shore over here, then go alongside the bridge. That will allow us to coordinate with the women when they ride their bikes over the top.” They didn’t have radios or any other way to organize when they would both meet at the roadblock, so they’d agreed on the visual sync-up at the bridge.
“There they are!” Butch shouted, not taking his hands off the sides of the boat. The women were on the bike path heading for the main span. The maroon-colored cargo barge was no longer blocking the way; instead, it floated in the garbage patch next to the bridge.
“How did that barge get free?” he wondered aloud. “Is the water still rising? This seems impossible.”
Another empty barge moved underneath the span of the bridge. It had a few feet of clearance to spare as it went under, but it moved surprisingly fast, despite being no more sophisticated than an empty shoebox floating freely.
Ezra needed to slow down as he approached the middle section. It wasn’t only the barge floating by; tons of debris rushed through the opening, leading him to wonder if the floodwaters were getting higher on the south side of the bridge, therefore forcing the water to go underneath.
He backed off the motor entirely when he was in the thickest part of the logjam. The four dirt bikes powered up the eastern incline of the arched bridge, but they waited when they were at the highest point.
“Why did they stop?” he wondered aloud. The women waved him sideways, like they wanted him to go back the way they’d come. They also cupped their hands and shouted, though they were far enough away he had no hope of hearing their voices. The floating mess around them seemed to crackle and boil as pieces bounced and rubbed against each other.
“Uh, E-Z. We’ve got a problem here.”
“Yeah, we can’t get through all this crap without making a huge loop into the middle of the lake. I didn’t realize all this was a solid brick of floating debris.”
“Yeah. That’s one thing. And check this out.” The current moved them closer toward the middle of the bridge, which gave them a view of the lake beyond. The floating barge was already through and rushing away, appearing a little lower than it was before. Almost as if it had gone down a small waterfall when it came out on the other side of the bridge.
The current caught them and dragged the boat toward the gap under the bridge, spurring him to give some gas to the motor to try to back out of the floating mess.
Butch pointed. “We’re getting shoved in there.”
“Yeah, I see it.” Ezra gave it more gas, but found the pieces of trash floating around him had compressed, creating a mass of garbage intent on fitting through the bridge. The blades of the propeller hit several items beneath the water, while the front of the boat rode up on the arriving driftwood, Styrofoam, and everything else tossed there by the wind.
He decided to save the motor rather than risk it all to get to shore through the floating garbage pile. He shut it off and tilted it to vertical, so the prop came out of the water. “We’ll go under the bridge and then let the trash spread out. Then we’ll be able to spin the prop again. The delay shouldn’t be a big deal…”
The mile-wide mass of rubbish compressed down to about a hundred yards as it tried to fit through the gap still left by the Biblical-level flooding. The narrow waterway under the bridge echoed with cracking driftwood and shearing lumber from lost pleasure boats.
“Hang on,” he shouted to Butch as they started underneath the massive girders of the bridge. The last things he saw were Mary and Jean leaning far over the side of the pedestrian walkway about twenty feet above him. He wasn’t sure what made him think it, but he only had a fraction of a second to say it.
“We’ll be right back!”
Chapter 18
Beartooth Pass, WY
When she figured she’d gone far enough beyond where the cars crashed into the creek, she pulled to the side of the road and stopped. “I told Tessa I’d call her back. I’m going to tell her to have her gun at the ready. Misha is in these cars somewhere. They need to be prepared if he shows up. She knows that, right? She worked in a police station…”
“Maybe, but neither she nor Chester look like they’ve ever fired a gun before. Not that I would know how to identify such a person if I saw them on the street, besides the guy we’re trying to avoid. Him, I could easily imagine shooting things.”
Misha was a big Russian hitman. It was probably a mistake to push Tessa and Chester into a confrontation with him. Still, she didn’t have much choice after revealing who he was. All she could do was warn them about what he was capable of doing. They could use the information as they saw fit.
“Tessa? I’m back.” The lightning show had greatly diminished, but a bolt hit out in the valley, causing an echo of thunder in her speaker.
After a pause to let the sound settle, Tessa replied. “This is creepy, Miss Park Ranger. Did you stop the co
nvoy so we’d get a good look at it? ’Cause I’d just as soon have a full mile between us and this. Chester says this is a bad place.”
“Crap. Are you stuck back on the switchback with that eerie lone headlight and all the wrecks around it? I’m so sorry.”
“No big deal. I’m ready to—” Tessa stopped talking.
“Ready to what?” Grace queried in a friendly voice.
Asher sat with his arms wrapped across his chest, keeping warm as best he could. “Maybe they got out to check if anyone was alive?”
She shook her head. “No one could have survived those crashes. I wouldn’t go near them to check.” Grace keyed the mic again. “Come in, what’s going on back there?”
An unearthly sound resonated in the blackness outside, reminding her of an approaching fire engine, or police car. As it got closer, she realized it wasn’t one horn, but many. The convoy drivers blew their horns in long cries, as if to push the whole line ahead of them.
In a flash, cars began driving around her parked truck.
“Wait!” she cried out. “Where are you going?”
It was impossible to burn rubber on the snowpack, but some of them seemed to try. A big silver Ford truck led the way, and dozens of cars streamed by, sloshing left and right as their wheels alternately lost and gained traction. She was tempted to join them, but once the line was moving, there was no safe way to wedge back in the middle without getting struck from behind.
“Tessa, come in. Where are you?”
It took about five minutes for the unruly mob to drive by. By that time, she’d gotten out of the truck and stood next to it, hoping someone would stop and tell her why they all honked. Eventually, she saw the last few cars in the line. All of them had mangled front ends, and back ends, like they’d struck each other in a demolition derby exhibition. The last car in the entire line skidded to a sloppy, snowy stop in front of her.
“What happened?” she asked with incredulity at how fast her situation had changed. Belatedly, she remembered Misha could be inside, so she leaned in far enough to look in the dark compartment. A lone man was behind the wheel. The rest of his car was stuffed with fishing and camping gear.
“A car fell from the sky,” he said breathlessly. “It landed on…well, your other park ranger truck.”
Her heart fluttered. “Is that why everyone shot off?”
He nodded. “I guess. Those of us trapped at the back didn’t want another one to smack down on top of us, so we rammed the others to get them moving. Soon, everyone was honking and ramming their neighbors, trying to move forward.”
Tessa’s dead because I stopped too soon.
“So, the rangers are really dead. Are you sure?”
He bobbed his head. “Yeah, I think so. We didn’t stick around to look. It’s a mess back there.”
She stepped away from the man’s car, which prompted him to speed off the moment she got clear.
“Asher, I’m going back. Get out if you want, but I have to see.” She jumped through her door, slamming it behind her.
“I’ll stay,” he replied, sounding doubtful.
She didn’t want to risk turning around in the snow, so she reversed course a few minutes until she had the accident scene bracketed by her rear window frame. The ghostly headlight of the destroyed RV was there, but the distinctive white and green paint of Tessa’s NPS vehicle sat a bit closer to her. A minivan had come down and crushed the truck to about half its normal height, then it flopped sideways next to it.
It wasn’t a question of finding survivors. The real mystery was whether any bodies could be identified. Still, she jumped out and called for them. “Tessa! Chester!” Maybe they’d gotten lucky, like her, and saw the disaster approaching. At least two other carloads of people had found ways to jump out at the last second…
Asher lingered by the guard railing, perhaps thinking their friends had slid farther down toward the creek. She glanced at him for a second, looked away, then checked again. He was looking up, not down.
“Grace!” he yelped. “Here comes another one!”
Her legs reacted to Asher’s warning on autopilot, but it was hard to move in the snow. Her boots slipped like she was on an ice-skating rink. At the same time, she heard the horn of the approaching vehicle. Somewhere up above, a driver had taken the wrong set of ruts in the deadly noontime darkness. Now, as a last act, the doomed person held on to the horn the whole way down.
It was a freight train of metal heading right for her.
Kentucky Lake, KY
When Ezra and Butch came through the other side of the bridge, he put the motor down, intent on turning away from the main channel. He also figured out there were thousands of dead fish in the water. As they sloshed around and were broken open in the waves, the air became saturated with the foul odor. “We’re getting the hell out of here,” he said with determination.
If he went right, he’d go back toward Land Between the Lakes. If he went left, he’d put himself closer to his old neighborhood. There was only one logical choice. After watching the oozing debris for a few seconds, he aimed the motor to go right, back to Mary and Jean.
Ezra headed for the stretch of shore near the bridge, no more than fifty yards away. As he did, the boat behaved in an unusual fashion, shifting from side to side and going nowhere, like the water was flowing faster than it should. In half a minute, the stretch of shore where he’d been aiming was about twice as far away from where they’d started.
“Dang, the water is moving fast,” he said, mostly to himself.
“More barges are coming through the gap,” Butch gulped, pointing behind them. As they watched the action, two barges shot under the bridge with the other garbage. One was overfilled with coal; the other looked like a sealed fuel-hauler. “Those better not hit us!”
The coal hopper clanged a bridge pylon as it rushed through the gap. The deflection sent it spinning into the other one. A second group of cargo containers came through after the first. As he watched, he was certain they were uphill from their little boat, like there was more water on the other side of the bridge.
The johnboat spun in a slow circle, making it hard for either of them to watch where they were going, but Ezra did see something unexpected. A line of treetops appeared in the water on the western side of the channel; it was a long, thin island that had all but been swamped by the high waters. Now, as they sped by it, the trees of the island appeared to be coming out of the water again. “Oh, God. We’re screwed.” Ezra gestured Butch toward the island.
“What’s happening?” Butch asked, still clutching the side of the boat like he was afraid it would tip at any second. “Why aren’t you taking us closer to shore? I’d like to hop out, if you don’t mind.”
Ezra gave the little outboard as much gas as possible, but it appeared to have no effect on their trajectory. If he tried to go toward shore, the speed of the water flowing north made it impossible to gain any ground. He shifted direction and tried to speed toward home, but the same thing happened. The shore went by, including his old neighborhood, but the johnboat refused to get closer to it.
“Uh, let’s not panic, but I’m beginning to think the lake is draining somewhere down that way.” He pointed north.
“What are you saying? There’s a hole in the dam?”
Ezra was afraid to speculate, though their speed suggested he’d know shortly, anyway. He decided to tilt up the motor again, if only to avoid striking underwater logs and debris at such high speed. A couple of minutes later, it became obvious they were technically below the normal surface of the lake. It was draining so fast they were on the downslope, heading for what had to be a massive hole in the dam.
“Wait a second,” he said with concern. “If we can’t go sideways, maybe we can go forward. If we go downhill and then turn away from the channel, we might be able to slip out of the current and get to shore.”
“Are we going to be able to get back to the ladies?” Butch asked.
“Butch, my frien
d, we’ll be lucky if we can even make it to shore. If we get to the dam, the water is going to be hitting bridges and power lines and sunken buildings. We’ve got to get off this lake before we reach it.”
He had no way of knowing how fast they were moving, but based on the landmarks whizzing by, it seemed to be every bit of thirty miles per hour. They’d already drifted far from the bridge; they’d be at the dam in twenty minutes, tops.
Ezra set the motor in the water and went toward the dam, cutting down their remaining time even more. He angled it to the left, hoping to make it to shore long before they reached the broken dam.
They weren’t alone out on the lake. Big, rusty barges flowed with them, with lots more still squirting out from under the distant bridge. They provided huge obstacles to sail around as he fought to get out of the main channel. But even those threats weren’t his immediate concern.
“Better get your backpack on,” he said to his friend, keen to give the man a constructive task to do. Butch appeared well beyond terrified as he sat facing forward and toward their approaching doom. “We might have to swim for it.”
He wondered how much of a boater the young man might have been. If he knew about johnboats, he’d know they weren’t made to be used in choppy waters. They were prone to bogging and sinking when struck by heavy wave action…
Ahead, the dam started to become visible, causing a breath to catch in his throat. The water had dropped enough to see the top of it again, but there was a huge gap between one end and the other. It was confirmation of what he already knew to be true based on the evidence: the Kentucky Lake dam was gone.
“Susan, babe, I could really use a miracle about now.”
Airspace over Colorado
Petteri sensed his carefully crafted persona evaporating. The plane lurched hard to one side, sending his stomach into a barrel roll. The turbulence had been terrible since they’d entered the dark clouds above New Mexico, and it hadn’t let up for the previous hour. If it got much worse… He would rather kill the pilot and everyone on the plane rather than have them see him throw up.
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 34
