“Tell me again what happened yesterday.” He’d called Dorothy to his office to refresh his memory on how he lost his executive officer.
Dorothy had been there when Asher and his terrorist buddies got the jump on him and his security backup. He was pleased she’d survived, though if he were honest with himself, it would have been better if Howard had come through instead. Looking over to the young woman, her black hair was disheveled, and a dark bruise lurked along the hairline above her left ear.
“Well, sir, we all stood in the lobby with you when someone from out on the street started shooting at us.”
“Did you see who it was?” he interrupted. For his part, he’d been pulled to the ground by his security man the second the first shot went off, though he got up and ran immediately after hitting the floor. It was part of his survival instinct. He justified not waiting for the other guy by reminding himself how important he was to the operation. There was a reason the company was named after him.
“Yes,” she nodded, “it was a teen boy. I think he was with the other Native American man. The chief guy.”
“A teen boy?” he said with distaste. “He’s the one who killed Howard?”
Dorothy thought about it for a short time. Long enough he almost prodded her to answer.
“After you left, the guards went down. Howard, survived, I think, but Asher and the park lady grabbed guns and fired at us. I curled into a little ball on the ground, but Howard fought back. I…uh, can’t say for sure who killed him. When all the gunfire was over, they kicked me in the head”—she pointed to the bruise on her temple—“and told me to get lost.”
Her eyes glistened as if on the verge of tears. Seeing it surprised him; she’d been solid as a rock since he’d met her. However, she was young, and a woman who’d suffered through a traumatic event. It was to be expected.
“You’ll be happy to know I have a pair of experts tracking them down now. Nerio Torres and her husband are two of the best people on my payroll when it comes to…cleanup.”
She sat up. “I don’t care how they do it. Those people need to pay for what they did to us. But, wait, who’s in charge of your security after…”
“After Howard?”
She bowed her head.
Petteri pressed a button on his desk phone. “Miss, please send in Mr. Aarons.” He hung up with his administrative assistant. Since he was on the road, he traveled with a lighter staff. Back at headquarters, he would have taken the time to get to know the ladies answering his phones, but on the job site none of his usual song and dance was necessary. He didn’t care what his people thought of him, as long as they did what he asked.
A young man walked through the door of the conference room. His face was bracketed by a dark, full beard, which Petteri instantly hated. However, the guy had worked under Howard for five or six years. The major had often said Craig Aarons was the one guy he trusted if he ever retired from TKM. The man stood at attention, as if Petteri were a general in the army. An act which almost negated Petteri’s distaste of the man’s facial hair.
“Mr. Aarons, thank you for coming on such short notice. I know you’ve been down on the streets with the others, but I had to call you upstairs last night for a reason I’m sure you already know. Howard was killed by terrorist elements.”
Aarons nodded grimly. He was dressed to kill: black combat boots, black tactical pants, and a blue TKM security shirt. His belt was bulging with ammo clips and whatever else you called the equipment soldiers wore on the battlefield. However, he didn’t see any weapons.
“Where’s your gun?” he asked.
Craig looked directly into his eyes. “Sir, I didn’t want to scare anyone in your office by carrying my weapons. I’ve left them with my team captain on the next floor down.”
He was taken aback. “Scare us? Your job is to protect us. How are you going to do that without your gun? I want you to go right back down there, arm up, and then come back. Don’t ever be in my presence without at least two guns. Do you understand?” His anger rose with each word, but he caught himself before launching into a tirade. Howard had known exactly what Petteri wanted since they’d worked together for so long. It would take time for Aarons to get with the program. He tried to soften his next words. “I want you armed, soldier, in case our prisoner frees himself and comes after me. You wouldn’t want that on your record, would you?”
Aarons had turned to go out the door, but he stopped to look back. “Sir? We don’t have any prisoners. Well, I mean, we did have one, but he got out last night. Didn’t Nerio tell you?”
Petteri’s blood froze in his veins. “Tell me what? Who’s escaped?” There was only one person who was being held captive. One person who he’d come within a second of killing but was prevented from doing so by Nerio. One person who was taken into custody and secured inside a locked room by that same woman.
“Miss Torres caught me after she came back from the parents’ house of one of the terrorists who killed Howard. She said they had no luck there, but also explained Misha Gagarin had somehow escaped from this building. She told me the two of you arranged for her to go after him, and I wouldn’t need to report it to you. I’m sorry if I was supposed to—”
“Dammit!” he slammed his fists on his desk. “Go get your weapon, ten men, and guard every inch of this floor. From this minute forward, you write down every person who even glances in your direction and give me updates about it every half hour. Go!”
He slumped in his chair. Dorothy’s eyes were fearful, so he went ahead and tossed her some comforting words. “Don’t worry. Howard trusted this man completely. He’ll be fine. I’m more worried about Nerio. She’s like a feral cat when on the hunt. She likes to play with her food…”
Chapter 3
Sidney, NE
Grace and Asher dove in between two of the parked coal hoppers, barely missing the connector linking them together. At the same time, a brrrrrt sound belted out from above. The metal cars replied with a hundred zings as the bullets from the machine gun rained down on them.
“Holy crap!” she cried out, blood surging through her temples. She hugged the back end of the metal coal car, hoping it was thick enough to shield her.
The next volley went into the wooden flatcar and her truck.
“Oh no!” she shouted. Her worry was for Diedre, not her truck. She’d been slowest to climb down and had been behind Logan and his dad while they struggled to get underneath the hookup. Was she still over there?
She couldn’t look away. The helicopter hovered sideways, coming closer to being directly above them. The woman aimed her spinning machine gun at the train engine below her, perhaps thinking someone had gone under it. The brrrrt of belched-out rounds tore into the side of the big orange diesel. Scanning the flatbed, and the crawlspace under the boxcar, Grace could see that none of her friends were visible.
“They moved,” she said breathlessly to Asher.
“Are they safe?” he asked while smashed against the car with her.
“Can’t tell. They must be over here with us.” She’d motioned for them to come over right as the woman fired her guns. She prayed they’d made it to safety.
The machine gun cranked over another time, and about five long seconds of bullets streamed down into the parked coal hoppers. They all had a distinctive metallic ring when striking and bouncing against metal. However, they also had unusual angles around the reinforced sides and ends, sparking worry one of those bullets might ricochet and somehow tag them beneath their protective shield.
For a few seconds, the machine gun went quiet.
“Maybe she ran out of ammo,” she said with a hopeful voice.
“I really doubt—” he said, before halting. In the distance, a boom went off, sounding like the thump of an airburst firework.
“What now?” she lamented.
The boom resonated again. This time it was followed by a change in pitch of the helicopter rotors. It was enough to get her to check around the corner. �
�She’s moving!”
The explosion happened a third time. She caught sight of a puff of white smoke at the truck she’d spotted earlier. Even from a quarter of a mile away, she saw a man aiming an impossibly large rifle in their direction. He had it propped on the hood of his blue pickup truck.
“Jeez, she brought friends.”
As Grace watched, her initial impression quickly changed. The man with the rifle shifted his stance, aiming the weapon at the helicopter now veering away from the trains, over the fields. He fired again, but then pulled the gun off his hood and disappeared out of view.
“I think maybe he was firing at the woman,” she ventured, afraid she saw it wrong, but praying she was right.
The aircraft swooped in a long arc around the mystery truck, as if wary of being targeted again. However, after going around it once, the pilot went back into hover mode, changing the orientation so the woman’s machine gun faced the truck. From there, it was obvious what was about to happen.
“Why doesn’t he fire again?” she wondered, mostly to herself.
Asher came around to join her. He leaned on her back, looking over her shoulder. “Would you stick around if that thing was on top of you?”
“But he was fighting back,” she replied.
The woman’s gun chugged out rounds for a solid ten seconds. The report came on the wind as the truck’s tires exploded, every bit of glass shattered, and the fuel tank was penetrated, sending the back end up in a fireball. A much bigger explosion erupted from the first, creating a blackened mushroom cloud.
The hovering copter had to back up midair to avoid being tagged by the smoke. However, it stayed for twenty or thirty seconds, as if waiting to see if anyone walked out of the firestorm. Eventually, it tilted forward, beginning its advance back to them.
“Shit, she’s not giving up.” Frantic to make sure her friends were in secure hiding places, she tried to find Shawn, Logan, or Diedre, but they weren’t anywhere in sight.
Asher pointed. “She’s there! My sister is under one of these coal cars. You can see her shirt about five cars up the line.”
“Do you see the boys?” she asked, aware the helicopter was seconds from being above them.
“No, I—” He hesitated. “It’s turning away!”
She peeked out. The helicopter had banked again, out over the farm fields. The engine sound was different, too.
“It’s smoking,” Asher declared.
The rotor wash made it difficult to spot, but the more she studied the retreating bird, the easier it was to see the black smoke pouring out one side. Unexpectedly, the pilot adjusted his route so the woman could turn her machine gun back to them.
“Get down!” she ordered, falling to the rocks.
The bullets came in before the brrrrt. Pinging ricochets struck multiple cars, train engines, and the metal buildings of the train yard. Men and women cursed from almost every direction.
She realized Asher had fallen on top of her, though she doubted his body would stop one of those military-grade projectiles. She also figured out they were both on the wrong side of the coal cars, now that the woman was out over the field. The machine gun bursts stopped and restarted three or four times as they lay there.
“Good God,” Asher stated. “I think she’s pissed about her broken helicopter.”
Finally, the rotary machine gun went silent.
“No kidding she’s upset at us,” she said, testing a laugh.
The whump whump rotor noise faded completely before Asher shifted to let her up. “Thanks for looking out for me,” she said softly, getting to her feet.
“Anytime,” he smiled, brushing coal dust from his NPS uniform shirt and pants.
By the time they’d emerged from their refuge, Logan and his dad had come out from under the train engine.
“You guys were under there the whole time?” she asked with mild horror. “We thought you were in the coal area, where it was safer.”
Logan smiled, but Shawn was less enthusiastic. He leaned heavily on his boy due to his injured leg.
Diedre rejoined their small group. She came from farther up the line of coal cars.
Grace pointed to the burning truck. “If it doesn’t look like the chopper is coming back, we should go out and see if there are any survivors. Whoever they are, I think they probably saved our lives.”
“We better hurry,” Shawn said quietly. “Or, rather, you guys better hurry. I’m going to stay here with Logan. He’s going to help me see if they have a first aid kit inside. Right, son?” It wasn’t a question.
Logan nodded his head as he helped Shawn walk toward the train shed.
Diedre flashed a smile to her brother but then moved to follow Shawn. “I’m beat up, too. I need to see what they have for pain management.”
Asher seemed torn. Follow his sister or follow her? Grace wouldn’t blame him for tending to his family, but she also didn’t want to go out there alone.
“We’ll make it quick, all right?” she said, hoping to convey confidence.
It seemed to make up his mind. He turned to Diedre. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
She waved over her shoulder with her good arm but kept walking.
“We’re going to take our guns,” Grace assured him. “You can never be too careful.” She climbed onto the flatcar, anxious to see the damage done to her beloved NPS truck.
Near Columbia, MO
He judged they’d have about thirty seconds before they made it directly under the span of the highway. He had the throttle all the way forward, which pumped fuel into the Suzuki outboard to give the full 350-horsepower kick required for life-saving maneuvers.
Butch had fallen next to Haley, using his arm to push her down with him. They were on the floor between the two rows of seats. The big guy looked up once he was certain the young woman was going to stay there. “You want me to return fire?”
There wasn’t time to adjust their gear, get him in position, and fire back. They had twenty seconds until they made it under.
“No!” He veered left, taking them in a more direct path upriver. It kept them a bit closer to the men, but it exposed them for less time.
One of the guys fired straight down at them.
Then another.
The rifle cracks echoed under the girders holding up the highway.
“And…we’re clear!” Ezra ran the boat under the deck, making it impossible to be seen from above. However, he didn’t dare stop. He kept the accelerator smashed forward as he willed his pleasure boat to shoot out of the other side like a cannonball.
“E-Z, I’m getting my rifle.” Butch shifted, reached for his gun, then put his hand on Haley’s back. “Haley, stay where you are!”
“No worries there,” she yelled over the growl of the maxed-out motor.
The pontoons skipped over the eddies and currents swirling around the concrete bridge pylon. He ignored the larger pieces of trash and driftwood that still sullied the brown water. There was no time to worry about dodging obstacles. He thought back to all the times he’d gone as fast on Kentucky Lake. He’d never done it with Susan in the boat—she hated going fast—and he only did it when the surface of the lake was glass smooth.
By the time they came out of the shadows of the big bridge, Butch was finding a position to aim his Bushmaster rifle out the back of the boat.
“Anyone who pops up, you pop them,” Ezra shouted.
“On it,” Butch said, finally settling into his stance.
Meanwhile, Haley found Liam and dragged him into her protective custody. Ezra had enough time to wonder if the cat and dog got along well enough to huddle under her without fighting, but Butch fired his rifle before he could finish his thought. In spite of the young woman’s protective efforts, Liam yelped in response.
“They’re coming to this side,” Butch said, as if reporting the news.
“Keep their heads down!” Ezra suggested.
His rifle barked several times in a row. A shot. Two-second paus
e. Another shot. Butch was a professional, but he’d never trained in hitting small targets while bouncing around in the back of a boat. It would have shocked Ezra if he scored a hit.
At the same time, he nudged the wheel left and right, giving them a slight wiggle in their escape path. He didn’t know if it was enough to throw the enemy off their line, but it had to be better than nothing. The boat was going too fast to make dramatic changes in direction. He didn’t want to bleed off too much speed, either.
Ezra almost jumped out of his seat when the depth finder exploded.
“Damn!” He flinched.
He flicked the wheel reflexively, adding an evasive turn a bit to the left. The depth finder had already been hit once by a bullet the other day. Now it was gone; the rifle round had shattered it completely. There was only a fragment of the black casing stuck to his dash.
Butch fired several more times, but as he gained distance from the bridge, he recognized it was increasingly unlikely anyone was going to hit their targets. However, Ezra didn’t slow down, even when they turned a corner in the river, hiding the bridge from them.
“Are we safe?” Haley asked, sticking her head up.
“I don’t think so,” he replied, not sure if he should talk to her the same way he did with Butch. If Butch had asked, he would have told him there was another bridge a few miles ahead. Butch would recognize they couldn’t slow down, not for a second, since it was imperative they beat the trucks to the next crossing.
Ezra glanced down to the girl, hugging her two furry friends. He held out a hand to help her off the all-weather carpet. “Come on up. You can sit back in your seat.”
He watched as Butch and Haley returned to their original spots. It gave him the few seconds necessary to decide which way to go with her.
“Haley, I’m glad you came aboard with us, but this trip is going to take all of us working together to make it out the other side. It looks like the goons from St. Charles aren’t going to let it go. I bet one of those men was the same guy who’s been chasing us since Bass Pro.”
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 83
