She and Asher stood closer to Robert’s engine. The arriving train grew louder, a deep resonance echoing in her chest. Whatever it was, it sounded powerful.
Robert joined them. “It’s a big one. Multiple engines.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It’s an acquired skill.”
Many of the adjacent residential backyards were lined by tall wooden privacy fences, as if they didn’t want to see the train yard, but one only had a low chain-link fence. Three little kids stood up against the barrier as horns blared, announcing the train’s entrance to the yard.
“She’s not stopping,” Robert called out over the growing excitement and noise.
He wasn’t lying. There were more than a few engines at the front, each pumping horsepower down to the tracks. However, there were two extra cars at the head of the train, in front of all the engines.
“They ran into our lost cars,” Grace said with amazement. The boxcar was at the very front, burned down to its metal frame, but still rolling along. The flatcar was behind it. Both were pushed by the first engine in the line, suggesting the train wasn’t stopping for anything.
The engineer sat on the horn as the two cars and the front engine whizzed by Grace and the others. She imagined he’d done it to be a jerk, or to warn people up ahead, but she saw the kids jumping for joy in the gaps between the cars. The engineer blew the ungodly loud airhorns for the youngsters.
There were eight engines daisy-chained together at the front of a long procession of uniform-colored coal hoppers. Each car seemed to rattle and squeak as they rolled by. The thunderous shaking had to be rattling walls in the houses set next to the tracks. There was no way she’d consider living so close to a rail line, though she’d never thought about it until that moment.
“How long is this thing?” she asked the wind.
It went on and on. She figured there were hundreds of cars. At some point as she watched, Robert came over and tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m ready when you are!”
She flashed the thumbs-up sign. As soon as the train cleared out, she would cross the tracks to get back to the truck. They’d be on their way again.
However, the train wouldn’t end.
To her imagination, it took an hour for the train to travel through the town. When she finally saw a flash of red and orange signifying more engines, she figured the end was near. “Jeez, five more engines!” she shouted to Asher as the noisy diesels approached.
As before, the engineers up in the cabins must have noticed the children. The horns went off for a good ten seconds right as it passed Grace and her friends. She had to cover her ears.
The powerful motors shook the rocks beneath her feet. When the last one rumbled through, she confirmed those children were there, still cranking their arms up and down to get the engineer to let go of one more horn blast.
However, her attention went to a strange person standing by a tree next to the children’s house. A dark-haired woman had something black and shiny sitting on a low branch. It took Grace a couple of seconds to recognize the threat and decide what to do. Asher and Misha waved to the children, thinking they were waving at them. Unaware of what was coming.
She launched herself at the pair.
“Down!”
Kansas City, MO
“Sorry about your boat, E-Z,” Butch said, once he was sure he was awake.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad we got off before it sank. Thanks belong to Haley for being your swimming instructor.” He looked over to the young woman. She was sitting up against a wall on the far side of Butch. Awake. Her tight-fitting stretch pants and shirt were dry, meaning they’d been in the building for a few hours, at least.
She smiled at them both.
He continued. “I’ll get over losing Susan’s Grace. Honestly, it would probably have been better to ditch her before we tangled too hard with those TKM shooters on the bridge. It was needlessly risky for me to get in a shootout with five men.” He wasn’t sure if he’d ever let go of the images swirling in his mind. Shooting those men had been necessary, especially handlebar mustache guy in the truck, but he didn’t have to enjoy it. The truth was he’d been willing to take too many risks with their lives for the sake of the boat.
A rifle shot echoed in the morning air.
“What was that?” Haley asked, sitting up.
“Dunno,” he replied, shifting so he could look out the broken window. There was nothing left in the interior of the office; it hadn’t been as obvious when they’d arrived in the dark. Now, in the morning light, it appeared as if the rock had come down in the river, splashing water or blowing air into the skyscrapers of downtown. The burst of energy pushed everything inside the building toward and out the south-side windows.
“Well, hell’s bells,” he said to himself, getting a look at the scene outside.
The people who’d lined the shores around the bend had come upriver overnight. There were hundreds of them on the bank of the lake, many with weapons. After the first person shot at the rock in the middle of the lake, it seemed to signal others to do the same. In seconds, it looked like a civil war battlefield.
Fireworks guys were out there, too, launching them on a dry slab of concrete at the water’s edge. The shots weren’t as impressive in daylight, but the shooters’ aim was more exact. The big mortar rounds thumped on the shore, then exploded on or above the mining operation.
The TKM miners didn’t shoot back, as best he could tell. Men scrambled down from the tops of cranes, hopped inside the thick-hulled barges for cover, or got inside the captain’s perches of towboats. As Ezra knew from his own experience, there was no fighting back against a raging mob of thousands of citizens.
In minutes, the towboats shucked off their ropes and departed from the unnatural island. The men hiding in the hulls of the cargo haulers made desperate runs to catch them before they left, or they dove overboard to try to swim for it. All the while, bullets plinked around them.
A few were struck and killed.
Others were injured.
“I guess the people of Kansas City have been planning this attack for a while,” Ezra remarked, as if watching a dull stretch of a baseball game.
“Does no one like TKM?” Haley asked seriously.
Butch made a pfft sound with his mouth. “They go around shooting up towns and looting stores. They probably wanted to take all this ore without giving any of it to the people who lost their homes. I bet the same thing is happening back in Paducah.”
Ezra dipped his head, afraid someone in the crowd might have spotted him. “Are you saying you want to go back home and liberate our own asteroid piece?”
“If it would make me rich, sure. Why not?”
Haley perked up. “You think we could get rich?”
Butch nodded. “Why else would they be mining it? Wasn’t that the whole point of bringing in asteroids from deep space, or wherever they got it from?”
For a few moments, Ezra worried the kids would run down the steps and join the crowd.
“Hey, look! It’s your freaking boat!” Butch pointed to the lake.
“Sure is,” he said sadly. Susan’s Grace had been salvaged by the people on the shore. He thought it was still leaning to one side, but it could have been a result of all the people on the deck. Fifteen of them stood and sat wherever they could. The engine was working again, too. The boat moved slowly out toward the abandoned rock.
“Double sorry,” Butch added. “It wasn’t going to sink after all.”
“No, but there was something wrong with the motor when we were out there. I know that for a fact. If I’d had time, and wasn’t getting shot at by those men, I might have fixed it, too.” They watched as the boat inched closer to the black orb half-submerged in the water. From their vantage point, the asteroid piece was at least a quarter of a mile away. His double-pontoon boat seemed like a tiny pebble floating next to the giant orange barges left moored around the boulder.
“Well, I guess I’m glad the boat isn’t lost, after all. Maybe when this is all over, I can come back and lay claim to it.”
“I’ll come with—” Butch began.
He was interrupted by a cracking boom from out at the dig site. The top half of the rounded island disintegrated in an instant, sending rock fragments in all directions, like one of the massive incendiary fireworks they’d been setting off. Instead of harmless flames, it sent pieces of rock into the air.
“Oh my God,” Haley gasped.
Susan’s Grace had been too close. The pieces of rock splashed on top of it, sending it and all its passengers directly to the bottom. The big barges also went down in tremendous splashes.
Debris skipped over the water like a thousand Frisbees tossed at the crowd.
Some pieces were higher in the sky, arcing his way as if fired by giant catapults.
Belatedly, he realized they were in serious danger.
Chapter 20
Rawlins, WY
Grace shoved the two men as the bullet cut through the air inches above her head. It clanged off a rail car behind them.
Asher fell flat on his face, losing his hat, but Misha rolled with the shove, putting himself behind the equipment box at the junction of the tracks. Once she saw the logic of it, she yanked on Asher’s collar to drag him over.
Another bullet cracked off a metal bar ten feet from their hiding spot.
She listened as the kids in the yard screamed and ran. When the air settled, Misha’s radio came to life. It was still on from when he’d communicated with Robert.
“Hiya, friends,” Nerio laughed. “I guess I need some new tricks. Your gal pal saw me before I could open up that Russian brain of yours.”
Misha nodded grimly to Grace. “Spesseeba. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Now you have to get us out of this.” She laughed nervously.
Nerio continued. “This is where it ends. You’re getting too close to the train depot at Green River. I know you’re going to the dig site with your native allies. I can’t allow that. This was supposed to be a fun diversion for me as I cleaned up messes for Petteri Tikkanen.”
Misha glanced between her and Asher. “Did you tell your friends to come back and help us if we called for them?”
She pulled out her phone, surprised she hadn’t thought of it immediately. When she turned it on, it immediately meowed at her; her voicemail system was telling her a message was waiting.
Misha gave her and her cat ringtone a sideways glance, which she ignored.
The call was from the same number as before. Assuming it was her dad, she swiped to covertly listen to it. “Hi, honey. I got your voice message. I won’t go into Denver. We’re on the river, though, heading west. I’ll try to get to where you said. TKM has been after us. They almost killed me.” He sounded shaken. “I have to go. I love you.” He hung up without clapping, which could only mean he was in a tough spot.
“Grace?” the Russian complained.
“I’m calling now!” she responded.
Shawn had given her his number, so it was in her phone ready to go. However, the call went directly to his voicemail, suggesting he was out of cellular range. She hung up, knowing there was no point in leaving a message asking for rescue.
“We’re on our own,” she advised.
Misha fidgeted with the TKM rifle they’d liberated from Denver. “This is cheap Chinese garbage. I need proper Kalishnikov.”
“Can you fire it?” she asked, halfway tempted to yank it out of his hands and shoot it herself.
“Of course. I simply wish for better.” He sat up on one knee, aimed toward the base of the tree, and fired a few rounds. The loud bangs forced Grace to protect her ears.
Misha ducked down as return shots came at them.
“They are both there,” the hitman said dryly. He picked up the radio. “Where is fancy helicopter? You are both on ground.”
Nerio laughed in a carefree manner. “Oh, this is rich. We don’t need a helicopter or a machine gun when we have you in the open. One move from your hiding spot and you’re dead. Alejandro and I can wait. Your people aren’t around. If you try to run, I’ll simply use my little tool to track your radio signals.” She paused. “Oops,” she added, obviously playing with Misha.
Misha set the radio on the rocks, then stepped on it.
“Wait!” Grace yelled as he cracked it to bits. “How are we going to talk to them?”
“Safely,” he replied. He yelled over the top of the switching equipment. “You two will have to come and get us!”
Nerio yelled back, not upset in the least. “Maybe some of these children could persuade you? I’d hate for something to happen to one of them. You never know when the next train is going to come by.”
The distant horn of a train caught Grace’s attention. Was it the one that had gone through, or was it another coming from the east?
“She wouldn’t,” Asher exclaimed.
“Dang it,” she replied. “I bet she would.” She hoped the kids ran inside and told their parents about the gunfire, but no one had come out to see what was going on. As odd as it was to think it, she believed the train yard was normally a loud and chaotic place. Maybe no one would even realize those loud noises were gunshots.
The train horn seemed to get louder.
“We have to take action,” she said, aware it wasn’t a plan.
Kansas City, MO
“Up against the wall!” Ezra shouted.
He, Butch, and Haley scooted up to the outer wall of the building. The glass was already busted out, so he didn’t worry about being hit by flying shards, but he assumed they’d be hit in the back by the incoming rock if they tried to go deeper into the building. As long as the rocks didn’t break through the concrete…
Butch and Haley held hands during the two or three seconds before the rocks arrived. They came through the windows and hit the outside of the building, rising and falling in intensity as the pieces rained down. Some of them shot through the open window, skipping across the empty floor toward the far side. A few ricocheted off the edges, deflecting in odd directions, including a few small chunks that splattered over them.
Mercifully, the debris storm ended as quickly as it started. A few smaller chunks fell from the air or from upper floors, but soon it was over.
Haley shook pieces out of her hair.
“Dare we look up?” Ezra asked rhetorically. They peeked over the edge of the windowsill. He wanted to see what had happened, but he was terrified of what he was going to find.
“Oh man,” Butch whispered.
The top half of the rock was almost completely shredded.
“They must have blown it up rather than let the people have it,” he surmised, based on how events had played out. Which side was helped the most? It might have been his own arrival which got the ball rolling on the evacuation by the TKM miners. Or maybe he gave away the attack plan when the crowd on the shore was forced to fire at him. There was no way to ever know.
What he was certain of was the mining company had killed a lot of the men and women who’d been standing in the open at the edge of the lake. The rocks had struck anyone unlucky enough to be in their path. Looking down, he saw about half the people on the ground, and the other half warily crouched or kneeling next to their fallen friends.
“This is a war crime,” Butch said with rising anger. “We have to tell someone.”
Haley pulled out her phone, perhaps hoping to record what she could, but her face said otherwise. “It got wet. I think it’s toast.”
Selfishly, Ezra thought about how he wouldn’t be able to call Grace. A few seconds later, after hearing people cry three floors down, he got his head back in the moment. “We saw it. Those people saw it. We can back them up when it comes time to take those miners to the woodshed.”
“So, what do we do now?” Haley asked.
Without hesitation, Butch replied. “I say we blow up something of theirs. Preferably with
a lot of their men standing around. In Iraq—”
Ezra interrupted before he got too far into it. “Right now, we have to get out of here. I wish we could help those people, but look at us. We have nothing. The only thing I can think about right now is getting to Grace. The people we’re dealing with, this TKM outfit, are not people to be trifled with. She warned me not to trust them. Boy was she right. But she’s tangled up with them, too. She’s going to one of the dig sites in Wyoming.”
Butch huffed. “Well, as long as I get to blow up their stuff at some point, I’m still with you, E-Z. You know that.”
“Me too,” Haley added. “I’m with your daughter. I don’t trust anyone working with TKM now.”
He sighed, knowing what he was asking of them. “All right. We’ll go down the steps and slip out the other side of the building. We’ll walk to the west and hope we can find an abandoned vehicle. Without my boat, we’re stuck depending on other transportation.”
The wailing from outside became louder.
“Now. We’ve got to move.” He hunched over and got away from the windows.
The others followed.
He desperately wanted to hear Grace’s voice.
Denver, CO
Each passing hour of the morning brought worse news for Petteri. When he received a call from his Kansas City team, he knew what was coming.
“Yes?” he said into the handset.
“Hello, sir. This is Clay Frontman with the Kansas City recovery team.”
“I know who you are. Tell me the news.”
The man hesitated. “Well, sir, we were attacked by tens of thousands of armed terrorists. They lined both sides of the river for miles around. They tried to send boats after us. We shot back, as you instructed, and I’m sure we put a dent in them, but there were too many.”
“How much of the rock did you get?” The Kansas City operation was one of his favorites. The rock had bounced in from a spot in nearby Kansas, settling into the mud of the Missouri River. Its impact created the lake, which was a stroke of luck as far as he was concerned. No other mining company had the resources to buy up shipping and dredging equipment and mine on the water. He figured they’d get the whole rock before anyone even knew what he was doing. But here he was, listening to another failure.
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 96
