by Bobby Adair
Far ahead, a handful of southbound cars were lined up at the checkpoint. Another ten or twelve were in line heading toward town. Tommy counted at least nine men and women up there, all armed, some standing by windows, hassling drivers, others situated at a menacing distance, hands on their weapons.
“What do we do?” asked Summer.
Tommy noticed the Escalade’s brake lights hadn’t flashed red yet, and Crosby was swerving to the right side of the road. “Speed up a little. Try and get on his ass.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. Don’t make it obvious, just get up there.”
Tommy felt the car pull, heard the engine rev.
He took out the sat-phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“No one.” He folded it open and put it to his ear.
Crosby’s tires threw dust up off the shoulder as the Escalade left the pavement.
“What’s he doing?” asked Summer.
“He’s going around the line,” Tommy told her. “Follow him. Get close.”
Summer followed, navigating the cruiser onto the shoulder in the Escalade’s dust.
Crosby was slowing down and passing the first of the cars in line. His brake lights finally flashed on.
Summer pulled in right behind, and kept on rolling. “He’s going to stop.”
“Don’t panic,” Tommy advised. “Keep your cool. Roll your window down.”
“What if they—”
“Let me do the talking.”
Crosby’s driver’s side window rolled down. He was coming up even with the front of the line. He swished a lazy hand out the window. A guard waved him on past the roadblock.
“Do the same,” Tommy told her.
Summer raised her hand to the guard ahead, friendly, casual. Yet he didn’t wave them through. He wanted them to halt.
“Don’t come to a complete stop,” Tommy told her, and then he started talking to imaginary Crosby on the phone, loud and obnoxious. “Yeah, yeah. I understand. We’ll be right there.” He called across Summer’s lap, as the car came parallel with the guard. “Is there a problem?”
The guy said, “You got a—”
Tommy pointed at the Escalade. “We have orders, buddy. We’re in a hurry.”
Not knowing how to handle the situation, the guard gave up and waved them through.
Tommy leaned back in his seat. Summer gunned the engine and steered back onto the pavement.
***
A mile past the old mining equipment yard at the edge of town, the road was empty, except for the Escalade and the car Tommy and Summer were driving.
“He’s slowing down again.” Summer didn’t like the situation.
Tommy glanced at the speedometer. “Forty?” The speed limit on the road down to Breck was sixty-five, most of the way. Crosby had run his Escalade up to fifty-five as he left town, but never went any faster than that. Since then, he’d been slowing down in five mile-per-hour increments every few minutes.
“Thirty-five,” announced Summer.
A hand reached out the Escalade’s driver’s side window, waving them to pass.
“You think he’s onto us?” asked Summer.
“Yes.”
“Should I pass?”
Tommy rolled his window down and waved back at the Escalade, like everything was cool just the way it was. “I don’t know.”
“No sage wisdom from the meth-head war bible?” Summer blurted.
“Stay calm.”
Summer matched the Escalade's speed and kept the distance between them at a hundred yards. "He knows we're up to something."
A remote stretch of highway lay a few miles ahead. Nothing up there but the remains of some old farm buildings, pastures, and beaver ponds.
“I’d hoped we’d be farther out of town.” Tommy took a fast glance around. Scattered houses and car repair shops stood just off the road. Plenty of chance they’d be noticed doing what Tommy had in mind. “We’ll just have to do it here.” He reached over and turned on the cruiser’s roof lights. “Speed up and pull him over.”
***
Racing up to sixty and then leaning hard on the brakes, Summer pulled the police cruiser right in behind the Escalade.
The Escalade slowed down to twenty.
“Stay close,” Tommy told her, “but try not to intimidate him.”
"You're telling me how to manage my driving body language?" Summer's irritation was evident in her tone.
“Yeah. Of course. We don’t want to spook him.”
Confirming with glances down at her speedometer, Summer said, “He’s not stopping. He’s pegged at twenty.”
“This guy’s obstinate.” Tommy reached for the mic, flicked the PA system on, and called, “Pull over, please.”
In response to the amplified order, the Escalade did nothing to change its behavior.
After giving it a few seconds, Summer asked, “What now?”
“Mr. Crosby,” Tommy called into the PA. “Please pull off the road, this will only take a moment.”
“We need a new plan,” figured Summer. “There’s no way he should know who we are—he’s spooked.”
“We could run him off the road if you’re up for it,” Tommy suggested.
“Or shoot out his tires,” Summer sarcastically responded.
“Once the bullets start flying,” Tommy told her, “we’ll lose control.”
“Lose control? Tommy, do you hear what you’re saying? We don’t have control now.”
“It’ll get dangerous because—”
“Running him off the road won’t be dangerous? Seriously, you don’t think he’ll interpret that as a threat?”
“Summer,” Tommy told her, “don’t panic. I’m just saying that at this speed, running him off the road shouldn’t be too risky. But if we shoot—”
“Oh shit,” said Summer, looking into the rearview mirror.
Tommy turned to see out the rear window. “Dammit! He called in the cavalry.”
“What do we do?”
“Ram him!”
***
Down the flat valley floor, it was easy to see a good three-quarters of a mile back. A cop SUV was speeding toward them, lights flashing, and another car, an SUV or truck, followed right behind.
“Floor it!” Tommy told Summer. “Ram him, now!”
“From behind?”
“Hit him on the driver’s side fender. Run him into the ditch.”
Summer hit the brakes first to create a gap.
Tommy took another quick look around. The ditch beside the road. Flat pasture on both sides. The river winding its way down the valley. The remains of a burned-out barn. Nothing to turn to their advantage. Outnumbered, they’d most likely be killed in a shootout here. Tommy realized their best bet was to abandon the plan and escape.
He said, “I think we—”
Summer punched the accelerator, and the car leaped across the gap between them and the Escalade. Tommy didn't have time to finish his sentence. Summer didn't have time to listen, and Crosby didn't have a chance to react. The cruiser smashed into the rear of the Escalade. Wheels squealed. Plastic pieces of taillights and bumpers exploded across the highway. The Escalade's rear bounced off the pavement.
Past the point of changing their minds, Tommy shouted, “Floor it!” He reached over, grabbed the steering wheel and and yanked it to the right.
The Escalade canted sideways and rolled off the road as it picked up speed.
Summer screamed.
A storm of dust blew up as the tires spun through the dirt on the shoulder.
The vehicles careened into the ditch and crashed into the slope on the opposite side, and the airbags burst open.
***
A car horn keened.
Tommy had stars in his eyes, and his nose was bleeding from the slap of the airbag.
Outside, the air was clouded with dust and radiator steam so thick it was hard to see the black SUV smashed into their bumper.
Tommy
shook his head to clear it. “You okay?”
“I think so.”
Tommy pushed the airbag out of his way and tried to shoulder his door open. It was jammed shut.
Summer turned to look out the back window. “They’re slowing down. We still have a minute or two.”
Tommy pulled his legs up to kick out the shattered windshield. The safety glass folded back. Tommy kicked again, made a hole, and scrambled through to get on the hood. "Get out. Be ready to shoot."
Summer opened her door and stumbled onto the ground.
Tommy glanced over his shoulder to see she was pulling herself together quickly. He hopped off from the hood and hurried down the passenger side of the Escalade.
Someone inside started firing a gun in wild, un-aimed shots.
“Duck!” Tommy shouted to Summer as he raised his pistol, not the .44 Magnum he’d told the lie about to the two 704s they’d stolen the cop car from, but the nine-millimeter he actually had. He fired three shots through the black-tinted side window in the direction of the driver’s seat and fired three more in the direction of the passenger seat.
Wasting no time, he ran up to the shattered window and peeked in. Two people were in the front seats, a man hunched over the steering wheel, wheezing blood, and a woman on the passenger side, bloody, but with a weapon in hand, struggling to turn around enough to see behind her. Tommy fired twice more through the back of her seat, and she fell limp.
“They’re coming!” Summer shouted.
“Put a bead on ‘em and don’t expose yourself.”
Tommy climbed into the SUV through the rear passenger door. He checked the woman. She was dead. The man was big and heavy. He had gray roots peeking out under black dyed hair and wore a mustache. He was the Crosby Summer had described. He had a wound in his back. One of Tommy’s bullets had torn through his shoulder blade, and judging by the blood spluttering out with each breath, had gone straight into his right lung. He wouldn’t live long without medical help.
And he wouldn’t be getting that medical help if Tommy could help it.
Tommy climbed over the stunned man, and quickly manhandled his wrists up to the steering wheel, where Tommy zip-tied them in place.
Crosby wouldn’t be going anywhere until someone freed him.
Tommy climbed out of the SUV and didn’t see Summer. He looked back through the steam and smoke. He could barely make out the oncoming lights of the police cruiser, but it was close. “Summer?”
“In here,” she called back.
Tommy hurried toward the wrecked car, and saw that Summer was in the back seat looking through the back glass, kneeling with her AR-15 at her shoulder.
“Crosby?” she asked.
“Alive, but he won’t be going anywhere.” Tommy glanced back down the road and tried to gauge how much time he had. “Don’t stay inside. The car won’t give you any protection. Get up there by the front where you have the engine block to protect you. Shoot over the car. Wait until they come to a stop, though. If you can, wait until they get out of the car, and then unload on them.”
“I’ll run out of ammo,” Summer guessed.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tommy told her. “Just empty every magazine you have. Don’t stop firing until you’re through.”
Shaking her head, Summer opened her mouth to argue.
"I'm going to flank them."
“What?”
"Fire as soon as they get out."
Tommy bounded through the ditch and sprinted along a pasture fence on the other side, running in the direction of the oncoming 704s, knowing they couldn’t miss seeing him.
Chapter 19
Thankfully, the barbed-wire fence was old. As many wires were broken as not, though the broken ones lay in the grass, coiled, and ready to catch his feet. Tommy cut through a gap in the fence, leaped over a pile of charred boards, and ran into the blackened remains of an old barn that had burned so long ago trees were growing on the dirt floor.
Looking back to see where the 704s were, and feeling a panic because they were so close, he tripped, tumbling through the rubble on the floor, feeling the sharp jabs of old nails and broken glass. With no time to waste on thoughts of cuts or more severe injuries, he rolled up onto his feet, and skittered over to kneel behind the remains of a wall.
The lead SUV was already speeding past him, apparently not planning to stop at the wreck. The pickup, though, was still coming. And just like that, the brilliant plan Tommy had imagined when he'd laid out his quick ambush instructions for Summer went up in smoke.
Improvising, and hoping Summer could hold her own in a firefight where the advantage was to the other side, Tommy flipped the fire mode selector on his AK-47 to full-auto, put a bead on the too-close-to-miss pickup driver’s window, and pulled the trigger.
The rifle kicked hard as a long burst of big slugs shattered the truck’s glass.
It swerved and started to lean.
Tommy stopped firing, only to hear the rapid fire of another rifle. He hoped it was Summer’s.
The pickup rolled onto its side and spun on the asphalt, throwing up a spray of sparks as it slid.
Tommy leaped over his defensive wall, and ran for the truck.
He glanced over his shoulder to see Summer scooting along beside the police cruiser. The other police SUV was well past the scene of the accident and had stopped down the road. Summer fired as she ran to take up a position beside Crosby's Escalade, using it for cover.
The pickup Tommy disabled came to a stop, and he ran to a spot where he could see the shapes of people through the thousand cracks in the windshield. He didn’t waste time trying to figure out which ones were alive or wounded. He fired three short bursts through the glass, resulting in satisfying splatters of red from within.
In the middle of the road, he turned and changed out his empty magazine in a motion so fast and fluid it was as if the elapsed decades since the last time he’d done it had never happened. He leveled his weapon at the sheriff’s SUV a hundred meters down the road, and had a split second to decide what to do. The doors were swung wide. Muzzles flashed from behind them. Summer was pinned behind the Escalade. Tommy had a full mag in the AK and two more stuffed in the baggy pockets of his 704 jacket. Ninety rounds and a handful in the nine-mil.
Bullets started to snap in the air around him, meaning the people at the police SUV had taken notice of him. Fortunately, they weren’t firing accurately. Not enough training on the exact weapon in their hands, or the stress of the firefight, jacking their adrenaline to levels only a life-or-death fight can reach?
All the same in Tommy’s book.
He took careful aim at the big gold ‘F’ in the middle of the passenger door of the SUV, and fired a short burst. The door jerked shut on a person who crumbled to the pavement behind. He adjusted his aim and shot at the gold ‘S’ on the driver's side door, and the driver fell.
All gunfire stopped.
“Stay behind Crosby’s Caddy,” Tommy shouted to Summer. He didn’t bother to check the pickup behind him for living shooters. If anyone had lived through the number of rounds he’d shredded through the cab of that pickup, well, they weren’t a problem he’d be able to solve with a mere assault rifle. He’d need a kryptonite hand grenade or an infinity stone. So he kept his rifle aimed at the sheriff’s SUV as he marched down the highway’s pair of center stripes.
***
One of the two in the sheriff’s SUV wore a 704 jacket. The other, the driver, was a deputy. Both were women, and both were wounded badly enough they couldn’t defend themselves when Tommy walked up and finished them each with a bullet to the head.
Summer, who was standing close enough by then that some of the blood splattered on her, didn’t approve, yet didn’t protest.
Tommy walked around the SUV to see if it was still usable. Summer had put at least a dozen holes in the sheet metal and shattered most of the windows. It was, however, still idling there in the road, and the gauges read normal.
Summer
turned to look down the long, straight road to where it curved away toward Spring Creek. “More will come.”
Surveying the mess, and coming to the obvious choice as he stared at the sheriff’s SUV, Tommy asked, “Is Crosby still alive?”
Summer didn’t answer.
Tommy looked over to her. She was nodding, standing there on the pavement with Crosby's Escalade and the smashed police car smoking behind her. It was almost cinematic. With brass casings on the road all around her feet, she held her rifle in low-ready, watching Tommy's six as he tried to figure out what to do. In that moment, Tommy realized there was a tough core to her that—up to that moment—he hadn't thought was much more than bravado and snark, that quaked every time she got into a bad situation and had to make brutal choices.
And he reminded himself, as he stood there with an executed sheriff’s deputy as his feet, knowing every normal human emotion in him should be wailing out loud, and mashing him under a ton of leaden guilt, that he hadn’t been born with callouses on his soul. Cruel Fred had put them there. The reform school had toughened them in an acid bath of tears and blood. Life on the outside had hardened them into armor.
Summer’s baptism in barbarity was coming fast and mean. Yet, in her own way, she was rising to look it in the eye, and doing her part when called on.
She deserved more respect than he was giving her.
And she was right in her guess. More 704s would come, and he and Summer needed to be gone before anybody rounded that curve down the valley to see them standing in the road or fleeing the scene.
They needed to move. Immediately.
***
From the back seat, Crosby moaned and coughed. He was slobbering blood, and his nose was running red snot. His splattered hands were cuffed to the partition between the seats, his shirt was soaking through, and his skin was draining to gray.
“He won’t last,” Summer told Tommy from the passenger seat.
