Dead End (911 Book 2)

by Grace Hamilton

  17

  Goddamnit!” Parker swore. Turning to Will, he gestured emphatically to the bushes. “Go, go, go!”

  They didn’t need to be told twice before the entire family moved fast, disappearing into the trees and bushes off the side of the road.

  “National Lampoon’s Vacation takes on a whole new meaning,” Ava commented.

  “Your humor is becoming incessantly dark,” Finn pointed out. Ava shrugged.

  Parker looked to the curve in the road ahead of them, hearing the approaching engines getting louder. He thought about the family thrashing through the bush, only able to move as fast as the two young children could. He thought about how his own daughter needed him.

  “Goddamn…” he said to himself.

  “Let’s go, Parker,” Finn urged.

  Parker turned to them. “Go,” he said. “Get to the boat; I’ll catch up to you.”

  “What the hell do you mean, you’ll ‘catch up,’” Ava demanded. “What are you doing?”

  The approaching engines were getting louder. Parker gestured for them to hurry. “I’m going to slow them down,” he said. “We need to give the family time to get away.”

  “We all need to go now,” Ava argued.

  “I’ll meet you at the river!” Parker shouted at them. “Finn take her!”

  Finn met his eyes in acknowledgement, and then she pulled at Ava’s sleeve. The two girls left the road as Parker turned. Whatever size truck was approaching, he realized, it was big. The engine noise emitted a deafening cacophony as it approached. Taking a smoke grenade out and setting it next to him, Parker took a knee on the side of the road and lifted the M249.

  A quick burst through the windshield, he figured. Kill the driver and stall the convoy long enough to pop smoke and haul ass. If there’s a turret gunner, he goes first, and then the driver.

  Seventy yards away, the noise of the approaching vehicle, or vehicles, he thought now, reached a peak and Parker sighted in, forming a good cheek weld with the buttstock. His finger curled around the smooth metal curve of the trigger and he took up the slack.

  A Stryker armored fighting vehicle rolled around the corner less than a mile away, traveling at a snail’s pace. The .30 autocannon on top of the 18-ton metal beast of a vehicle pivoted as the gunner scanned the area from the safety of his remote targeting apparatus.

  “Oh, shit,” Parker muttered.

  He let the M249 drop to the end of its harness and scooped up the smoke grenade. He yanked the pin free even as he turned and began running. The soda-can size grenade bounced behind him and gray smoke billowed out. He heard servos whine as the Remote Weapon System pivoted and the M2 heavy machine gun behind him began tracking in his direction.

  He wasn’t going to beat the thermal optics of the Stryker, and individual body armor was completely ineffective against such a large caliber weapon. His only hope was the defilade of the ditch running alongside the road.

  Throwing himself forward, he slid into the ditch and ducked beneath the level of the road. “Dammit all to hell!” he yelled at himself.

  The .30 caliber machine gun opened up. It fired slowly compared to the M249, coughing out in a thunk-thunk-thunk of a rhythm as Parker began low-crawling along the ditch, rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. Geysers of dirt erupted next to him and bullets knifed the air, displacing air like miniature jet planes.

  On the road, the area had grown heavy with smoke, cutting visibility. Parker knew the thermal images could see through smoke, but he hoped the defilade created by the ditch would screen him long enough for him to pull off some misdirection.

  The skin on his elbows scraped off and began weeping blood as he crawled forward, moving as fast as he dared. He crawled back toward the armored vehicle, figuring the crew would expect him to make a run for the woods from the terrifying piece of machinery. He knew from discussions with Eli that the thermal imager his pursuers carried had a range out to almost eight thousand feet, so he couldn’t hide for long and he couldn’t run.

  Sweat drenched his body and, in a few more moments, he was blinded, enveloped in his own smoke. The RWS .30 cal. couldn’t engage targets within the sphere of range of its inability to rotate downwards, creating a ‘dead area’ in close proximity to the vehicle. If they wanted to get him, Parker knew, they’d either have to break contact and reverse to range, or dismount infantry would need to get out and come get him. Those men would be operating without the benefit of the advanced imaging optics, however.

  He couldn’t see the Stryker anymore, as the smoke was too thick, but the sound of the RWS tracking for him was clear enough. He crawled further forward. The grenade discharged smoke for anywhere from fifty to ninety seconds before it ran out. When that happened, the smoke began dissipating but, by design, this was a slow process, even in an open area. With trees lining both sides of the road, he knew he had some time.

  Putting his head down, he continued crawling.

  Thirty meters from where he’d thrown the grenade, the smoke thinned out enough for Parker to try to set up his next move, whatever that was going to be. Behind him, he heard the transmission shift as the vehicle operator threw it in gear and began reversing out of the smoke.

  If he could make the river, he could reduce his heat signature and perhaps slip away downstream, breaking contact. But it was too far to sprint; the gunner would cut him down with little difficulty even as he stumbled, blind from the smoke screen.

  He cast about for more options, growing desperate as he rounded a curve in the dirt road and realized they were on an access road leading from the interstate to the river. On the highway, he saw an abandoned gas station with a service bay across from several one-story houses with their windows broken out.

  He got up and began running.

  He was halfway to the structure when they saw him and he heard the engine rev. Dodging around the houses to use them as cover, he headed for the station.

  Stumbling into the garage, Parker quickly tried to fortify his position.

  Next to the door to the office, there was a Coke machine, and he tipped it over, blocking the entrance. He found a piece of slim metal pipe in a scrap heap and slid it into place on the track rollers to the sliding door, effectively shutting the entrance point down. Working quickly, he gathered quart bottles of 40-weight engine oil and used his knife to slice them open, spreading the viscous contents across the grimy cement floor under each of the two windows. Sliding into the mechanic’s pit built into the garage floor, he tested his fields of fire. It was a good position. Better than he’d had any right to hope for anyway.

  Outside, he heard the Stryker pull in to the station’s lot. He knew he was safe enough from the main gun, below the level of the floor as he was. From what he’d seen, this vehicle had the Mk44 Bushmaster II .30 chain gun. It could rain steel death through this building with enough intensity to bring the roof down, but as long as he stayed in the mechanic’s pit, chances were high he’d survive direct fire.

  Once the soldiers got inside the garage, however, it would be a different story.

  This is how I die, he thought.

  He heard the big diesel engine of the Stryker whine as the vehicle crept forward, but there was no call for his surrender.

  The .30 opened up at more than one hundred rounds per minute of API—Armor Piercing Incendiary rounds—and the cannon coughed the rounds out in a staccato rhythm. Striking the cinder block construction materials, they blew basketball-sized holes in the walls and tore the steel sliding door apart as if it had been no more than tissue paper. Orange incendiary spray lit up the cavern-like gloom of the garage and the auditory assault of the barrage rang through the building in daisy-chain thunderclaps.

  He heard .30 cal. autocannon rounds smashing into the Volkswagen next, ripping it apart in a furious hammering of blows. Glass shattered and the room echoed with destruction as metal tore apart. The incendiary material immediately caught the gas on fire and it went up like a volcano, sending a blast of heat rolli
ng across the nearly demolished shop.

  Parker scrunched down against the forward wall of the mechanic pit as steel cyclones ripped through the building. Dust and vaporized chunks of cement filled the air like snow as metal crumpled under the impacts. Fifty-five-gallon drums of industrial lubricant blew apart next, spreading greasy globs of the petroleum product across the space. Load-bearing supports exploded then, and the left side of the building, opposite the office, folded, then collapsed, ripping a section of the roof free like a badly-cut pizza slice.

  Shards of construction materials and flakes of metal rained down on the crouching Parker, falling debris dropping in miniature avalanches as displays of motor oil caught fire. The concussion of the big rounds landing and the sonic shock of API rounds streaking by directly overhead reverberated through his body even as he avoided direct contact with the deadly hail of cannon rounds.

  He pulled the pin on a smoke grenade and tossed it overhand in a hook shot, seeking to add as much chaos as possible to the situation. He didn’t need to coordinate his actions with a team like his attackers could, and could spray fire at will. Reducing visibility only helped him.

  The salvo stretched out forever. A steel girder fell from overhead, landing crossways across the narrow cement trench he crouched in and forming a barrier to catch large sections of the falling roof—Parker couldn’t have gotten luckier with its placement, he realized as soon as more roofing fell down. When the fusillade ended, it took Parker several moments to realize it simply because the ringing in his ears continued to deafen him.

  They’re coming.

  He threw a second smoke grenade. He popped open the legs on the M249s bipod and settled the weapon into his shoulder, peeking above the pit. He couldn’t see the end of his weapon, the surrounding smoke was so thick. He felt pretty good about his chances of a surprise attack, unless they had anti-personnel grenades.

  Suddenly, through the smoke, he heard the Stryker’s V8 Caterpillar C7 engine rev as the driver raised the rpms into the red. It reached a zenith and he heard the tires jerk forward as the vehicle operator threw it into gear.

  “Oh shit!” he yelled.

  He’d expected a dismount strike, but they’d thrown him one hell of a curveball.

  Dragging the M249 back to his body, he dropped down into the pit. Above, he heard the metal sliding door of the garage screech as it ripped free of its moorings and tore apart. The sound of the turbo-charged 7.2L diesel engine thundered into the bay, rolling over debris like a leaf pile. Tires screeched on the cement as the operator locked the brakes and it skidded to a stop.

  The infantry fighting vehicle slammed into the burning Volkswagen and sent it skidding into a back wall like a hockey puck. The vehicle’s ruptured gas tank exploded in a second fireball as it rent open and burning fuel spilled out and spread across the floor.

  In the next moment, Parker heard men yelling out, and he figured at least a six-man squad had dismounted to make entry. Following the sound of their voices, he popped up and cut loose with the M249, letting off a quick Z-pattern blast and then ducking down. He thought the ambient background IR from the burning materials would easily be too intense for the thermal imager on the vehicle’s RWS optics to pick him out, even if they tried it.

  But he didn’t want to push the theory.

  Dropping down as much as he could, he realized it was getting almost impossible to breathe. Working quickly as small arms fire erupted overhead, he broke out his stolen protective mask and snugged it into place over his sweat-drenched head. Holding the snout housing the filter seals, he created half an inch of space between his neck and the mask and blew out a breath, clearing the mask of any trapped bad air.

  Letting the mask seal then, he was suddenly in a fishbowl world of muffled sound, fighting for each breath in order to fill his burning lungs with enough air to feed his oxygen-starved body. Without looking first, he lifted the M249 over the lip of the pit and cut loose with a long, ragged blast.

  This seems like a reasonable time to leave, he thought.

  Suddenly, he heard rushing feet moving across the concrete, and he instinctively pressed his back against the wall of the pit. He caught an impression of a figure flying past him off the edge and heard a muffled cry as one of the soldiers fell into the trench. The man moaned, and Parker barely made out his form in the murk and smoke. If he fired into the pit and missed, the rounds could ricochet around like buzz saws, slicing him to pieces.

  Shifting his grip on the M249 to his off-hand, he drew his pistol. Smoke swirled around him, cloaking any indication of movement. Men shouted orders through the muffled barriers of their protective masks, but Parker couldn’t make out what they were saying. The man in the pit answered, though, and Parker quickly shuffled forward.

  Suddenly, the man was directly before him, and Parker pulled his trigger twice. The pistol kicked in his grip and his rounds slammed into the man’s torso from six inches away. The soldier cried out in surprise and pain, and fell back. Parker dropped the M249 and caught the muzzle of the M4 as the soldier swung it around.

  Jumping inside the weapon’s reach, body to body, he shoved his pistol up under the man’s chin and fired again. The smoke swirled and, face-to-face, Parker saw blood splash the eye lenses inside the pro mask the soldier wore, and then the man fell away, and Parker scrambled for the lip of the mechanic’s pit and alligator-crawled over the edge.

  Behind him, the Stryker revved up and then pulled into reverse, lurching backward out of the opening in the garage wall. He heard men calling out to each other and realized the squad was strung out inside the chaotic structure; they’d lost unit cohesion. Checking the mental map he held of the building, he began high-crawling toward the back of the garage bay.

  The Volkswagon, engulfed in flames, burned and spit out black smoke into the swirling mess of the garage. The heat forced him to divert his path, and he realized the burning car could now be sitting directly in the path of the door he needed to reach. He remembered seeing the back corner of the structure collapse under the onslaught of the .30 cannon, and, instinctively, he turned in that direction.

  The voices faded as the men in the infantry squad fell back. He heard someone’s voice yelling, “On line! On line!”

  Moments later, five weapons opened up to rake the smoky interior of the building with bullets, their muzzles flaring like matchsticks and backlighting the smoke. Parker pressed his body into the cement, his heart beating hard from fear and exhaustion.

  The line of firing weapons broke as some of the soldiers performed magazine changes. Adjusting his current elevation to climb up to where he thought he’d seen an opening would be suicidal, but a wolf caught in a trap would chew off its own leg to get free, Eli had once told him. He couldn’t remember the context of the conversation, but the veteran had always been full of little pearls like that.

  Not prepared to chew anything off, he scrambled up the debris pile, relying on speed over subterfuge. His head rammed into something hard and sharp as he moved, and a jolt of pain locked up the muscles of his body for a moment. His scalp split open and rivers of warm, sticky blood gushed over his face, mixing with the dust frosting his head and forming a stiff skim over his skin.

  He shuddered hard, disorientated, and his lungs worked to their limit as he fought to feed oxygen to his pounding heart through the filters of the protective mask. Off to his left, one of the soldiers opened fire with his assault rifle. Abruptly, just in time, Parker went over the edge of the rubble pile and tumbled down the hillock of debris. Here, the heavy smoke had risen and, lying on the ground, he saw he was finally outside. Bullets still cracked and whizzed by overhead, so he began crawling through the smoke.

  The unforgiving cement scraped the flesh off his knees and elbows as he moved, and he gasped like a fish inside the claustrophobic hood of his mask. From memory, he cut to the right and headed toward the edge of the woods. Reaching the ancient barbwire fence surrounding the lot, he scrambled through the strands and rolled into
the cheatgrass.

  More men were shouting orders, but the smoke still hung in an impenetrable fog and he felt secure enough to rise to his hands and knees and crawl for the tree line. He already missed the feeling of security that the stolen M249 had provided. He didn’t remember losing it, but it wasn’t worth worrying about; at the moment, he was near desperate to reach the edge of the smoke cloud and strip off his rubber mask.

  Exhausted, he crawled over some bushes and found himself in the woods. Tendrils of smoke drifted through the trees, but it was clear enough that he didn’t wait any longer to pull free the mask and gulp in air. He lay panting for a moment, his body drenched in his sweat.

  Then, still breathing heavily, he rose and began making his way to the river.

  18

  The Vineyard

  Truesdale stood in the fuel shed with two of his section leaders and counted 55-gallon drums. They were going through gasoline faster than he’d expected, and he was going to have to send out scouting parties if the Church’s network couldn’t establish a black-market source soon.

  “Come on,” he grunted to the other two men. “Let’s go check how the ammunition stores are and then we can take a break.”

  Sara Parker hadn’t been gone that long, but she’d built up a healthy appetite in him and he couldn’t get her out of his mind. If he couldn’t get her back soon, he’d need to find a replacement.

  As they turned to leave, the shed’s door opened and one of the gate guards came in.

  “We got visitors,” he said.

  Truesdale was instantly on edge. “Who, and how many?”

  “Three on horses; Church couriers,” the guard said.

  Truesdale frowned, nervous now for a more specific reason than the fact that getting visitors these days was almost never good news. “Do you know them?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen the woman before,” the guard said.

  “Who is it?”

  “Maggie Parker.”