“I’m going forward to see what’s up.” Turnbull tossed Amanda the remote. “I’ll be ten minutes, tops.” He got out and crossed over the median and the westbound lane into the dark of the desert.
He moved out about 100 yards from the freeway and climbed up the ridge parallel to it. He did not stop at the top of the ridge, but instead crawled over top, sliding down a few yards to the military crest where he would not be silhouetted against the sky on the ridge line. The line of vehicles descended down the hill maybe a quarter mile and stopped at a roadblock of four vehicles with blue and red light bars, probably PSF.
But the PSF officers were not doing anything. Turnbull watched them through the binos. They were just standing there, walking around their vehicles, not checking documents, not interacting with the people they had halted, nothing. The westbound lane was open; every once in a while a truck passed through going toward Vegas. But eastbound was completely stalled – and there was no indication anyone was in any hurry to get it restarted.
What the hell?
It was maybe an hour and a half until dawn. He took his binos and turned them toward the desert. There was a little bit of moonlight, maybe enough, he decided.
Fifteen minutes later he was back at the Explorer.
“What is it?” Amanda asked from the driver’s seat.
“It’s a problem. Get in the passenger seat.” Turnbull said, going to the back of the vehicle and opening the rear hatch. Inside, he opened the access panels to the rear lights and pulled the bulbs out of their sockets, then shut the hatch again. Behind him, a trucker watched him curiously from his seat above the road. Turnbull gave him the stink eye, and the driver averted his gaze. He didn’t see anything. This was none of his business.
Back in the driver’s seat, Turnbull killed the headlights, cranked the ignition, and engaged the four wheel drive, then pulled a hard left over the shoulder and into the median and across the westbound lane and then into the desert. The brown Explorer soon disappeared from view. With the bulbs gone, he was able to brake without flashing his red lights. Slowly, but faster as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight, he drove north around the far spur of the ridge.
“The freeway turns north. If we go east here maybe five miles, we hit it again way past the roadblock,” Junior said, squinting at the map by the light of a small pocket flashlight with a red lens.
They passed the roadblock lying a mile to their south; there was no reaction as they bypassed it. No one was looking out into the desert. Turnbull pressed on, concerned that they would be making the crossing well-past dawn. And the fuel indicator was dropping much faster than he had hoped.
The SUV convoy roared through Las Vegas at 80 miles per hour. They were making up lost time. Larsen convinced Rios-Parkinson to refuel in Baker to ensure they had gas for the entire conceivable route. The station had been closed and two of the ten PBI tactical team members had had to kick in the door of the gas station’s proprietor’s trailer to convince him to fuel the vehicles.
The tracker now indicated that their quarry had left the freeway.
“This can’t be right,” Larsen said, looking at the screen on his tablet. “They were sitting there on the road for 20 minutes a mile south of the roadblock and now it’s showing them north of the freeway, off-road, heading east.”
“They are bypassing the block,” Rios-Parkinson said. He had ordered the PSF to seal I-15 outside of town to the east, where no one who mattered would ever be at this hour. Then the tactical team could easily take them trapped in traffic and no one would ever know what happened. A few civilians might get killed in the crossfire, but that was acceptable. Except these bastards were refusing to cooperate – again.
“I don’t get it,” Larsen said. “He’s a professional, obviously. But it looks like he’s heading to cross in Utah. He’s going out the way he came in.”
“So?”
“So professionals don’t do that,” said Larsen. “I don’t understand.”
“Maybe he is not as professional as you think,” Rios-Parkinson said, dismissively. But Larsen had been inside the PSF station, and he had had personal experience in Indiana with the kind of people who were able to conduct operations like that. He clutched his own M4, and he began to be afraid.
Turnbull wheeled the Explorer back onto the 15 and accelerated northeast. There was almost no traffic in their direction, and only a few occasional vehicles heading west. The sun would be up soon. Turnbull hit the accelerator and pushed it to 90. The fuel economy dipped, but he had few options with daylight coming.
They drove for almost a half hour before the gas station where he and Junior had eaten their first meal on the blue side came into view. He passed it and then, down the freeway out of sight, turned left and again crossed the westbound lane to head north. Using the nav system on the Explorer, he made some rough calculations of where he needed to go and headed in that direction.
“Kelly,” asked Junior from the back. “Let’s assume that roadblock was for us.”
“I already do.”
“Okay, so if it was for us, then your idea about going back the way we came was totally wrong.”
“Looks like it.”
“So why didn’t they grab us at the roadblock?”
“Not enough of them, maybe,” Turnbull opined.
“So that’s got to mean that there are more coming from the west. I mean, we haven’t seen any bad guys from the east.”
“What’s that tell you?”
“They are behind us, following.”
“Except we went off-road again, and they don’t know that.”
“Maybe,” said Junior, but he sounded unconvinced.
They drove on, using dirt tracks where they could and flat washes where there were no trails. The going was tough, and the sun was beginning to rise in the east.
Turnbull looked at the nav system and decided it was time to turn east up a dry arroyo that jostled them with rocks every few seconds. It was slow going, but steady.
The fuel reserve warning had been lit for a half hour, and it estimated four more miles until empty.
Fine. Four less miles for them to walk out.
Leaving about five or six miles to the Utah border.
The Explorer did not run out of gas; the indicator said there were two miles left in the tank. Instead, the terrain simply became impossible for a vehicle. There was a low ridge ahead, the summit at least a mile ahead, and the Ford was just not going to make it over the rocky terrain.
“Everyone out,” Turnbull said. He took his M4, his pack, and his ammo bag, and put on his PSF vest. Hopefully no one would read the letters “PSF” and shoot him. Junior hobbled out with his weapon slung around his neck, unsteady but game to give it a try. The hard drive was in his pack. Abraham was solemn, and Amanda looked happy to be out of the SUV and in the fresh air.
“Let’s go,” Turnbull said, leading the way up the rocky incline.
A half mile in, they had to rest. Abraham, the city boy, was having a hard time with the exertion. Amanda’s frequent gym workouts had her in better shape. Junior was obviously in pain, and blood was seeping out from under one of Amanda’s bandages, but he didn’t complain.
“Everyone drink water,” Turnbull said. The sun was now rising well above the horizon, and the evening chill was gone. They were sweating. It was only going to get worse. Up ahead was a low ridge running north to south, its west face covered with rocks and brush.
They took another break on the military crest of the hill, finding shelter out of the sun 20 feet below the ridge line. It was a good position, concealed in a small clearing behind vegetation, with sightlines back toward the abandoned Explorer and both north and south along the face of the hill.