“Heeeeeeee-yahhhhhhhh!” screamed Dog-ear and Sheriff Junk together.
The wall of flames had shrunk in the distance behind them when they saw a jeep charge through it. It wavered for a few seconds but then straightened, a soldier in it rising to his feet to steady its machine gun. The jeep was coming fast, gaining, bullets churning outward in a continuous stream, a few clanging off the leading jeep’s frame.
“Shit!” yelled the mayor, ducking low. “We’re out of ammo.”
“Not quite,” said Heep as he reached for another Laws.
“It’s up to you now, Clara.”
Clara didn’t say anything, just kept on driving. The road ahead seemed one big black blur and she was squinting like crazy just to keep the jeep reasonably straight. She hoped her expression wasn’t giving away the knifing pain she felt in her chest. She thought at first she’d been shot but the tightness down her whole left arm all the way from her jaw told her the old ticker had finally had enough and was calling it quits. Just hang on a little longer, she urged. Keep pumping. Come on!
She saw stars from the pain and her vision clouded over even more. The jeep wavered slightly as the narrow road that would take them into the San Juans came up fast. Sheriff Junk had managed to steady another Laws with the bullets just clearing his head, but Clara’s sudden turn into the mountains made him drop it.
“Shit!” he wailed, feeling for it desperately.
Clara clutched and downshifted into the hairpin turns, afraid to use the brakes and sacrifice their lead over the trailing jeep. Her vision had been reduced to simply steering her jeep between the mountainside and the deadly edge. She was gasping for breath now and each thud in her chest stole more of it away. The pain felt like bubbles bursting inside her. She could feel her hands stiffening, and the night was starting to go from dark to black. The jeep keeled left and sideswiped the mountain. Clara overcompensated and almost plunged them over the side.
“Easy!” screamed Dog-ear.
She got the jeep straight again, holding her breath now because it seemed to keep down the pain. Sheriff Junk had the Laws steady once more. The trailing jeep was now ten yards back. But the steep grade and sudden turns confused his aim and denied him the certain kill shot he felt he had to have.
“Fuck it,” he said and rose in the jeep with Dog-ear clutching his knobby legs for support.
Heep’s knees cracked and popped. He fired as Clara swung over a rise, which forced his shot down too low. But the jeep was close enough for the powerful explosion to send road fragments crashing upward into it. The driver struggled with control only briefly before the jeep smashed first up against the mountainside and then careened wildly across the road and over the edge.
Junk and Dog-ear failed to see any of this. They had both fallen to the floor of the jeep, which came slowly to a halt. Both men struggled to their feet, looked back and saw there was no more pursuit.
“We did it! Goddamnit, we did it! Got those bastards good! Hey, Clara, we—”
Dog-ear stopped when he saw Clara Buhl slumped over the wheel.
“Oh shit,” he said. The San Juans loomed ahead of them, and Pamosa Springs was nothing but a dark patch below.
Part Five
The Battle of Pamosa Springs
Pamosa Springs: Thursday, eight A.M.
Chapter 31
Guillermo Paz completed detailing his orders to his individual unit commanders and dismissed them. In the havoc of last night he had lost a dozen men, a dozen to an old geezer with a pair of six-guns and a trio of middle-aged bureaucrats. Paz cursed himself for underestimating the lot of them, for not killing them when he could have. But his orders had been to stabilize the town and until last night the execution of the six citizens and jailing of the leaders had accomplished precisely that. Even the mysterious murders had ceased, and, if not for lax security, all would still be under control.
Worst of all, a rocket fired during the escape had knocked out the telephone substation containing the outside line on which General Raskowski had been calling him. But his priorities were clear: keep the townspeople where he could control them, and keep the generator gun safe from all possible harm.
With that in mind, Paz had stationed his heaviest artillery at opposite ends of the town to create a grid capable of shutting down virtually any attack from ground or air. Not that it mattered. The generator gun was encased in a shield of tungsten steel, impenetrable and easily defended in its position between two sloping hillsides. Paz gazed toward it stroking his mustache almost continuously in his anxiety. Strands came out in bunches, and he mindlessly tossed them aside. The end was near, just hours away now.
Paz could barely wait.
Blaine McCracken lay low on a rise overlooking the town of Pamosa Springs. What he saw through the binoculars made him gasp. Beneath him in the center of town, men dressed as American soldiers were continuously herding groups of residents forward at gunpoint toward the town’s largest building: a steeple-fronted white church. He watched as dozens upon dozens of townspeople were wedged like cattle through a set of double doors, prodded along with automatic rifle barrels. At the same time, he noticed more soldiers packing plastic explosives against the side of the church, enough to bring down the whole town, never mind that single building. The message to the hostages inside was clear; any attempt at escape would lead to their own destruction.
He turned his attention northwest of the town center, to another phalanx of soldiers standing guard upon a ravaged foothill. In the gulley beyond it, he knew, had to be the generator gun that would fire the particle beam. Once the reflector achieved orbit twelve hours from now, the beam could be bounced anywhere Raskowski chose from his base across the Atlantic.
His mind drifted back to his last moments aboard the Dragon Fish after Vasquez’s custom-made submarine had systematically destroyed the rest of Raskowski’s Bimini forces.
“The general’s not finished with you yet, fat man,” Blaine charged, still uncertain of Vasquez’s intentions. “Me, Natalya and the Indian are the only ones who can finish him off.”
“You’ve forgotten someone, haven’t you, McCracken? Me. I caught you. I won. Now I’m ready to move up to more challenging competition: this Russian who played me for a fool, who dared to enter my waters….”
The discussion continued as they surfaced and steamed fast for Vasquez’s private port in the Biminis. Foremost on Blaine’s mind was that the failure of Raskowski’s assault teams here would alert the general that there still existed a dangerous threat to him. The element of surprise on all fronts was gone. Their best approach now would be a three-pronged attack in which at least one of the prongs would be assured of success.
Blaine would proceed from here straight for Pamosa Springs. Wareagle would head to Washington with a plea to get troops to the area while there was still time and to abort the satellite launch at all cost. Natalya, meanwhile, would travel back to Europe with Vasquez. The fat man would provide a commando team to be used in an assault on Katlov’s current position and what must certainly be Raskowski’s headquarters — in Zurich, as it turned out.
“Are you sure your men are reliable?” she asked him.
“Reliable, my dear? They are all my sons, ten from six different wives, and they all take after their father.”
They had gone their separate ways only eighteen hours before Raskowski’s murderous strike on the United States would begin. In his position atop the small rise, McCracken knew Natalya must still be on her way to Europe. His would surely be the first blow struck.