“Take her right through it, Joe,” Brooke said. “It’s not deep — I come through here with the horses all the time.”
Hawke crossed the stream and pulled the Jeep up the opposite bank. He took an appreciative look around the shady glen.
“Nice place for a picnic.”
“Damn it all,” Alex said and looked at him sarcastically. “I packed the psychotic gunmen but forgot the salad dressing…”
Hawke glanced at her and smirked. “You know what I mean.”
“I hate to break up what could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Brooke said. “But we have to get back on the road — look.”
They were now in an enclosed field, bordered on all sides by the edge of a larch forest. “We ain’t driving through there, believe me,” Brooke said. “It’s either back to the wheatfield or up to the highway.”
Hawke agreed. They were penned in down here. What might have been an escape route had made them fish in a barrel, so he swung the wheel to the left and plowed through what remained of the second field. Ahead of them was the highway, but the Corvette was still nowhere in sight.
They smashed the Jeep through the wooden fence and climbed up the embankment in a wild spray of gravel chips as the tires slipped to keep traction. Checking the way was clear, Hawke pulled the battered Jeep back onto ID-75 and headed south to Hailey.
Back on the highway now, they checked the GPS and saw they were only three miles from Hailey and the airport. In the first few seconds of peace since the attacks had begun, Brooke reached for his phone and cursed when he realized it wasn’t on him.
“Damn it! Must have left it back at the cabin…”
“Use mine,” Alex said, reaching for her own cellphone.
As she handed him the phone, the Corvette appeared in the mirrors once again.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Alex asked.
“They were waiting behind that billboard,” said Hawke. “How far from the airport are we now?”
“Less than two miles,” Brooke said, twisting in the rear seat to take a better look at his pursuers. “If only we knew what the hell was going on! Maybe we should stop and fight the bastards.”
“Are you crazy, Dad?”
“Alex is right, Jack. You’re too valuable.”
The Corvette accelerated and pulled up beside them on the passenger’s side.
“I need to make a call to my guys at the airport — Hawke get us away from these crazies!”
Hawke nodded. “Sorry in advance, guys.”
Alex looked at him, confused. “What for?”
Hawke spun the wheel to the right and smashed into the Corvette sending the much lighter vehicle careering off the road. It plowed into the shoulder, kicking up arcs of grit and gravel chips as the driver struggled to maintain control.
“Good work!” Brooke said, beaming as the Corvette almost lost control and spun around in a circle on the highway.
Hawke frowned. “But not good enough.” He watched the sports car regain control and power out of the skid. After a tremendous squeal of tires the Corvette emerged from a thick, black cloud of burnout smoke and resumed the pursuit.
“They’re determined little bastards,” Hawke said.
He stamped on the Cherokee’s throttle and the heavy vehicle lurched ever-forward along the highway. He pulled down the sun visor to protect his eyes from the bright summer light outside as they raced toward the airport. Behind in the mirror the same hot, white sunlight gleamed on the hood of the Corvette. He flicked his eyes away just in time to see the exit sign for the airport.
Brooke cocked his shotgun. “I don’t want these assholes following us all the way to the airport.”
Hawke nodded his head. “Agreed. Assholes with guns and aviation fuel don’t mix.”
“Slow down a bit, will you? I can’t get a decent shot off at this speed.”
“Be careful, Dad!”
“Don’t worry about me, Alex. It’s like I always say — if you can’t shake ’em off, you gotta pick ’em off.”
“Wasn’t that your campaign slogan?” Hawke said.
Brooke didn’t reply. His look said it all.
After a few seconds, both men laughed, but Alex was less amused. “I mean it, Dad.”
And she did. She hadn’t spoken to her father for so long she could barely remember when they had fallen apart. She and Hawke had shared the cabin for weeks now, but her father, one of the busiest men on the planet, had only joined them for the last few days. It was the most time she had spent with him in years.
They had argued at first, but having Joe Hawke and his no-nonsense attitude to life had helped bring them together. She had even started to wonder if they could go back to the way things used to be — before the Great Jack Brooke had walked out on his wife and kids. Before the straight-talking Idahoan had destroyed her family for a woman half his age, pathetically citing pressures of the job. In her heart, she was unsure if she could ever forgive him for that, but she knew one thing — she couldn’t lose him now.
“Relax, darling,” Brooke said, and flashed that crooked smile at her. “No asshole with that much product in his hair is going to take me out of the game.”
Alex watched her father turn in his seat to face the rear as Hawke decelerated the Jeep, keeping one eye on the mirror at all times. Ahead, ID-75 bore off to the right and they began to drive into the northern reaches of Hailey. It looked like a great town — all white picket fences and horse paddocks. Hawke hoped it would still look like this by the time they flew out of it, but he couldn’t be sure.
“You have to take them out before we get into the main town,” Hawke said. “We can’t risk killing any innocent people.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Brooke said, squinting into the sights of his shotgun. “It won’t take long now they’re right behind us… but it breaks my heart to do this to poor old Sally.”
Hawke looked at Alex and mouthed the word “Sally?”
“The car,” she whispered back, a look of apology on her face.
Brooke fired a shot and missed, but then a second and third shot followed immediately afterwards. They both hit the Corvette, the first on the windshield and the second on the driver’s front tire.
The sports car responded as Brooke expected, skidding violently to the left and leaving the road in a hurry. The passenger tried to get a shot off through his open window, but then he saw a high white fence rapidly approaching as the Chevrolet raced uncontrollably toward a field of horses.
Hawke watched in the mirror with a good degree of satisfaction as both men instinctively raised their hands to protect their faces. The Corvette smashed through the fence and plowed into the field, its front spoiler ramming into a low rise in the earth and sending the car flying up into the air and spinning over onto its roof. It crashed back to earth with a heavy crunching sound as it landed upside down in the field and spun around two or three times before coming to a stop in a cloud of burst radiator steam.
Brooke cheered loudly as he pulled himself back into the Jeep and placed the shotgun down at his side. “To the airport, Joe,” was all he said.
Hawke and Alex shared a look but said nothing.
The former Special Forces man cruised the battered, hay-covered Cherokee down Main Street and followed the road as it curved around toward the airport. It was a small victory, but something told Hawke there was more trouble to come.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Klaus Kiefel sipped at the tequila as he watched his men push America’s Commander-in-Chief across the expansive car park toward the deserted processing plant. It was rough stuff, but it was all the now-dead security guards had thought to bring on their shift. Perhaps he should send the one remaining guard to buy something more appropriate for his sophisticated palate, but he had a feeling she would come in much more useful than that as the evening progressed. For now, she could stay tied to the side of distillation unit.