3
TWENTY YARDS TO GO. EDDIE HAD SLOWED A LITTLE, TO show he was about to comply with the men manning the roadblock, but he kept coming. None of the men arrayed before him looked overly concerned yet, but when they did, one of the soldiers put his hand in the air in a universal gesture to indicate they should pull over.
That was Seng’s cue. He mashed the accelerator and gently heeled the bus over onto the narrow gravel verge. Loose dirt hissed under the heavy vehicle, and a tall plume of dust rose in its wake.
The Taliban paused for less than a second at this affront to its authority. Gunfire erupted from the checkpoint. The heavy engine block absorbed round after round while the windshield starred and spiderwebbed in a dozen places before collapsing entirely. Eddie’s face was soon streaming blood from glass that had nicked his skin.
The Corporation team gave as good as they got, hosing the pickup from bumper to bumper. Had the ride over the uneven terrain been smoother, they might have had better luck picking individual targets, but from a moving vehicle at this tight range it was all spray and pray.
The interior of the bus became a fine haze of gunpowder residue and pulverized glass. At near-point-blank range the two sides exchanged murderous gunfire. The man behind the pintle-mounted machine gun went down when Linc fired off nearly a full clip at him, though miraculously the ammo loader went unscathed. The three men on the ground had dropped flat, and their view was cut off by the underside of their own truck as the bus rattled past them.
They had just gotten clear when the loader replaced his comrade behind the butterfly grips of the machine gun and opened up. With nearly twice the powder charge of a standard AK-47’s, the bullets from the PKB came at them like armor-piercing rounds. The rear of the old school bus was riddled with two dozen sizzling holes, and the bullets had the power to blow through a couple rows of seat before finally losing momentum. A few passed all the way through the bus. Had Eddie not been driving like some old geezer in Florida, with only his hands remaining in view, he would have taken two to the back of the skull.
“Is everyone okay?” Juan shouted, his hearing compromised by the deafening roar of gunfire.
Even as his people acknowledged they were unhurt, Cabrillo was checking on young Setiawan Bahar. The teen remained oblivious in his drug-induced dreamworld. A few chips of glass had fallen on him, but other than that he looked like he could be asleep in his own bed back in Jakarta.
“Are they chasing us?” Eddie asked. “All my mirrors are shot to hell.”
Cabrillo looked back. The checkpoint was just a short distance behind them, but he could see figures cutting in and out of the pickup’s headlights. The men were doubtlessly organizing themselves to track down the fleeing bus and finish what they’d started. Their truck had more speed, maneuverability, and firepower than the bus.
They’d been lucky to get past the checkpoint. Juan knew too well that luck was fickle at best and downright capricious most of the time.
“Oh, they’re coming, all right.”
“Hold on,” Eddie suddenly said.
It felt like the bus had driven onto an express elevator heading straight down. They had reached the spot where the road fell away in a series of punishing switchbacks. Any thought of abandoning the bus before reaching the potential target area was moot in Juan’s mind. They were too late, with a Taliban technical racing up behind them like the guy was gunning for the checkered flag at the Indianapolis 500.
Tracer fire arced out from the trailing pickup, pulsing trails of burning phosphorescence that reached for the hurtling bus. They had the range but not the accuracy. The gunner had to be struggling just to stay in the truck, never mind manhandling a heavy machine gun.
At the front of the bus Eddie was fighting the wheel like a madman, not daring to look at what lay beyond the right-side tires. The road clung to the side of the canyon, weaving along its face like something out of an old Road Runner cartoon. What he wouldn’t give for an Acme rocket right about now.
Inches from the left-hand windows the rock wall rushed by in a blur. Out the right was a vista under the sliver of moon that seemed to drop away forever. Juan couldn’t imagine the view from the top of Mount Everest being much broader than this. If he craned his neck, he could see the road below where it had doubled back on itself. MacD Lawless joined him at the mangled rear door. He had Eddie’s REC7, and the thigh pockets of his camo pants bulged with spare magazines.
“Figured your man up there can’t drive and shoot at the same time.” He handed Juan his pistol. “That’s a fine piece, but Ah think the Barrett here is more apropos to this particular situation.”
He had an accent Juan couldn’t place.
When asked, Lawless said, “New Orleans,” pronouncing it N’Orlens.
“The Big Easy.”
“Coincidentally, that also describes my sister.” Lawless flashed that handsome grin of his. “Actually, I don’t have a sister, but I love that joke.”
The respite lasted another second until the pickup rounded a corner behind them, and the gunner once again had a target. Bullets ricocheted off the canyon wall and arced out over the valley, and some even found their mark, punching additional holes into the bus’s rear quarter.
Undaunted, Lawless shot back. His rate of fire was slow and deliberate, and when Linc and Linda joined them, all four were pouring a lot of lead down the dusty road—enough, it seemed, to deter the driver, because he slowed until the bus pulled one gentle bend away.
Without warning, Eddie slammed on the brakes and kicked the steering wheel hard over. The bus seemed to corkscrew into the earth as it rounded the first dipping hairpin turn. The outside tire of the dual rear axle dangled in space momentarily before Eddie could center all the tires on the road again. The four warriors in back were tossed like rag dolls. Linc slammed his head against a metal pole and lay inert. Linda had blood gushing from her nose from where she’d banged it, and Juan had inadvertently head-butted MacD Lawless so that his breath exploded in a whoosh.
Their gunfire hadn’t slowed the other driver. He’d known there was a hairpin coming and that’s why he’d applied the brakes.
Bullets rained through the bus’s paper-thin roof. The technical had stopped on the precipice above so that the gunner could rain shells down on them. There was no place to hide, no cover. The powerful rounds punched all the way through the floor with barely a check in their speed. It was random chance, and Eddie’s hard acceleration, that got them cleanly away.
Juan immediately checked on Setiawan, who continued to sleep peacefully.
A moment later the pickup’s headlights swept around the switchback, and the race was on once again.
“Are you a betting man, Mr. Chairman?” Lawless asked while gasping to refill his lungs. “Ah know Ah am, and Ah think these odds are starting to suck.”
Juan had to agree. Something was going to have to give soon. At the next hairpin, they weren’t going to be so lucky.
“Look around,” he called out. “See if there’s anything on this heap we can use.”
They scoured under the seats. Juan wrestled an old trunk from under one of the benches. It was sealed with an iron lock that looked as if it had been forged when his ancestor and namesake was discovering California. He drew his pistol, angled it away, and fired. The bullet shattered the wrought-iron lock and ricocheted harmlessly away.
Inside were several women’s burkas, but judging by the size they were made for men who would use them as disguises. To Cabrillo it was a coward’s trick but an effective one. Under the drab clothing was a suicide belt made up of bricks of plastic explosives, sacks full of metal scrap for shrapnel, and a timer that went high up on the back of the vest so the would-be martyr couldn’t deactivate it. The belt was worn in such a way that the bomber couldn’t take it off.