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“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked angrily. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“No reception up here…I don’t bother. Who are you?”

“I don’t have time to explain. That truck that just went past you. The men in it killed six people down in the Leister Deep as well as the hoist operator. Get to a phone and call the police. It’s a Ford F-350 dual rear-wheeled pickup with five men in it wearing black tactical uniforms. There’s no rear license plate.”

The driver took one look into Mercer’s slate-gray eyes, recognized the determination behind them, and chose to believe the bizarre story. He cranked the bucket loader’s joystick control and added on some more power.

Mercer reached across and chopped the throttle controls back to idle. “I don’t think you understand, pal. I’m going after the truck. Get out and run.”

“No way, man. I can’t let—”

That’s as far as Mercer let the operator get. He threw a right fist into a spot below the miner’s left ear. His head snapped around and his eyes went glassy. Mercer popped the quick release for the safety belts and hauled the driver out of his chair as the bucket loader continued to slow.

The man was groggy but not out. Mercer frog-marched him down the rear deck to the stairs mounted over the back tires. The driver was starting to come to his senses. Mercer could feel him becoming more resistant. Rather than hitting him again, Mercer collapsed the driver’s knee so that he fell back into Mercer’s waiting arms. He lowered the operator to the deck and unceremoniously pushed him down the stairs. He rolled like a log and then fell into the mud in a dazed heap.

“Call the police! Have them stop that truck!”

Not knowing what the driver would do, Mercer raced back to the cab and threw himself into the operator’s seat. He was in a Caterpillar 990. Not their largest front-end loader, but not too far off the mark, either. He was very familiar with how to drive it, and nearly every other piece of iron that came out of Cat’s Peoria, Illinois, plant.

He cranked up the throttle and marveled at the throaty boom of the 625-horsepower diesel. The machine lurched forward. Mercer had no intention of trying to catch the fleeing pickup. He had a quarter of their top speed. What he had, though, was a real off-road capability they could only dream about.

Rather than steer down the broad dirt access road, Mercer directed the 990 over the edge of the plateau where the mine and quarry were located, avoiding the S-shaped switchbacks altogether. The grade was steep, better than forty-five degrees, but there were enough small trees and undergrowth to keep the eighty-ton monster from plunging out of control. Mercer worked the joystick control like a fighter pilot, juking the loader around the larger trees that it couldn’t simply bowl over. Saplings as thick around as baseball bats vanished under the massive tires, and branches whipped at the cab, one shattering the side glass.

The loader emerged onto the haul road once again, halving its distance from the speeding pickup that had yet to notice it was being stalked. Like a rampaging elephant, Mercer drove the loader across the road and down another embankment. This time there wasn’t anywhere near the same amount of vegetation, and the big machine began to slide on the loose rock and dirt. Mercer fought the instinct to apply the brake and instead hit the gas to straighten out. The back end tucked in behind the front, and he continued to steer down the slope. He hit the next section of flat haul road and was nearly tossed through the windshield by the impact, and for a moment he feared the blow had been enough to dislodge the front axle. But the machine ran on, a snarling testament to American design and construction.

The pickup had just passed by. Mercer could clearly see the marks on the ground from its doubled-up rear tires. The loader sped across the road, and when Mercer put its nose over the next slope, he could see the truck steadily accelerating out of the last hairpin turn. And a sharp-eyed gunman must have seen him too.

A rear window in the dark truck’s cab slid down, and the stubby barrel of one of the machine pistols appeared. They must have figured the big Caterpillar machine was chasing after them, and they were taking no chances. The range was extreme for such a weapon, but that didn’t stop the shooter from unloading a thirty-round magazine of 9mm Parabellums.

A few shots might have hit the loader. Mercer couldn’t hear any strike over the engine’s roar, but for good measure he raised the bucket and tilted it outward so that the cab was protected. He urged the machine over the precipice. This time there were bushes and trees, but they were thicker than upslope and Mercer was forced to use the loader’s massive weight as well as its powerful engine to bull his way down the mountain. He was forced to lower the bucket and use its lip like a blunt ax to scythe through the scrub and topple trees that rose forty feet or more. His speed was cut in half, and he felt frustration mounting. There was only one more switchback before the haul road met the local byway. Within a quarter mile of the entrance to the mine, there were any number of turnoffs. Even if the loader’s driver had called the police, once the shooters reached the public roads they’d vanish inside of a couple of minutes.

If Mercer couldn’t stop them, he had to find a way to delay them.

He had the engine roaring like a rhinoceros defending its territory, and the dense copse of trees, saplings, and brush disappeared under the loader’s tall rubber tires, but the Ford pickup was also under full power. The driver knew what he was doing, because he power-slid into the last hairpin, letting momentum and centripetal force slew the big truck around onto the final leg of its escape.

They were now charging for the spot where Mercer would emerge back onto the road from his crazy dash down the treacherous slope. If Mercer was late and they made it past, it was over. They would be gone.

The Ford’s engine was racing, and Mercer knew it was going to be close. In the last few seconds before he hit the road, the vegetation gave way to knee-high grass and the Cat picked up just enough speed. But then came the hail of bullets. Four guns opened fire simultaneously. One of the shooters had crawled into the pickup’s open bed and was firing over the cab. Other rounds came from the passenger window and from the two guys in the backseat.

The onslaught of lead was overpowering, and their aim grew more accurate as the gap between the two vehicles narrowed. Mercer didn’t have the protection of the big steel bucket as these shots were coming from his right-hand side.

The windshield and remaining side glass disintegrated, showering him with diamond-like shards. Bullets pinged off metal and ricocheted past his head.

Mercer had no choice.

He levered a booted foot onto the operator’s seat and threw himself out the left window. He rolled as he landed on the decking from which he had tossed the driver moments earlier, and used his momentum to leap bodily off the earthmover.

Mercer landed in the grass and tucked his head as tight to his shoulder as he could. He rolled and tumbled a half dozen times, shedding speed with each jarring impact with the frost-hardened ground. The loader thundered past him, its tires churning just feet from where he had somersaulted. Bullets continued to pummel its thick steel hide.

And then the machine hit the flat of the road just in front of the pickup. Had Mercer remained at the controls things would have worked out differently. The impact with level ground wasn’t evenly distributed between the two front tires. The left hit first, which caused the machine to veer sharply to that side. The bucket swung crazily at the same time the pickup’s driver laid on the brakes and threw the truck into a sliding skid, before kicking it around in the opposite direction like a matador torqueing away from the enraged bull. The earthmover’s bucket clipped the F-350’s rear quarter panel with enough force to put the truck up on its outside wheels. The driver cranked the steering to the opposite lock, and as quickly as the vehicle almost flipped onto its roof it was back down on all six wheels and accelerating away.