The old road-beaten company truck she’d been given as a blank canvas had been steam-cleaned, repainted, and ingeniously augmented with repurposed items from the plentiful warehouse shelves. The truck was transformed from stem to stern into the glossy spitting image of a Pennsylvania hazmat emergency vehicle complete with realistic siren horns, diamond-plate running boards, rooftop strobes, and more.
If you got close enough, some of the lettering appeared to be of the press-on type one might use to put an address on a mailbox, but it was so well integrated that the overall look was near perfect. Most every other label, official seal, and logo was hand-painted, including the government-coded license plates. The only visual clue that these things weren’t real was that the artist was still touching up her work here and there with a makeshift palette and a tiny brush.
“This is outstanding,” Hollis said.
“Thanks.” Cathy Merrick swept her bangs from her eyes with her wrist and looked up at him. “I think it’ll pass, as long as no one gets too close. Let me show you where it’s weak, though.”
The overall shape and size wasn’t correct and there was nothing that could be done about that; she’d accomplished what she could with deceptive shading and other airbrushed optical trickery. Still, it looked good enough to fool almost anyone unless they broke out a tape measure with a set of factory dimensions.
The other standout problems were the doors and windows in the back section. The HomeWorx truck had only a wide roll-up door in the rear. The vehicle it was meant to impersonate featured double doors that opened from the middle with tinted windows in several places. This glaring difference would be noticed by anyone who’d ever seen a medical show on TV, much less by a trained security detail.
The missing doors and windows had been painted on, so realistically that it seemed like you could just reach out and open them right up. Some chrome hardware, smoky Plexiglas, and black-rubber molding was spot-glued in place to add some 3-D realism to the art. But despite the almost uncanny illusion this was indeed the weakest link. It looked great at a glance and it all might withstand a quick viewing from several feet away, but it would not hold up to any extended inspection.
“I think it’s going to be okay,” Hollis said. “You’ve really outdone yourself here.” He felt a little dizzy, and pulled over a folding chair to sit down.
“Are you all right? You look like you’ve just run a mile.”
“I’ll be okay.”
Cathy put down her brush and paints and felt his forehead with the back of her fingers. “You’re burning up.”
“I know, I’ll be okay. Why don’t you show me what else we’ve got here. We might have to drop everything and take off any minute now.”
Cathy took him around and went through the rest of the work. The laminated, pin-on ID tags Lana Somin had made at the computer station were picture-perfect, gilded replicas of the examples she’d downloaded from the Internet. They’d even crafted some actual badges from molded hot-melt glue, embedded safety pins, and gold metallic paint.
There were two cobbled-together uniforms, one for the driver and another for a front-seat passenger. These had been dyed and decorated from materials on hand, jailbreak style, using generic work shirts and pants.
Since it was possible that the driver’s compartment of the truck might have to endure a brief viewing, it had been dressed up as well. Tool carriers disguised as medical bags and a number of 3M full-face respirators from the paint department were conspicuously placed. A hanging microphone on a coiled cord was clipped to the sun visor with its loose plug stuffed into the ashtray. A handheld radio scanner was mounted near the glove box and would be turned up loud and tuned to police frequencies to provide realistic background noise in the interior.
“One of those uniforms is for you and the other’s for me,” Cathy Merrick said. “In fact, we should get dressed now. I’ll be driving, you’ll sit up front, and everyone else will be riding in the back.”
It was all good work, much better than he could have hoped for.
As she’d been showing him these things, Hollis was also thinking about what this woman had been through in recent days. The courage she and the others were displaying was something to admire considering all that had happened and the unknowns ahead. People often don’t know what they can do until they’re called upon to do it; he’d seen this sort of grit in wartime, of course, from civilians and soldiers alike.
None of it was mentioned, but the burden of what they’d lost was there as well, in each of them. The hurt was held in check only by the urgent needs of the moment and the acceptance that a proper memorial for the fallen would have to wait for another time.
Just as Hollis had finished changing his clothes, Tyler ran up and handed him a notepad.
“Molly and the others,” the boy said. “I don’t know how they did it but they’re coming by plane, and they’re on their way in.” He pointed to a set of numbers he’d copied down. “Those are the coordinates of an old private airport outside of Boyers, about twenty miles up the road. I’ve already put the location into the GPS; that’s where they’re going to try to land.”
“When?”
“Soon. Half an hour, maybe.”
“Okay, then,” Hollis said. “Let’s get ready to move.”
It had begun to rain and the high raftered ceiling was clattering softly and resonating with the occasional peal of thunder. But as he stopped and listened, he found another noise was growing there as well.
“Do you hear that?”
Tyler listened, and then he nodded, frowning.
“You all stay back here,” Hollis said. The only firearms they’d kept were the handguns from the grab-and-go bags they’d taken as they fled the ranch. He took one of these pistols, tucked it into his belt in back, and then pointed to the bunker of cement bags the employees had helped them stack up earlier. “All three of you stay under cover until I come back. I’m going to go out and see what’s what.”
Though the sun was still up, the overcast sky appeared very dark through the tall glass windows at the front of the warehouse. By the time he’d reached the center section of the place the steady, airborne noise he’d heard had become unmistakable.
A searchlight from above began to sweep the length and breadth of the parking lot outside, and soon a black helicopter descended into view. Its insignias were those of the ruthless mercenaries who had laid waste to the trail behind him all these months. Its cargo bay was open and it was hovering close enough that he could clearly see the barrel of a mounted machine gun swing around and lock its aim in his direction.
Chapter 60
The last few seconds before the shooting started crept by slowly enough to let a flood of separate thoughts tear through Hollis’s mind.
The defensive preparations he and Tyler had made earlier were meant only as a last-resort deterrence against ground forces. He hadn’t factored in a threat like this, perhaps because once they were trapped from the air the rest of the plan would collapse and they’d have no chance to get away.
He could give himself up now, as he’d told the others he would do if the law rolled up and there was no escape. But these weren’t lawmen, and the thought of turning his people over to a pack of murderous thugs was nearly as bad as the idea of leading them into a fatal last stand.
And Molly was still on her way into the area. If he could delay things here by even a little, it could make time for the others to send off a message so she at least might escape capture.
A quick decision was needed, and so he made it.
He would walk out to give himself up, confess that he’d forced the three in back into unwilling service, and then hope that his friends would use the short distraction of his surrender to get on the radio and try to warn the others away.
Hollis raised his empty hands above his head and stepped out into the open.
The men outside didn’t hesitate. As he took the first step forward the gun flashed and the windows shattered and he d
ove back for cover as a furious volley of bullets tore a ragged furrow up the aisle where he’d stood only a moment before.
The helicopter eased forward and dropped lower as its pilot tried to give the gunner a better angle on his target. Hollis held himself flat to the floor as the torrent of gunfire cut another swath across the interior, shredding everything in its path to flying shards and splinters. And then the roar of the gun outside stopped abruptly; seconds passed, and the echoes faded.
If this lull in the destruction was due to a jam then the odds had shifted, even if only slightly. It was an opportunity to either retreat or advance and only one of those offered slim hope. Hollis stood and threw caution to the wind and drew his pistol, charging forward, firing toward the cockpit and the open cargo bay.
The sheer surprise of seeing this rash counterattack against an armored aircraft must have far outweighed its actual threat to its occupants. As the chopper banked and veered away, one of the men in back was either hit by a lucky shot or simply lost his footing and fell, arms flailing, sixty feet down into the pavement.
The helo had disappeared around the side of the building but it likely wouldn’t be gone for long. Hollis ran outside to the fallen body, took the AR-15 strapped over the dead man’s shoulder and a spare magazine from his pack, and then hurried the length of the warehouse back toward the vehicle bay.
There was a heavy thump from overhead as something hit the ceiling. He ducked behind cover and a second later an explosion shook the place and peeled back the metal roof high above the south side of the warehouse. Shiny canisters fell through the new opening, spewing sparks and yellowish gas as they bounced and skittered across the floor.
When he reached the others they were taking shelter within the igloo of stacked sandbags, just as he’d asked. He retrieved the respirators from the front seat of the truck and helped the three of them strap on the masks before he applied his own. As the stinging gas began to blow through the space he directed Lana and Cathy back into hiding and then turned to Tyler.
“It’s not much of a chance we’ve got but I need your help!” Hollis shouted through the clear mask. “Follow me!”
The boy nodded without hesitation, and they set off running.
The two of them reached the nearest of the water heaters they’d prepared earlier and Tyler helped steady the heavy cylinder as Hollis put his shoulder to it and lifted it upright so it was standing as designed on its stubby legs. He twisted the thermostat control to its maximum setting, tapped the boy’s arm, and they ran on to the next one.
Another explosion rocked the air from above and another jagged hole tore open in the roof. Rain poured in to mingle with the water already spraying from the overhead sprinkler system, which had been set off by the smoke and drifting gas.
They’d just managed to get the last of the heaters aimed upright and set on high when gunfire erupted from overhead and they were driven again to cover. It wasn’t the big gun that was firing this time; maybe that beast really was out of commission. The helicopter was fighting gusting winds and the three-round bursts coming from the remaining men in back made a lot of noise but so far weren’t proving accurate.
“I don’t know how much time we’ve got before those water heaters blow on their own,” Hollis said, “but it’s not much. Get to the back and get your mom and the girl ready to go. Tell them to stay down and cover their ears tight, and you do the same. This is about to get loud.”
Tyler looked reluctant to leave but he did what was right and took off running for the rear of the warehouse. The gunfire from above shifted to follow his sudden movement, the bullets clanging in the rafters and ricocheting off the high shelves along his path. Whatever they were using to track their targets, it wasn’t only visual; it seemed as though they could see through solid walls.
As the helicopter appeared through one of the holes in the ceiling, Hollis stepped out from cover and opened fire on it with the AR-15. That seemed to do the trick of drawing attention away from the others; a new barrage of bullets rained down around his position as he ran for the front and then on outside into the parking lot.
Hollis tore the respirator from his face as he crouched behind the metal base of a tall light pole. The helicopter was hovering above the battered warehouse, pivoting around so the men in the cargo bay would have a clear shot at him and the others from a safer range.
He reloaded and readied the rifle, brought the scope near his eye, took aim at the base of the first distant water heater—the one that was almost directly below the aircraft—and then squeezed the trigger.
The cylinder exploded with the force of a healthy stick of TNT, sending the bulk of its chassis rocketing upward through the roof, trailing vapor and debris five hundred feet into the air.
It was a clean miss, but the craft was buffeted by the shock wave and began an evasive sideways drift, left to right across the width of the warehouse. The men in the back were still firing at him, the impacts of their shots working closer to him by the second. He kept his patience, tracked the building speed and movement of the helicopter, and breathed the first real prayer he’d offered in twenty years. He then sighted down on his remaining targets and shot them in sequence, right to left:
1 . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . . 5
The pilot of the craft must have sensed what was in store, because the helicopter had jerked suddenly upward and pivoted toward safety, but his reaction came too late.
Each water heater blasted upward through the roof, one after the other, in a relentless line toward his oncoming flight path, until the last of them just barely clipped the chopper’s aft end. It was just enough; the impact hadn’t looked like much but the tail of the craft was destroyed.
With no force to counteract the torque of the main rotor the helicopter began an uncontrolled spin, whirling faster and faster as it descended toward the far side of the parking lot, where it crashed in a bright, fiery explosion of unspent fuel and armaments.
Hollis pushed himself to his feet and walked slowly toward the burning wreckage, scanning the area for danger as he went, his weapon at the ready. He reached the crash about the time Tyler and the others pulled up beside him in the truck.
In the back of the ruined chopper were the burned remains of three men.
The pilot’s seat was empty.
Chapter 61
By the time the tiny airfield came into view Noah noticed that the plane’s fuel gauges had dipped to near zero and one engine was running rough.
Though the old C-60 had clawed her way through battering turbulence and ice and lightning strikes and equipment failures, in the end its pilot had endured even more. Despite his brave front Bill McCord was clearly fading and it had become a continual struggle for Ellen Davenport to preserve the weakened function of his heart. The only saving grace was that one way or another, the flight was nearly over.
Ellen watched from the right-hand seat as the pilot eased down the throttle, set the flaps and trims, flicked on the nav lights, and pulled the lever that would hopefully lower the landing gear. There was a grinding and a deep mechanical rumble from behind and below them as the undercarriage descended. McCord took his eyes from the windshield for only a second when the sound had ceased; he checked the status lights of the gear and shook his head.
“Hold on tight,” he said. His jaw was clenched, his voice only a harsh whisper spoken through the unrelenting torture of the shocks from the pacing. “I don’t know if both the wheels are down, but either way, we’re landing.”
As the throttle was pulled back farther the right engine faltered and then coughed and died with a final wheeze. The plane slowed and yawed perilously and the pilot responded to correct his crumbling descent.
Every minute of his many decades of flying experience must have come to bear in those last few seconds. With utter concentration and some last measure of untapped strength he somehow straightened them out. He eased the craft into a gentle bank that would put the bulk of the we
ight on the only wheel they were sure was down and locked, and then he held all the battling forces steady under his hands as the ground rose up to meet them.
• • •
“There they are,” Hollis said.
Through his passenger-side window he’d seen the faint lights of an approaching plane wink on against the backdrop of black thunderheads rolling in from the west. All the adrenaline from the battle at the warehouse had deserted him along the ride and the pain and weakness he’d felt before was returning, worse than ever.
Cathy Merrick pulled the truck to a stop as they reached the end of a long dirt road. Just ahead was a little country airfield with no tower, lights, or services, just a grass-lined runway probably used only by crop dusters and private pilots practicing their touch-and-go landings.
They both rolled down the windows and though the sound of the approaching aircraft was just barely audible it didn’t sound right at all. The descent grew unsteady as they came on; they were way too high and moving too fast to land and the wings weren’t fully level. Soon Hollis could see that only half the landing gear was down.
When it passed the far end of the runway the plane settled in and flared, banking subtly as if to favor the side with the missing wheel. It flew down the length of the pavement, holding itself in the air and bleeding off speed, and then when it seemed the air could support it no longer it lost its lift and dropped the last few inches to the ground.
It rolled out and slowed on that single wheel, the tail came down, and then the unsupported wing tipped and fell into sudden contact with the pavement. The one spinning propeller shattered at impact and threw its blades, the plane skidded and veered, showering sparks and grinding along until at last it skidded into a sharp half turn and came to a silent, smoldering halt.