A head rose above the edge of the dump truck, and Ty fired at it. He missed, but a silver divot appeared along the edge of the truck, and the man dropped his weapon and clawed at his eyes. His second shot found its mark, and the man dropped from sight.
“Got him!” Sean exclaimed after his weapon discharged, then quickly turned his attention back to the closer threat.
The shooting continued in a steady, indistinguishable roar for three or four minutes, then slowly died down as the return fire from the dump truck diminished. Sean called out for his men to hold fire. A brief moment of silence was followed by moaning and crying, along with banging sounds from inside the back of the truck. Then, to everyone’s relief, they heard the transmission grind into gear.
“Luther’s on the road,” yelled Ty as the dump truck began moving towards Luther’s twisting body. Ty rose to his feet and ran along the top of the berm, leaping over stunned men as he sprinted towards the river. With steel plates covering the side doors of the truck, he needed to get ahead of it to be able to take out the driver through the windshield. Gunshots rang out and bullets whistled past him, but he kept running, seeing in his peripheral vision the truck closing in on Luther, lying injured on the road.
Two gunshots came from close by, then all gunfire ceased, leaving only the sounds of the truck’s engine and Ty’s feet pounding the dirt. He drew even with the front of the truck, which was crawling forward in low gear, then began to get ahead of it, but it was only a few feet from Luther, who, wounded and bleeding heavily, was unable to move to the side.
Ty pushed himself to his limit, gasping for air but desperate to stop the truck. He turned as he ran, seeing he didn’t have the angle yet, and pushed harder, raising his gun to his shoulder. The truck was shifting gears when Ty finally had the shot he needed. He planted his feet, aimed, and pulled the trigger in rapid succession, shattering the windshield with the truck less than ten feet from Luther. Ty kept shooting until he ran out of bullets. The driver slumped forward as Luther rolled over and lobbed one of his grenades over the cab of the truck.
In the fresh silence Ty heard the clang of metal striking metal, followed by frightened shouts and a deafening explosion, but the truck continued to roll forward.
“Move, Luther!” Ty shouted, unable to stop the truck. There was a sickening, hollow thud and a scream, as the front wheel struck his injured friend. Ty dropped to his knees in shock. The dump truck careened forward, bounced off the rail on the side of the bridge, then collided with the same blue pickup it had tangled with earlier before finally coming to a stop.
Overcome with emotion, Ty tried to stand but his legs buckled. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and sobs wracked his body as he looked at the broken form in the middle of the road.
Sean gathered a group of men, and they approached the idling truck, now jammed against the railing. A gunshot from the back of the truck sent everyone diving for cover, but no one in the truck showed his face. Sean’s team waited thirty seconds after the gunshot, then resumed their advance.
Ty watched as they skirted around the front of the vehicle and yanked open the driver’s door, ready to unload a volley of bullets, but the driver was already dead. With the others providing cover, one of the men climbed into the cab and turned the engine off, then they waited, listening for sounds of life from the back.
While Sean’s team waited, several of the better shooters at the barricades trained their rifles on the far side of the river, scanning the area for any additional threats. The remaining members of the militia tended to the wounded while trying to deal with the emotional repercussions of the short-lived battle.
Ty heard shots and turned back to the truck in time to see one of their men standing on the roof of the cab, firing shots into the bed of the vehicle, and then it was quiet. Fifteen minutes after the first shots were fired it was all over.
CHAPTER 41
Friday, February 17th
Moyie Springs, ID
Kyle knelt in front of the grave marker once again, trying to reconcile his emotions and guilt at not having been there in their time of need, weighed against the awareness that, under the circumstances, it was a miracle he’d made it at all. The lightly falling rain mirrored his mood, with hardly enough moisture to justify an umbrella but threatening, with dark, rolling clouds filling the valley, to turn the drizzle into something more torrential at any minute.
“We should probably head back, Kyle.”
Kyle turned towards his father and nodded. “You’re right. No sense in getting any wetter than we need to.” He stood and put his arm across his dad’s shoulders as they left the cemetery. “It’s still a shock to me that she’s gone. I always thought she’d live forever. Last time we talked everything was good. I never imagined it would actually be the last time I spoke to her.”
Five days previous, Kyle had walked up to the front door of his parents’ house, unsure of what to expect. He had imagined every possible scenario while traveling. One second he feared they’d both be dead, then the next he’d convince himself that they were doing fine, then that they’d be at death’s doorstep, and he had arrived just in time to save them. Worst of all, he feared he’d frighten them, and they would unleash a volley of bullets that would cut him down after having walked thousands of miles.
The walk through Moyie Springs with Sheriff Pratt, and the orderly situation he observed, had increased his hopes that all would be well, so it had been heartbreaking when his dad tearfully welcomed him home with the news that Kyle’s mother had succumbed to a stroke just before Christmas. Her blood thinning medication, which she’d taken for years, had run out in early October, and shortly thereafter, she had suffered a series of strokes, the last one, three days before Christmas, proving fatal.
Since his mother’s passing, his dad, Gene, had been struggling, and was in a deep depression when Kyle’s knock sounded. The gun propped beside Gene’s recliner was there for defensive purposes, he promised, but Kyle worried, based on his father’s state of mind, that it might be put to another use some point in the not too distant future. Their reunion, however, had snapped Gene out of his melancholy, and each day Kyle had seen an improvement, to the point that he was close to again being the jovial grandpa Kyle’s kids knew.
They were halfway home from the cemetery when his father broke the silence. “You can’t imagine how much I miss your mother.” His voice, full of emotion, was nearly drowned out by the sound of rain on their umbrella.
“I know. You two were inseparable. How many years were you married?”
“June would have been forty-one.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Sorry to get all weepy on you, but I haven’t had anyone to talk about it with.”
“You’re fine, Dad. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you sooner.”
“That last month was the hardest. She couldn’t do much of anything except lay in bed. I spent most of my time taking care of her, but she just got weaker and weaker.” He paused, but Kyle just listened. “I knew she was going to die. I could get her to drink water, but she wouldn’t chew anything. Even the doctor at the hospital told me it would just be a matter of time.”
“Was she in pain?”
Gene shook his head. “Not that it seemed, but she couldn’t communicate, so I don’t know. I hope not. I tried to keep her comfortable. That’s when we moved out to one of the rental cabins. It was smaller and had the wood stove. There wasn’t so much to take care of or keep warm. I could just focus on her. I’d comb her hair and rub her arms and her legs. She didn’t talk, but I could see in her eyes that she knew what I was doing. That was something I guess.” He laughed. “I tried to paint her fingernails for her once, but I wasn’t very good at it. Just made a mess of her hands.”