“Trust me!”
Tommy slammed on the brakes and whipped the truck to the left, then stomped the gas pedal again. Sean was thrown from one side of the truck to the other. Fortunately, he wasn’t standing up and rolled to a stop against the bedrail. Tommy heard his friend being tossed around in the back and looked in the mirror to make sure he was okay.
“Everything all right back there?”
Sean recovered and braced himself. He glared at his friend through the back window.
“A little heads-up would have been nice!”
Tommy’s teeth flashed in the mirror. He jerked the wheel to the right, and Sean lost his balance again, falling over into the bed.
Now he was irritated. “Quit doing that!”
“Do you want to get out of here or not?”
Sean looked back and saw the other trucks still in pursuit. They were at least three hundred yards behind, but that could change.
The access road leading out of the airfield approached on the left, and Sean knew exactly what his friend was thinking. He braced himself against the right bedrail and squatted down as Tommy leaned into the turn and spun the wheel.
The tires squealed, and the truck swayed. The rear end fishtailed for a second, but Tommy corrected and guided the vehicle toward the exit. A pair of armed guards were rushing to get the chain-link gate closed. One was standing in the middle of the road, waving his hands over his head in a feeble attempt to stop the Americans.
The other pushed hard on the gate, rolling it out toward the other side. Tommy didn’t let up. He pressed his foot harder on the pedal. The truck sped at the guard who suddenly realized he was in an extremely compromising position. Twenty feet before the pickup reached him, he dove out of the way and rolled to the side of the road.
The gate was almost closed, but Tommy had no intention of letting that deter him. His eyes narrowed, and his knuckles whitened, fingers gripping the wheel tighter. “Might have a little debris back there, Sean! You should probably cover your head!”
“What?” Sean shouted back. He looked up through the back window and realized what his friend was talking about. “Whoa!” He ducked down just before the hood of the truck smashed into the gate.
The pickup shuddered but won the battle, crashing through the weak fencing with devastating force. The hinges ripped from the poles, and the gate broke free. It stuck to the grill for a few seconds before it fell under the front tires. The truck bounced over the warped, twisted metal and sped away to the main road.
Sean rose up from the truck bed and looked back at the remains of the gate, then through the window at his friend. “Nice work!”
Guns popped from the guards at the entrance, but they were already out of range. A moment later, the other trucks appeared still in pursuit.
“We’ve still got trouble, though!” he yelled at Tommy again.
Tommy flashed a glance in the rearview mirror and noticed the line of trucks in pursuit. Just ahead, the road split off in two directions. One was the way back into the city. The other led out to the mountains. It was a no-brainer. Driving back into the city would not only slow them down and allow the enemy to catch up, but it would put innocent people at risk.
Tommy spun the wheel to the right, and the truck’s tires skidded across the asphalt. He corrected the turn and pounded the gas again. The engine grumbled as it sped away.
Sean watched the other trucks follow, still several hundred yards back. If all things were equal, they wouldn’t be able to catch up. He stole a quick look through the window and saw Tommy was heading into the mountains. Good idea, he thought. We can lose them there. Then he saw the dark clouds forming in the distance. Right in the direction they were heading.
As if reading his mind, Tommy shouted back. “You might want to climb up front if you can. Looks like we’re gonna get wet! And by we, I mean you!”
Sean shook his head. “If they catch up, I’m gonna need to be back here to fend them off! Just keep going. Maybe we can lose them in the rain!”
Tommy steered the pickup through the straights and curves of the flatlands, past the farms, ponds, and outcroppings of forest. They passed small villages with dozens of huts that looked like something from an ancient time. People were sparse, but the ones they passed stared in wonder at the high-speed chase zipping through their little part of the world.
Suddenly Tommy slammed on the brakes.
The truck’s tires skidded and bumped on the road in a desperate attempt to stop. Sean was pressed into the head of the bedrail at the sudden change of momentum. He peeked over his shoulder, wondering why Tommy would do something like that.
Then he saw. “Oh, you have got to be kidding!”
A local herder was leading a flock of a few dozen sheep across the road. They were completely blocking both lanes with no way to get by. Sean looked back down the road.
The trucks behind them were still coming, and now they were closing the gap rapidly. One of the men in the lead pickup leaned out the window, holding a Kalashnikov to his shoulder and preparing to fire when the target was in range.
“Tommy! Get us out of here!”
“I can’t get around! There are sheep everywhere!”
The oblivious shepherd smiled and waved at the Americans as if everything was fine. Then he looked beyond their truck and saw the approaching vehicles, along with the gunman. His clueless smile immediately turned upside down, and he started smacking the ground with his shepherd’s rod in an effort to get the animals moving faster.
The last of the sheep entered the road, which gave Tommy a small bit of space between the left lane and the shoulder.
“Hold on!”
Sean barely had a second to grab the rail as Tommy gunned the pickup around the animals. The left tires kicked up red dust when they hit the shoulder, riding precipitously close to the drop-off into a five-foot-deep ditch. While the ditch wasn’t life threatening, getting stuck in it certainly would be.
Tommy deftly guided the truck back on the road and kept his foot to the floor.
In the back, Sean rechecked his weapon. The men in the lead pursuit truck opened fire. They’d pulled within a few hundred feet and were well within range. Of all the rounds the gunman fired, only one struck the Americans’ pickup. The red taillight exploded in an eruption of plastic and glass.
Sean steadied himself and took aim. He couldn’t waste a shot since they had a finite amount of ammunition.
The gunman ducked back into his seat to reload, and Sean squeezed the trigger. The first shot splintered the windshield into a giant spiderweb. The driver jerked the wheel left and right to make for a harder target, but he overcorrected and lost control. The truck veered off the road and into the ditch. It slammed into the embankment so hard that both occupants were thrown violently through the windshield.
As if nothing happened, the next pickup in line took its place. Sean had counted five trucks before. One down. Four to go.
He pressed his back into the headboard of the truck bed and firmed the weapon’s stock against his shoulder. Another gunman popped out of the window of the new lead vehicle and started firing. He was more accurate than the previous shooter and put two rounds firmly in the Americans’ tailgate.
Sean breathed evenly, just as he’d been trained to do. Situations like this could cause a person to panic. When that happened, the first thing to change was their breathing. Erratic breaths could alter a shooter’s aim by fractions of an inch. Those fractions added up to several feet over a given distance.
He felt the trigger tense against his finger as he lined up the driver in his sights. Just as he squeezed, Tommy wheeled the pickup to the right. Sean’s round missed far to the left, sending a plume of red dirt into the air. He looked over his shoulder and saw they’d reached the foothills leading into the mountains.