The Rover on the left pulled up alongside the trailing SUV and opened fire, sending dozens of bullets through the gunman on that side and the back of the driver’s seat. The SUV suddenly jerked sideways and launched over a nearby hill, disappearing in a cloud of dust and smoke.
Lindsey’s driver looked back again in the rear view mirror, slightly more concerned than she had been before. “Take them out,” she commanded in a stern tone.
The men in the left lane were reloading when a new wave of bullets came from the second vehicle in the convoy. They were forced to slow down for a moment, keeping at a safe distance until they could return fire. The other Rover took their place and began to pull alongside the black SUV. Lindsey’s men poured rounds at the tan vehicle until suddenly, the front right tire burst. The truck wobbled back and forth for a few seconds, skidding across both lanes, finally coming to a stop on the side of the road.
The lone remaining Range Rover sped past with men and guns protruding from both sides. The gun barrels popped rapidly, peppering the back of the target vehicle with holes. One bullet struck a gunman on the driver’s side in the neck. The man dropped his weapon and grasped his neck before tumbling out of the window and onto the road. The brethren’s truck ran over the rolling body, and kept in pursuit. With no threat on that side of the car, the driver of the Rover pulled the hood of his vehicle up next to the back of the target. The other SUV swerved left, trying to keep the attackers at bay, and force them to approach from the passenger’s side where two gunmen were taking aim. The tan truck’s driver accommodated and quickly jerked the car back into the right lane.
The move by Lindsey’s man would have been a good idea, had the driver been paying more attention to the other lane in front of him. But he was more occupied with the gunman to the rear, and never saw the big rig speeding his way. The black SUV crashed into the heavy tractor-trailer truck with a loud boom, leaving little left of it other than a pile of smoking, twisted metal.
Kaba glanced back at the wreckage and the last remaining Range Rover approaching quickly.
“You two should get down,” she said, matter-of-factly.
For the first time in the scenario, Lindsey had taken on the same concerned expression as his French companion. Both men ducked down behind the leather seats, DeGard covered his ears with his hands.
The tan Rover approached, guns blazing from the passenger’s side. A blizzard of bullets riddled the back and side of the vehicle, shattering the window above the crouching Frenchman and pounding the metal door just next to him.
“Take the wheel,” the driver ordered coolly to the man in the passenger’s side.
The younger, blonde man in the other seat did as he was told and gripped the wheel, holding it steady as Kaba pulled a Glock .40 from a shoulder holster and rolled down her window.
The Range Rover was pulling up alongside them when she whipped the pistol up with both hands and squeezed off one shot into the head of the driver in the other truck. The attacker’s vehicle slow immediately and veered off the road, going airborne over a dune, and flipping violently front over back in the desert sand.
Kaba re-holstered the weapon and took back the wheel.
“You’re safe now, sir.” She said, keeping her eyes forward. She never even glanced back and the two men crouched in the rear seat.
DeGard rose up hesitantly, and looked back at the now empty road. A pillar of smoke wafted up from the accident with the 18-wheeler but was out of sight sixty seconds later. Lindsey straightened up and pressed down his jacket, removing the wrinkles.
“Well done,” he applauded his driver, impressed at her composure. “Well done, indeed. You see, Monsieur DeGard, nothing to worry about.”
The archaeologist looked back again at the empty road then at his employer. He wanted to say so much, but thought better of it and bit his tongue. Several men had just lost their lives, some of them Lindsey’s, and the old man seemed relatively unaffected. Expendable resources. That’s how the man so many called The Prophet viewed them, and probably him too.
He was beginning to regret signing on for the job. But a quick check in his jacket pocket reminded him of what awaited if he could see it through.
Chapter 16
Will slowed the gray hatchback to a stop. A tan SUV lay on its side, a tangled mess of twisted metal. Coolant, gasoline, and other fluids had leaked all over the road. A reddish trail of blood mingled with it. The driver was dead, his body lying on the shattered window against the ground. There were three other bodies strewn along the road within a fifty-foot radius of the wreckage. Will got out of the car and took a closer inspection of the trashed vehicle.
It was a Range Rover. The occupants were all wearing matching outfits, scarves, and turbans. There were AK-47s lying around near the wreck, too. The men were armed. Will searched what was left of the vehicle and found a few pistols, then stuffed them in his pants. They weren’t the quality he’d grown accustomed to, but a gun was a gun at that point. And he needed one, but he wasn’t about to carry around one of the AKs. He found them bulky, unreliable, and inaccurate. Precision, particularly, was something he valued desperately.
Upon closer inspection of the Range Rover, Will noticed something else that was peculiar: bullet holes. He ran his finger along the metal and into the indention where the paint flaked off. He looked down on the asphalt and noticed something metallic shining in the bright sun. He picked up the object and examined it. I recognize this shell. His eyes gazed north, up the highway. He could see some smoke on the horizon, bringing a smile to his face. From the looks of it, The Prophet’s team was holding its own. But he needed to make sure.
Will started to get back in the car then remembered the body still stuffed in the hatchback. The accident site seemed like a logical place to drop it off. After all, the mortal wounds left by the rock would seem like a natural occurrence due to such a violent crash.
He carelessly dumped the body out on the ground then sped off down the road. Will had only gone about another mile when he saw one of Lindsey’s SUVs off on the side of the pavement. He pulled over again, this time to see if it was the car his employer was in. The bodies lying around were hired guns. No sign of The Prophet.
Will immediately knew what had happened. There had been some kind of a chase. The men in the tan Range Rover had attacked Lindsey’s convoy. But why? Who would have done something like that? Random terrorists? It was certainly possible. And with the country’s political state in an upheaval, it could be highly probable that Lindsey’s caravan had fallen prey to bandits or terrorists.
Will got back in the car and pushed up the road until he came to an empty SUV. There was no one around, but he did notice one of the tires was flat. Probably shot by one of his boss’s mercenaries. He kept moving, only slowing down slightly as he passed the vacant vehicle. Then, he saw the source of the smoke that was wafting into the dry, desert air. One of Lindsey’s black SUVs had been crushed like a can, running directly into an 18-wheeler. The big rig had been hauling steel I-beams, and when combined with the momentum of the truck, the SUV hadn’t stood a chance in that game of chicken.
A corpse lay on the road, dead hands still clutching his sub-machine gun. Both legs stuck out at awkward angles, and a blunt-force head wound oozed a line of blood down the black road. Another body, nearly bent in half, dangled out of one of the back passenger windows. The driver and front seat passenger couldn’t be seen for all the metal, plastic, glass, and wires. Safe to assume they were dead. No one could have survived that. The driver of the rig had, apparently, hit the windshield. He was slumped over the wheel underneath cracked glass and a smeared blood stain.