He shook his head. “They already knew. That’s why he hovered up there,” Brewster said, gesturing towards the tree tops. “Those things have a mass spectrometer in the nose. They know the signature of the powder in our shells. For all I know, they have the profile of the volatiles in the soles of our boots.”
“Jesus,” Enceas breathed.
“Taking him out will buy us time, but not much.”
“You act like it was easy.”
Brewster shrugged. “A design flaw in the Jaguar. The eight millimeter guns can depress, but the cannons can’t. When he couldn’t get me with the eights, he had to come down to our level to use the cannons, eyeball to eyeball. I knew I could crack the canopy if I could get in enough shots. It was a calculated risk.”
“Your calculated risk wasn’t good enough for Tommy,” Harry Hughes said from behind them. “He caught one that missed the tree.”
“And then there were three…” Enceas said quietly.
Daylight was no help.
The late afternoon Sun was blasting down on the concrete ribbon of I-26. The surface of the road shimmered in the heat. Sporadic traffic whistled by, almost close enough to touch.
The wind of each vehicle’s passage blew Sergeant Owen Rivers’s hair across his forehead. Absently, he reached up and raked his fingers through it to restore his part, only to have it blown again by the next truck. His attention was on the road surface, trying to read the story of what had happened the night before.
The highway patrol cruiser sat behind him on the outside shoulder of the road. He opened the door and reached inside, pulling out the electronic note pad on the front seat. He didn’t really need it. He remembered the accident clearly. It was simply a focus for his attention.
Logic dictated that the missing part of the car should be nearby. After all, it wasn’t as though it was going to drive off by itself, especially since the batteries were in the back half of the car. How far could it go without power?
Keeping his eyes on the scars in the concrete, Rivers walked their length. Nothing. Absolutely nothing that he hadn’t seen the night before. He prided himself in being thorough, but for once he was wishing that he had left something undone. There had to be some clue here that would give him a better understanding of what had happened to the Ford.
Loose ends annoyed Rivers. It chipped away at his professional pride to leave questions unanswered. Many of the cases he was proudest of were ones where he had worried at some seemingly insignificant detail until it opened up entirely new avenues to investigate.
And over three hundred kilos of missing plastic and aluminum alloy was hardly something he could ignore. There was a rational explanation for what had happened. All he had to do was find it.
Cursing under his breath, he walked back to the beginning of the scar. The key was here, at this end, not at the end where the remnants of the Ford had finally left the pavement.
He mopped his brow with his shirt sleeve, staring at a fast food container, already yellowed by the Sun. Within another week it would be dust. Throwing litter out of cars was still illegal, but hardly the problem it had once been. Some idiot had thrown it out the window….
His eyes narrowed and a slow smile crept across his face. What Monica called his “gotcha” look.
At one hundred kilometers per hour, nothing dropped straight to the ground. It fell in an arc. Carefully, he backtracked a short ways along the lane the Ford had been using. Right about… here.
Even on his hands and knees, he nearly missed it. There was a tiny groove, less than the thickness of his fingernail, that cut diagonally across the pavement. The sides were so smooth as to be almost polished. The impossibly sharp edges were already crumbling where tires had crossed. Another twenty-four hours and the cut would have been nearly invisible. He opened his knife and tried to slip the blade into the crack. The tip went in, but the blade was too thick to penetrate further.
He stood, staring at the hairline groove in the pavement. It was too smooth to have been there long. That left the question as to whether it was related to the previous night’s wreck. Rivers didn’t believe in coincidences, but he failed to see how he could relate the two.
Disappointed, he headed back to the cruiser. He had hoped to find something a little clearer than a slot in the pavement. Even if it was related to the accident, it still didn’t give him a clue as to the whereabouts of the rest of the Ford.
Lawrence Enceas was deeply weary. He had lost too much blood; he was weak. Even Brewster, still unhurt, was tiring quickly. For every step Enceas and Hughes took, he took ten, circling them, doubling back to check for pursuit, scouting ahead. Harry Hughes, the only other surviving member of their team, was ashen faced, and for the past hour had spoken only when directly addressed.
Shortly after abandoning the clearing, they had seen a small Brazilian force working their way silently through the trees, but had managed to avoid being spotted. There was no question about it, they were being hunted.
Enceas and Hughes, leaning on each other for support, stumbled into the small depression where Brewster was waiting for them after checking the path ahead. They lay gasping for breath for a few moments before anyone spoke.
“Gentlemen,” Brewster said. “I have good news and I have bad news.”
“Go for it,” Enceas panted.
“The good news is that there’s another clearing ahead that would be perfect for a pickup.”
“The bad news is that there’s no pickup coming,” Enceas finished for him.
“Well, actually, the bad news is that the clearing is recent. Possibly only a few hours old. It might be a trap.”
“So you think the Brazilians cut a hole as a lure for us?” Enceas asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t see anyone, but that’s no guarantee. Those assholes wrote the book on jungle tricks.”
“Is it big enough for a Kicker to get in?”
“I think so.”
They were silent for a few minutes. The only sounds were of labored breathing and the buzzing of flies. Enceas was startled to hear Hughes speak.
“What made the hole?”
Brewster’s mouth tightened. “Looks like a fire fight. The trees are chewed all to hell. There are enough toothpicks in there to keep Godzilla happy for a thousand years.”
Hughes tried to snort in derision, but began coughing raggedly. As soon as he could control his breathing, he said, “Hell, let’s do it. Anything’s better than sitting down and waiting to die.”
Brewster looked at Enceas. “And you?”
“Let’s call in from here. Assuming that we get through, they’ll already be on the way by the time we get to the clearing.”
They spent ten minutes trying to raise an answer on the radio, but without result.
“Let’s get this over with,” Enceas said. “If either of us,” he gestured at Hughes, “pass out, you’ll have a helluva time trying to move us. We might as well make the clearing while we can still move under our own power.”
Slowly, fighting exhaustion, they moved ahead. Hughes tripped and fell, dislodging one of the electrodes from his pain blocker. By the time they got it taped back into place, his forehead was covered with a sheen of fresh sweat and his breath was coming in short gasps.
Supporting him with his good arm, Enceas took his left side, while Brewster took his right. Together, the three of them lurched forward.
True to Brewster’s word, it looked as though a giant beaver with dull teeth had been chewing on the fallen tree trunks in the clearing. They collapsed against the trunk of a tree still standing at the edge of the clearing, sliding to the ground.