The stowaway looked up, and Colchev saw blue eyes peering back at him through the video camera. Colchev stared in stunned disbelief when he recognized the man as Tyler Locke.
How had Locke had ended up here? Colchev wanted to reach through the screen and throttle him, but he was six miles away, helpless to do anything himself.
He leaned forward, his own eyes never leaving Locke’s. He spoke slowly and distinctly into the microphone so that Gurevich would have no doubt that dying would be preferable to failure.
“I don’t care how you do it,” Colchev said, “but get that bastard off my truck.”
TWENTY-ONE
Even as he was trying to keep himself from sliding off the hood and getting crushed by the road train’s eighty tires, Tyler couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the truck’s empty cab. Invisible hands made minute adjustments to the steering wheel.
I guess it’s getting harder to find suicide bombers these days, he thought.
Tyler marveled at the engineering involved in creating a two-hundred-ton remote-control truck. Then the howling wind reminded him he was in danger of becoming outback roadkill, and he looked for a way off the hood.
The situation hadn’t turned out exactly as he’d planned. It had been Tyler’s bright idea to jam the pliers of his Leatherman multi-tool into the trailer’s rear door track to hold it open while he gripped the door’s handle to pull himself onto the roof. Although Grant steadied him as he scrambled up, the abrupt encounter with the airstream nearly blew him onto the asphalt. Once Tyler was safely up and found his footing, he’d run along the trailer roofs, leaving Grant to implement their backup plan.
Tyler intended to climb down next to the cab’s door, but while he was still on its roof, the road train had unexpectedly slowed, tossing him onto the hood instead.
Tyler swiveled his head to see why the truck was slowing. He squinted at a white car that turned off the highway just in front of him. It looked like the truck would follow.
As the road train made its turn, Tyler used the momentum to swing his legs over to the side and down onto the running board. With one hand on the mirror, he maneuvered over to the door handle. He pulled on it and realized he shouldn’t have been surprised to find it unlocked. Colchev wasn’t expecting stowaways on board.
He got into the cab and searched the interior for a simple DISENGAGE button, but he couldn’t see one. In the middle of the dashboard was an LCD screen the size of a laptop’s. He touched the dark screen, and a window lit up with the CAPEK logo.
Having successfully negotiated the turn, the road train accelerated again. A sign flashed by.
NO THROUGH ROAD
JOINT DEFENCE FACILITY PINE GAP
PROHIBITED AREA
TURN AROUND NOW
Tyler had never heard of Pine Gap, but it sounded like the kind of place a terrorist would want to target. He had no doubt security cameras along the road had already spotted the truck, but they might think it was just a shipment to the base that hadn’t been properly recorded on the schedule. Guards would try to wave him down at the front gate and only realize their mistake when it barreled through. Stopping the truck before it got there was Tyler’s best option.
Tyler scanned the screen hoping for an obvious solution to his predicament. A button at the bottom said MENU. Tyler tapped on it, and an inscrutable list of acronyms and commands filled the screen. It would take some study to figure out what series of commands led to the STOP command, so Tyler did what he thought would shut down most any cruise control.
He jammed his foot on the brake pedal.
The truck began to slow, but he could feel the accelerator fighting him. Either the auto-shutoff had been disabled or Colchev was in the van countermanding his efforts.
Tyler tried turning the wheel to jackknife the truck, but it spun freely in his hand. Normally a truck’s steering was controlled by a rack-and-pinion mechanism, but the CAPEK vehicle’s steering was drive-by-wire, controlled by a computer that sent commands from the steering wheel to a motor adjusting the position of the front wheels. The drive-by-wire system had been disengaged.
Tyler looked for an ignition key but found only a red START button. Pressing it had no effect. He pushed the brake pedal as hard as he could, and the road train slowed to ten miles per hour.
The walkie-talkie on Tyler’s cell phone squawked.
“Tyler,” Grant said. “You there?”
“I’m here and inside the cab.”
“So you’re stopping us?”
“Not exactly. We’ll have to go with plan B. Get Stevens and Beech out of there.”
“Will do,” Grant said. He’d have to drop them off the back of the truck and hope the speed would be low enough to prevent serious injury.
“Is the device ready?” Tyler said.
“Almost. I just wanted to let you know I’d be incommunicado momentarily. I’ll be out of here in thirty seconds. Can you keep us crawling for that long?”
“Will do. Should give us plenty of open space.”
“And remember. Do not call me.”
“Got it,” Tyler said and hung up.
A face popped up in the driver’s side window. Tyler had been so distracted that he’d lost track of the white car. The man outside with the thin nose and hideous underbite had climbed aboard to expel Tyler.
Colchev’s man ripped the door open, and Tyler gave him some assistance. Tyler pushed the door wider, slamming it out of the man’s hand and throwing him off balance. But he recovered easily and lunged inside, grasping Tyler in a chokehold.
Tyler kept his foot on the brake pedal as long as he could, but with his neck lodged in the crook of his assailant’s arm, his vision tunneled at a rapid pace. He threw an elbow backward with little effect, and he couldn’t use his other hand or he’d lose his grip on the cell phone. With only seconds before he blacked out, Tyler twisted in the man’s grip and launched himself through the driver’s side door, landing on the hood of the white sedan.
The surprised driver swerved and slowed as he brought a pistol to bear. Tyler rolled so that he would land in the dirt and not on the blacktop where he’d be drawn under the truck’s wheels. Bullets blasting through the windshield missed him as he tumbled off the car and onto the hardpan, shielding his head from the impact, but subjecting his arms and legs to a multitude of bumps and bruises. He winced as he sat up and opened his palm to see that the phone was still intact.
The car accelerated away to catch up with the cab. Tyler turned and saw Grant fifty yards behind him waving. Two limp forms lay next to him.
Tyler sprinted toward Grant and pointed at a boulder the size of a Volkswagen beside the road.
“Get to cover!” he shouted.
Grant gave the thumbs-up and picked up one of the men as if he were no heavier than a feather pillow. Tyler ran to the other man and saw that he was the smaller of the two, Professor Stevens. Tyler threw the dead weight onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hustled behind the boulder.
When he reached the relative safety of the rock, Tyler lay Stevens down and gasped for air.
“Glad you could join us,” Grant said, and looked at the car driving alongside the cab of the accelerating truck. “They with the Auto Club?”
Tyler nodded. “And they’re very upset about what we’ve done to their truck.”