The other van was making a run on the left-hand side, inching its way in front of them to block their path. Dodge wrenched at the wheel, and the tires of the pickup screamed as they veered onto an off-ramp to Hoover Dam.
“You can’t get across the dam anymore,” Tyler yelled. “They closed it to traffic when they opened the bypass!”
“Got nowhere else to go,” Dodge yelled back.
“There’s a vulnerable TCP port in the NetBIOS,” Sam said, poking around the LoJack server. “The session services in the message block.”
Another hammering burst of fire sounded behind them, and the rear window starred and cracked. Vienna fired twice again, the gunshots crashing like thunder inside the cab of the truck.
“Can you discover the Windows shares?” Dodge asked through gritted teeth.
“Already got them,” Sam said. “Trying to wriggle into the RPC.”
“Here they come again—get down!” Tyler yelled as the vans took advantage of a passing area to attack from both sides, raking the pickup with automatic fire as they accelerated alongside.
Dodge forced the left van toward the rocky wall, ignoring the firing from the right until the left van fell back; then he swung the pickup violently over to the right.
The right-hand van slammed on its brakes to avoid being shunted off the side of a cliff, and fell back in behind the pickup with a squeal of protest from its tires.
“Hang on!” Dodge shouted.
Sam looked up to see concrete crash barriers in a line across the road in front of them. He braced himself against the front seat and hugged the precious laptop to his body.
The bull-bar of the pickup truck smashed into the barrier at the narrow gap between two of the units. Concrete exploded past both sides of the truck, and Sam’s seat belt slammed into his chest, the laptop almost flying out of his arms. But the concrete barriers gave way, bunted to each side to make a gap for the flying pickup truck. Then they were through and on the old road across the top of the dam.
“Okay, I’m in,” Sam cried. “What’s that plate again?”
“CDD7605,” Vienna rasped over the sound of gunfire close behind.
Sam keyed it in and poised the cursor above the Remote Shutdown button.
“Hold it,” Dodge said. “I’ll tell you when.”
Through the left window, Sam could see water. To the right, the vast concrete structure fell away from them into a deep canyon. Stretching between the walls of the canyon, impossibly high, was the massive arch of the bypass road, pencil-thin concrete towers supporting a narrow ribbon of bridge.
Another concrete barrier came and went with the same shattering explosion of concrete chips and dust. Then they were across and careening around a tight curve beneath a rocky cliff face. Sam’s eye was caught by a massive drainpipe, surely a hundred yards high, that disappeared into the rock face to the right. Another tire-screeching corner and they were rising up a gently curving road toward a hairpin bend.
“There,” Dodge said. “Right on the bend.” He gunned the engine toward the corner.
Sam looked back and saw a dark shape leaning out the window of the nearest van, readying another shot.
“Shake her around a bit,” he yelled, and Dodge jerked the steering wheel back and forth, spoiling the man’s aim. The driver’s-side mirror cracked and starred, but the rest of the volley went wild.
Then they were on the curve, the pickup lifting and tilting as Dodge forced it around at high speed.
For a moment, Sam thought they were going to roll, but the huge tires of the pickup steadied and straightened out of the curve.
“Now!” Dodge yelled.
Sam hit the button on the laptop just as the first van entered the apex of the curve. For a half second, he thought nothing would happen; then the nose of the van, which had been riding high, suddenly dropped as the engine lost power.
On a steep rise, on a hairpin bend, it had almost the same effect as slamming on the brakes of the van, and there was a screech and a thud from behind it as the following van swerved hard to the left to the outside of the bend, clipping the rear of the lead van and spinning it around 180 degrees. It slid over toward the side of the road, hit the safety railing with a crunch, and stayed there.
The trailing van was not so lucky. It rose onto two wheels with the impact of the collision and continued to veer left, crunching into and rolling over a thick stone wall and disappearing from sight.
On the other side of that wall, a steep slope led straight down to the lake, and Sam didn’t need to hear the splash to know that that van would not be following them again.
Vienna whooped with excitement, then convulsed as a spasm of coughing racked her body.
Overhead, a cloud burst with a flash and a distant roar of thunder, and it began to rain.
51 | REFUGEES
Route 93 was deserted all the way to Kingman, Arizona.
The thunderstorm still raged around them. As they drove, the sky lit up in brilliant, searing flashes of lightning. Stunted desert grass and rocks lined both sides of the highway, distorted into grotesque shapes as rain cascaded freely down the windshield.
The radio in the pickup had been set to scan, and as they neared Kingman, it burst into life, picking up a music station. In between songs, the announcer, a woman with a soft, sultry voice, talked about community events and read some advertisements. There was a big yard sale at the First Baptist Church, apparently, and Joe’s Budget Flooring was having a half-price weekend. If there really was a war raging in America, either she didn’t know about it or it was already over.
Sam scanned the skies for signs of aircraft, despite the weather. Ursula would not want to lose them now; that was for certain.
Once, he thought he saw lights in the sky, and Dodge immediately cut the headlights and the engine.
If it was an aircraft, it quickly disappeared into the thunderheads, and after only a short wait, Dodge restarted the truck.
In those few minutes, the temperature inside the cab dropped at least ten degrees, and Sam was grateful once the heater kicked in again.
“If they get us in this weather,” Dodge said, “it’ll be on thermal. A black truck at night in a storm will be nearly invisible, but we’ll be a lot warmer than the surrounding countryside. If they can get a thermal imager in our vicinity, we’ll show up as a hot spot.”
Vienna’s condition seemed to be getting worse, not better. Her breathing at times became shallow and forced, and her face looked gray and lifeless. She spoke only twice on the trip. Once to ask for water and once to ask where they were. Other than that, she sat with her eyes closed, dozing or just resting, Sam wasn’t sure.
A solitary streetlight illuminated a gas station, dark and silent, standing alone in the storm.
“Pull in here,” Sam said, and Dodge turned into the forecourt, not bothering to signal.
Why had he even thought that? Sam wondered. With all that was going on, signaling a turn hardly mattered. It wasn’t as if there were other cars on the road. But somehow it just seemed wrong. As if by getting the little things right, like signaling when you made a turn, you could start to put the big things right. Like Ursula.
It made no sense, but what did make sense nowadays?
Dodge stopped the truck when they got to the gas station. It looked deserted.
“Everybody out,” Sam said. “We need to get Vienna out of her hazmat suit and see if we can find a hose to wash out the car.”
“It’s freezing outside,” Tyler said, but opened his door anyway. The cold hit them immediately, and the rain lashed and stung at them.
Sam helped Vienna out of the car, gasping as the shock of the rain hit his unprotected skin. His clothes were saturated in seconds. She stood silently, scarcely noticing the rain as he unfastened the suit and peeled it from her body.
With tender fingers, he tilted her head backward. She shut her eyes against the rain. He ran his fingers
