wide enough for the truck.
He turned his head and looked out the rear at the next Goblin Valley truck, the one that had shot at them. It had forced its way past the burning truck and now accelerated towards him.
“We’re going.” Ruppert still spoke in a whisper, despite the sirens screaming behind them and the loudspeakers chanted Arabic battle prayer. “Get ready with number six.”
Lucia pulled herself up to a kneeling position on the floorboard and grabbed the final bomb.
Ruppert swung his feet down to the pedals, so that he was halfway between sitting up and lying on his side. He stomped the accelerator and swerved the truck to drive it through the opened portion of the gate. Twin metallic squeals sounded along the sides of the truck as the side mirrors sheared away. The truck scraped between the gate on one side and the concrete wall on the other.
Then they pulled loose and they were free, charging towards the menagerie of stone goblins filling the valley. Ruppert squinted against the wind pressing in on him through the open windshield area.
“Now!” Ruppert yelled, but Lucia was already pitching number 6 out through the demolished rear window. It struck the ground just outside the open gate, a few yards ahead of the caravan of trucks.
Lucia clicked the remote, and a fireball engulfed the gate area, which was still close enough behind that a wave of heat ruffled through Ruppert’s hair. She hurled the remote itself, entirely stripped and useless now, out the window, and it shattered against a passing boulder.
With all his mirrors shot away, and a field of giant boulders ahead, Ruppert couldn’t waste time looking back to see whether the bomb had destroyed the next truck, or in some other way blocked the gate. They would know soon enough.
He pushed himself upright and rammed the gas pedal to the floor, and soon he was dodging the maze of elevated boulders on their narrow sandstone stalks. The fire and smoke at Goblin Valley School retreated behind them. Ruppert let himself breathe again, and glanced down at Nando, who’d remained silent through the entire ordeal.
The boy glared up at him, his mouth fixed in a thin, straight line, his dark eyes blazing. Was the kid going to cause trouble now?
“Incoming!” Lucia cried. She grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it to the right. A screaming, whistling sound punctured the air next to Ruppert’s ear. He saw the artillery rocket slam into a cluster of the big goblin boulders ahead, enveloping them in flame, kicking up wide jets of sand. The dirt track they were traveling led directly into the flames and the swelling black cloud of smoke.
Two large boulders, the first one the size of a beach ball, the next one much larger, hurtled out of the smoke, rolling towards them.
Ruppert slewed off the road into sand, and found himself dodging rock formations that seemed leap towards him wherever he turned. Some of them towered above the truck.
More artillery pounded the unbalanced spires of rock around them, and a rain of shattered stone hammered the roof of the cab, denting it in more than a dozen places. Ruppert threaded among the goblins as best he could, losing most of his speed to the difficult maneuvering and the jagged, rocky ground. A few times he even caught a tire against a boulder and had to reverse and change course.
The rockets screamed down at them, toppling more of the rocks, which not only pummeled the truck but also blocked off many of their potential escape routes. Ruppert noticed they all seemed to land very close to the truck. The guards, or perhaps students, weren’t shelling the valley at random, but knew exactly where to find Ruppert and Lucia.
“GPS!” Ruppert shouted at Lucia. She was reaching down and trying to take Nando’s hands, but the boy wanted nothing to do with her. Nando ignored his mother, but he was glowering at Ruppert.
Lucia kicked at the underside of the console, then grabbed underneath it, gritted her teeth and pulled. She ripped free a plastic module the size of a poker chip and flung it out the passenger window.
Ruppert continued to push ahead, and within a minute they were out of range of the falling shells. He looked behind him, but saw only solid black. Smoke and clouds of sand occluded the valley.
He found his way back to the dirt road, and at last he could really make some time.
“Sir?” Nando asked. He was still lying curled on the floor, staring up at Ruppert.
“What is it?” Ruppert asked. “Are you hurt?”
“You’re not really a staff sergeant, are you, sir?” the boy asked.
“Nando,” Lucia said, and the boy cast her a sharp look. “Don’t you know who I am?”
Nando stared at her for a long moment. “Are you in the movies?”
“Nando, I’m you mother.”
The boy’s brow furrowed. “Is this…an interrogation exercise?”
“Please, Nando.” Lucia’s eyes glistened. “Try to remember.”
They climbed up out of the smoke-filled valley, heading northwest. Then, at last, the fires among the ordinance sheds must have touched something serious, because a narrow geyser of flame ejected straight up and out of the smoldering school compound, reminding Ruppert of the pillar of flame in the movie Exodus. He thought of the boys he’d left standing at attention, and hoped they’d had the sense to scatter and lay low when the fighting started.
Nando climbed up to look out the passenger window, and Lucia moved aside to let him sit.
“My parents died in the wars,” Nando said. He stared at the pillar of fire. “Like all the kids at school. My dad in Nigeria, my mom in the Philippines. Commandant Redding told me. He showed me pictures.”
“It isn’t true, Nando.” Lucia reached for his hand, but again he jerked away.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“It is your name. Fernando Luis Santos. And mine is Lucia Santos. Your mother.” She took his hands in hers. 'Look at me, Fernando.'
Lucia leaned close to his ear and whispered, most of it too low for Ruppert to hear. It was Spanish, too low and fast for Ruppert to understand.
“Stop it,” Nando said. His voice was low and quivering. “I have to think.”
“Nando,” Lucia whispered. “Do you remember-”
“I have to think!” the boy snapped. He looked directly ahead, squinting into the wind that rolled over the bullet-scarred dashboard.
Lucia looked at Ruppert with a pained expression, her lips drawn and thin. He tried to smile, and he drove on.
Ruppert felt himself relax a little as they pulled into the tight canyon where they’d stashed the Bronto. Lucia and Nando left the Goblin Valley truck, while Ruppert lingered inside to change out of the bloodstained school uniform, in the process lifting the cash from the staff sergeant’s wallet. Through the shattered windshield, he overheard them:
“Where are we going?” Nando asked.
“We’re leaving for somewhere safe, up north.”
“When do I go back to school?”
“You don’t ever have to go back there. You’re free now, Nando.”
“I’m always free,” Nando said. “I’m an American.”
“Yes, you are, Nando.”
“If you’re my mother, is that man my father?” Nando whispered.
“No.”
“Is he your commanding officer?”
“No, I am the commanding officer.”
“Excuse me?” Ruppert asked. He’d finished changing, and now closed the door of the Goblin Valley truck behind him.
“I am,” Lucia insisted. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I know we have one more thing to do before we can go.” Ruppert glanced at the rear of the Brontosaur, sheathed in its desert tarp. Lucia nodded.
“Nando,” she said, “Why don’t you go stand at the front end of this truck, and wait there for a minute, all right?”
“Yes, sir.” Nando turned on his heel and marched to the front of the camouflaged truck, where he stood at