passage followed a long, low incline.
Jack shifted into the next gear, moving the truck along at a moderate pace. It rode fairly smoothly on absorbent shocks and reinforced springs despite the unevenness of the path. He glanced in his rearview mirror where two bright dots appeared as the bikers switched on their machines’ headlights.
Branches slapped the truck cab’s roof and scratched at its sides as the vehicle lumbered up the passage between the trees. It rolled through the far end into a clearing.
The park wasn’t much, just a rocky cleft floored by an acre or so of weedy flats. A handful of cabins were grouped in an inverted U shape at the opposite end of the clearing. A long, low wooden plank building stood at their center. It looked like a shoebox with a roof instead of a lid. Its long side faced the end of the path through the trees. The cabins were dark, tumbledown shacks, but the long house was in better repair. Its windows were muted squares and oblongs of light. A handful of dark figures milled around in front of it.
Jack pointed the truck at them and headed toward them. He downshifted, slowing as he neared, tapping the horn with his palm heel several times to sound a tinny beep- beep. He stuck his hand out the window and gave what he hoped would be taken for a friendly wave.
The high beams’ glare pinned a half- dozen armed men. Jack wondered which of them had taken part in the attack at Silvertop and the cold- blooded execution of the BZ-stricken CTU survivors that had followed it. His own blood was feeling pretty hot at that moment.
Some of the gang had rifles, some had guns, others both. They showed no alarm yet. The truck poked along at a few miles per hour. A couple of men raised hands to shield their eyes against the glare, others turned their heads away from it. One yelled, “Dim those beams!”
Jack switched off his lights. A sudden blackness fell, made heavier by contrast with the harsh glare that had just filled the clearing. Jack speed shifted, stomping the gas while forcing the stick through the different gears as he did so.
The men were backlit by the long house’s lights, muted though they were. Jack piloted the car toward them. There were sudden outcries, angry shouts.
Somebody opened fire with an assault rifle. Guns started popping, their muzzle flares spear blades of light. A burst of autofire spanged harmlessly against the truck’s steel- plated front.
Jack switched the high beams back on, bathing his opponents in glare. The truck was almost on them. One or two hardy souls stood and fired but the others started breaking for the sides and long house.
A gunman stood in front of the truck shooting at it. A round punched a hole through the windshield, exiting through the roof of the cab. The truck closed with the shooter. He threw up his arms. The truck hit him with a thud and sent him flying.
Jack manhandled the wheel, whipping it to the left. The truck slewed around in a wide curving turn. The men scattered, running in all directions. Jack steered for the nearest, chasing him down. The target ran toward a cabin with the truck at his heels.
He almost made it. The front bumper tagged him and he fell under the wheels. The truck shivered twice as if it had gone over two speed bumps.
Jack swung the wheel around hard left again to keep from hitting the cabin. The right edge of the steel plate struck a corner of it and brushed it aside. The cabin collapsed in a heap of broken logs and the truck kept on going.
The rolling thunder of the truck motor was counterpointed by the angry hornet buzzing of the two Harleys as they entered the scene. One swung left and the other right. Jack couldn’t tell which was Griff and which Rowdy.
A racketing fury clouted the driver’s side of the truck. Jack didn’t like that so well. The machine’s flanks were its weak points, the front its strong point. He wheeled it around and drove toward the shooters.
He passed Griff going in the opposite direction chasing a man down. Griff fired a couple of shots across the top of the handlebars at his quarry. Jack flashed past them and missed the outcome of the clash.
A couple of riflemen stood in the space between two cabins on Jack’s right, firing at him. He made for them, slugs ricocheting off the truck’s steel plate. He threw up a hand to protect his eyes as the windshield disintegrated, spraying him with cubes of broken safety glass. His face and hand were peppered with sharp stinging fragments but not his eyes. He could see fine.
The truck kept going, plowing into the shooters with a one-two combination of thuds, the machine giving a vaguely perceptible shiver as it turned them into broken heaps. The truck rolled up an incline, a tree looming in the lights.
Jack hit the brakes, the truck balking and sliding to a stop with a crunch. The tree broke in mid-trunk where the steel plate had hit it, falling in the opposite direction.
He was after Reb Weld’s kill squad, not trees. He threw the gear into reverse, the truck varooming backward and running over the same bodies again. It backed into the clearing, narrowly avoiding hitting Rowdy, who was chasing a man fleeing toward the opening of the passage. Rowdy swerved wide to clear the truck’s rear bumper. He shouted something. Jack couldn’t make it out but it didn’t sound nice.
Griff emerged from behind a cabin near the top of the inverted U. Gunfire zipped around him. It was getting hot so he turned again, weaving between two cabins for cover.
A shotgun boomed. Jack looked in his rearview mirror. Rowdy had halted his cycle to shoot a man. His first shot missed. He stood straddling the bike, shotgun raised to his right shoulder as he swung the muzzle in line with the fugitive and fired again. His quarry went down.
The clearing was empty of fleeing figures but littered with fallen ones. The enemy’s firepower was now concentrated in the long house where the remaining shooters were making a stand. They were inside covering behind wooden walls and shooting through windows and the open doorway. Four of them: three at the window and one at the door.
Jack thought that wooden plank walls wouldn’t provide much protection against bullets or trucks. He glanced at Pettibone, who huddled cowering in the well under the dashboard on his side of the cab as much as the short rope around his neck allowed. Jack said, “Here we go!”
Pettibone cried, “No, no!”
Jack pointed the truck at the long house and leaned on the horn to get the bikers’ attention, filling the clearing with a loud rude braying. He engaged the gear and the truck rolled forward, gathering speed.
The shooters targeted the truck as it closed in on them. Jack hunched down in his seat as low as he could get while still seeing over the top of the dashboard. Line of fire tore up the turf in front of him. The shooters got their range and poured it on into the truck. Bullets spattered the armored front racketing like the proverbial hailstorm on a tin roof.
A row of slugs stitched a cratered line of bullet holes in the cab’s rear panel not far from the top of Jack’s head.
The long house loomed up, filling Jack’s field of vision. He steered toward the window through which a trio of shooters were blasting. The truck’s left front tire was shot to pieces, causing it to tilt and veer left.
Jack battled the slide, hauling the steering wheel hard right to compensate for the drift. It took some muscle to keep the machine on course.
The building was fronted by a foot-tall wooden boardwalk. The planks snapped and splintered under the truck’s weight, sounding like they were being fed into a wood chipper. They fought the vehicle’s progress, trying to slow it down. It bucked and shuddered but continued its advance. The steering wheel fought to break Jack’s hold but he clutched it with both hands in a death grip.
Jack stomped the gas pedal to the floor and kept it pinned, goosing a final wild burst of shrieking RPMs out of the engine.
The wall with the window was in his way. The truck punched through it, battering two shooters crouching behind it. They greased the machine’s wheels as it thrust into the long house.
The long house had a long hall. Its wooden floor collapsed under the truck. The pickup continued its forward motion, tearing up planks and beams and tossing them to either side. It slid to the middle of the space before jerking to a halt.
Rafters rained down on the truck. The wall behind it had a truck-sized hole in it. Part of it caved, bringing the front half of the roof down with it. The collapse kicked up thick clouds of dry gray dust. Heaps of debris, timbers, and tabletop-sized chunks of plaster came crashing down on the cab’s roof and hood.
