“Keep—”
His voice went hoarse as the air left his lungs. An instant later, a concussive shockwave pushed them both down, face-first. The accompanying roar was worse than a thunderclap dogfighting a jet engine. Then came the heat…
He needed to check behind for half a second, basically to estimate how much time was left to live. The truck had plowed into the side of the nearest flatbed trailer, sending it and the tanker up and over the target. They’d slid into the middle of the loading zone before detonating, sending fiery fuel onto every truck in the row, and many to the rear.
“Get up!” he croaked. Emily was already trying to get to her feet, but he realized there was a nauseating wave of fumes surrounding them, as if the fuel had mixed with the technology of those robots and created a new biohazard. Whatever it was, it made him lightheaded.
Working together to stay upright, they got back to a slow jog. Secondary explosions rocked the city blocks behind them, often shoving stiff winds at their backsides from the shockwaves.
“Faster!” he urged.
They ran for a full block, maybe a quarter of a mile, before he thought it was safe to rest. He ran under a beautiful decorative tree next to the sidewalk, then turned back to see the industrial disaster from a safer vantage point. “Unbelievable.”
It was impossible to see the entire line of trucks in the convoy; the buildings shielded them. However, the big parking lots next to the intersection gave them a clear view the central part of the disaster.
Emily coughed a few times before speaking. “God bless that man for fighting back. And thank you, God, for letting us get away from it.”
“Amen,” he replied.
The suicidal driver must have known where to strike to do the most damage. In the miasma of the fumes, and under the threat of a fiery death, Ted only observed how the tanker blew up inside the line of trucks. However, with the benefit of distance, he realized the real target had been the cranes. Of the twenty or so lined up along the street, only the one closest to the rear stood up straight. A few were canted at precarious angles. The rest were tipped over and warped, with their cabs on fire.
Ted gave Emily a once-over. Her brown hair, which was already a frizzy mess from days of hard travel, had come unraveled to the point she could have been mistaken for a mad scientist. The front and sides of her uniform were covered in gray dust from her fall. Seeing the opportunity to help, he reached over and brushed back some of her loose hair, sticking it behind an ear.
She reached up and held his hand. “Thank you for saving my life. I would have never seen that truck coming from behind me.”
“My pleasure,” he said, catching himself breathing fast from all the adrenaline.
“It looks like our friends made it.” She pointed to the crash site. The camera team filmed from behind an overturned car on the parking lot beyond the loading zone. Darla, the woman in the red dress, was on the ground, possibly injured, but Todd kept his camera panning the devastation.
“I hope they got me on live TV,” she replied.
“Yeah, what was that all about? You took off your bandana.” It remained off. She’d loosened it so it was around her neck.
“It occurred to me if I dropped my disguise while across the street, our intel guys and gals would see me in the background. I would be identified as still alive.”
“Hmm. I guess that would work. I think we can safely say lots of people are going to be picking apart this video feed to figure out what happened.” After he’d said it, he hoped it didn’t instill panic in Emily. David’s people would almost certainly pick her out and know she was in Colorado, fighting back. No one would believe Emily just happened to be at the same spot as an attack of such magnitude.
She laughed a bit. “I hope we learn who the driver was. He deserves a medal.”
“How did he survive the initial attack on America?” he wondered aloud. “Was he with anyone?”
“All I know is we better clear out of here before their version of the police show up. Everyone is going to get interrogated. Like you said, it’s what the Secret Service would do if the attack had been on me.”
He realized she was right. Their ruse was about to be exposed.
“To the truck!” he said with enthusiasm. It was still parked on the street behind the other SUVs and the TV crew’s van. However, in his own limited panic, he’d run them past those vehicles to get clear of the blast zone. Now they had to go back a few hundred yards.
While on the run, it occurred to him there were no sirens. No firetrucks arriving. He laughed when he figured out why. “Those dumbasses go around burning things, like we saw back in North Dakota. I bet they never thought they’d need to put out any fires. The fire station has everything they need, but no one knows how to operate it.”
They reached their truck without further delay. He climbed into the driver’s seat, sure the fire was going to burn for a long time, and probably spread. Injured drivers and other mercenaries crawled out of the wreckage, much to his grim satisfaction. Smaller explosions continued to rock the area; the fuel tanks of the other big rigs caught fire, too. However, his humor was doused when he started the engine.
“Uh oh.”
Emily climbed in. “What is it?”
He pointed across the street to Todd. His camera was pointed directly at them.
“I think we’re about to be famous.”
NORAD Black Site Sierra 7, CO
Dwight had never experienced such confusion in his entire life. After coming out of the white light, it really seemed as if he’d
