Chapter 42
Jared and John were up first thing the next morning, pushing the VW bug around to the rear of the building, where the roll-up door stood open and the trailer awaited its mate. Another ten minutes and the trailer was secured to the rear of the tiny German vehicle. Jared was charged with driving while John rode shotgun. They would not wait for the others, who would follow on horseback. If they moved as a group, their progress would be tediously slow and act as a magnet drawing people to make contact with them. If Jared and John drove as fast as the little car would allow, they all felt this would afford them the best chance at getting out of town without being molested.
Once the horses were saddled, everyone nodded their goodbyes. Jared climbed into the VW, inserted the key, and waited until the other men were mounted and had ridden out of sight before he turned the key in the ignition. The VW sputtered to life, sounding so loud, Jared almost shut it off. If for some reason the vehicle broke down, Jared and John would return home on foot, where they would regroup and figure out another way to get the trailer and its contents up to the ranch house.
As the VW sprang to life, Jared glanced at John, who sat next to him, and could see the tension in his friend’s face, which seemed to match his own. In this new and much quieter world, noises like car engines seemed deafening and sure to bring trouble. Jared pushed the clutch in, put the vehicle in gear, and slowly pulled around the side of Solar Green, then out onto the road.
John wished he’d cut a turret in the roof so he could be up higher, searching for threats as they drove. Jared pressed the gas pedal and watched the speedometer climb from five miles per hour to twenty-five miles per hour over the course of an entire city block. They weren’t going anywhere fast by the old days’ standard, but in just three short months, Jared had grown accustomed to travelling slow, so at twenty-five miles per hour, Jared felt like he was flying.
John sat with a map folded in his lap, pointing out the various turns Jared needed to take in order to place them on East Santa Clara Street. Once they made the turn from South Seventeenth Street onto East Santa Clara Street, John folded the map and stuffed it into his cargo pocket. The next turn they would make was going to be onto Mt. Hamilton Road leading up into the mountains.
John kept his head on a swivel, seeking any signs of danger, not only from their front, but both flanks as well. He wasn’t much concerned with their rear since the chances of being overtaken were low, in John’s estimate. Even with his lack of concern for being pursued from the rear, John still cast a couple of glances rearward as they motored up East Santa Clara Street.
Jared drove, weaving his way through the cars left abandoned on the street, until they reached Highway 101, where Jared pushed harder on the gas pedal as the vehicle slowed on the incline of the overpass. At the top of the overpass, a sea of abandoned vehicles stretched up and down Highway 101 for as far as the eye could see. There would have been no way to drive their setup through all that traffic, and Jared was relieved the current street was not in the same condition.
When they began their descent off the overpass, the speedometer eclipsed thirty-five miles per hour. Jared eased off the gas a hair, feeling the trailer tugging at the rear of the small German vehicle. The last thing he wanted was to have an accident because he’d been driving too fast. As he slowed the VW slightly, he saw John nod his head in silent agreement.
Josh stared blankly out the side of the Black Hawk as they cleared the coastal range of mountains, racing towards the city below. The pilot’s and copilot’s excited voices over Josh’s headset shook him from his thoughts. Something or someone was commanding the pilot’s attention to the point of diverting the aircraft slightly off course. Josh moved to the opening between the back of the aircraft and the pilots’ seats.
“What’s the deal?” he asked, straining to see through the Black Hawk’s windshield.
The copilot pointed straight off their nose. “A car, there’s a car down there, moving, towing something, I think.”
Josh rose so he was squatting, his head as high as the ceiling would allow. The helicopter was now following a straight road, and Josh could see a small vehicle with a trailer attached to its rear, chugging along the road in front of and below the helicopter. The car was about two miles out, but the helicopter was closing the gap quickly. The helicopter had been traveling at two thousand feet AGL when the pilots spotted the little vehicle. Josh, however, wanted a much closer look at the strange sight below.
“Get lower,” Josh shouted. “I want to see what they’re up to.”
The pilot in control of the aircraft eased the nose over a few degrees, causing their altitude to evaporate. When the large helicopter was at eight hundred feet, the pilot leveled off, racing toward the vehicle from behind.
A quarter mile from the little racing anomaly, Josh shouted into the mic, “Roll left. Pass ’em fifty yards off their left side, man.”
Josh knew if these men were armed, the driver would be far less capable of managing a rifle than the
