I glanced back in the mirror and saw spiderweb cracks covering the windshield with two gaping holes directly in front of the driver's seat. The truck had slowed and then swayed from left to right and back again. Slowly at first, and then more violently, it swerved, even as the truck continued to shed its speed. Eventually the momentum of the truck became too much and, almost as if it was in slow motion, it turned sideways and then rolled over, spinning from its side to its roof and eventually landing on its other side.
All three of us let out a massive cheer as the truck flipped, but our jubilation died when the headlights of the second truck appeared from behind the first and fixated on us.
"That's one, do you think you could do that again?" I asked, impressed at how efficient Jaye was with a gun.
"We're about to find out, here they come," she said, taking aim again.
The second truck did not make the same mistake as the first one. They came in hot, but instead of ramming us straight on from behind, the truck sped past our rear bumper and pulled up alongside us on the driver's side. There, in the passenger seat, was Bardales himself, glaring down at us.
Jaye had followed the cab of the truck with her pistol, aiming over my head as I continued to drive. She let out a deep rumbling growl and unloaded half a dozen shots into the passenger door and the roof of the cab. Bardales had seen the attack coming and ducked down behind the safety of the passenger door just in time. A couple of seconds later he reappeared in the window, a vicious snarl on his bearded face.
Jaye took aim again. Bardales pulled his own pistol out and aimed back at us. Before either of them could fire, however, the driver of the truck jerked the wheel and sideswiped us. Our jeep jumped violently to the right, and Jaye's arm flailed, slapping against the steel roll-bar. Her pistol flew away into the night. Bardales, too, was caught off guard and reeled from the impact, pulling his arm back into the cab. He too had lost his gun in the collision.
Still locked in a struggle against the military truck, I turned the wheel hard to the left to counter the angle that they were forcing us on. We bumped and rubbed against the bigger vehicle. The whole driver side of our Jeep was buckling and crumpling. The smell of burning rubber as our tires rubbed filled the air.
We were fighting a losing battle. The massive truck's weight was too much for the smaller jeep, and it was much more robustly built. Despite my efforts, we continued to get pushed closer and closer to the cliff-like drop off to our right. Realizing that sending us over the edge was their plan, I stomped on the brakes with all my weight.
Our sudden deceleration caught the other driver unaware, and the truck shot off to the right, ripping the driver's side front fender off our Jeep. The driver barely regained control before he ran off the side of the mountain. Bardales' vehicle swayed back and forth, now directly in front of us. The truck's brake lights glowed like evil red embers as the driver slowed down enough to regain control. I looked from the brake lights to the opening in the back of the truck, and that was when I realized I had made a mistake. Four men were staring out of the back, their automatic rifles all aimed at us.
I stayed on the brakes until I came to a complete stop, and then without hesitating, I slammed the gear selector into first and whipped the Jeep around, heading back up the mountain. Again, the driver of the transport truck was slow to realize the situation, and we were already speeding up by the time he got the cumbersome vehicle turned around.
"I hope you've got a plan," Jaye said next to me.
"I'm making this up as I go."
"That's what I was afraid of."
"If you have any bright ideas, please, by all means, let me know."
"Heading back to a military base wouldn't be one of them," she said.
She had a point. Bardales would have left many of his troops behind at the camp. "Hold on," I warned Jaye and Miles.
I cut the wheel hard over again, working the brake and gas, while simultaneously shifting to a lower gear. Even after all the abuse and subsequent damage I had inflicted upon the old off-road vehicle, it responded perfectly to my demands. The back wheels lost and then regained traction exactly when I wanted them to, and the engine remained strong, never bogging down or hesitating.
The whole maneuver only took a couple of seconds and we were again rocketing down the dirt road directly into a pair of incoming headlights.
"Uh, Chase?" Jaye asked nervously.
"You two might want to put your seatbelts on," I advised, aiming for the passenger-side headlight of the oncoming truck and reaching for my lap belt.
Out of my peripheral vision, I could see Jaye scrambling to find her seatbelt. I could only assume that Miles was doing the same in the backseat. Dark jungle flashed by us in a blur. I risked a glance down at the speedometer and saw that we were moving at forty-five miles an hour, though in the darkness and on this bumpy road it felt more like seventy.
The headlights grew closer at an alarming speed, and I braced myself for the crash. I kept the wheel steady, aiming for the passenger headlight, and held my breath while I ignored the self-preservation part of my brain
