Fire with Fire(66)

He tried to countersteer, but the tires didn’t bite; driving on the slick macadam was like driving on a sheet of water. They skitter-screeched forward at an angle, heading straight for the flatbed. Opal snapped forward at the waist, hands over her head: he felt a flash of envy for the speed of her reflex, started into the same position—

He slammed into, then bounced back from, the dashboard. The shattering of glass and squeals of twisted metal were loud in his ears. The car continued to move, but no longer forward; it slung him sideways as it completed its 180-degree counter-clockwise spin with a crunch against the side of flatbed, its nose pointed uphill. The PVC pipes rattled hollowly, shifted slightly toward the roof of the car; angry, drifting spirits of agitated dust swirled around them.

“You okay?” Caine dabbed a finger at his forehead; his knuckle came away shining dark red.

Opal nodded, hand tucked down against her right side. “Jesus, you really are a bad driver.”

“Sorry. Can I help—?”

“No, I’m fine. And I wasn’t serious about your driving. Lighten up: this road is a death trap.”

“Can you move?”

“I said I was fine—but this door’s mashed in and pinched against the flatbed. I’ll have to get out the driver’s side.”

Caine opened his door, assessed the damage as Opal clambered out: the car wasn’t going anywhere soon. Its sideways spin had, fortunately, brought it across the road and away from the precipitous ledge, but had also sent it straight into the protruding corner of the low-slung flatbed. The right front wheel had received the full brunt of the edge-on impact: the flatbed’s corner had crumpled the car’s front quarter panel and struts, sliced clean through the tire, and had half-bisected the wheel itself.

“Well, at least we’ve got company coming.” Opal stepped around to the rear of the car. “Maybe they’ll give us a lift.” As the two off-road vehicles rose into view over a hump in the road six hundred meters downslope, she started waving her arms in a slow cycle: wide arms to crossed arms and back again.

The reaction of the vehicles was peculiar; whereas most motorists confronted with an accident slow down, these sped up, the second vehicle moving out of line and taking up a flanking position in the other lane. Caine, who was moving toward the trunk, stopped: Something’s wrong—

—and his world slammed into slow motion, the way it did when he felt, more than saw, a threat approaching. The vehicles were moving in concert; their actions were sure, swift, coordinated. And their passengers, although he could barely make out silhouettes, were all dark, broad-shouldered masses: not a rabble of variously-aged, -dressed, and -shaped tourists. Not tourists—

“Get behind the flatbed—now.” He moved past Opal to the trunk.

“What are you talki—?”

“Just do it.” He popped the trunk, pulled up the liner.

Opal frowned at him, mouth open to object, then heard the revving engines of the closing vehicles, looked over in their direction: her eyes widened. She turned and sprinted around the corner of the truck.

Caine had found the small toolkit for changing flats, followed around after Opal—and found her crouched low, looking out under the long expanse of carrier bed by peering around the tires. She glanced up at him: he held out the toolkit, proffering the half-sized crowbar-wrench combination. She shook her head. “Would only slow me down.”

Caine looked at the flatbed, the pipes, the shovel, the weathered straps, fraying where their fabric attached to the buckles. Yeah, that might work.

Opal was still looking at him. “Now what?”

The engines were coming markedly closer. Twenty-five seconds, maybe thirty—

“Can you fight?”

“Better than you can breathe.”

Well, always time for a little bravado. He picked up the shovel, tested the heft. “I think I can take out the first car—at least long enough for us to close in and have a fighting chance.”

“To do what?”

“Take some down and get their guns.” He cocked the shovel back like a baseball bat, angled for an edge-on swing. “Tell me when they’re within one hundred meters.”

“Uh—now!”

He swung: the edge of the shovel bit into the fraying uphill strap, just below the buckle, sliced through about half of it. Shit—and he cocked the shovel back, swung again.

The tattered fibers were already groaning—the PVC pipes pulling against them—when the shovel hit and sheared the rest of the strap. Pipes started cascading off the other, downhill side of the flatbed. Caine jammed the point of the shovel under the bottom-most pipe and levered upward, throwing his whole weight down upon the tool’s handle. The spatter of falling pipes became a hollow-sounding avalanche.