Turning toward Opal, he shouted “Go—”
—but she was no longer there. Having evidently scooted under the flatbed as the first pipes came down, she was now sprinting downhill in the immediate, dust-roiling wake of the storm crest of tumbling, sometimes high-bouncing plastic tubes. Caine picked up the small crowbar, ran back around the corner of the flatbed, heading for the first car.
The first vehicle tried braking but the pipes were under its wheels, whanging off the windshield as it lost control and skittered into the drainage ditch. Caine stretched his legs and body toward it—and, through the dust, saw a smallish figure sprinting straight toward the side of the listing vehicle. The front passenger-side door started to open. Without breaking stride, the smallish figure launched into a long, sideways leap. Just as a head and shoulders started to emerge from the car, the silhouette crashed into the door like a pile driver, feet first. The door slammed back; a sickening crunch was audible over the tumult of tumbling pipes. The door rebounded from crushing the passenger, became a springboard which launched the silhouette back in the direction from which she had come. And gone: into the dust.
But, now almost at the car and looking for any weapon that the crushed man might have dropped, Caine saw the rear passenger door opening. Still running, he flung the crowbar overhand, went into a long leaping dive—
—saw the spinning, shining tool hit the door’s window, glass shattering inward—
—and then he landed just in front of the vehicle. He immediately snap-rolled under it.
There were sounds of blows, blocks, and grunts over on the driver’s side: Opal going after the wheelman, probably. And now, the rear passenger door resumed opening, crashing back on its hinges, unleashing curses and a pair of feet in cheap leather shoes.
Five feet to the left side of those shoes—lying on the ground just beyond the rim of the right wheel well—was what Caine had been hoping to find: the pistol formerly carried by the man Opal had crushed in the door. Caine grabbed the weapon, realizing that, if he were seen doing so, he was now probably living the last few seconds of his life.
But the man in the cheap shoes was exiting the rear passenger door more cautiously, had evidently not yet moved to a point where he could see around his own door to the ground near the front of the vehicle.
Caine wasn’t sure of the make of the weapon—maybe an older Sig Sauer—but it was clearly chambered for caseless ammunition: there was no ejection port.
The man’s feet moved swiftly forward alongside the vehicle, drew abreast of the wheel well, crept more cautiously as they neared the front bumper. One more step and he’d discover that the dim figure that had thrown the crowbar at him was no longer hidden there. An explosion—muffled by distance—made him pause a moment.
Caine checked the safety: off. The weapon was cocked. Steadying it with two hands, he aimed the pistol at a point just beyond the front right tire.
The man’s cheap shoes tensed, flexed—and then he jumped around the front fender of the vehicle, evidently in a crouch. This move put his feet and ankles in the pistol’s gunsights: Caine squeezed the trigger and kept squeezing.
Other than the expected roar of the gun, the first split second was utterly surreal: there was a misty blast of blood from the ankle only three feet in front of Caine, flying specks of flesh and bone—and no other sound or movement. Then, as the pistol barked and jumped again, a stunned animal howl harmonized with it, and the ankle and foot buckled. More of the man appeared, falling into the gunsights. Caine kept firing, one part of him stunned by what he was doing, the other part coolly wondering how many rounds were in the weapon.
The bullets made a nasty, meat-ripping sound: the man struggled to rise—another bullet hit him. He flinched—another bullet—then quaked—another bullet—and collapsed into stillness. One last bullet.
A thump to the left; Caine rolled to face in that direction, and found a sunglassed man—the driver?—staring straight at him, right cheek flush against the cracked macadam. However, he was also lying with the back of his jacket facing Caine—meaning that his head was apparently on backwards. His neck bulged hideously, twisted: Opal’s handiwork.
Link up with her, gather weapons, look for radios. Then, suppress—or take out—the next carload of them.
Caine rolled toward the man with the rear-facing head, squirmed out over him and a clutch of tangled PVC pipes. No sign of Opal. Damn. Maybe she’s already moved on to engage—
Caine heard motion behind him, turned, saw his death in the black hole of a gun muzzle that was coming around the front of the vehicle, almost trained on him. He began bringing his own weapon around toward the new gunman, who had evidently exited the back of the car from the same side as the one with the cheap shoes. And Caine knew: I won’t make it; he’s going to get me.