53 | DIVERSION
Tyler drove as though the devil was at his back.
The big engine of the Shelby growled like a wildcat as it ate up the highway east toward Kansas.
The road still groaned under the weight of the refugee traffic, but he was no longer concerned about being noticed and used the power of the big car to weave his way along the blacktop, veering onto the left side of the road for long stretches, as there was little oncoming traffic.
The farther he got, the more time he spent running, the better the chances that Dodge and Sam had of making it to Cheyenne.
Even close to Colorado Springs would be good enough, he thought, as Fort Carson would have thrown up a protective screen by now. If they could make it that far, they could probably make it all the way.
He scanned the sky constantly as he drove. Early warning of an attack might be his only chance.
He could dodge; he could weave. If it came to it, he could leap from the car and try to make a run for it.
Deep down, he knew that he had little to no chance of survival if they found him, when they found him. But there was no point in thinking like that.
The first hour of the journey was monotonous, uneventful, and fast. Sam drove and Dodge worked on the laptop.
They passed through a small town, Trinidad, at high speed, ignoring road signs and the startled glares from the people on the streets.
Sam caught a glimpse of one sign as they left the town behind them, curving around to the north: FREEDOM ROAD.
Somehow that seemed weirdly appropriate.
Other towns flashed by: Aguilar, Walsenburg.
But the trouble didn’t start until they got to Pueblo.
The radio suddenly went wild with shouted orders, the sound of heavy machine-gun fire, and the thunder of the rail guns on the Abrams tanks.
The airwaves were full of shouts and screams, and Sam could not tell what was going on or who was winning.
In front of them, the rumble of gunfire sounded above the engine and the radio, and flashes lit the horizon.
There was a long sustained period of heavy firing and a series of booming explosions; then the radio suddenly went quiet.
“That didn’t sound good,” Sam said.
“How far away are we?” Dodge asked.
“Less than an hour,” Sam said. “That’s just a guess, really.”
“This thing go any faster?” Dodge asked, turning back to his work.
“Only if it had wings,” Sam said.
? ? ?
The choppers came out of the south, just as Tyler passed the turnoff to Patterson Crossing. He saw them when they were still dark dots on the fading sky, and he knew what they were before they evolved into their menacing, wasplike shapes.
Helicopters—Apaches.
He stamped on the brakes and swung the car around the intersection, away from the constant stream of traffic on the highway.
Maybe at Patterson Crossing he could find somewhere to hide the Shelby: in a barn, behind a tree, anything.
Here, there was nothing but grassy scrub for miles on either side. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
He urged the car forward, roaring toward the tiny town. They had found him. That was enough, wasn’t it?
That had created the diversion. Now if he could hide the car or just distance himself from it, he might survive after all.
He passed a couple of grain silos and briefly contemplated trying to hide behind them but dismissed the idea.
The Apache helicopters had him in their sights by now. The silos offered no protection.
A large building of some kind loomed to his right.
Perhaps if he could make that …
A flash in his rearview mirror. A smoke trail heading toward him from the first of the two choppers.
Tyler slammed on his brakes.
The rocket must have triangulated on the speed of the car, because it passed well over his head and impacted on the road in front of him, throwing up a storm of tarmac and dirt.
He slued the car to the side, narrowly avoiding the erupting crater, and swung back on the highway behind it.
Time to get out of the car now!
He saw another flash in the mirror and tried the same trick, but the car was moving slower than before. The road erupted just in front of the vehicle, lifting the two front wheels off the road and throwing the car sideways into a drainage ditch.
Tyler saw the ditch approaching in a strange slow motion, and observed, rather than felt, the impact as it hit.
Then came the body slam of the side door, and the world turned to black.
By the time they reached Wigwam, the sound of the explosions ahead of them were no longer distant but were loud crumps that vibrated the Humvee. Sam kept the speed as high as he dared through the township, not wanting to risk an accident.
Dodge closed the laptop and sat back in his seat, his eyes closed for a moment.
“Cheyenne Mountain is supposed to be impregnable, right?” Sam asked.
Dodge nodded.
“Even from a nuclear attack?”
Dodge nodded again but said, “I don’t think it’s us she’s after with the nuclear bombers.”
“No?”
“She’s pouring all her troops into the area to try and stop us. If she bombed Colorado Springs, then she’d be killing them.”
Sam took his eyes off the road for a second and frowned at Dodge. “If not us, then what is the target?”
Dodge shrugged. “My guess is where she’d find the highest concentration of non-neuros. If she can’t get them to join her, then she wants to destroy them. Probably around Wichita, where all the refugee camps are.”
Sam thought of Brenda and Olivia and the two children, and his breath caught in his throat.
“Oh my God,” he said at last.
Tyler was lying in the wreckage of the car. His arm felt broken, and there was blood running down his face.
The pain meant he was alive.
He had survived!
His pistol was jammed under his body, and he struggled to get his weight off it.
Boots were approaching, two pairs.
The pistol was still jammed.
Voices now.
“It’s Agent Tyler. He’s alive.”
“Where are the others?”
“Must have taken a different car, headed somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Tyler’ll know. Get a neuro-headset, quickly.”
Tyler’ll know.
Tyler did know. That knowledge was in his brain, and if they got it out, then they’d know where to find Sam and Dodge.
The pistol came free from under his body, and he raised it, slowly, past his hip, which was surely also broken. Past his shoulder and his neck.
He raised the pistol to his head and flicked off the safety.
But suddenly there was a boot on his wrist, and the pistol was wrenched out of his hand.
“Not so fast, Agent Tyler.”