Ghost Country

Chapter Thirty

Three miles. Three fourths of the town underlined. The going was harder now: their muscles were sore and the channels between the cars lay deep in shadow.

Yuma looked strange in the twilight with no lights coming on. Just low, black rectangles against the dying sky. Nearer, the sea of cars made a single, undefined field of darkness.

The wind was much cooler. Under any other circumstances it would've felt soothing.

Travis stopped. There was no question that Finn and his people had seen them by now. No question that they were coming, that they were out there somewhere among the cars, threading this way.

Paige and Bethany stopped too.

The three of them met one another's eyes. F inn found the desert surprisingly easy to traverse. The inch-thick layer of rubber crumbs, the remnant of a few hundred million tires, made for a soft-and silent-running surface. Finn had incorporated running into his exercise regimen years ago, not long after settling down in D.C. His mile time varied between 6:30 and 6:50. His men, most of them with twenty years on him, were all at least that fast.

They'd completed the southern arm of the sprint and were well along the westbound track now. They had their FLIR goggles on. The desert looked spectral through them. The cars were bluish white, while the passageways between them were shrouded in deep indigo and black. It was like running through a photo negative.

Finn held up a hand and brought the men to a stop.

He set the cylinder down beside a pickup, then climbed onto the sidewall of the truck's bed. He balanced himself against the cab and surveyed the desert.

Christ, they were right there. Six cars west and four cars south. They were crouched low; Finn could see only the reflection of their heat signature against the side of a minivan.

Were they hiding because they'd heard the approach? Finn ruled it out. They couldn't have heard.

The answer was simpler than that. They could no longer find their way in the dark. There was no moon. No light glow bleeding into the sky from distant cities. There was starlight, but starlight was worthless. Human eyes, even dark-adjusted for hours, couldn't see a thing by it. Finn had faced that fact a number of times, in remote places all over the world.

Miss Campbell and the others had stopped because they simply couldn't go on. They were crouched as low as they could get, hoping it was enough.

Finn considered waiting for them to go to sleep. Then they could be executed without even knowing it, and spared the jolt of animal terror that would otherwise mark their final seconds as the shooting started.

He thought of it and then discarded it. They would probably post a watch. That person would sit awake for hours, anxious and miserable, listening for footsteps in the dark. And that was its own kind of pain. No need to prolong it.

He turned to step down from the truck-but stopped.

He'd smelled something. Just briefly. It'd come to him on the breeze, blowing northward over the cars.

He tilted his head up and inhaled. Couldn't detect it again, whatever it was. He tried to place it, based on the trace of it he'd gotten. Somehow it made him think of gun lubricant, but that wasn't quite it.

He took another breath, still couldn't reacquire it, and let it go. Maybe it was the natural odor of tens of millions of cars, mothballed in the desert for all time. It occurred to him only for a second to question that idea-to wonder how any smell at all would still be around after seven decades of sun and wind-and then he stepped down from the pickup and waved the men forward again.

They rounded the truck's front end and went south. Finn stopped them again one channel north of the row the others were crouched in, and led them west. They would drop down into the same pathway as Miss Campbell when they were two cars shy, and simply rush them. It would begin and end in seconds. As close to painless as circumstances afforded. T ravis took the first glove box item from his pocket. He shook it next to his ear. Empty as expected. Even though it was nearly a sealed container, its trace contents would've no doubt evaporated long ago, even in the sun-sheltered interior of a dashboard.

It didn't matter. The item should serve its purpose here, regardless.

He lowered it until it was nearly touching the bed of tire crumbs. F inn brought the men to a halt at the near edge of one of the broad north-south lanes. He could see the victims' heat signature against the minivan, one channel south and two cars past the far side of the lane. He was sure all the men could see them too. No need to plan the final move. They knew what to do now. Finn stepped forward into the lane, and simply got out of their way. He sidestepped to the left. Waved them on.

They advanced, single file, angling across the lane toward the channel in which the victims were crouched. L ambert took point as Finn moved aside. He moved slowly, silently, one step per second. No need to rush.

He came even with the open channel between the last few cars and saw the three targets easily. Two were dead right now if he pulled the trigger. The third-someone small, slender-framed-was crouched at the back corner of the van, halfway around it. That one might create a problem if the shooting started too soon. Might get clear and lead a pursuit among the cars, however brief. Might even return fire-Finn had said these people were armed. Better to take them all in a single action.

Lambert raised his foot to take another step, and heard a faint suction noise from the ground beneath it. He looked down. Saw nothing there in his thermal vision. Looked up again at the targets, still a good thirty feet away. The largest of them had his hand to the ground. Looked like he was holding something with it. F inn took another step aside as the men filed past him. As he did, his heel struck something in the darkness. It made a light, hollow thud. Something big and empty, made of plastic. It spun aside easily under the impact of his foot. He looked but couldn't see anything. Whatever it was, it was the same temperature as the ground.

He stooped, felt for it, found it. A smooth container with a handle.

And a spout.

He drew it toward his face, and his next breath told him exactly what it was, and what he'd smelled from atop the truck bed twenty seconds earlier. T ravis was sure the Bic would work-would spark, anyway. Flint and steel shouldn't have changed at all in Yuma, these past seventy-three years.

He was less sure that the spark would be big enough, or long-lived enough, to ignite the fuel-soaked tire crumbs.

He flicked the sparkwheel with his thumb. It generated a tiny flash that barely escaped the lighter's windscreen-and had no effect on the fuel.

He flicked it again.

Same result. L ambert pressed forward between the cars. Twenty feet from the targets now. Still no clean angle on the little one behind the van.

What the hell was the big one holding?

Lambert could see the guy's thumb moving. Snapping across whatever it was. Each time there was a tiny pinprick of light in his FLIR-enhanced vision. T he third spark did nothing, either. It wasn't working. Not this way.

Travis pressed the end of the lighter directly into the soft tire crumbs. He put the tip of his index finger to the sparkwheel and dropped his shoulder, allowing plenty of slack into his arm. Then he pivoted, swung his entire upper body clockwise, and kept his finger pressed to the wheel until the last instant, so that every ounce of his momentum would come to bear on it. When his fingertip jerked across the wheel, he felt the steel dig into his skin almost hard enough to draw blood.

In the same instant he heard a man shouting, somewhere close by in the darkness. He was saying, "Fall back!" L ambert heard Finn start to shout just as the big target lowered its shoulder and wrenched its torso around.

It was the last thing his FLIR goggles showed him.

A tenth of a second later his vision was washed out by blazing white light, and he felt a wave of heat engulf his legs and waist. T ravis had expected Finn's men to be close. Maybe within a hundred feet. Maybe closer than that.

When the trail of gasoline ignited, revealing the men in a line formation just over a car length away, it was visually startling but not so surprising. Travis threw himself backward, still in his crouch, slamming into Paige and pushing her back with him.

He got his left hand beneath himself on the ground to keep his body from sprawling. He brought his right arm up and around, getting his hand on Paige's shoulder, and the moment they'd cleared the back of the van, he shoved her sideways, propelling her and Bethany behind the vehicle's bulk.

At no point did he take his eyes off of the men in the flames. They may have caught him off guard, but it was clear they'd gotten the worse end of the encounter. They flinched backward, their left hands coming off of the forward grips of their weapons, reaching instinctively for their eyes. The top halves of their faces were hidden by some kind of night-vision goggles, but the lower halves said more than enough about the sudden panic they felt. They were blinded and confused, and a second from now their clothing would be on fire. They were in every kind of trouble.

But they weren't the whole story. Beyond the five who were trapped between the vehicles, Travis could see as many as five more who hadn't yet filed into the narrow space. They were disoriented too, but they weren't immobilized.

They were going to be a problem.

Travis understood all that, even as he shoved Paige, while his own body's momentum continued backward. A millisecond later it shifted beyond the balance point of his left arm beneath him. His feet kicked out of place on the rubber crumbs, and he went down hard on his back, landing on the shotgun he'd slung on his shoulder. F inn had already torn his FLIR headset off by the time the flames erupted, his second shouted word still clearing his mouth. He saw the burst of light forty feet away, and a fraction of a second later the fire was rushing toward him. It didn't just spread along its pathway: it screamed. It looked like a bullet train emerging in flames from a tunnel. Finn only just managed to step clear of it, even with plenty of distance to see it coming.

Lambert and Miller and the three behind them were almost immediately ablaze. Finn saw why. It wasn't just the ground beneath them that was burning-the sides of the vehicles had been doused with gasoline, too. The men were walled in by the inferno.

Even the five who hadn't yet entered the space were flailing, impulsively trying to cover their eyes instead of the FLIR lenses five inches in front of their foreheads.

Finn lunged at them. He swatted their headsets up and off, one after another, and shoved them toward the next channel through the cars.

"It's a fucking diversion!" he screamed. "Take them before they can move on it!" P aige saw Travis land on the Remington, even as she and Bethany fell to the ground behind the van. Paige landed on her ass, twisted hard to the side, slammed both hands to the ground and pushed herself up into another crouch, all in one fluid move. Then she was rising, uncoiling like a spring to full height, her right hand automatically drawing the SIG-Sauer from her waistband.

She heard Finn yelling something about a diversion.

She came out from behind the van, leveling the SIG across the roof of the compact car next to it. She was vaguely aware of Travis right beneath her, trying to roll over and get his hands onto the shotgun, but other things took greater command of her attention.

The fire trail. Surging away across the desert like the exhaust wash of a rocket.

The five men in the flames, their clothing ablaze, their hands grabbing at zippers and buttons, their bodies running into one another and into the cars that boxed them in on the sides.

The other five men. Not on fire. Not even wearing their headsets anymore. Turning and running in this direction, through the nearest free pathway between the vehicles. Finn urging them on.

Finn.

Right there. Just beyond the compact car and the lowrider that faced it. He was thirty feet away, and holding the other cylinder.

For a moment Paige met his eyes. She had the SIG leveled in the neutral space between the charging men and Finn himself. It was like an intersection in time. The last point at which all options remained open.

She felt her training begin to exert itself. The world didn't exactly slow down for her. It just became simple. Very, very simple.

There were targets.

Some of the targets were threats, and some weren't.

Some of the threats were more immediate than others.

The most immediate was the man leading the pack between the cars. Twenty feet away and closing. His MP5 coming up. His eyes on her chest, where the first shots were going to go about a third of a second from now.

Paige made a slight adjustment with her wrist. It took a fourth of a second. She pulled the trigger. The bullet punched into the pack leader's forehead like a finger into stale piecrust, collapsing it inward in big bony shards. His head snapped back but his body continued forward, already dropping, obeying simple laws of physics now instead of whatever was left between his ears.

Four men left. Two of them still plowing forward between the cars.

But not the other two. They were checking their movement. Falling back. Turning their attention on Finn now, defensive. They understood the danger he was in-probably better than he understood it himself.

Finn was still in her field of fire. Still a target.

But there were still threats. Immediate threats.

Paige retargeted from the falling corpse of the first man to the second, five feet behind him. She fired again. Caught him right in front of the ear. The entry wound was small, but in the firelight she saw what had to be the full contents of his head come out the back in a ragged cloud.

Then things began to change very quickly.

The two men closest to Finn got ahold of him. Dragged him down and away. Paige saw their heads whip around, their eyes tracking over their surroundings, looking for the best route to safety-to distance and cover.

At the same time, the third man between the cars was dropping. Dropping faster than the corpses of his friends. Getting down out of her line of fire. He hadn't reached the compact car yet. He was still passing the lowrider. The chasm between it and the next vehicle was shallow, but as Paige lowered the SIG to follow him into it, the compact car's roof slid up into her gunsights, blocking the angle.

She fired anyway. Three shots, as fast as she could pull the trigger. She saw them hit the car's roof, punching through but deflecting wildly as they did. Past the roof's edges she saw the man still coming on, unhindered.

She also saw that she was out of time to try again.

She threw her body sideways in the same quarter second that his return fire cut open the darkness. The windows of the compact car imploded. Paige hit the ground, landing near Bethany again. She hit harder than she wanted to. She'd been forced to put speed before control when she threw herself out of the way, but that was going to cost her now.

Because she wasn't going to get up in time. Wasn't even going to roll herself over into a firing position in time. That would take her a good second and a half, and by then the man would be rounding the back end of the car.

She saw it all play out like a nightmare. Still not slowed down. Just clear. Agonizingly clear. She managed to turn her head, her eyes going all the way to their corners.

The gunman was already there. Clearing the car's rear window and then its trunk. Shouldering the machine gun for the easy kill.

And then his head came apart.

It happened so suddenly that Paige almost missed the muzzle burst from the twelve-gauge, in the darkness behind the car's bumper.

A second later Travis was on his feet, racking another shell into the shotgun's chamber, raising it and sweeping it through an arc above the car. Looking for Finn.

But Finn was long gone. Paige could see it in Travis's eyes.

She became aware of screaming voices-realized she'd been hearing them for seconds already, but hadn't focused on them. They hadn't been part of the simple picture.

She saw Travis turn his eyes to the side of the van, and she realized what the screaming was. The men in the fire. Still alive. Travis swung the Remington their way and emptied its remaining shells into them, its broad pattern allowing for five kills with four shots-two or three shots could've almost done the job.

The screaming stopped.

Travis slung the shotgun. He turned, held out his hands to Paige and Bethany, helped them up.

Paige stared around at the aftermath. The bodies in the flames. The bodies alongside the lowrider. The empty space where Finn and the other two had been.

She looked at the fire trail. No more than fifteen seconds had passed since Travis had lit it, but already it extended hundreds of yards. Paige could see its far end still racing toward its conclusion: the place where the three of them had first begun dumping fuel containers in a thick line between the cars.

Already the flames were spreading away from the original trail. The cars flanking it were becoming engulfed. They were well primed to burn. Engines and tanks and fuel lines caked with long-hardened gas and oil sludge. Interiors of parched foam and cloth.

And then there was the desert floor itself. A thick carpet of crumbled tire rubber, dried and seasoned by seven decades of sun. The blaze was expanding outward through it, mostly north from the fire line in the direction of the breeze, moving at maybe a fourth the speed a person could walk.

But that was deceptive, Paige knew. The fire was going to spread a lot faster than that, once it got going. She could already see the mechanism that would drive it. From the empty window frames of the compact car, burning scraps of upholstery were being channeled up into the night, riding high on thermals and wind, touching down again hundreds of feet to the north. A single glance along the line of burning vehicles showed her the same thing happening everywhere, as windows buckled in the intense heat.

Travis scanned the darkness to the north one last time, cupping his eyes against the glare of the flames.

No sign of Finn or his men.

The crumb-scattered ground around the compact car was beginning to ignite. It was time to get moving.

The three of them shared a look, and a few seconds later they were running south, with the growing fire to light their way.