Vertical Coffin

Chapter 47

Sonny pulled slowly into Cactus West and drove through the little empty village once, taking each street to the end before turning around and retracing the route. After we looked the place over he turned off the engine.

"Wait here," I told him and found a building that had a tumbled down wall I could use to climb up to the roof, one story up. I stood gingerly on the flexing corrugated metal and surveyed the flat, ugly terrain. From up there I had a good view of the desert gunnery range. I could see more vast, blackened napalm drops. The few yucca trees that had survived were also scorched black. I slowly scanned the landscape with the night vision binoculars. The strong lenses pulled the eastern mountain range into focus.

The Dodge was parked about half a mile away. I saw a figure that had to be Smiley, walking around examining things on the ground. He picked up something large and loaded it into the back of his truck. It was hard to make out what he was up to, because he was so far away. The night scope bathed everything in a strange green hue but afforded me a lightened view of the area. As I watched, Smiley got behind the wheel, the truck started up, then turned and headed right toward us.

I scrambled down off the roof and ran back to the sand rail.

"He's coming this way," I shouted.

"The black truck?"

"Yep. Pull this thing around behind that bombed-out shed." I pointed to a structure that had only three sides. "Back it in so you're heading out. Gimme one of those AR-fifteens."

Sonny handed me a carbine with a hundred-round clip, then twisted the ignition wires, restarted the rail, and drove it around to the back side of the nearest building. He put the dune buggy in reverse, backed it in, and shut it down. Suddenly the desert was very still. A second later Sonny ran toward me carrying the second AR-15, jamming in one of the large C-mags and tromboning the slide.

The temperature fluctuation out here was amazing. Over a hundred degrees at noon, it was now close to freezing. The stars twinkled and winked as if somebody had punched a load of buckshot through a dark blue blanket. The quarter moon shed almost no light on the little uninhabited town.

"Let's set up a cross fire," I said.

"I'll take that wall over there." Sonny pointed to a bombed-out structure that would give him waist-high cover if he was standing, and would completely hide him when he kneeled. I picked a little square adobe shed with an open front window and corrugated tin roof. I pointed to it and we split up to take cover.

Way off across the desert we began to hear the sound of the truck approaching, its engine growing louder, growling in low gear. It sounded like he had it in four-wheel drive to keep from sinking into the sand. Less than a minute later headlights appeared around the far end of the last building in Cactus West. The high beams shot light up the center street of the empty town. I was hunkered down under the small window, holding the AR-15 at port arms, listening to his truck engine idling. Then I rose up cautiously and peeked over the top of the window frame.

"I see you, asshole," Smiley shouted, then opened up on my position.

The walls all around me started to disintegrate. I immediately knew from the sound and fury of his weapon that this time he wasn't firing an AK-47. He was shooting at us with a.50-caliber Browning machine gun. The huge antitank exploding rounds were cutting the bricks in half, knocking my cover down around me with devastating efficiency. The.50 slugs contained exploding tips. If he kept this up, my little adobe shack would soon be dust. Sonny opened up on him trying to take some pressure off me.

Smiley laughed maniacally, then turned the weapon on the low wall where Sonny was hiding. I heard the exploding shells tearing Sonny's cover down. I popped up and squeezed off a twenty-round burst. The.223 bullets ripped into the truck, but didn't seem to be doing much damage. Before I could fire a second burst, Smiley spun back and started unloading on my little adobe shack again.

The AR-15 is a good assault rifle, but it's no match for a.50-caliber antitank weapon. Adding to the problem were the truck's high beams that were shining right at us, blinding me.

Sonny made a move away from the crumbled wall, firing the AR-15 as he ran. I popped up and gave him some cover fire. He dove behind an old burned-out van just as Smiley started ripping holes through it. Suddenly he stopped shooting and I heard his engine accelerate. The black truck sped right down Center Street. I caught a glimpse of him as he roared past. His eyes were wide, the cords of his neck bulging. Then his tail lights receded as he headed back out into the desert.

Sonny was on his feet, running toward me. "He's got us outgunned with that thing!"

"Get the rail. We're going after him," I shouted.

Sonny ran for the dune buggy and got it going, while I stood in the center of town with the night vision binoculars up, watching the truck disappear into the dark desert night, trying to see if he made a turn before I lost sight of him. Sonny skidded to a stop beside me.

I jumped into the passenger seat, Sonny popped the clutch, and we shot out into the gunnery range speeding after Smiley.

We were running at breakneck speed across the desert. The moon was almost no help. The ravines and gullies were hard to see and came up fast in the dark. Sonny was not slowing for any of it, swerving at the last minute to miss the few tall cactus plants that had managed to escape the napalm drops in this charred, bombed-out no-man's-land. Occasionally we were airborne, landing in soft sand throwing a rooster tail off both of the giant rear tractor tires. We were slowly gaining on Smiley, who was forced to use four-wheel drive and couldn't run the truck as fast.

We were only about a hundred yards behind him when he turned off his headlights and swerved right, heading down into a gully. Sonny whipped the wheel and followed. We raced along the sandy wash, narrowing the distance between us until we were so close the flying dirt from the truck tires stung our cheeks and filled our eyes with grit. We rounded a turn and roared past a line of trucks and old bulldozers situated to look like a stalled armored column. Each one was identified in large, white letters that read: t-62 or armored troop carrier.

Was this out here for a reason? Why had he turned off his headlights? Why was he leading us here? Suddenly I had a deadly premonition.

Just then, off to our right, a loud siren started blaring in the distance. I turned to see where it was coming from but couldn't locate it. Seconds later, five state-of-the-art FA-18 fighter jets dropped out of the moonlit sky, heading right at us. The Super Hornets roared down toward the column of parked trucks and bulldozers. Just as I looked up, a Maverick missile launched from under the wings of each plane. The pilots were a mile out and I doubted they could even see this little sand rail down here. Had Vincent turned off his headlights so they wouldn't see him in the low light of the quarter moon?

The air-to-ground weapons streaked toward us and five loud metal clicks sounded from above. I'd only heard this once before when I'd done cross-training with the air wing, back in the Marines.

"What's that?" Sonny screamed as we roared along.

"Detonators!" I yelled as the warheads went hot overhead.

The Mavericks vectored in over our shoulders. The first one blew an old dump truck off its axles and ten feet into the air. Little pieces of it rained down all around us. The other four hit seconds later, blowing up a bulldozer and some old trucks.

Smiley had already turned right, driving the Dodge Ram out of the gully. But Sonny and I were stuck in the middle of this night fire mission. Suddenly, five more Mavericks came streaking in. Their detonators clicked on, followed ten seconds later by huge explosions. A bulldozer on our right turned into deadly shrapnel.

I grabbed Sonny and threw him out of our speeding sand rail just as two more missiles struck, blowing up vehicles on both sides of us. We burrowed down into the sand as the four fighters screamed by low overhead, climbed into the night sky, and banked right to come around for a second pass.

"We gotta get outta here now!" I pulled Sonny up and we started running back toward the sand rail, which had come to a rolling stop twenty yards away and was miraculously still upright with the engine idling. There were destroyed garbage trucks and bulldozers blazing all around us while the strike fighters climbed, making a sweeping turn, their wings glinting in the moonlight.

"They're coming around!" I yelled. "Listen for the sound of the detonators. They click on about a hundred yards out. You can hear it happen. Means you got about five seconds to get in a hole somewhere."

Just then, I saw the Dodge nose up to the lip of the wash, fifty yards away. The door slammed, and without warning he was firing the.50-caliber at us again, pinning us down. The huge slugs whined all around, tearing holes in the night and exploding anything they hit.

The Super Hornets had completed their turn and were coming back. Smiley saw them, dove into his truck, and backed up out of range of the missile attack. It gave us a precious few seconds to get out of there.

"Let's go!" I yelled as we jumped into the bucket seats. Sonny put it in gear. We hung a right, climbing up out of the wash just as the FA-18s leveled out and started another pass. I saw more bombs light up and streak out from under the wings heading our way again, then seconds later: click, click, click, click. The detonators snapped on.

"Now!" I yelled.

Sonny and I dove out of the rail while it was still moving and started eating sand.

The trucks and vans parked in the wash exploded like a chain of fireworks, shooting sparks high into the air. We were further out of the fire zone this time, so none of the shrapnel or falling debris landed on us.

The Hornets completed their pass and climbed out again. Our sand rail was again miraculously still unscathed. It had a low center of gravity and wasn't prone to flipping. We raced toward it as the.50-caliber started up again, chopping loudly from a sand hill on the right.

Sonny screamed and went down in a heap. His right leg was missing from the knee down. Blown right off.

"Shit!" I stopped short and kneeled over him.

Smiley's laughter rang out from a distant hillside. The jets roared low overhead, passing over us again before they careened to the left, turning for another pass. Once they were gone, climbing to come around again, I heard Vincent yell:

"Having fun, assholes?"

I took off my belt and cinched it tightly around Sonny's thigh.

"How bad is it?" he asked, lying on his back, straining to look down at his leg.

"It's fine. Just a scratch," I told him, pushing him back down so he couldn't see.

When I had it tied off, I threw him over my shoulder and made a run for the rail. I could barely see Vincent up on the sand hill. He had the big Browning thrown across the hood of his truck and was squeezing off long bursts. The massive exploding slugs dug holes all around me as I threw Sonny into the passenger seat, and jumped behind the wheel. The FA-18s were coming in again, wingtip-to-wingtip. Five more Maverick missiles launched. Smiley backed the truck away fast, out of the line of fire.

I threw the sand rail into gear and floored it, roaring back across the desert toward Cactus City. The buildings loomed on the night horizon as we approached. I looked over my shoulder, but Smiley was nowhere behind me. I needed to get back to the SWAT truck and get a first aid kit for Sonny, then radio for help. With his leg shot off, and his arteries open, even with my belt tourniquet, he would bleed out soon and die. I headed back toward the hole in the fence.

Suddenly, off to my right, another silver dune buggy was heading right at me. Where it had come from I didn't know. The same huge rear tractor tires threw sand out behind as it closed in. The same metal mast jutted up between the seats.

A skinny man wearing a checked shirt and John Deere ball cap was at the wheel. He angled in to head me off, then pulled alongside until we were wheel to wheel, running at breakneck speed. I looked over and saw that he was driving with only one hand. The other was holding a big Army.45 pointed right at me.

He raised the muzzle and fired one shot over my head. My AR-15 was on the floor, banging around uselessly at my feet. I fought the wheel with both hands, flying along half blind at over forty miles an hour.

The man extended his arm and aimed the gun at my head. His meaning was very clear.

Stop or die.