Offworld (29 page)

"Let's hope so."

Once they were westbound on Highway 10 again, Chris fingered
his earpiece.

"So much for the cover of night," he said, fully aware that Owen
might not be the only person who was listening. The horizon behind
them was already changing from black to dark blue, signaling the
earliest signs of the rising sun.

"They will expect us to return to the highway," Owen replied.
"The smart move would be to seek refuge elsewhere."

"It'll have to wait till we get off this," said Chris as the two vehicles
approached the massive Calcasieu River High Bridge, a sprawling
eight-hundred-foot bridge that reached across the river. Shaped like a
flattened A, the bridge's peak was near its center, cresting one hundred
and forty feet above the water. There was no leaving the bridge once
on it, until making it to the other end.

They were ascending the eastern side of the bridge, headed toward
the peak, when a row of headlights switched on at the bridge's apex,
blocking their path. There were at least four jeeps, parked shoulder to
shoulder, with little to no room in between. Across the three-foot-high
median another four jeeps waited in the eastbound lane.

Chris glanced in his rearview mirror, where four more of the
jeeps approached from behind.

They'd driven straight into a trap.

Chris knew when he was out of his depth. Fighter planes and
rockets were one thing, but this ...

If anyone's listening up there ... A little help?

Please?

"Beech? Any ideas?"

"Several. But this one should do," Owen replied, and Chris watched
as Owen accelerated, swerving fast around Chris and Trisha in the
minivan and bearing down full bore on the black jeeps several hundred feet ahead.

Owen poured on the speed, and Chris knew what was about to
happen. Owen was going to sacrifice the pickup truck to punch a
hole for Trisha and Chris to pass through. Chris wasn't sure where
that left Owen and Mae, but there was no time to consider it. Owen
was almost there.

Realizing this, Chris increased his pace so he could speed the
van through the gap Owen was about to create.

But at the moment Chris was certain the spectacular crash would come, Owen swerved the truck to the right. Thanks to a maneuver
too fast for Chris to follow, the truck was suddenly up on its left two
wheels. A high cement sidewalk, no more than three feet wide and a
foot off the ground, ran the outside length of the bridge, and Owen
managed to bring the truck, barreling along almost horizontally, onto
that raised sidewalk. The side of the truck's cab scraped along the metal
barrier on the outside edge of the bridge, spitting sparks and sending
a tremendous screech into the night, but Owen never slowed.

The pickup squeezed through a space between the jeep and the
bridge without slowing, and once it had sped past, it tipped hack on
all four wheels and bolted forward until the taillights vanished out
of Chris' sight below the arc of the bridge.

A stunned silence filled the interior of the van. Owens move had
happened so fast that Chris and Trisha barely had time to react, and now
both sat with mouths agape inside the van, which Chris had screeched
to a halt a few hundred feet before the waiting barricade.

"Whoa," whispered Chris.

"He doesn't expect us to do that, does he?" asked Trisha, eyes
wide.

Chris couldn't think of a reply, gazing in his rearview mirror as
the black vehicles coming up behind them closed the gap and stopped
about fifty feet hack.

Chris' mind scanned for any ideas that could get them out of this,
though none emerged but the insane or the impossible.

"We could jump. Out over the side, in the water," Trisha offered.

Chris shook his head in tiny movements. "The water's over a hundred feet below us. I don't know how deep this river is, do you?"

She glanced hack and forth between the jeeps in front of them
and the ones behind.

There was simply nothing to be done. They were captured.

But he wasn't about to make it easy for their captors.

"GET OUT OF THE VAN," announced a voice over some sort of
loudspeaker. It was a rough, growl-like male voice.

"Not a chance," Chris replied, though only he and Trisha could
hear it.

"Maybe they just want to talk," Trisha whispered.

"Or maybe they have three heads," he shot back.

A driver's door opened on one of the jeeps behind them. Before
he could see who got out, Chris heard a thundering noise from
somewhere out of sight.

Something big. And it was coming toward them.

They couldn't see it at first, but soon the bright headlights of a
tractor-trailer crested the bridge's high point from behind the jeeps
blocking their way, and slammed into the rear end of the one on the
far left, near the central barrier.

The jeep was crushed like a soda can, slamming forward at a
dangerous speed. In seconds it would pass beside Chris and Trisha's
van on their left. But before the jeep and the tractor-trailer reached
the van, the rig's door opened and Owen jumped out, tucking into
a controlled roll.

"Go!" shouted Owen as he sprang to his feet.

Chris shoved his gearshift into drive and stomped on the accelerator. He rushed toward Owen, but the man was already moving,
using his momentum to charge toward the van. Chris and Trisha
both understood what needed to happen next, and Trisha unbuckled
herself and leaned back to slide open the van's side door.

As the van passed Owen's line of entry, he leaped cleanly into
the hack of the van and shoved the door shut.

"Go, Chris!" he shouted again, and Chris hit the gas, heading
straight for the gap Owen had opened for him. Behind them the
still-charging tractor-trailer and crushed jeep slammed into the wall
of vehicles that had been blocking their retreat. The sound was
deafening.

"Where's Mae?" Chris barked.

Just ahead," Owen replied. "I left her in the pickup."

"You're insane!" Trisha yelled, her neck craned around to see Owen in the back seat. "How did you do that back there? And where
did you get the eighteen-wheeler?"

"Saw it parked on the side of the road, just there-where Mae's
waiting. Had a fifty-fifty chance it would still have juice. Driver must've
been sleeping in the back on D-Day, 'cause the whole thing was
powered down," he said, and Chris imagined his friend was probably
bruised and scratched raw in several places from jumping clear of the
truck, but he didn't even seem to be breathing hard.

"Chris," Owen said urgently, "we have no time. Slow down, but
don't stop when you reach the pickup. We'll be right behind you."
He slid open the side door once more.

Chris followed Owen's request, and Owen jumped from the moving van and kept running at relatively the same pace as the vehicle.
Mae waited in the passenger's seat of the pickup, the driver's door
open and the engine already running. Owen hopped in, slammed
shut the door, and mashed down the accelerator until the engine
howled in disapproval.

Burke had no idea where to go. Owen had suggested earlier that
they get off Highway 10, but then what? Where could they go?

Without question, they had to get to Houston. If for no other
reason than that these people-whoever they were-were trying
to keep them from it. Chris had never taken lightly to being told he
couldn't do something.

"What's that?" Trisha wondered aloud. She pointed ahead, just
to the right of the highway where a handful of fires burned very
high above the ground. There were no streetlights or billboards or
anything else illuminated, so not much could be seen about the
area surrounding the fires. It almost looked like the plumes were
suspended in midair.

"I think it's an oil refinery," he replied, squinting as they came
closer. "Probably burning out of control."

He suddenly glanced at Trisha, his brow furrowed.

Without warning he turned from the highway and made for the
structure in question. Owen followed in the truck.

"What are we doing?" asked Trisha. He glanced at her; she still
had black shadows beneath her eyes, yet the events of the last few
minutes had infused her with adrenaline so that she was as alert as
he was.

"You know how big and tangled a typical oil refinery is? Pipes
and beams and machinery," he explained. "There must be a thousand
places to hide in there, especially in the dark."

The place was murky and dangerous, a vast tangle of bizarre
industrial structures that felt like a tiny rectangular city all its own,
situated alongside Highway 10. It looked so old that Chris was amazed
it could still be in use. Even though gasoline-powered vehicles had
become sparse, crude still was a core component of any number of
petroleum-basecl products.

They passed rows of enormously wide, round storage tanks where
gasoline, kerosene, and other refined yields were stored before being
shipped to customers. Thick, fat pipes led in all directions, and railroad tracks ran parallel to Highway 10, just inside the property. Chris
made for the dozens of tall silo-like distillation columns dotting the
central part of the facility like miniature skyscrapers, where crude
oil was separated into usable types of chemical compounds. The
fires they'd seen from the road were randomly lit atop five of these
skinny columns, as if Paul Bunyan's birthday candles were waiting
to he blown out.

The age of the facility and lack of personnel had combined to
create a disastrous mess, with crude oil spilled out on the ground
here and there, pipes leaking gasoline and other chemicals, and a
few small ground fires burning at random.

Chris went off-road, precariously aiming at the central core of the
refinery, where the distillation columns were surrounded by metal scaffoldings. These held power lines and were assembled in a disjointed mess like a giant Erector set. The entire place was all but pitch-black,
having lost electrical power probably weeks ago, Chris guessed.

It was like trying to blindly feel one's way through an obstacle
course. They had to slow to a crawl, barely dodging columns and
metal struts and large spherical boilers, which were only visible when
they were just a few dozen yards out. Finally, somewhere near the
very center, Chris brought the van to a stop and turned off the engine.
Owen glided in right behind him and did likewise.

"They will find us here," Owen said quietly in his ear.

Chris did not reply.

His thoughts turned to Mae, alone in the truck with Owen, who'd
just done some really incredible-if terrifying-things. He wondered
how she was weathering it, and reprimanded himself for not suggesting she join him and Trisha in the van.

A thunder of engines in the distance cut his thoughts short.

Trisha deflated next to him. "That didn't take long."

"Must've seen our brake lights," Chris whispered, frowning.

Somewhere in the distance a huge fireball went up. They could
see it through the tangled web of pipes and beams. The fire was more
than fifty feet wide, billowing out and then up. It had just flashed
into existence long enough to flash out again. The ground trembled
in response to the blast, and they felt it a full second after the fireball
went out. Another explosion followed, this one two hundred meters
from the last. And another.

"They're taking out the storage tanks," Owen explained through
the radio, with little thought of maintaining the secret of their hiding
place anymore. "Probably with grenades."

"Trying to flush us out," Chris said. It was an effective method.
He'd used something like it years ago as a fighter pilot during a wartime raid on an enemy compound. Only he'd done it with missiles
fired from the air.

More explosions rocked the refinery, and soon the blasts were
coming faster, and in greater numbers, from all directions. Chris and Trisha could barely keep up, whipping their heads about, catching
glimpses of the red and orange blasts, from forward and behind, or
either side. The jeeps had spread out fast, and appeared to be closing
in on them from all sides, burning everything in their path as they
went. The ground shook with every blast, and Chris could practically
feel the heat growing as the explosions came nearer.

"There must be dozens of them," whispered Trisha. At least."

"Which is more than they initially led us to believe," Chris
agreed.

"They've got military training," Trisha went on. "They're using
coordinated tactics."

Chris nodded, watching the blasts and trying to come up with
their next move.

"You think they're responsible for D-Day?" she asked.

"Either that or they're more leftovers like Mae."

The explosions were less than five hundred meters out and
approaching fast. Chris' foot was itchy and eager to stomp.

"We can't stay here, Chris," said Trisha.

He switched on the van's engine. Through the dark pipes and
structures, fireballs illuminated the background enough that he could
see the moving silhouettes of six or seven jeeps turning in their
direction.