Pressing one hand to his bleeding neck, Linc had the wherewithal to grab Linda’s ankles when Juan spun the wheel to put the armored side of the Pig between them and the shooter. He barely kept her from tumbling to the road.
“You’re hit,” she said when she saw the blood oozing through his fingers.
“I’ve cut myself worse shaving in the morning,” Linc deadpanned. However, he didn’t demur when Linda unclipped a first-aid kit stored under her side of the bench seat.
Cabrillo had spun the Pig in a tight turn to line up the underslung .30 caliber for another go. Linda’s actions had bought them the few seconds they had needed. Her cover fire had pinned the gunman behind the cruiser once again, and only now was he reaching back in to work the radio.
Mark opened fire as soon as he had a shot. He wasn’t aiming for the driver’s compartment. The shooter was too well protected. Instead, Mark riddled the rear of the vehicle until gasoline gushed from the perforated tank. Because every seventh round was a magnesium-tipped tracer, it took only a second-long burst to ignite the growing lake. Flame blossomed from under the car in a concussive whoosh that was strong enough to lift the car’s rear end off the asphalt. The Libyan started running for the desert but wasn’t fast enough.
The mixture of fuel and air in the tank exploded spectacularly, flipping the car into the air, its undercarriage burning like a meteor as it cartwheeled. It crashed into the dirt a few feet from the fleeing gunman and kicked up a flaming spray of dust that engulfed the man. When it cleared, his clothes were burning, flaring like a torch. He dropped to the ground, trying to smother the flames, but he was soaked in gasoline and the fire refused to die.
Murph sent another burst from the machine gun into him. It was a mercy shot.
“Where’s the last guy?” Juan shouted.
“I think he took off into the desert,” Linc said. Linda had a gauze pad taped to his neck and was cleaning the blood from her hands.
Cabrillo cursed.
It was only a matter of time before another vehicle came along. But he had no choice. They couldn’t afford to leave any witnesses behind. He heaved the wheel over and left the road.
The Pig’s rugged suspension handled the soft sand with ease, and soon they were barreling along at forty miles per hour. The gunman’s tracks were clearly visible in the beam of the halogen lamps, widely spaced divots that told him their guy was running with everything he had.
It took only another minute to spot the corrupt police officer sprinting like a startled hare. Even with the big truck bearing down on him, he made no effort to surrender. He just kept running. Juan brought the Pig up right on his heels so he would feel the engine heat burning into his back.
“What are we going to do with him?” Mark asked. There was genuine concern in his voice.
Juan didn’t answer for a second. He’d seen and caused death in a hundred forms but hated killing in cold blood. He’d done it before, more times than he cared to think about, but he knew every time he did he lost a little more of his soul. He wished the Libyan would turn and fire at them, but Juan could see the man had abandoned his weapon back at the checkpoint. The smart thing would be to run him over and be done with it.
Cabrillo’s ankle flexed to gun the engine and then relaxed again. There had to be another way. The gunman suddenly tried to dodge out of the way of the Pig. He lost his footing in the soft sand and went down. Juan slammed the brakes and turned the wheel sharply, skidding the truck in a desperate bid to avoid running the guy over. All four of them in the cab felt the impact.
Before the Pig had settled on its suspension, Juan had his door open and was jumping to the ground. He bent over the body. A quick glance told him everything he neede
d to know. He climbed back into the truck, his mouth a tight, fixed line.
Cabrillo focused his mind on the image of the man firing at the Pig, of Linda hanging out the window, of the flesh wound in Linc’s neck, but nothing he knew would make him feel better about what had just happened. When they regained the road, he drove for the civilian vehicle. The one police cruiser was still burning.
Juan took back his pistol from Linda, rammed home a fresh magazine, and racked the slide. He jumped down from the cab, keeping the weapon pointed in a two-handed combat grip, swinging from one mangled police car to the next. He reached into the first one and yanked the radio microphone from its attachment point and tossed it into the desert, in case a Good Samaritan came along and wanted to call the authorities. The second would be a melted puddle of plastic, so he ignored it.
He approached the family sedan, taking a deep breath as he leaned in the window. The smell of blood was a coppery film that coated the back of his throat. The husband and wife, as well as their two children, were dead. The only solace he could find was the bullet wounds had been instantly fatal. That did nothing to lessen his anger at the senseless slaughter. He noticed a slim wallet sitting on the father’s lap. Ignoring the blood splatter, he grabbed it. The driver’s name was Abdul Mohammad. He had lived in Tripoli, and, according to his ID card, had been a high school teacher. Also in the wallet Juan found just a couple of dinar.
He didn’t feel so bad about running down the fourth gunman.
The young family had died because they were too poor to pay a bribe.
TWELVE
SEVEN MONOTONOUS HOURS PASSED AS THE TEAM TRAVELED across the desert. Linc slept most of the time, his big body swaying to the rhythms of the Pig churning over the rough terrain. Linda had offered to drive for a while, but Cabrillo declined. He needed to keep focused and out of his head. Every time the image of the slaughtered family crept to the forefront of his mind, his knuckles would blanch as he gripped the steering wheel.
Mark and Eric Stone had done a fantastic job mapping their route through the mountains using the satellite photos, and the truck had delivered more than Max had promised. The engine barely strained going up the steepest inclines, and her brakes were more than ample to keep the Pig under control during the descents. Max Hanley had even rigged chains that could be lowered behind the rear tires like long mud flaps. The chains dragged across the ground and obliterated any sign of the vehicle’s passage.
There was little fear they would be tracked from the checkpoint. However, there was a palpable sense of urgency. It wouldn’t take the Libyan authorities long to figure out what had happened on the highway, and they would want to catch the people who killed the cops, corrupt or not.
Juan received regular updates from Max aboard the Oregon. The Navy was rotating a squadron of E-2C Hawkeyes thirty miles off the coast. The propeller-driven, early-warning aircraft were keeping an eye on Lybia’s search-and-rescue efforts. These reports were shared with Cabrillo, so as the dawn flared and aircraft of the Libyan SAR teams once again took to the skies he knew if any were getting close to their location.
So far they had been in the clear. Once again the Libyans were concentrating their efforts more than a hundred miles from the crash site.
“GPS puts us two klicks from the wreckage,” Mark said. “Stoney and I spotted a good place to hide the Pig near here.”