The Jungle (Oregon Files 8)

Juan had to agree. Something was going to have to give soon. At the next hairpin, they weren’t going to be so lucky.

“Look around,” he called out. “See if there’s anything on this heap we can use.”

They scoured under the seats. Juan wrestled an old trunk from under one of the benches. It was sealed with an iron lock that looked as if it had been forged when his ancestor and namesake was discovering California. He drew his pistol, angled it away, and fired. The bullet shattered the wrought-iron lock and ricocheted harmlessly away.

Inside were several women’s burkas, but judging by the size they were made for men who would use them as disguises. To Cabrillo it was a coward’s trick but an effective one. Under the drab clothing was a suicide belt made up of bricks of plastic explosives, sacks full of metal scrap for shrapnel, and a timer that went high up on the back of the vest so the would-be martyr couldn’t deactivate it. The belt was worn in such a way that the bomber couldn’t take it off.

Juan wondered if this was being delivered to the village for Seti and concluded it probably was. Rage boiled up in him with an acid burn that tightened his throat and tensed up his shoulders so they were as rigid as steel trusses.

“Whatever you’re going to do,” Eddie shouted over the winds that whipped through the bullet-riddled bus, “make it fast. There’s another turn coming.”

Cabrillo and Lawless locked eyes for just a moment, the same thought running through their minds.

“How long, you reckon?” MacD asked.

“Forty-five seconds ought to do it.” Juan manipulated the timer to set it but didn’t activate it until they were almost at the hairpin turn.

Cabrillo hit the button to set the clock in motion and tossed the bomb out a window. Eddie braked hard, fighting the wheel with all his strength since the bus lacked power steering. As before, the road fell away in a sharp S-turn and twisted back on itself.

Gravel spit from under the tires when the bus slewed around the corner, becoming light on its inside wheels from the centripetal force of Seng’s reckless driving. It settled back on its suspension, and he gunned it again.

Just like at the first switchback, the Taliban pickup had slid to a halt so its machine gun could open fire on the bus’s exposed roof. The gunner had just depressed the weapon on its pintle mount so that the barrel was pointed at the bus, and his fingers began exerting the necessary pressure on the trigger, when the bomb, which had landed on the side of the road, unseen in the darkness not four feet away, went up in a mushroom ball of smoke, fire, and steel scrap.

The old Toyota was blown off the road entirely and started sliding down the rocky embankment toward the road below. The gunner had vanished in the blast, while the driver and one of the passengers in the cab were thrown through an open window as the vehicle tumbled onto its roof.

That’s when MacD Lawless either saved all their lives or killed them.

Unlike the others, who were watching the truck to see if it was going to miss the bus as it rolled down the hill, he’d glanced out over the valley and saw an odd ring-shaped flash of light in the sky. The Nintendo Commando back at Creech, behind his computer screen and joysticks, had received authorization to fire his Predator’s Hellfire missile.

Lawless didn’t waste the breath to shout. He raced forward, hurtling past a dazed Franklin Lincoln, and reached the driver’s seat in just over a second. He grabbed the steering wheel before Eddie knew he was even there and cranked it hard over.

The front tire sank into the soft shoulder as the bus left the road, followed quickly by the rear wheels, and then the vehicle rolled onto its side, throwing the occupants onto the right wall. Glass shattered, but before anyone could fall against the hard ground, the bus rolled again onto its roof.

An instant later, the Hellfire, with its eighteen-pound shaped charge, slammed into the mountainside at the exact place the bus would have been. The explosion resembled a miniature volcano, with dust and rubble erupting from the hole it had gouged into the stone.

Like a runaway train, the bus slid down the steep embankment, rattling and jarring its hapless passengers. It crashed into a thicket of bushes just before it was about to fly off the edge of the road where it had been cut into the mountain. Its speed greatly reduced, the bus ponderously rolled onto its side and then crashed to its wheels on the roadbed. After the tumultuous din of the mad slide, the silence was overwhelming.

“Is everyone okay?” Juan called out after getting his wits back. His body ached from head to toe.

“I think I’m dead,” Linc said shakily. “At least that’s the way I feel.”

Cabrillo found a REC7 on the floor and snapped on its powerful tactical light. Linc had a little blood tricking from where his hairline would be if he didn’t keep his head shaved. He spotted Linda emerging from between two of the bench seats. She was massaging her chest.

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“I think my B’s are now A’s.”

Juan next turned the light on Seti. The boy had a knot on his head from where he’d banged it against the wall when the bus first overturned, but the harness they had rigged for him had kept him firmly in his seat and the drugs had shielded him from the horror of what had just happened. He envied the teenager.

“Eddie, are you all right?” Cabrillo asked when he reached the front of the bus. Seng was wedged under the seat near the vehicle’s pedals.

“I have a newfound respect for anything that goes into a clothes dryer,” he said as he pulled himself free.

MacD Lawless lay crumpled in the stairwell. Juan bent to check on him, pressing two fingers against his neck to look for a pulse. He found it, strong and steady, and no sooner had Cabrillo moved his hand away than Lawless began to stir.

“So,” Juan said, “we went from us saving your butt to you saving ours in a little over an hour. I think that might be a record.”

“No offense,” Lawless slurred, “but Ah’d take it all back if Ah didn’t hurt so much.”