Split Second (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 1)

FORTY-FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS.

That was how much the crate weighed. It was off-loaded from the tractor-trailer by forklift and placed in the back of the smaller box truck. The rear door was closed and secured with two different locks, one a key, the other a combo. Each was rated to be impervious to thieves.

The man climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck, closed the door, started the engine, revved the motor, cranked the AC, and adjusted his seat. He had a long way to drive and not much time to get there. And it was hot as hell. Maybe hotter.

He would have preferred an armed escort, perhaps an Abrams tank for good measure. The air was so hot that waves of visible heat shimmered in spots. The ground was rocky and, in the distance, mountainous. The roads were bad, highway amenities were nonexistent, and he was on his own. He had guns and plenty of ammo. But he was only one man with only one trigger finger.

He no longer wore the uniform. He had taken it off for the last time about an hour ago. He fingered his “new” clothes. They were worn and not overly clean. He pulled out his map and spread it out on the front seat as the tractor-trailer pulled away, the forklift inside the trailer and secured.

He was now alone in the middle of nowhere in a country that was also, largely, in the middle of nowhere.

Other than the ninth century, he thought.

As he stared out the windshield at the imposing terrain, he briefly thought about how he had ended up here. Actually, it was quite straightforward.

He had volunteered for the job.

Back then it had seemed brave, even heroic. Right now, he felt like a fool for accepting a mission that had such a low chance of survival for him. But wasn’t that, by definition, heroic?

Yet did he really want to be a hero?

The answer was irrelevant. He was here. He was alone. He had a job to do and he had better get to it.

In addition to the map he had GPS. Out here, though, it was spotty, as though the satellites above didn’t even know this was a country where people might need to get from point A to point B. Hence the old-fashioned paper version on the front seat.

He put the truck in drive and thought about what was in the crate.

More than two tons of very special cargo. It would carry him a long way. And it better. Without it he was certainly a dead man. Even with it, he might be a dead man.

He wondered again at his sanity for accepting this task. As he drove along the bumpy road he calculated he had twenty hours of hard driving ahead of him if he hoped to get there in time.

They would be waiting for him. The cargo would be transferred and he would be transferred along with it. If they let him live. And that was largely up to him. Communications had been made. Promises given. Alliances formed.

That had all sounded good in the endless meetings with people in shirts and ties, their smartphones jangling nonstop. Everything seemed official, cut and dried, t’s crossed, i’s dotted, signed, sealed, and delivered.

Out here alone with nothing around him except the bleakest landscape one could imagine, it all sounded delusional.

He worked his way toward the mountains in the distance. He carried not one piece of personal information on him. Yet he did have papers that should allow him safe passage through the area.

Should, not would.

If he were stopped before he reached his destination he would have to talk his way out of it if the papers were deemed insufficient. If they asked to see what was in the truck, he had to refuse. If they insisted, he had a little metal box with a black matte finish. It had one red button on it. When he pushed that button he and everything else within a hundred square meters would disappear into vapor.

That was just the way it had to be. He did not want to push the button and be transformed into vapor. What sane person would?

He drove for twelve straight hours and saw not a single living person. He saw one camel and one donkey wandering around. He saw a dead snake. He saw a dead human body, its carcass being reduced to bones by vultures. He was surprised there was only one dead body. Normally, there would have been a lot more. This country had certainly seen its share of slaughter.

During the dozen hours he saw the sun set and then rise again. He was heading east, so he was driving right into it. He lowered the visor on the truck and kept going although he was tired and his eyes were heavy. He played CD after CD of rock music, blasting the truck cab. He played Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” twenty times in a row, as loud as his ears could stand. He smiled every time the baseball announcer’s voice came on. It was a little bit of home out here. Who could have imagined?

Still his eyelids drooped and he kept jolting back awake after his truck had strayed across the road. Luckily, there was no other traffic. There were not many people who would want to live around here. Foreboding would be one way to describe it. Dangerous would be another, more accurate, one.

Dante’s Divine Comedy might be the best description of all. He was clearly not in Paradiso or even Purgatorio. He was smack in the Inferno part. Only he lacked the poet Virgil to show him the way.

Thirteen hours into the trip he grew so tired that he had decided to pull off the road and take a quick nap. He had made good progress and had a little time to spare. But when he saw what was coming his weariness vanished. His nap would have to wait.

The open-bed truck was approaching directly in front of him, the vehicle placed squarely in the center of the road, blocking passage in either direction.

Two men sat in front and three stood in the bed, all holding subguns. They were coming on fast; he had no possible way to avoid them. He had known this might happen.