To add insult to injury, the Sheriff drives the rig off the bridge because that idiot Guereca obviously left the keys in the ignition.
The dust cloud boiling behind the two vehicles as they sped through the fields screened what was happening. Asadullah watched until they were too far to see.
He checked his watch, counting the next minutes as they ticked by, and when the time passed for the chlorine cloud to release, nothing happened. Another two minutes crept by, and still nothing.
Somehow, by some cursed miracle that he couldn’t see, they stopped the tanker from exploding.
Samir and Crystal stood beside the Grand Cherokee in silence, watching Holland alternately pace, then look through the binoculars, then pace again.
Crystal nudged Samir and pointed with her chin as a Presidio Police vehicle passed by several blocks away, then stopped, backed up until it was in the middle of the street, and the officer looked at them through binoculars while he talked on the police radio.
“Asadullah!” Samir said. The terrorist looked at him, then at the policeman.
“Get in,” he said. They sped off the rise as the police cruiser yelped its siren and turned on the red and blue lights.
The Grand Cherokee accelerated west on Apple Street, but not so fast that the policeman couldn’t close the distance. Samir said, “Go faster!”
Holland said, “I will make a turn in two blocks. Right before I do, use the AK to shoot out the police car’s radiator and engine, the tires too.”
Crystal said, ‘Can’t we outrun him?”
“We cannot outrun all of them, but if this one is stopped so he is unable to radio others our location, we might escape.”
Samir readied the Kalashnikov, lowered the passenger window, and when Holland said, “Now”, he pushed his head and shoulders out the window and emptied the full clip into the police sedan.
Bullets blew out headlights, knocked off trim, exploded both front tires, destroyed the radiator to send up a wall of steam, and the last three rounds walked up the windshield to hit the light bar and tear it loose so it hung like a torn ear off the roof as the sedan shuddered to a stop. The officer ducked behind the dash.
Asadullah accelerated south at the next intersection only to see flashing lights far ahead. He turned right again, going west on Bledsoe Boulevard, blowing through stop signs as cars skidded to a stop and honked their horns.
Crystal listened to the sirens getting louder, closer. Asadullah turned south again on Leaton Street, and then west on O’Reilly.
Samir said, “You’re not going over the International Bridge are you?”
Asadullah said, “If we can make it to Mexico, we will not be caught.” He turned on Highway 67 toward the bridge and saw a dozen deputies and police officers near the Port of Entry. They threw a spike strip across the pavement and pointed shoulder weapons at the terrorists.
As the officers watched, the Grand Cherokee suddenly turned off the pavement, tearing through several wire fences and into a large plowed field. The spinning wheels threw up a high rooster tail of dirt as Asadullah drove in an S pattern to increase the dust cloud and hide their escape.
Bullets hit the Jeep’s body, sounding like hail as law enforcement opened up on them. Crystal screamed when a round penetrated the passenger door behind the driver’s side and tore completely through her calf before exiting the far side of the car.
Samir ducked forward as bullets zipped through the interior and the sides. Gray circles the size of quarters appeared on the hood and fenders as dozens of rounds hit the Jeep, popping off the red paint with each impact.
Another round hit the doorframe and sprayed all three in the neck and face with shrapnel.
Asadullah pushed the Jeep harder, keeping the dust cloud between them and the police. Bullets began missing, and left him time to drive out of range of the shooters.
He burst through another wire fence and crossed into brushy pasture. The Jeep slowed as it drug broken cedar posts and fifty feet of barbed wire behind, until the wire caught in brush and pulled off the vehicle with an ear piercing metallic shriek.
The rough and uneven ranchland forced Asadullah to drive over low brush and batter down clumps of head-high mesquite as he dodged large boulders to continue west.
When he reached Bridge Street, Asadullah slid sideways onto it and accelerated south toward the Rio Grande. Where Bridge Street turned left toward Presidio, he turned the steering wheel in the opposite direction and shot off the road through another three-strand barbed wire fence, returning to the brush and rocks, bouncing and sliding and roaring across the rough ranchland like a maniac.
“I see them! They’re coming!” Samir said.
Crystal wrapped her calf with a blue headscarf she carried in her purse and said, “They’re going to kill us!” She looked at Samir with frightened eyes.
Asadullah remained silent as he drove. The Jeep sailed off a shelf of rock and dirt, dropping three feet lower to another level made up of even larger rocks, boulders, and scattered flood debris.
The next drop-off they traversed caused Crystal to yelp as she jerked hard against the seatbelt. Asadullah slowed as he drove the Jeep into the dry gravel and sand bottom of Cibolo Creek. Then he turned toward the Rio Grande, and accelerated.