H10N1 (13 page)

“In case we need to get away fast.”

Rick nodded like he’d been thinking the same thing. They made another reconnaissance on foot, then parked four guns and two knives on a picnic table.

She told him he had lunch duty since she’d fixed breakfast. While Rick cooked, Sanchez sat on top of the picnic table, her feet on the bench, the map book in her lap. Instead of the page for Arizona, she was studying the highway grid for the entire United States.

When the idea popped into his head, Rick thought for sure he’d lost his mind. But before he even had a chance to put on the brakes, the words were spewing out of his mouth.

“Look, Doc.” He tapped on the page. “You’ve got to take I-40 right through Little Rock. Why don’t you come with me to Devin’s place? You can drop me off and take the van.”

What did he just say?

“No thanks,” she replied.

Now he knew he’d lost it, because a rational man would be grateful for the easy escape from his lunacy. But as soon as she refused him, he had a hundred reasons why she couldn’t.

“Come on, you’ve got to show Judith how to give me the rabies shots. And how to change my bandages.”

Sanchez made a little pooh-pooh face.

“Doesn’t someone have to take the stitches out?” he asked.

“I figured you could just chew them off when they started itching.”

“Line drive, Doc. Right between my legs.” The woman was a sassy one. Bet she liked to get rough when she wrangled under the sheets.

Digging his Swiss army knife out of his pocket, he opened the meal pouches. Beef and noodles slithered onto the foil trays.

“Besides, what are we going to do with this big hog? Turn it into a chicken coop?”

“I’m not taking the van,” she insisted.

It was a red flag in his face. “Listen, we’ll get there in time for dinner. I bet they’ve got fresh tomatoes on the vine as big as my fist. Green beans. Summer squash. Wouldn’t you like some real food before you get back on the road tomorrow?”

Sanchez got this dreamy look on her face. It wasn’t his good looks or boyish charm that won her over, it was a ripe tomato. Rick stabbed at a chunk of beef.

“What?” she said. “Aren’t you going to say a blessing for this bountiful meal?”

Rick smiled as he remembered Bobby Ray and Lily.

“Those two were a trip, weren’t they?” Then before Rick blundered his way into another argument, he asked, “Are you into that whole religious thing?”

“No.” Sanchez shook her head and smiled. “But I kind of liked that part about us being sent to help.” She took a bite of food and chewed. “My grandmother was very religious, so I tried it when I was younger. She had this conch shell her mother had given her. You know, the kind where you hold it to your ear and hear the ocean? Only my Abuela said it was angels whispering. She told me if I listened hard enough, I’d hear their message.

“For years, I listened to that shell. But I never got any message. As I got older, I had a hard time understanding how God was this benevolent deity who had his eye on the sparrow. Why wasn’t it on sick children?”

Relieved of prayer duty, Rick plowed into his own meal. “Remember that saying, ‘Drugs are for people who can’t handle reality’? That’s what I think of religion. Just another drug.”

She nodded. More stuff in common. He tried to remember why he’d thought she was such a stuck-up bitch, but it was getting kind of fuzzy.

Her head turned to take in the lake and trees. “People look at all this and they call it a miracle. I see millions of years of evolving protozoa and natural selection.”

They were discussing near-death experiences and reincarnation when Rick pulled back onto the road heading west.

“So, Sanchez. If you’d died back there at those dogs, do you think you’d have come back to haunt me?”

She gave him a wicked smile. “Oh, definitely.”

Then she went cosmic on him, questioning whether they really had died back at the attack, and now they were ghosts tooling around America.

“I mean, you certainly don’t seem like the same man from the Medical Center. Perhaps we’ve stumbled into an alternate universe. You know, where everything is the exact opposite.”

“No way,” Rick said. “If that had happened, you’d be this ugly crone with big fat hips and little bitty—” Oops.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rick was just about to talk his way out of another blunder when he caught movement in his rearview mirror. A pick-up truck had come up out of nowhere.

“Oh, hell,” he mumbled.

Sanchez glanced out of her own mirror. “That’s odd.”

It was a lot worse than odd. What were the chances that some guy was driving along the same road as Rick? He tried to get a look at the driver, but the truck was hanging back.

“Can they get us?” Sanchez asked.

“No,” he snorted. “But they’ll probably try. I used to get chasers when I was making runs back in New York. Usually young punks who thought they were invincible.”

Ahead, Rick scanned possible turn-offs. That’s when he spotted a second truck careening toward the van.

“Damn!”

The driver of the second truck hit his brakes and skidded sideways for a few feet before he got his truck turned around. Then he hit the gas, his tires smoking. He managed to stay ahead of the van, but not without laying down two black tracks on the pavement.

Great. Rick hated organization. He’d take mindless chaos over a thought out plan any day. No doubt, these two were boxing Rick in, leading him to some big surprise up ahead. He hit the brakes just to see what happened. The trucks stopped and waited.

Sanchez was watching them, too. “I suppose if you try to get around that guy, he’ll cut you off.”

Rick began driving again, his hands twisting on the steering wheel, wondering what kind of options he had. No point racing to the showdown, whatever it was. He kept his speed at forty.

“How many rounds you got in your gun?” he asked Sanchez.

She snatched up her Beretta and checked. “Five.”

“Better get another clip.” He jerked a thumb to the cabinet in the back.

She was rummaging through the gun case, when Rick spotted the set-up just beyond a curve in the road. These hooligans had set up a roadblock with all kinds of crap: two beat-up cars, a tractor, a fully-loaded hay wagon, and a twenty-year-old pick-up with a sofa in the truck bed.

“Shit!” He jerked his foot off the accelerator. “Get up here!”

Off to the right, was a dirt road. It looked like those good ole boys were hoping to divert the van. The lead truck even pulled onto the side road to show Rick the way.

“Take over,” he snapped at Sanchez. To her credit, she never missed a beat. He hopped out of the driver’s seat and she slipped right in.

“Don’t stop,” he said. “Just take it slow, I need a minute.” As he dashed to the back, he shouted, “Whatever you do,
don’t turn
.”

Once he found what he needed, Rick stacked two boxes on top of two boxes to give himself some stability. Then he unscrewed the hinges on the overhead hatch. He’d only used the hatch once, when he was washing the van. He remembered how tight the fit was. He’d barely been able to get his shoulders through the opening. This was going to have to go fast. The boys in the back no doubt had shotguns.

Bending his knees to get some spring action going, Rick pushed up on the hatch, watched it fly off and heard it bang on the roof twice before it fell away. Raising the rocket launcher over his head, he squeezed his shoulders tight and rose up through the hole. Immediately, he propped his elbows on the roof of the van and nestled the butt of the launcher against his shoulder.

No time to think about the rednecks behind him taking aim at his head. He sited on the pick-up with the sofa and fired. A small rocket hissed as it shot ahead, the tail sparking as it flew straight into the truck.

And then everything was quiet. The truck did
not
explode into a ball of fire. It didn’t even rock from the impact.

A dud? A few choice words for the military sprang to mind, but before Rick could get them out, a bullet ricocheted off the back of the van. He dropped to his knees, scraping through the opening, and banged the rocket launcher on the rim as he ducked.

Off balance, he tumbled off the boxes. The butt of launcher caught him in the ribs while the barrel whacked him in the face. Just as he rolled to his feet, the pick-up blew.

Sanchez hit the brakes as metal fragments and cotton batting blew in all directions. Rick righted himself in time to see part of a truck door fall from the sky and hit the windshield. Thank God the glass held.

Billowing smoke from the burning hay wagon hid the damage to the roadblock, but Rick had no choice.

“Hit it!” he yelled.

Sanchez aimed for the roiling black cloud. Rick’s gut twisted. If he’d blown a chunk out of the pavement, they drive right into it.

The van took a quick lurch to the right just as part of the sofa crashed onto the road. Sanchez clipped one of the beat-up cars and set it spinning as she passed through the opening.

From both sides, gunfire exploded, pinging off the metal shell of the van and leaving tiny pockmarks on the windows. Once Sanchez cleared the rubble, she floored it.

Stumbling forward, Rick dropped into the passenger seat and check the rearview. First one pick-up and then the second burst through the flaming carnage, hot on their tail.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Half-rising from his seat, he asked Sanchez, “You want me to drive?”

“What?” She even took her eyes off the road to glare at him. “You don’t think I can handle this?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You’re implying that I can’t keep this van—”

A bump on the back of the van knocked Rick back on his butt. It took an instant to realize what had happened. Then he got pissed. “Okay, that’s it.”

Wrenching out of his seat, he stomped to the gun cabinet for another rocket. Before he could get the missile loaded into the launcher, one of the redneck truck drivers tapped the van’s bumper again.

“They probably think I’m loading up for another volley,” he called to Sanchez.

“Really?” Sanchez dragged out her little sarcastic quip. “And they’re ramming the van to keep you off balance?”

Okay, so he deserved that. “Just try and hold it steady until I get into position.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Rick growled from deep in his throat before realigning the boxes he had stood on before. Climbing up, he held the launcher in one hand while gripping the edge of the opening with the other. His shin was throbbing like a son-of-a-bitch, and his wrist was screaming. He’d have to do that bobbing squat again to get the launcher and himself through the hatch, knowing it was going to hurt like hell. All the more reason to make the shot.

He counted in his head: one-two-wham!

The van took a hard hit and Rick toppled off the boxes. He banged his shin on the way down, and instead of breaking his fall with his bad hand, he took the impact with his elbow; so now he could add that to his list of injuries.

The guys in the trucks got tricky. One driver would bump the left side of the van, then the other guy would tap the right, trying to throw Sanchez off.

She wasn’t into their game. The van lurched forward, picking up speed. But Rick knew there was no way to outrun those dudes.

“Hang on!” she yelled at Rick. Then she slammed on the brakes.

He managed to grip the open gun case door to keep from being thrown across the van. He heard the squeal of tires outside before one of the trucks bashed into the bumper. The back wall actually caved an inch or two. Guns flew off their brackets. Rick dropped the launcher.

Still holding the cabinet door, he reached down to retrieve the gun, but Sanchez blasted off again, making a sharp swerve to the left. The launcher skidded away.

Damn! He should have taken over the driving. He definitely had to get up front and see what the hell was going on. But Sanchez took her foot off the accelerator again. The cabinet door ripped of its hinges and Rick hurled into the boxes.

“Now!” she yelled. “Get up there and shoot!”

With another snarl, Rick righted the boxes, bounced his knees twice for momentum, and heaved the launcher and himself through the hatch.

About a hundred feet back, one of the trucks sat on the pavement, its engine spewing steam. The second truck driver must have hesitated, maybe checking with his buddy, but he’d gotten the all clear because he was barreling toward the van.

Bracing on his elbows, Rick aimed the launcher at the asshole’s windshield and fired. The guy was closing on the van fast. Hell, he was probably going to hit the van before the delayed rocket ignited.

“Go!!” Rick screamed at Sanchez.

He heard the engine whine as she gave it the gun. The gap widened between the van and the truck. At the last second, Rick realized flying shrapnel was eminent. Bracing for the pain, he let go of the roof and fell back down through the hatch.

Sanchez didn’t slow down until she’d gotten back on Interstate 40. And then she picked a spot up on a ridge where they could see in both directions. She was trying to calm down, but Rick could see the cords in her neck flexing, watched her swallowing the fear.

His own heart was racing like a mother, and his body ached all over.

Once she had the van stopped, she blew out a long, shaky breath. “Shall we assess the damage?”

He admired her grit. Most women would be blubbering by now, but Sanchez was definitely holding it together. And she was right. He needed to see if the van had been compromised.

Wearily, he gripped the handle and opened the passenger door. But Sanchez reached an arm across to stop him. “I meant your leg.”

He saw fresh blood soaking through his jeans.

This time she was much gentler as she swabbed his wounds. She did seem a little disappointed that he wouldn’t need more stitches. As she dabbed his shin, her hand trembled.

“You did good back there, Sanchez,” he said.

She gave a slight shrug. “Sorry you got so banged around. It was all happening pretty fast.”