Page 143 of At Her Pleasure
“I’ll tell you when we’re not outrunning a cartel.”
“Shit. Here I was, thinking we had time to get drive thru for sixty cheeseburgers. And one vegan patty.”
It was second nature for him to quip under stress. She looked startled by it, but she put the truck in gear as if she’d been driving a semi her entire life, and they trundled forward, the engine rumbling.
“Don’t use the lights,” he told her. “If it gets dark enough, we might be able to get off on a side road before the bad guys show up, and they’ll overlook us as they pass by.”
Another slim-as-shit possibility.
Then that possibility died. The compound was a half mile in their rearview mirror when headlights popped up on their horizon. A whole stream of them. Enough twilight was left for him to make out the silhouette of two Humvees, a van and a couple flatbed trucks. They’d be bristling with armed passengers. Spotlights topped the two flatbeds, and they were using them. Within a couple minutes, they’d be within their scope.
“Stop the truck,” he told her. “We let them out, we all run. I’ll blow up the truck and you get as far as you can.”
“No. I’m staying with you. We provide cover fire together. Two’s better than one.”
“Cyn.”
As she switched off the ignition, she gave him a look so calm, it was as if they were sitting in his motorhome at the campground. “I never expected to live this long, and if even a handful of them get away, that’s worth dying for.”
It wasn’t like the movies, where there was time for meaningful monologues. He made decisions fast, going with his chewed-up gut. It was better that way, because otherwise his worry about what could go wrong, how she could be hurt, would get them all killed. Or pull him down with despair, knowing the worry no longer mattered.
Mick grabbed the remaining grenades and shouldered the AK as they exited the truck. Cyn stuck the couple extra mags for her gun in the pockets of her slacks.
In the desert twilight, the red dye in her hair was even redder. Her eyes were alive and hard, sparkling with adrenaline. Fear would be buried somewhere deep, an inevitable reaction to facing death, but she wouldn’t let it control her.
She was right, that she never would have convinced him to let her do this if he hadn’t known, in that same deep-down place, that she could handle it. But he wished that deep-down place had shut the hell up. Or he’d ignored it.
They’d reached the back of the truck, his hand on the latch to open it, when clipped and rapid gunfire rat-tat-tatted holes through the fabric of the air. Followed by an explosion that blasted his eardrums and vibrated through their feet, rocking the truck.
He jerked Cyn further behind it. Then he heard what had been masked by the truck engine and the gunfire. A helicopter.
Moving as one, they reached the corner of the truck and peered around it.
The front vehicle of the convoy was on its side, and on fire. The explosion. The one second in line had crashed into it, and was still intact, but the flames…
Mick pulled Cyn back again as it ignited, a second boom rippling the sides of the truck’s trailer, like a light wind over a curtain.
The copter banked and swung around. A second one passed over him and Cyn. Chop, chop, chop, loud enough to vibrate the bones. Its lights blinked in the dusky gloom. Mick noted the spark of Venus in the sky. It would be bright at full dark.
But for now he was able to see the man sitting in the open doorway of the bird, holding the launcher that had taken out the first vehicle. A young-looking soldier, wearing fatigues and a helmet with a visor, so Mick couldn’t see his face. No identifying markers on the helicopter, but if they’d stopped the oncoming cartel response, they were the good guys.
The post-sunset grey and black streaks in the sky mixed with billowing smoke. He and Cyn moved back to the corner, guns ready. Mick saw the convoy’s rear vehicles turning around, to face the way they’d come. Blue and red lights sparked over the horizon. Realizing they were blocked, the battle-hardened men in the convoy were preparing to engage.
The cop cars slid left and right, and officers emerged, taking cover behind the vehicles as they returned fire. Mick pulled Cyn back again. Too close to friendly fire.
The cartel was in a weak position and knew it. So Mick kept sharp watch around the side of the truck, and saw when a few smarter men abandoned the vehicles and headed in their direction.
“Three incoming. Two on this side, one on the other.”
“Want to switch?”
He stifled a snort. Even as she tossed out the jibe, Cyn was moving to the opposite corner. When his two were close enough, he squeezed and dropped them fast, then spun to her side. She’d already fired. He reached her in time to see her target fall and stay down, though in that same blink he’d had his gun arm stretched out, parallel to hers, back pressed against her shoulder blade, just in case another shot was needed.
She touched her temple to his jaw, a brief contact and acknowledgement of the backup.
One of the helicopters passed again, then hovered, gusting air over them as it laid down a blast of warning fire in front of the truck. Cartel members were putting their guns down, raising their hands and dropping to their knees. Some tried running off the road and into the scrub, hoping to be lost in the dark.
The cops had K-9 units and would track them down. The desert terrain extended for miles, and when the sun came up, dehydration would get them if they didn’t surrender.