24: Deadline (24 Series) (30 page)

He burst out from behind his cover with a shout on his lips, running as fast as he could in a diagonal path across the open ground, firing the MP5/10 from the hip in chattering bursts of fire.

Shots from the Night Rangers sliced through the air around him, heavy-caliber rounds spanking off the ground near his feet as he sprinted toward a cluster of tumbledown buildings that had once been shower blocks. He heard the choking snarl of motorbike engines behind him and the white glow of a headlight washed across his path like a search beam. A too-close shot hummed past his ear, so near it made him flinch and almost stumble over the broken brickwork surrounding the fallen blockhouse. Jack ducked around the side of the building as guns boomed and more rounds lanced after him.

“Get that sucker!” Jack heard someone shouting, baying for his blood. “Get the bikes, run him into the dirt!”

More engines growled to life after the first, and he knew the hunt was on. He smiled.
Good.
The more of them after him, the better chance Chase had to do what they had come here for.

The white beam that had briefly silhouetted him as he pounded across the parade ground now swept over the sides of the blockhouse, and Jack knew that the leading rider would be upon him in moments. Slinging the MP5/10 over his shoulder, he grabbed a section of rusted rebar lying amid the ruins of the half-collapsed shower block and went flat against the wall.

The bike came thundering around the corner of the blockhouse, a matte black Harley-Davidson Iron 883, its engine emitting a nasal, big-cat snarl. The rider—a Night Ranger from the Dakotas charter—had only a fraction of a second to process the flash of movement from the corner of his vision before Jack struck out with the iron rod. The length of rebar hit him across the chest, instantly dislodging the biker from his saddle and pitching him back over the rear wheel. Ribs shattered by the impact, the Night Ranger could only lie there and fight for breath.

The riderless bike wobbled and fell over, slewing to a halt in a spray of gravel. Jack sprinted to it, pitching the Harley back onto its wheels with a grunt of effort. He slipped easily into the saddle and gunned the throttle, bringing the motorcycle around toward the direction it had come. With the MP5/10 in his hand, Jack accelerated away, back down the narrow alley between the shower blocks. He shot out in front of the rest of the Night Ranger pack, spraying bullets in their direction as he slewed the bike away from the tank garage and the motor pool hangar.

The night was torn by more howling engines as the bikers turned the pursuit into a hunt, hurtling after Jack on his stolen mount, following him as he wove a slalom course around abandoned vehicles and potholed sections of the old base’s wide streets. Fort Blake’s derelict buildings echoed with the noise. Jack dared to throw a look over his shoulder as he pulled the submachine gun’s trigger again. The weapon’s breech locked open with a metallic snap as the last round in the magazine was expended, but the shots fired had made a mark. One of the bikes snapping at his heels abruptly twisted into a sideways skid, veering into a mud-choked ditch. Jack let the spent weapon drop on its sling again and hunched forward over the Harley’s gas tank, cutting the air resistance as it pulled at his jacket.

The roadway ahead terminated in a T-junction. The footprint of the army base’s ghost town roads was just three or four blocks square, laid out in a wide grid that doubled back on itself. For a moment, Jack wondered about cutting the head off the junction and blazing a path out across the tall grasses beyond—but the heavy Harley was no cross-country scrambler, and if he hit a hidden gulley out there, it would all be over.

Instead, waiting until the last possible second, he pushed into a leaning turn that followed a sharp race-line curve to the left, powering the bike through as the rear tire left black streaks on the crumbling asphalt. Guns barked behind him. Some of the riders were trying to get off a lucky shot in hopes of knocking him out of the saddle. Jack worked the handlebars, putting the bike through a sidewinder slide to throw off their aim.

“
Jack! Jack?
” It took him a long second before he realized that the faint voice he could hear was issuing out of the tactical radio still clipped to his belt. “
We’re on the move,
” he heard Chase say. “
Rolling out. You copy? Jack, do you copy me?
”

He couldn’t risk letting go of the handlebars to toggle the radio and respond. Jack could only hope that Chase would be able to get the bus and the press-ganged workers away from the base before the bikers realized they had been blindsided.

*   *   *

“Holy crap!” Fang cried out as the little business jet screamed low over his head and turned in a wide, sharp bank before lining itself up with the middle of the highway. He blinked and grinned as he realized what was going to happen. “Well, lookit. This is gonna be interestin’.”

The jet dropped toward the white line running down the middle of the road, the running lights on the wings and the undercarriage dazzling as it came nose-on. Fang heard the squealing of the tires hitting the asphalt and then the rolling thunder of the engines as they went into reverse. Wheel brakes screeched as the aircraft frantically bled off speed, shaking and shuddering as it bounced over a surface never designed for the relatively smooth ride a jet plane required.

Sitting atop his bike, it didn’t occur to Fang to get out of the way, unlike some of the other Night Rangers who had come out here with him, past the outer limits of Deadline. They backed off, but he kept waiting, grinning at the jet as the distance between the aircraft’s nose cone and the handlebars of his panhead grew less and less. After all, Fang had once faced down a brown bear and lived to talk about it. That was how he had gotten his nickname. He didn’t see this as any different.

The biker could see the faces of the pilot and copilot clearly by the time the plane rolled to a halt no more than twenty feet from his idling motorcycle. He gave them a jaunty salute, which neither man returned. Fang chuckled to himself and got off, wandering to the side of the plane as the cabin door dropped open.

An angry-looking guy in a suit filled the doorway. “You’re not Rydell.”

“Naw,” Fang admitted. “I’m the welcoming committee. You gotta be Special Agent Hadley, yeah?” He nodded at the plane. “Any landing you can walk away from is a good one, huh?” He gave a low whistle.

“Where is he?”

Fang gestured back in the direction of the town. “He’s puttin’ something together for ya.”

Another man, young and serious, appeared behind Hadley. “Where are we?”

Fang spread his hands. “Welcome to Deadline!” He pointed out a car—a dusty Ford Contour that the MC kept around for the times when they needed a cage—and tossed the keys to Hadley. “Got ya some wheels for while you’re visitin’. Y’all can leave your bird here and follow us.” He wandered back to his bike and revved the motor, turning it around, aiming it back down the highway. Around him, the first drops of rain started to fall from the sky.

He heard the other FBI agent asking a question. “What have you done, Hadley? What’s going on?”

“I’m making use of available resources,” he snapped. “Get the others. We’re on the move.”

18

The Night Rangers were still on him as Jack veered the stolen Harley-Davidson off the cracked roadway and down a narrower side street that threaded between a line of low, wide hangars. Sheer sheet-metal walls reared up on either side of him, capturing the howl of the bikes and reflecting it back. Off to one side, Jack could see the growing pillar of smoke rising from the burning drug factory and he used it as a landmark, orienting himself. There was little light here, nothing but the glow from his Harley’s headlamp, nothing to warn him of a sinkhole ahead or a lethally broken stretch of asphalt until it was too late. One of the bikes pursuing him had already fallen to such a hazard, and Jack didn’t want to go out the same way.

To his right he saw that one of the hangar doors was partly open, a tall and thin gap wide enough for two men abreast. At the last second, Jack jerked the handlebars and veered off the road and into the echoing space. He thought he heard a bullet clank off the doors but then he was through and roaring across the empty, warehouse-sized area.

He hoped that there would be another open door on the far side, but immediately he saw he had been mistaken. Nothing but walls were visible in the spill from his headlight, and Jack knew he would have to act quickly. His miscalculation could see him trapped in here, and then the bikers would have him.

The Harley bounced over something and he glimpsed the corroded length of discarded chains snaking across the dusty concrete. Jack pumped the brakes and slowed down, leaning out of the saddle so he could snatch up a fat steel link and pull it to his chest. The chain rattled as he accelerated away again, and Jack switched off the bike’s headlamp, plunging the view ahead into darkness.

Other bikes had come charging into the hangar after him and they lit the space with their own shifting illumination. Jack aimed the stolen Harley at his pursuers and set off like a missile, feeling the chain tug and clatter across the ground as it came with him.

Too late, the other riders saw him racing back toward them and tried to veer off; but Jack spun the rusted chain up and over his head like a lasso, throwing it with all his might toward his pursuers. He sped past, aiming for the open door, hearing the catastrophic crash of metal meeting concrete at high speed as bikes and riders went down behind him.

*   *   *

The bus thundered down the roadway, bouncing over every patch of rough asphalt, the sound of the laboring diesel engine a heavy droning beneath the fearful muttering and crying of the passengers. Chase put them out of his mind as he concentrated on keeping the big coach astride the center line, hoping that they wouldn’t meet something coming the other way.

It was hard to steer, and turning the huge wheel to get it around the corners was an effort that made his shoulders ache. His bad hand slipped now and then, and he cursed, fighting to keep the vehicle from getting away from him.

The big windshield was marked with spiderweb impacts where the bikers at the gates had tried and failed to stop them. Chase blew through the motorcycles acting as a roadblock without pause, and there had been an ugly crunching sound as one shooter—too slow to get out of the way—vanished under the old Greyhound’s front axle. Reflected on the inside of the fractured glass, Chase could see the people behind him packed tightly into the bus’s cabin, far more than the vehicle was supposed to carry. The overloaded bus translated that weight into a rumbling, shaking ride, threatening to give out at any second.

Then ahead, he saw the black, slab-sided shadow of the deserted mega-mart building.
Almost there.
If they could make it to safety inside, they could figure something out, find a way to get everyone away from the predations of the outlaw bikers.

“Hold on!” he called, applying the brakes as the bus bounced across the road and came to a juddering halt in the overgrown parking lot. Chase stood up, raising his hands as dozens of faces turned his way, questions and demands coming at him all at once. “We’re clear of the base,” he told them. “You understand that? You’re free.”

Confusion and fear reflected back at him. It had been hard enough to convince these people to board the bus, and now they were hearing him without really believing what he was saying. They had no reason to trust him. After the lies that had brought these people to Deadline, Chase couldn’t blame them.

“Listen,” he began again, opening the doors. “There’s another vehicle inside that building, I could use another driver … We can all get out together—”

Chase was halfway down the stairway when a figure loomed out of the rainy darkness and grabbed a fistful of his jacket, pitching him forward and out onto the ground. Before he could react, a heavy steel-toed boot crashed into his gut and he curled up, the pain making him choke.

He heard screaming and shouting, and suddenly there were bright lights all around. Chase shielded his eyes, blinking furiously.

The same man he had seen leaving the derelict base a short while ago, the one who seemed to be the bikers’ pack leader, emerged from behind a line of parked motorcycles. Framed by headlamps all blazing with sodium-white light, he came over to where Chase was laying, pushing his men aside to get a better look. “Which one are you?” he demanded, then dismissed his own question. “Ah. Doesn’t matter. You ain’t from Chicago. You’re messing with my program, and that don’t get to happen.”

“You … must be Rydell,” Chase managed.

That got him a cold smile. “This here is my kingdom, pal. My soldiers, my subjects, you dig? And you don’t come in and start screwing with that.” He looked around. “You actually thought you’d be able to get gone with those bitches from the ’Case? And these chumps?” He pointed at the terrified faces of the people crammed onto the bus. “Stupid. That’s gonna cost you.”

Rydell nodded at his men, and they all came in around Chase to take a shot at him.

*   *   *

Jack saw the floods of smoke churning from the burning tank garage and realized he had completed a full circuit around the edge of Fort Blake. As he raced on, he dared to look back and fired off a shot from his pistol. Despite everything, there were still riders on him, and he wondered if he would ever be able to shake them.

But in the next second, it didn’t matter. Jack was barely past the burning remnants of the Night Rangers’ illegal manufactory when the fire inside touched off a detonation that resonated like a bomb blast. He had no way of knowing what it was—perhaps some chemical drum superheated to a temperature beyond criticality—but this massive explosion was enough to blow out the metal doors and vents along all the bunker’s sides, and bring the thick concrete roof caving inward.

A pressure wave knocked Jack off his bike and sent him and the motorcycle spinning in different directions. He crashed back down to earth and rolled, landing hard against an overgrown sandbank, the air sucked out of his lungs.