The Cardboard Sign On Desert Highway And The Road Of Mercy
CHAPTER 4: THE DESERT GAUNTLET
“Sniper! Take cover!” Dutch yelled, diving behind the steel lip of the concrete loading dock as high-velocity rifle rounds chewed through the brickwork above his head.
Mason dropped to one knee, clutching the insulated cold-pouch against his ribs. The temperature in the alley was already climbing past one hundred degrees; every second spent pinned down under gunfire was a direct threat to the fragile peptide bonds of the life-saving insulin. If the temperature inside the pouch breached forty-six degrees, the proteins would degrade into useless liquid, sealing Lucia Morales’s death.
“Hawk! Smoke!” Mason barked over the deafening crack of rifle fire.
Hawk reached to his tactical belt, pulled the ring on a military-grade M18 white phosphorus smoke canister, and hurled it across the alley directly beneath the front bumper of the armored Suburban.
Within three seconds, a colossal, blinding wall of dense, suffocating white smoke billowed across the narrow alley, completely obscuring the gunmen’s line of sight. The rifle fire sputtered into wild, inaccurate bursts that buried themselves harmlessly in the brick walls and asphalt.
“Mount up! Punch through the east gate!” Mason roared.
Mason, Dutch, and Bear scrambled onto their running motorcycles, while Hawk jumped onto the rear pillion seat of Bear’s cruiser. Mason twisted the throttle, and the three heavy Harley-Davidsons surged forward through the blinding cloud of white smoke, tires screaming on the slick concrete.
They burst out of the smoke screen, swerved around the front fender of the blinded Suburban, and rocketed out of the alley onto Highland Avenue, accelerating eastward toward US Route 90 at eighty-five miles an hour.
Behind them, the roar of modified V-8 engines tore through the afternoon heat.
The two remaining black Suburbans cleared the smoke, tires smoking as they swung onto the highway in hot pursuit, their tinted windshields reflecting the blazing sun like mirrored shields. The heavy vehicles closed the distance with terrifying velocity, their turbocharged engines screaming.
Mason glanced into his rearview mirror. The lead SUV was closing rapidly, its heavy steel brush-guard closing to within thirty feet of Dutch’s rear fender. Through the tinted glass, Mason could see the passenger leaning out the window, leveling a tactical carbine across the roof pillar, aiming directly for their rear tires.
“They’re not trying to arrest us, Cutter!” Dutch shouted over the intercom. “They’re trying to execute us on the highway! They’re aiming for our rims!”
“Hold your line!” Mason commanded, leaning into the wind. “Look ahead! Mile Marker 88!”
Two miles ahead, where the highway crossed the main east-west line of the Union Pacific Railroad, the red crossing signals suddenly began to flash, accompanied by the urgent, metallic clanging of the emergency bells.
From the southern cut, a colossal, two-mile-long Union Pacific intermodal freight train was approaching the crossing at fifty miles an hour, three massive diesel-electric locomotives pulling a hundred and twenty double-stacked shipping containers. The black-and-white crossing gates were already descending across the two lanes of Route 90.
“Mason! The gates are coming down!” Bear shouted through the radio. “We’re going to get cut in half!”
“Accelerate!” Mason roared back. “Drop gears and burn! We cross before the locomotives hit the asphalt! Trust your iron!”
The three Harley-Davidsons screamed in unison, their speedometers touching one hundred miles an hour as the blistering desert wind battered their helmets like an iron fist. The deafening blare of the locomotive’s five-chime horn echoed across the desert flats, warning of the impending crossing.
Mason crossed the tracks with less than forty feet to spare, his tires momentarily going airborne over the raised steel rails with a heart-stopping lurch before slamming back onto the pavement with a shower of rubber smoke. Dutch and Bear cleared the crossing half a second later, their rear tires clearing the cattle-guard just as the lead locomotive roared across the asphalt in a blur of yellow steel, flashing headlights, and screaming iron wheels.
Behind them, the driver of the lead Suburban panicked. Seeing two thousand tons of screaming steel hurtling across his path, the driver slammed on his brakes with all his weight. The heavy three-ton SUV skidded sideways across the caliche shoulder, tires smoking, and slammed violently into the concrete drainage ditch, completely disabling its front axle and collapsing its steering assembly. The second SUV was forced to screech to a halt behind the passing freight cars, trapped by two solid miles of moving train!
“Clear!” Dutch bellowed over the radio with a triumphant roar that shook the intercom. “We broke their back! The train has them locked down!”
Mason didn’t celebrate. He reached down with his gloved hand and checked the digital temperature gauge on his saddlebag cooler: 41°F. The cold packs had held. The insulin was safe.
They tore across the remaining eight miles of desert highway, turned south onto the washboard arroyo trail, and sped toward the Morales homestead, racing the clock to save Lucia’s life.
As they crested the final caliche ridge overlooking the ranch, Mason’s heart sank into his throat.
Thick, billowing columns of black, oily smoke were rising into the sapphire sky.
Greer’s secondary arson crew—two utility trucks equipped with commercial agricultural flamethrowers and fuel drums—had arrived during their absence. The dry brush perimeter around the homestead was engulfed in a raging wall of ten-foot orange flames, and the wooden roof of the antique barn was blazing like a torch, threatening to collapse onto the adobe house where Lucia and Toby were trapped!
