Kade: Santanas Cuervo MC (10 page)

“We got dust coming,” Big Dick said, looking down the road.

Everyone turned to look. “It’s probably nobody, but we better go inside, just in case,” Kade said.

She didn’t want to go back inside, wanting to see how she compared to the men, but Kade was right. Maybe they would drive right by and she could come out and play again.

They walked along the side of the RV then went inside. She watched out of the window as Kade dropped the magazine on his weapon and began to reload. She noticed while he wasn’t rushing, he was wasting no time feeding the bullets into the magazine. He finished and slapped it home, worked the slide to prime the weapon, then dropped the magazine and replaced the bullet, slapping it back into the gun as the truck slowed to a stop in the road.

“Get back,” he said softly, motioning her away from the window. She moved away and sat down, waiting for the truck to leave. They sat for a moment, listening to the two men in the truck talking to the brothers outside.

“More dust,” she said, nodding at the windshield.

The first truck had come up from the rear, and now another one from the other direction? “This doesn’t feel right,” Kade said softly. “We haven’t seen another vehicle since you parked here, now two at the same time? Stay here.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, her heart starting to hammer.

“I’m just going to check it out.” She stared at him with wide eyes as he opened the door, holding his pistol out of sight beside him. “Hey! You guys want a beer?”

The brothers looked at him an instant before Juice’s head exploded. As the brothers dove for cover, Kade fired into the cab of the truck. The truck roared backwards, throwing dirt everywhere as the driver tried to get some distance, swerving around behind the RV to get out of Kade’s range. There were several pops as Bickers, Anders, Duck and Big Dick started shooting. Kade jumped out of the RV running to help, but then there was the fast staccato beat of an automatic rifle.

“Shit!” he snarled as he skidded to a stop. They were going to get cut to pieces by the machine gun and their only chance was to run. He turned and charged back the way he came, throwing himself into the RV and dropping into the driver’s seat.

“We have to go,” he yelled as he looked around until he found and twisted the key to start the engine.

“Wait! The jacks are still down and the slides are out!” she cried, dashing to the control panel to retract the slides and raise the leveling jacks.

The big Caterpillar diesel coughed to life at the rear of the coach. “Hurry up!” he yelled as he raced the engine, hoping the brothers would understand and come running as he tried to figure out how to put the coach in gear.

“Go!” she screamed as she felt the coach settle and roll to the side as the jacks retracted, the slides tucking in tight a moment later. He poked the button marked with D to his left as Bickers, Duck and Big Dick piled into the RV. There was another round of thudding gunfire, the interior splintering as the bullets ripped into the coach. Big Dick roared then fell to the floor as he grabbed at his leg. Bickers peeked out the door and fired wildly, trying to pin the men down as Kade floored the accelerator pedal. The engine revved, and he could feel the coach straining, but it didn’t move.

“Parking brake!” Winter yelled rushing forward and stabbing the button down, but it immediately popped back up. “No air pressure!”

Kade put the coach in neutral and raced the engine to redline, trying to build pressure as fast as possible.

Bickers and Duck leaned out and fired several shots through the door before ducking back in. “We need to go!”

“Where’s Anders?” Kade yelled.

“Dead!”

Kade let off the gas pedal and punched the button to put coach into gear and floored it as he pushed the parking brake button down. It stayed and the bus began to move. There was another burst of fire from the automatic gun, glass and bits of wood flying as the gunman hosed down the RV. As the coach struggled for the road, a man appeared in the door and Bickers shot him, the man tumbling away.

“Go!” Bickers screamed over the roaring engine.

Kade said nothing. He’d never driven an RV before, but the coach felt sluggish, as if it were stuck in mud, but they were moving. He kept the gas pedal pinned to the floor, the engine bellowing as the coach shuddered and lurched. He finally realized he was spinning the tires, but he was afraid to let up lest they become stuck. Finally, the coach hauled itself onto the road and began to pick up speed more quickly. They were going in the opposite direction of what he wanted, but he couldn’t stop to turn around.

He could see the second truck heading their way, almost on top of them, and he watched in the rearviews as the truck behind them swung onto the road in pursuit.

“Big Dick has been hit!” Winter shouted as she pulled out a drawer and grabbed several kitchen towels, pressing them to his leg. “Hold this!” she instructed him as she began to tie two more towels together.

“Hang on!” Kade cried as the truck in front of them swung sideways to block the road, the passenger bailing out to fire a sustained burst of automatic gun fire into the RV as it passed, the bullets pinging and popping down the left side as bits of the interior splintered and exploded.

The RV wasn’t traveling fast, but the impact sent them all tumbling, the vehicle weaving on the edge of control as it shouldered the pickup aside and sent it spinning into the brush.

“Shit!” Duck yelled as Kade struggled to get the swerving coach under control. As soon as he got it steady, he floored again, but when the speedometer reached fifty, the RV was so hard to control on the loose and rutted road he felt like they were only a moment from crashing and allowed the coach to slow again.

“I think I broke my arm,” Duck growled.

“How’re we doing?” Kade yelled, afraid to take his eyes off the road.

“Remind me to not loan you my truck,” Bickers said, sitting in the floor, holding to a chair as he stared out the door. The door to the coach was still open, but he was too afraid of falling to try to close it, the brush and scrub passing at terrifying speed.

She finished trying the towels together, then wrapped it around Big Dick’s leg and cinched it tight to hold pressure on the towels covering the wound. Finished, she scrambled forward to Duck. His arm was hanging at an unnatural angle.

“Duck’s arm is broken!” She scrambled to the back of the coach on her hands and knees so she didn’t fall, tearing the sheets from the bed and dragging them forward with her.

“We’ve got company!” Kade yelled. The road was too narrow for the truck behind them to easily pass, but that didn’t prevent the driver from trying, compelling Kade to swerve to force the truck back.

Struggling to keep her balance, she folded the sheet into a large triangle and looped it around Duck’s neck and under his arm to form a sling, the shaking and weaving vehicle making her task difficult. Duck hissed in pain when she tightened the sling around his arm as the coach suddenly slowed, then banking hard right, throwing them around again and making Duck groan in pain as he fell into her.

“Coming up on the right!” Kade said as he swung the RV around the corner, hoping he was turning in the right direction.

Bickers fired three shots through the open door as the truck passed, the truck knocking down a fence as it cut off the corner. A man leaned out of the passenger side and blindly fired a burst from the automatic weapon. He couldn’t miss the coach and again the inside splintered and windows shattered.

“Anybody hit?” Kade asked as the pickup began to slow, trying to force the RV to stop.

“No,” Bickers said, still holding to the chair.

Kade crept up on the back of the truck, then floored the coach, rapidly closing the last few feet and hitting the back of the truck with a crunch. The driver of the pickup slammed on the brakes to try and stop the RV, but his truck was no match for the lumbering coach and could only manage to slow it slightly before he gave up and raced ahead.

The truck tried twice more to stop the RV, but each time Kade floored the throttle and, though the truck could drag their speed down, it couldn’t stop them. They played cat and mouse for several miles; each time the truck slowed, Kade would drive into the back of it and push it along. At least the gunmen had stopped shooting at them and Kade hoped the automatic rifle was out of ammo.

When they reached Eagle Pass Road, the pickup turned right onto the much wider dirt and gravel road, toward Eagle Pass, so Kade hauled the rig to the left and headed south toward Laredo. “Call the cops. Let’s see if we can get these assholes off us,” Kade growled as the coach picked up speed again.

“No cell signal,” Bickers said.

“Where’s the sat phone?” he asked.

“Anders had it.”

“Where’s Winter’s?”

Bickers and Winter scramble about, looking for her phone, but couldn’t find it among the debris in the coach, the wild ride having dumped the contents of all the cabinets into the floor and scattered them around.

The truck popped out of their dust plume, moving fast as it raced past them on the left. He jerked the wheel left, the coach crashing into the pickup, but the truck was moving too fast and squeezed by before he could force it into the fence. “Bickers! Get ready,” Kade said as the truck continued to race ahead. “They’re going to try something again. Winter, get low.”

A hundred yards ahead, the driver spun the truck sideways, blocking most of the road as the two men bailed out and ran to the side. Kade slammed on the brakes, the coach shuddering and shaking as it skidded to a stop.

“What now?” Bickers asked as he watched through the windshield. “Do we ram it?”

Kade sat staring. “What do you think? If we break the RV, we’re sitting ducks against the machine gun.”

“Yeah, but by the time we turn around, if we can turn around, they’ll be on us anyway. I say go for it.”

Kade licked his lips, thinking. “Big Dick, you okay back there?”

“Just do what you have to,” the big man grunted against the pain.

“Do it,” Duck added.

“Everybody stay low and hang on,” he said as started forward. There was something very wrong with the RV, the rig pulling hard to the right and he was afraid another hard impact like the first one would fatally wound the vehicle and leave them in a firefight they couldn’t win. He drove slowly until he’d closed half the distance, then floored the throttle.

The coach began to pick up speed, bearing down on the pickup like an enraged elephant as the two men began firing on the coach. Kade hunched over the wheel, trying to reduce his target as much as possible as the windshield shattered, bullets pinging and popping as they cut into the RV. At the last moment he swung right, clipping the rear of the truck and sending it careening as the man with the machine gun slammed in another magazine and emptied the gun in a sustained burst into the side of RV as it muscled past.

Kade kept the throttle down as the men fired into the rear of the feeling RV. He watched in the single unbroken rearview as the two men ran for the truck, but it didn’t move as it disappeared into the distance.

“Everybody okay?” Kade asked.

“Bickers has been shot!” Winter cried, crawling forward.

Kade risked a quick look. Bickers was still sitting in the floor his back him, bent over as blood ran down his back. “Bickers?”

“Don’t stop,” Bickers gasped as Winter helped him lay back. His hand was covered in blood as he held his stomach just below his rib cage.

“Bickers? You okay, man?” Kade cried.

Winter pulled his hand away and looked at the wound. There was blood everywhere. She had some backcountry medical knowledge, but this was far beyond anything she could deal with. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital!”