The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers) (42 page)

“You have orders to use them?”

“I’ve got orders to take a look, and flexibility to act based on that.”

MILTON PICKED up speed again and started to close the half mile that he had allowed to develop between him and the truck. He was halfway there when he heard the engine start to rev harder, and the truck started to accelerate.

Lundquist must have seen him.

He twisted the throttle all the way, the engine firing out at maximum, and the distance closed again.

Four hundred yards.

Three hundred.

Two.

One.

The truck was laden down, riding down low on its axles, and Lundquist either couldn’t, or dared not, try to run any faster than he was.

Milton closed right up next to the rear doors. He balanced himself across the bike, stood up on the foot pegs and leaned forward. He reached up, his hand fastening around the locking handles.

The brake lights flashed a sudden red and the truck lurched right back at him. The front tyre bumped against the frame and then caught beneath it, the wheel buckling and the rear of the bike bucking upwards, propelling Milton out of the seat and over the handlebars, into the door.

He slammed into it, his hands fastened around the handle as his legs crashed down onto the road with the toes of his boots scraping against the blacktop. The sudden friction tore him backwards, but he held on.

He held onto the handle, his right boot wedged against the rear underride guard, and then brought his left foot up alongside it.

The front wheel came free, and the bike somersaulted away behind him.

There was a meaty thud as something bumped up against the doors from inside the trailer.

Milton shuffled across the guard so that he was behind the left-hand door, but close enough to reach the locking mechanism for the right. He anchored with his left hand and stretched out with his right, flicking off the safety latch and rotating the handle. He yanked back just as Lundquist stamped on the brakes again. There was another heavy bump from inside, and then the unlatched door suddenly swung open. A large plastic barrel teetered on the edge and, as Lundquist accelerated again, it overbalanced and tipped out of the back, crashing down onto the road and tumbling over itself, crazy cartwheels that sprayed diesel across the asphalt.

The door swung as Lundquist negotiated a gentle left-hand turn, and as it fell open, Milton got a clear view inside. Ellie had been right: the truck was packed with large plastic barrels of many different colours, together with distinctive “sausages” of explosives that had been fastened onto them with tape.

He wrapped his fingers around a wooden pallet that had slipped down to the lip of the trailer bed, and used it as an anchor to help him slither ahead.

Lundquist braked again. The wheels locked this time, leaving rubber on the road as the trailer fishtailed left and right. Milton slid back again to the edge, his fingers clutching the pallet so hard that he felt splinters digging into his flesh, but he just squeezed harder, his grip the only thing that was preventing him from falling from the trailer.

The pallet slid backwards, too.

Another of the barrels teetered back and forth and, as they swerved again, it fell. More diesel sloshed out of it, flooding out of the back, pouring over Milton. It rushed over his hands, then his wrists and arms and over his torso.

The barrel rolled around on its side, straight down the centre of the cargo bay at him.

THE BLACK HAWK’s navigator worked off a paper map that he held open over his lap, relaying instructions to the pilot. They flew fast and close to the ground, following the route that Lundquist was most likely to have taken. They started due east on Highway 28, the trunkline that bisected the Upper Peninsula east to west.

They reached Stannard Township and swung sharply to follow the 28 south.

Ellie looked down over Bond Falls State Park, the canopy of dense foliage, the road stretching ahead and behind them.

They rocketed over Watersmeet at three hundred feet above ground level.

“There!” the navigator said.

Ellie strained forwards against the restraints that held her in her seat. She craned her neck so she could see through the open door.

“That it?” Maguire asked her.

It was the same truck that she had seen earlier. “Yes. That’s it.”

They drew closer, still staying well back in the event that a blast was triggered.

The truck started to swing wildly to the left and right, as if Lundquist was trying to throw someone off.

Milton.

One of the doors was open, flapping as the truck swerved.

“Holy crap,” the gunner said.

They edged a little closer, and she could see him. He was half in and half out of the trailer, grabbing onto a wooden pallet that was wedged against the closed door.

Her headphones squelched with static, and then she heard the voice of the pilot. “Hotel two-six, Crazy Horse one-eight. Have the target in range. Request permission to engage.”

The next voice was distant, without the clamour of the turbines, someone in a command post somewhere. “Roger that, Crazy Horse. We have no personnel close to your position; you are free to engage. Over.”

“Okay, we’ll be engaging.”

“Hey!” Ellie yelled.

The gunner covered his throat mike with his hand. “Permission to fire?”

“Roger, gunner, go ahead. I’m gonna… I can’t see it now. It’s behind those trees.”

“Hey!” Ellie shouted, louder this time.

She reached down and started to fumble with the clasps on her belts.

“Ma’am,” Maguire said.

“Tell them to hold their fire!”

“Don’t try to get out of your seat, please.”

MILTON DUCKED his head as the barrel bounced over the sill at the edge of the truck, spun high into the air, and cleared his trailing legs by a few spare inches.

He reached with his right arm, slowly hauling himself into the trailer. He assessed it quickly. There was a strong, cloying odour of ammonia and diesel. It was pungent, and Milton quickly felt a headache developing. He would not be able to stay inside the trailer for long. It was forty feet long and two-thirds full. He saw barrels of different colours, hundreds of pounds of explosives marked with TOVEX, and thirty PRIMADET blasting caps. There were an additional twenty fifty-pound bags of fertiliser lashed up against the right-hand wall. Milton knew enough about explosives to know that if those blasting caps were ever detonated, they would trigger a blast strong enough to shake the heavens.

He started to feel light-headed from the fumes.

He looked back to the open rear end. The door was still swinging to and fro, given fresh momentum every time the trailer turned through a corner or bounced across an uneven surface. The trailer was twice Milton’s height and the ceiling was a good four feet above him. He went to the nearest barrel and wrapped his arms around it, grunting with exertion as he moved it, inch by inch, towards the rear. When it was close enough to be almost directly beneath the overhang of the ceiling, he clambered atop it, almost losing his balance on more than one occasion, and then reached up to fasten both hands around the edge of the roof. He boosted himself up, scrambling with both feet against the right-hand wall, heaving with every last scrap of strength until he had managed to wedge his torso over the edge, bringing up his right leg and pushing until he was all the way over.

The wind whipped at him, stinging his eyes, and he had to lay flat and clasp the edge of the trailer to stop himself from being blown off. The trees rushed by on either side, and when he wriggled across to the edge, he looked down to see the asphalt unrolling like a long and unbroken black ribbon.

He reached forward, grabbed at the edge, and pushed with his legs.

He reached forward and pushed.

Again.

Again.

LUNDQUIST JERKED the wheel left and right, feeling the huge mass of the trailer as it swung across the road. He knew that he had to be careful, that tipping the rig over would be the end of it all, but by the same token, he couldn’t allow Milton to interfere.

He had seen him earlier, racing down the road.

He reached across to the passenger seat and pulled the M16 closer so that he could easily reach the trigger, and yanked the wheel again.

He thought of what David said to Solomon.

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished.

He stomped down on the gas and swerved the tractor in the opposite direction.

“YOU CAN’T FIRE,” Ellie said. “The truck’s loaded with explosives.”

“And that’s why we have to,” Maguire shouted into his mic. “If we detonate it out here, all we’ll do is knock over some trees and make a mess of the road.”

“You’ll kill Milton.”

“We don’t know who he is.”

“He’s the only reason we’ve got a chance to stop this.”

“I’ve only got your word for that, Agent. I’ve got clearance to take that truck out at my discretion.”

“Then
use
your discretion. Give him a chance.”

“We let him drive on, we risk him triggering a blast in a town or a city. Can’t take that risk.”

“He’ll stop him,” Ellie shouted back. “You don’t need to shoot it.”

The headphones squelched again with the pilot’s voice.

“Man on the roof of the truck.”

The gunner looked out. “Okay, confirmed, we got a guy climbing up on the roof.”

“That’s Milton!” Ellie yelled.

“I’m gonna fire,” the gunner said. “Okay?”

“Once you get on, just open up,” the pilot said.

“Give him a chance!”

Maguire looked at Ellie. He bit his lip and then said, “No, this is Maguire. Hold on.”

“Sir?”

“Get ahead of it and then come around. We’ll see what he’s going to do. Position?”

“Six miles out of Iron River,” the pilot reported.

“Get ahead of the truck. If it’s still rolling three miles outside town, take it out.”

MILTON HAD seen the Black Hawk as it swooped ahead of them a hundred yards to the left. They wouldn’t get too close, just in case the trailer was detonated and the blast caught them, too. It raced away to the south. Milton doubted that they would let them pass into another town.

He would have jumped and left the chopper to blow the explosives, but the semi was going too fast. He didn’t much like the odds of walking away if he leapt from it onto the road.

That, and he had made a promise to Lundquist that he meant to keep.

The wind tore at him as he clambered across the full forty feet of the trailer. He gripped onto the lip of the roof and dropped down onto the catwalk behind the tractor. The handle to release the fifth wheel was an arm’s length beneath the trailer and he didn’t know whether it would be too far for him to reach. He lowered himself to his belly, his head pointing to the back of the trailer, and slid further until he was resting on the wheel guard, almost wedged beneath the tractor and the leading edge of the trailer. He looked over the side: the big Yokohama tyre rumbled just inches below him, across asphalt that seemed almost close enough to touch. Spray churned up and over him; he had to blink furiously to clear his eyes and then he had to grip hard with both hands as they turned into a sharp lefthander. The trailer pivoted on the fifth wheel and, for a moment, he thought he was going to be crushed beneath it.

It brushed his shoulder. The edge pressed into his deltoid, smearing thick black turntable grease, and then it straightened out again. Milton slid further beneath the trailer, the last few extra inches that he could manage, and then reached out his hand until his fingers closed around the locking handle.

It could only be pulled out at a perpendicular angle to the tractor.

He yanked it.

Nothing.

He had poor leverage.

Another inch…

He stretched out further until his muscles were taut.

He yanked again.

The handle rattled, and then slid out.

He backed up, clambered onto the catwalk, and braced himself against the cab.

Lundquist gave the engine a jolt of gas and the sudden surge separated the king pin from the fifth wheel. The road ascended a shallow rise and the connecting plate that fastened the trailer slipped out.

It started to fall away.

The airlines and the electrical cable stretched out, went tight, and then were yanked out of their couplings.

Without air, the trailer’s spring brakes automatically locked.

There was a huge crash as the front of the unit slammed down onto the road, sparks flying in a crazy cascade behind it, smoke pouring from the locked tyres.

It jerked left and right.

Milton flinched, expecting a blast.

Nothing came.

It gouged a track down the middle of the road, somehow staying upright. After fifty feet, it ground to a halt.

The tractor, shorn of its weight, raced ahead.

He anchored himself with the broken airlines and stepped onto the side of the tractor. The eight drive tyres turned, the spray flaying him. He reached the corner and stretched out, his fingers fixing around the handle of the storage compartment. He stepped onto the fuel tank, his feet sliding against the bulbous shape of the wet metal, and then he lunged ahead and took the grab handle. The exhaust stack chugged, fumes pouring out into the darkness. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, ducked beneath it, and hopped from the tank to the step.

He raised himself above the line of the window, looked inside…

… and saw the M16.

He let go of the handle, dropped below the line of the window, and swung away.

The automatic gunfire blew out the window, a sparkling parabola of glass that arced outwards and scattered behind him.

He held onto the handle of the storage compartment with his right hand, his right foot on the fuel tank, and swung back to the rear of the tractor.

He didn’t know what to do.

If Lundquist had spare ammunition, and Milton knew that he would, there would be no way he could get into the tractor cab before being shot.