Chapter 59 - Katjaa Takes a Hit
The shot didn't go into anyone.
The P226 cleared the holster, chambered, and fired in a motion so fast it registered as a single sound. The round punched into the asphalt just in front of the lead roadblock vehicle, kicking up a spray of hot gravel and dust that peppered the legs of the men nearest to it. They stumbled back a step in unison.
Hanks kept the gun up, muzzle slightly lowered, voice dropping to something colder than anger.
"Like I said. We're passing through. Nobody wants trouble."
He let his eyes move across the line of armed men, slow and deliberate, the way a cop looks at people he has already decided the outcome for.
"The backpack is a toll. Not charity."
He stepped back once and reached through the pickup window without looking away from the gang. Kenny and Lee pushed the pack out to him. He picked it up and tossed it onto the road between them. It hit with a heavy thud, the zipper splitting open, canned meat and compressed rations spilling out across the asphalt.
Every pair of eyes in the line went to the food. Grips on weapons went slack without their owners noticing.
The man in the baseball cap was back on his feet, held up by two of his men, one arm wrapped across his midsection where Hanks's kick had landed. His face was the color of old chalk. He stared at the supplies on the ground, then at Hanks, hatred and something else working behind his eyes.
He knew the shot had gone into the ground on purpose. He also knew that with the slightest adjustment it would have gone somewhere else entirely.
Hanks kept his voice level and final.
"Take the supplies and clear the road. Or we find out whether your guns are faster than mine." He paused just long enough to let the next part land. "You could gamble that I've only got nineteen rounds left and can't take all of you. Up to you."
Silence settled over the bridge. The only sounds were the river moving underneath and the men breathing.
The man in the baseball cap stared at Hanks for a long moment. He looked at the food on the ground. He thought about the shooting he'd just watched, the speed of it, the fact that the first thing Hanks had done after disarming him was not shoot him but demonstrate he could have. He thought about the two vehicles and the firepower that might be sitting inside them.
Greed and a working sense of self-preservation won out over wounded pride.
He spat to the side and jerked his chin at the supplies. The word came out like it cost him something.
"Take it. Let them through."
Two men moved forward quickly and dragged the pack clear. The roadblock vehicles scraped aside, opening just enough of a gap for the two vehicles to squeeze through one at a time.
Hanks stood with the P226 raised and watched every pair of hands until Lee eased the pickup through the gap and clear. The RV crawled after it, its bulk filling the space almost completely, the sides of the vehicle inches from the abandoned cars on either side. Hanks tracked the gang the entire time, moving nothing but his eyes.
The moment the RV's rear bumper cleared the bridge, he ran.
Four full strides and he launched himself, catching the truck bed rail and rolling in over the side in one movement as Lee accelerated away.
The gang's radio crackled.
The RV was still rolling past the man in the baseball cap when the voice came through the speaker at his chest. Young, and carrying a rage the boy was still learning how to manage.
"One tall, mixed blood. One short with a beard. They killed our people. Our boss says find them, kill them. Bounty's doubled. Show these outsiders what we do."
The man in the baseball cap looked at the RV's driver window. At the unmistakable beard behind the glass. At the cold, sharp face that had just taken his shotgun away from him and kicked him into his own men.
Old humiliation and new reward landed in the same moment.
"That's them. Those are the Moser Gang bounty. Light them up! Kill them all!"
He brought the double-barreled shotgun up and pulled both triggers.
The blast tore across the gap. Twenty-four steel shot spread wide, washing over the side and rear of the RV like thrown gravel.
Kenny heard the shout and his hands were already moving. He wrenched the wheel and floored it at the same instant.
The RV's massive body swung sideways.
Most of the shot caught the flank and the rear instead of the cab. Most. The side windows blew in. Holes punched across the body panels in a ragged line.
"Get down! Everybody down!"
Kenny was already weaving, working the wheel back and forth, trying to build distance while keeping the vehicle from rolling.
In the back, Carley threw herself over Clementine and Duck, pinning them to the floor as shot rounds raked above their heads through the space they'd been sitting in a moment before.
Katjaa made a short, muffled sound. Her body jolted once and she went down.
More rounds hit. Then more.
The left rear tire blew with a sound like a gunshot, the whole vehicle lurching hard to one side. Kenny fought the wheel, but there was too much weight and too little control. The RV drifted, clipped the tree line, and the front end drove into a large oak at the bridge rail.
The impact was enormous. The hood crumpled and started smoking. The engine cut out and the vehicle sat still, steam rising from under the mangled front.
"Kenny!" Lee's voice from the pickup, sharp with fear.
"Don't stop! Reverse!" Hanks was already firing back from the truck bed, though the range was long for a pistol and the shots were more threat than damage at this distance.
Lee reversed hard, the pickup sliding back behind the tree line for cover.
Kenny put one shotgun blast through the fractured windshield to clear it and kicked the glass out, then dropped out through the opening with the M590 up. He used the engine block for cover and started firing at the roadblock.
The blasts were loud enough to force the gang back behind their vehicles.
"Carley! Bring the kids through the windshield! Now!"
Carley was already moving. She pulled Clementine and Duck forward through the broken windshield frame and out into the open, the children shaking, barely able to keep their feet.
Then she turned back inside and saw Katjaa.
She was on the floor of the rear passage, the surface dark and wet beneath her.
"Katjaa. No." The words came out broken. Every instinct Carley had as a person went toward the woman on the floor. Every piece of hard-learned survival sense pulled her back toward the children and the cover of the trees.
She got the kids to the tree line.
"Lee, covering fire!"
Hanks vaulted out of the pickup bed and came in low under the incoming rounds, rolling to the side of the crashed RV.
"Kenny, take the left flank."
His arm came up steady, finding targets through the smoke and the confusion.
A gang member leaned out from behind a roadblock vehicle, rifle up, looking for Kenny. Hanks's eyes fixed on the exposed leg and he fired. The round hit the thigh. The man lurched, his upper body swinging out into the open from the shock of it. Hanks fired again before the first echo cleared, the second round catching the exposed chest. The man was still falling when the third shot found the center of his forehead.
Mozambique. Clean.
Another man was firing blind around the engine block of his vehicle, gun barrel extended, spraying rounds without exposing himself. Hanks exhaled, leaned out, and fired three times fast into the same spot on the hood. The first two rounds sparked off metal. The third punched through and found the man on the other side. He screamed.
Hanks moved. Every pause was a read of the battlefield, a step to a new position, a search for the next angle. He didn't fire unless he was certain, and every round he put out produced a result.
Kenny hammered at the left side with the M590. Lee worked the right with his Glock. Carley, once she had the children tucked behind the pickup, came back up with her pistol and added what she could.
The gang had started the fight with numbers and position. They were running out of both.
Under the combined pressure, with bodies down and no clean shots at the people returning fire, they stopped pushing forward.
Then something hit the ground and the world went white.