Flood Rising (A Jenna Flood Thriller) (31 page)

61

6:11 p.m.

Jarrod closed the distance in the first minute. Jenna could see the Jeep, trailing a monstrous dust cloud, racing toward her as if the track maintenance vehicle was standing still. He pulled alongside her and matched her speed, pacing her for another minute, as if trying to decide what to do next. Jenna hoped he would consider it a few minutes longer, putting her closer to the control building and safety.

The Jeep pulled away, moving several hundred feet ahead of the slower pickup, then it veered onto the rails, right in the path of the lumbering truck. Jenna grasped what Jarrod was attempting, but there was nothing she could do to counter the move.

The Jeep shuddered over the ties, shedding speed, growing large in the pickup’s rear view. Jenna kept her foot on the gas pedal, watching as the gap between the vehicles shrank to nothing. A sense of déjà vu swept through her. She was playing chicken yet again, only this time, swerving at the last second wasn’t an option. Neither was stopping. At the last instant, she turned forward and braced for the collision.

The pickup jolted with the impact. There was a dull thump, like an explosion, followed by the crunch of metal and fiberglass grinding together. The pickup’s engine strained against the added load, but the high gear ratio of ‘reverse’ was up to the challenge, and the truck pushed the SUV along, in spite of the locked brakes. The heavy steel undercarriage and metal wheels kept the truck on course, while the Jeep’s tires skipped and juddered over the ties. After just a few seconds of this punishing treatment, one of the SUV’s wheels snagged the ground and the entire vehicle spun sideways off the tracks, allowing the modified pickup to charge ahead once more.

Jarrod got the Jeep back under control and resumed the chase, but Jenna was nearly at her destination. Less than a quarter of a mile away stood the enormous hangar she had passed earlier. Beyond that was the rail maintenance yard, and just a little further past that was the control center. If she had to, she could run the rest of the way. Jarrod must have realized this, too. Instead of trying to get ahead of the pickup, he aimed the front end of the Jeep at the rail truck and punched the accelerator. Once again, there was nothing Jenna could do but watch the inevitable happen.

The world jumped sideways.

The broadside collision blasted the pickup off the tracks. Jenna was thrown around the interior like the beads in a baby’s rattle, but she held on to the steering wheel and kept the gas pedal pressed to floor. Despite being designed for use on metal rails, the steel wheels grabbed hold of the desert floor and the pickup kept moving under its own power. The Jeep tore free with another crunch, but Jarrod backed off only long enough to make another run at her.

Jenna stomped on the brakes and hauled the wheel to the side. The modified pickup couldn’t turn like a regular car, but it carved out a broad arc, avoiding another collision. The mangled Jeep shot past, missing by mere inches. Before Jarrod could come around for another pass, Jenna put the truck in ‘drive’ and hit the gas.

The truck’s wheels cut deep furrows into the hardpan and spun uselessly. After a few seconds, it broke free of inertia and rolled forward, picking up speed.

The engine revved through first gear and then the transmission shifted to the next gear and Jenna felt the truck gaining speed. The truck resisted her efforts to steer. The wheels, designed to run on long stretches of straight track, refused to turn more than a few degrees. The maintenance building lay just ahead and Jenna could see that she would never be able to steer around it.

I don’t need to get around it
, she thought.
Just a little closer, and then I can make a run for it
.

The Jeep slammed into the truck again, spinning it sideways. For just an instant, Jenna saw the maintenance shed looming before her, and then it was all she could see.

With a bone-jarring shriek, the entangled vehicles tore through the sheet metal walls, snapping the metal support frame apart like a child’s toy. The two vehicles skidded forward another dozen feet, the pickup’s steel wheels throwing out a spray of yellow sparks as they scraped across the concrete floor. The combined momentum of the two vehicles hammered them against an immovable anvil, crushing metal and pummeling flesh.

62

6:15 p.m.

Jenna’s first coherent thought was that she should get out of the truck and run, but as she reached for the door handle, she realized that the interior of the vehicle had been transformed into something from a claustrophobic nightmare.

The cab seemed to have been compressed, like an aluminum can squeezed in a fist. The driver’s side door had been driven inward, jamming up tight against the seat and the steering wheel. Beyond the side window opening—the glass had shattered, littering her with tiny fragments. Outside the window, she could see only the crumpled front end of the Jeep. The situation on the passenger’s side was even worse. The cab had accordioned inward, crushed against a wall of gray concrete.

She searched for an alternate escape route. The windshield was spider-webbed with cracks, but the laminated safety-coating still held it together. She might be able to punch her way through, but that would require time she wasn’t sure she had. She twisted around and saw that the small window at the back of the cab was broken out. The opening was just big enough—maybe—for her to squeeze through.

She started for it, but something held her back. The dashboard had collapsed over her legs, enfolding them. There was no pain and she could still feel her toes wiggling, but something hard pressed down just above her knees.

A crunching noise came from outside the truck, and through the driver’s side window, Jenna saw movement. It was Jarrod, disoriented, staggering from the wrecked Jeep. With a desperate effort, she tried to wrench her legs free.

An unseen jagged edge raked her leg through the fabric of her jeans, but she kept pulling, repositioning herself for the best angle. Outside, Jarrod shook off his daze. He looked around, taking in the scope of the damage. Then his eyes met Jenna’s.

She pulled again, holding nothing back, willing the dash to pull away, and suddenly she was free. One of her shoes came off, and as she started squirming through the window, the grains of broken glass dug into the sole of her unshod foot.

She was halfway through when she realized that she had lost the computer. It was still in the truck, probably in the footwell, hidden from view and inaccessible to both her and Jarrod. If she survived the next few minutes, she would know where to find it.

Another heave sent her crashing into the truck bed. She saw that the gray barrier she’d glimpsed from inside was actually one of the concrete piers used to support the antenna dish. The collision had smashed the pickup into the pier at the foot of the massive two-hundred-thirty ton structure. From this new perspective, she could see cracks radiating through the pillar.

Jarrod came out from behind the wreck, gun in hand, circling around toward the bed of the pickup, cutting off her best avenue of escape. Jenna could feel the rage—the primal fury—radiating from him, so it came as a shock when he called out to her.

“You don’t have to run.” His voice was tight, as if he had to fight to get every word out, but there was no menace in his tone. “We can get past this. What happened to Sophie was an accident. There’s still a place for you in our family. Just...come with me.”

He believed it. She could see it in his eyes. But she had made her decision.

Without giving an answer, she spun around and clambered onto the truck’s roof and launched herself sideways toward the lower landing of the antenna. The distance was further than she should have been able to jump, but she cleared it without trouble. Landing, on the other hand, hurt. Pain shot up through her foot as an embedded piece of glass slipped deeper into her flesh. Her legs throbbed where they’d been pinned in the truck. For a moment, every part of her body cried out in protest at this latest insult.

The report of a pistol shot filled the enclosure, and a round cracked against a metal surface right beside her. Fighting the pain, she yanked the glass from her foot and vaulted onto the rising staircase, ignoring the electric jolts of pain that rose up with each barefoot step.

A vibration shivered through the metal. Jarrod had climbed up into the truck and made the same leap.

She kept climbing, not wanting to fight a man who could redirect missiles in mid-flight.

Noah, I could really use some help right now
.

The thought made her angry. She had survived too much to turn into a helpless little girl, waiting for daddy to come save her. Irritation turned to motivation, and she started leaping up the steps, three at a time, rising higher and higher.

Jarrod mounted the steps and started up after her.

The long climb ended at a landing right below the elevation gears. Jenna recognized where she was. Sophia had fallen to her death from an identical platform. There was only one more flight of stairs, ending at the door to the vertex room, and then there would be nowhere left to go.

Jarrod’s head came into view, rising above the landing’s lip. Jenna turned, ready to drive him back with a kick, but before she could, he raised his gun and fired. The bullet sizzled past her, striking something behind her with a metallic clang. Frigid white mist sprayed over the platform. The round had struck a tank of liquefied helium coolant. Jenna felt her exposed skin blister from the cold, and she leaped for the next flight of stairs before the freezing cloud reached out to engulf her.

Over the hiss of escaping gas, she heard the antenna creaking. Behind her, rivets and support beams made brittle by the arctic blast, began snapping apart.

But there was still only one way to go.

Up.

Jarrod burst out of the cloud, his face frosted white from the icy mist, lips frozen in a grimace of determination. He charged after her.

Jenna reached the uppermost landing a moment later. There were no more stairs to climb, but the crisscrossing metal support lattice beneath the dish was within reach.

Just like the monkey bars on a playground
, she thought, and without hesitation, she swung out onto it.

The lattice might have posed no challenge for a nimble ten-year old Jenna, but it had been years since she’d been on a playground, and the last twenty-four hours had taken a toll. Or had they? Despite the pain in her foot and the breathlessness from her current situation, she didn’t feel like she’d spent the past 24 hours on the run. She looked down at her biceps. The knife wound was gone. She remembered a past that had never happened. What else about the past day was different? Her mind spun with the possibilities, but there wasn’t time to dwell. She entered the jungle gym, moving through the maze of metal beams as fast as she could.

It was like climbing the wrong side of a ladder, each rung taking her further out above a deadly drop. She glimpsed Jarrod on the landing, saw him hesitate for a moment and then take aim with the pistol.

A bullet sparked off the dish right above her, so close that she could feel the heat of the impact against her skin. She kept climbing and before Jarrod could get another shot off, she heaved herself up onto the rim of the dish and slid into the bowl. She lay there on her back, motionless, willing Jarrod to just give up and leave. Then she noticed a buzzing sound that she’d become familiar with in the Everglades. Cort’s drone had come around for a second strike. She pictured it above, flying in circles, its electronic eyes searching for targets.

Jenna searched for an escape route, but found nothing.

“You haven’t accomplished anything,” a voice rasped—Jarrod, from just above. Jenna looked up and saw him, perched on the rim of the dish, staring down at her. His expression shifted through a spectrum of emotions—anger, pain, disappointment…and triumph.

Jenna faced him. “The rest will never know if the signal went out. World War III isn’t going to happen.”

“It won’t matter. All the pieces are in place. When they don’t hear from me, they’ll go ahead with the plan. You haven’t stopped us.”

Jenna felt a coal of anger and defiance grow hot within her. “I stopped you.”

Jarrod spat out a derisive laugh. “Not really.” He hooked his left elbow over the edge of the dish and then reached back to draw his pistol from its holster.

Jenna looked about for cover. There were plenty of places that might shield her, but for how long?

Run toward a gun
…

The coal flared into a wildfire of determination. Jenna hurled herself at Jarrod.

She saw his eyes—eyes that were new, but identical to her own—go wide in disbelief. He pulled the trigger, nearly point blank, but the bullet pinged off the dish to the left, a ninety degree angle from the direction he’d fired.

The pistol fell from his fingers as he threw his arms out to brace himself against her charge. An impact stopped her attack midair and flung her backwards. She landed on the dish’s incline and slid to the bottom.

When she looked up to where Jarrod had been, he was gone. She found him above her. In the air.
He jumped!

Jenna rolled to the side as Jarrod landed, punching down hard and pushing some kind of psychokinetic force in front of his fist. The metal panel bent inward, leaving a basketball-sized impact crater. Had she still been lying there when...

Reflexes overcame Jenna’s surprise. She kicked out hard, swiping Jarrod’s legs out from under him. While he toppled backwards, she got back to her feet—and ran.

Every other footfall sent pain through her leg and left a bloody splotch on the metal beneath her, but she charged up the dish’s incline.

“You can’t get away,” Jarrod said, his voice close behind her, exactly where she hoped he’d be.

Jenna pushed off the dish, spinning around backwards and kicking out hard. Her heel connected with the side of Jarrod’s head, sending him sprawling. It was her turn to leap. While she didn’t know how to punch the way he could, she could sure as hell knock him unconscious.

But he saw her coming, and in midflight, he reached out and swatted her from the air without ever touching her. She rolled across the dish, more angry than wounded. She wanted to curse at him, to call him a coward, but her training did its job, stepping in and calming her down.

As Jarrod got to his feet, she thought,
I’m the same as him. No, I’m better than him.
An old playground phrase, uttered by the girls in her class after the drama teacher had them perform
Annie Get Your Gun
, came to mind. “Whatever you can do, I can do better.”

Before Jarrod could fully understand, Jenna swept her hand toward him, imagining an invisible extension of herself sweeping through the air. She had no idea how psychokinesis worked, but like her desire to reach the VLA, she hoped the knowledge had been built into her DNA.

Things went wrong, even before the arc of her swing reached Jarrod. Two of the four support beams holding up the telescope’s Volkswagen Bug-sized receiver bent and snapped as her arm swung past. With a groan, the remaining supports bowed to the lopsided tug and fell, tearing free from their mounts.

Jenna was forced to abort her attack, and she dove away from the falling supports. The entire dish shook as the receiver and all four supports, weighing several tons, crumpled inward. The dish shook like a struck gong, but Jenna rolled to her knees and turned toward Jarrod’s last position.

He wasn’t there. Instead, he was closer. While she had dived away from him, he had lunged forward. Jarrod dove over the fallen support, wrapped his fingers around Jenna’s neck and fell atop her. His fingers grew tighter, stopping the flow of blood to her brain. She’d be unconscious in seconds. Moving instinctually, she didn’t try to repel him with a psychokinetic attack. Instead, she clasped her hands together and drove them up between his arms like a wedge. His arms separated. The pressure on her neck reduced, but he remained locked in place, crushing the life out of her.

Her mind registered the high pitched buzz of a drone turning and flying away. She knew what was coming, and remembered Noah’s instructions when the boat exploded. She lowered her fighting hands, let her body go slack, closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

The pressure on her neck reduced, Jarrod no doubt thinking he’d killed her, that is, until she brought her hands to the sides of her head and covered her ears.

If Jarrod had reacted to her strange behavior, she didn’t see it. The missile finished it’s silent approach just a second after she covered her ears. The violent upheaval flung Jarrod away from her, and shook her body from below, knocking the wind from her lungs. Despite the lack of air, her blood reached her brain once again and her thoughts became clearer, even as the world around her fell apart.

She rolled over and was surprised to find the dish intact. Smoke rolled up over the sides, collecting beneath the hanger’s high ceiling. With a groan of metal, the dish tilted a few degrees. Nine stories below, the concrete base, struck by a missile, succumbed to the weight of the hundred-ton dish. It heeled over, lazily at first, but gravity pulled it faster with each passing second.

When the dish reached a forty-five degree angle, Jenna slid to a stop against a fallen receiver support beam. A moment later, Jarrod rolled to a stop, just feet away. She steeled herself for an attack, but when he looked at her, he said, “We can stop it!”

The antenna continued to fall. She didn’t reply.