Lee Child - Make Me

The man with the jeans and the hair said, “This is it. No brainer. They want us worried about three things at once.”

The Cadillac driver turned and checked east, because Moynahan was on the radio. The truck was still there. Still square, still rocking. No apparent forward motion. Mostly white. But only mostly. There were flashes of other colors.

Familiar purples and oranges.

He said, “Wait.”

Moynahan said, “Wait one, boss.”

The Cadillac driver said, “It’s FedEx. For me.”

Moynahan said, “East is clear, boss. It’s only FedEx. West is still unknown.”

The man with the jeans and the hair said, “Keep an eye on it.”

“Will do.”

Moynahan put the walkie-talkie down. He checked on the FedEx truck, just briefly, and then turned to look west. Maybe two heads would be better than one. The car was still coming. Still far away. Just reflected sun and flashing chrome, and a hint of red. Weak new thermals off the blacktop ahead of it, and a low billow of dust behind it. It could have been anything.

The Cadillac driver broke off and checked the railroad line. Nothing in the north. No walkers. No self-propelled machines. But the southern horizon was winking silver. The morning train, fifteen miles away. Coming up from Oklahoma City. A tiny pinprick disturbance in the air.

He checked east. The FedEx truck was still there, rocking in place.

He said, “I just realized. I’m going to miss the delivery. I’m stuck up here.”

Moynahan said, “Long way to come back tomorrow.” Then he gestured west, with his chin. “This is the slowest car in the world.”

“It’s not slow. They’re timing it. They want to get here with the train. So our attention is divided two ways. Which is why they’re coming in from the west. They don’t need to use the crossing.”

“How far is the train now?”

“The car is closer.”

“But the train is faster.”

The Cadillac driver didn’t answer. It was like the crap they asked in high school. If a car is twelve miles away and traveling at forty-eight miles an hour, and a train is fifteen miles away and doing sixty, which will get here first?

Both of them. It was coordinated. It was a no brainer.

The car kept on coming. The train kept on coming. Vectoring in. Collision course. Way below them in the plaza folks were reporting for duty, scurrying like ants. Guys were coming out of the diner. Getting into their trucks. Smart move. They were sending out a holding party. A roadblock, maybe a mile out. Always better to deal with a problem somewhere else. Unless the car was a decoy. Maybe they were on the train. Like an old Western movie. The sides of the cars fall open, and all kinds of sheriffs burst out on horseback. There would be four guys on the ramp to meet them. Plus one on the blind side, just in case. Should be enough. You all know the plan. You all know it works .

Now the train was big enough to see. It was sunlit on one side, and shadowed on the other. Like the truck and the car it seemed to be jerking side to side, without actually going anywhere. The air was boiling all around it, like a luminescent slipstream.

The car was still coming. Two pick-up trucks were ready to meet it. About a mile out of town, parked side by side, one in each lane. Lined up exactly. Proud. Almost ceremonial. Like stone lions at a mansion gate.

Then they heard the whap-whap-whap of rotor blades.

Moynahan and the Cadillac driver danced around like crazy men, twisting and turning, like men attacked by bees, looking up, searching the sky for the helicopter. And finding it in two different places.

There were two helicopters.

They were coming in nose down, fast and low, one from the north and east, which was half to the right, and one from the north and west, which was half to the left. Whap-whap-whap . Both looked to be painted black. Glassy cabins, but smoked windows. Below them the wheat was thrashing and boiling in long straight lines, the start of a massive letter V, where the tip of the V looked to be right where they were. The top of Elevator Three.

The car was still coming. The train was still coming.

Their walkie-talkie hissed. The man with the jeans and the hair said, “Stay eyes-on at all times. I need to know what gets out of these things. And where.”

Then the call cut off. They could see the guy far below, tiny and truncated in shape by the downward perspective. His was striding around, his radio up at his face.

Whap-whap-whap .

The car was still coming. The train was still coming. Both getting close. No need for binoculars. Not anymore. The rotors were getting louder, beating out of sync, and the scream of the turbines was breaking through.

Everything getting very close.

Less than a minute, maybe.

A whole bunch of things happened. Moynahan and the Cadillac driver spun around and around, trying to see it all. Trying to stay eyes-on. First the right-hand helicopter pounced ahead on a wide track to the east, sliding in again behind the town and heading due south, full speed, which was pretty damn fast.

Toward the farm.

Then the car reached the roadblock and stopped. It was a red sedan. Domestic. Cheap but supernaturally clean. Therefore a rental. Two of the guys from the diner were leaning down, talking in through the window.

Then the left-hand helicopter pulled away west, and hovered in place, like it was waiting, and then it came back again. Right over the plaza. Hovering low. Real low. Lower than the old concrete giant. They were looking down on it. The noise and the updraft tore at their clothes and knocked them about. The downdraft blasted dirt and crap everywhere. Like a dust storm, right there on Main Street.

Then the FedEx truck crossed the railroad crossing, about thirty yards ahead of the train. Thirty yards from getting T-boned by a thousand tons. The guy didn’t even speed up. It was his regular route. He knew what he was doing.

Then way in the south the right-hand helicopter dropped over the far horizon. On approach to the farm, they guessed, because what else was there?

And then right at their feet the train came in, loud and long, hot and brutal, hissing and clattering and humming and grinding, but for once in its life drowned out by the thump of the blades and the whine of the jets.

The guys from the diner were still talking through the car window.

The train doors opened.

Whap-whap-whap .

No one got out.

Nothing on the blind side.

Whap-whap-whap .

The train doors closed.

The train moved away, sliding out from under their feet, slowly, slowly, car after car.

The guys from the diner were still talking.

The last car rolled away and grew smaller, rocking, as tired rails yielded an inch.

The jets screamed and the helicopter rose up high.

The FedEx truck crossed the railroad crossing again and headed home. Moderate speed. ETA whenever.

The helicopter wheeled away, and banked over, so its downdraft blew sideways, pushing them across the walkway, blasting them with airborne dust and deafening noise. In the south the other helicopter came over the horizon and mirrored the same maneuver. Up, and then over, and then away. Nose down, low and fast. Getting smaller all the time. Flying a brand-new V, where the new tip was pointed far away.

It got suddenly quiet. There was nothing to hear, except the wheat. And the wheat was soothing.

Their walkie-talkie hissed.

Moynahan got it and said, “No one got out of the helicopter. It didn’t even land. No one got out of the train either. Nothing on the blind side.”

Out on the road the guys from the diner were backing their trucks away. The red sedan was nosing through. Coming to town.