Tremaine saw what he was doing. “Gun it, gun it.”
Rayfield hit the gas.
Josh never took his eyes off the branch as he kept firing. It gave some more, and finally gravity took over and it cracked and swung down. A layer of bark clung to the tree, then the branch slapped hard against the trunk, broke free completely and started coming down. Josh slammed on the accelerator and took the steering wheel back, passing by the tree as he did so.
“Go, go,” Tremaine screamed at Rayfield.
However, Rayfield slammed on the brakes as about a thousand pounds of tree branch smashed into the middle of the narrow lane directly in front of them. Tremaine was almost thrown from the vehicle.
“Dammit, why in the hell did you stop?” Tremaine looked ready to turn his pistol on the man.
Rayfield was breathing very hard. “If I hadn’t, that damn thing would’ve crushed us. This Jeep doesn’t have a hard top, Vic.”
Josh looked up ahead and then to the right where the path opened up some. He braked hard, swerved to the left, swung the truck around and then headed right and gunned the motor. The truck broke free from the brush, lifted a little off the ground as it went over a shallow gully, and landed in a clearing. Rufus’s head hit the top of the cab’s interior as the truck came back to earth.
“Damn, what’re you doing?”
“Just hold tight.”
Josh slammed on the gas again and Rufus looked up in time to see the small shack ahead of them that his brother had spotted seconds before.
Josh looked back and saw what he expected to see. Nothing. But it wouldn’t take Tremaine and Rayfield long to work the Jeep around the obstacle.
Josh looked past the shack at an angle and could see the road that lay beyond it. He had been right. Where there was a shack in the woods, there usually was a road. He pulled the truck around onto the other side of the old structure. Both brothers’ hearts sank. There was a road there, all right. But it had a large steel barricade blocking any passage. And on either side of the barricade were impenetrable woods. Josh looked back. They were trapped. Maybe he could hoof it, but Rufus wasn’t built for speed, and Josh wasn’t leaving his brother behind.
Josh’s eyes narrowed again as he looked at the shack. The Jeep would be on them in another minute or so. Even now he could hear the machine gun efficiently tearing the tree limb apart so the Jeep could shove it aside.
A minute later the Jeep scaled the gully and made its way to the clearing. Rayfield slowed down as they scanned ahead and immediately saw the shack.
“Where’d they go?” he asked.
Tremaine checked the area with his binoculars and spotted the road as it snaked off through the woods. “That way,” he shouted, pointing ahead.
Rayfield hit the gas and the Jeep shot around the corner of the shack. Instantly both men saw that the road was blocked off and Rayfield slammed the Jeep to a stop. With a roar, the truck, which had been hidden on the far side of the shack, exploded forward and hit the vehicle broadside, knocking it over on its side and flinging Rayfield and Tremaine out.
Rayfield landed on top of a pile of rotted stumps, his head at a vicious angle. He lay still.
Tremaine took cover behind the overturned Jeep and opened fire, forcing Josh to back the truck up, his head below the dashboard. Finally the truck engine died, steam pouring out from the hood, the front tires flattened by the machine-gun fire.
Josh came out the driver’s side while Rufus covered him. Josh lunged, dropped to his knees and rolled until he made it to the rear of the truck, and then he peered out. Tremaine hadn’t moved from his position. Josh could see the tip of the machine gun. Tremaine was probably putting in another clip just as Josh was doing, and taking a moment to study the tactical situation.
Josh’s heart was pounding, and he rubbed at his eyes to clear the dirt and sweat away. He had been in many battles on both foreign and American soil, but the last one had been almost thirty years ago. Besides, it didn’t matter: Every time, you were terrified that you were going to die. When somebody was shooting at you, it didn’t exactly make you think more clearly. You reacted more than anything else.