Ahead, a second truck heading our way was almost on top of us, and I watched in the rearviews as the truck behind us swung onto the road in pursuit.
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WILLOW
“Big Dick has been hit!” I shouted as I pulled out a drawer and grabbed a handful of kitchen towels before pressing two of them to his leg, one on each side of the wound. I was no expert in gunshot injuries, but it seemed like he was bleeding far too much, and I worried the bullet had hit a vein or artery. “Hold these!” I instructed as I began to tie two more towels together to make a tourniquet.
“Hang on!” Colt cried.
I glanced up just before the impact. The truck in front of us had stopped sideways to block the road, the passenger bailing out to fire a sustained burst of automatic gun fire into the RV as it shoulder past the truck, the bullets popping and pinging down the left side as bits of the interior splintered and exploded. The RV wasn’t traveling fast, but the impact sent us all tumbling.
“Shit!” Goose yelled as Colt working the wheel to keep the coach under control as the truck spun into the brush.
After what felt like a century of the coach weaving out of control Colt finally gathered it up and floored it again, the engine roaring as we began to accelerate. I could sense there was something wrong with the coach, the vehicle shuddering and Colt was fighting to keep the RV straight, but I knew to stop was certain death and I prayed whatever was wrong with the coach wasn’t fatal. There was nothing I could do to help him, so leaving Colt to wrestle with the RV, I scrambled back to Big Dick.
“How’re we doing?” Colt yelled, but never looked away from the road.
“I think I broke my arm,” Goose called, his voice tight with pain.
“Big Dick’s been shot in the leg!” I yelled to be heard over the rattling of the coach, the bellow of the engine, and the roar of air rushing past the still open door.
“Remind me to not loan you my truck,” Fish said, sitting on the steps leading out of the coach, holding to a chair as he watched the door.
I finished trying the towels together and wrapped them around Big Dick’s leg and cinched it tight to hold pressure on the towels covering the wound.
“Fuck!” Big Dick growled.
“Sorry,” I murmured, but I needed to stop the bleeding.
I grabbed too more towels, tied them together, and wrapped them around his leg just above the wound. I tied the ends together to form another tourniquet, and tightened it down even tighter than I had the first one. Big Dick groaned with pain, and I slipping my fingers under the twisted cloth to make sure it wasn’t too tight.
Finished, I scrambled forward to Goose. His arm was hanging at an unnatural angle. “Goose’s arm is broken!”
Afraid to stand in the lurching, rocking, coach, I crawled as quickly as I could to my bedroom, being careful to not cut my hands or knees on the glass shards that littered the floor. Reaching my room, I ripped the top sheet from my bed and dragged it forward with me.
“We’ve got company!” Colt yelled as he began weaving side to side, probably to keep our pursuers behind us.
Struggling to keep my balance as Colt fended off the trucks, I folded the sheet into a large triangle and looped it around Goose’s neck and under his arm to form a sling, trying not to fall into him as the coach lurched and darted. He hissed in pain when as I tightened the sling, but as I was tying the sling around his neck, the coach suddenly slowed, and then banking hard right. I grabbed the passenger chair to stay in place, but Goose wasn’t able to grab a support, and howled with pain when he fell into me. I held him as much as possible, straining to prevent him from sliding across the floor and into Colt.
“I can’t stop them! Coming up on the right!” Colt yelled as he piloted the coach around a corner.
As I watched, Fish fired three shots through the open door as one of the truck passed, the Chevy knocking down a fence as it cut off the corner. A man leaned out of the passenger side and blindly fired a burst from the automatic weapon. He couldn’t miss the coach and again the inside splintered and windows shattered.
“Anybody hit?” Colt asked as the pickup bounced back into the road in front of us and began to slow, trying to force the RV to stop.
“No,” Fish said, still holding to the chair.
I sat Goose up and scrambled out of the way so he could use my anchor to hold himself in place as Colt crept up on the back of the truck and then floored the coach, rapidly closing the last meter or so before hitting the back of the truck with a crunch. I clung to another chair to prevent myself from flying with the impact and wasn’t hurt. The driver of the pickup slammed on the brakes to try and stop the RV, but his truck was no match for the lumbering power of my coach and could only slow us slightly before he gave up and raced ahead.
The truck tried twice more to stop the RV, but each time Colton floored the throttle and, though the truck could drag our speed down, it couldn’t stop us. We played cat and mouse for several miles, each time the truck slowed, Colton would drive into the back of it and push it along while sawing at the wheel, trying to spin the truck, but the driver of the truck always raced away before he lost control of his vehicle. At least the gunmen had stopped shooting at us and I silently prayed that meant the machine gun was out of ammo.
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COLT
When we reached Eagle Pass Road, the pickup turned right onto the much wider dirt and gravel road, toward the town of Eagle Pass. That was the direction I wanted to go as well, but I damn sure didn’t want to follow them, so I hauled the rig to the left and headed south toward Laredo.
“Call the cops. Let’s see if we can get these assholes off us,” I growled as the coach picked up speed again.
“Still no cell signal,” Fish said.
“Where’s the sat phone?”
“Grace had it.”
“Where’s Willow’s?”
Fish and Willow scramble about, looking for her phone, but they couldn’t find it among the mounds of debris in the coach, the wild ride having dumped the contents of all the cabinets into the floor and scattered it around.
Movement in the mirror caught my eyes as the truck popped out of our dust plume, moving fast as it raced past us on the left. I jerked the wheel left to slam the coach into the pickup, but the truck was moving too fast to stop and it squeezed by before I could force it into the fence.
“Fish! Get ready,” I said as the truck continued to race ahead. “They’re going to try something again. Willow, get low.”
A hundred yards ahead, the driver spun the truck sideways to block most of the road as the two men bailed out and ran to the side. I slammed on the brakes, the coach shuddering and shaking as it skidded to a stop.
“What now?” Fish asked as he watched through the windshield. “Do we ram it?”
I sat staring. “What do you think? If we break the RV, we’re fucked against the machine gun.”
“Yeah, but by the time we turn around, if we can turn around, they’ll be on us anyway. I say go for it.”
I licked my lips, thinking. “Big Dick, you okay back there?”
“Just do what you have to,” the big man grunted against the pain.