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The road hugged the shore for only two miles, so they had a brief window for the intercept. If they missed Tagaan before he turned inland, they’d never find him again.
When they came around the next point, the highway came into view. The palms lining it were eerily still compared to the looming storm clouds behind them.
The big screen showed a single truck speeding along the road away from the direction of the cavern. It matched the description Juan had given them and was already halfway to the curve taking the road away from the shore.
“Murph, ready the cannon to fire,” Max said.
Murph worked his weapons control panel and said, “Cannon coming online.”
The hull plates covering the 120mm smoothbore cannon at the bow of the Oregon slid aside.
“Steady as she goes, Eric,” Max said.
“Steady, aye,” Eric replied from the helm as the Oregon slammed into another deep trough between waves.
“Your definition of steady needs work,” Murph cracked. He would need to time his shot like an archer on horseback at full gallop. “Ready.”
Max leaned forward. “Fire at will.”
• • •
TAGAAN HAD TO slow considerably when he was in the jungle to go around fallen branches, but now that he was on the highway and had it all to himself, he could more easily stay ahead of the storm. He knew of a concrete parking garage in Bacolod where he could outlast the rest of Hidalgo and plan his next steps. If he was lucky, he’d be there long before the edge of the eye wall reached him.
The stump of his leg still stung, but the bleeding had stopped. That was another thing he’d take care of in the city.
Now that he could pay less attention to the road, he had been able to open the cardboard sheets holding the pressed flower. As he looked at the secret ingredient of Typhoon, he considered how he could search for more of it. Finally, he would be the one with all the power.
But something about it wasn’t right. It was a white orchid, all right, but he didn’t remember the yellow petal in the center when he’d seen it on the fishing boat. The scrawled name was there, but it read Ceratostylis incognita. He thought the second word should be something more like inviolable.
Before he could make sense of it, the sugarcane field to his left exploded, throwing dirt high into the air.
Tagaan jerked the steering wheel in surprise but stayed on the road. Was someone bombing him? But surely no one was idiotic enough to fly in this weather. Then he glanced in the passenger-side mirror and saw the Oregon plunging through whitecaps.
A flash erupted from her bow. It was followed seconds later by a towering geyser of water erupting from the waves offshore.
The gunner now had him bracketed. Tagaan stamped the pedal to the floor. If he could get inland, he’d be out of visual range of the gun and home free.
When he saw another flash, he slammed on the brakes. A shell blasted a crater in the road where he would have been if he’d kept up the same speed. He swerved around it and accelerated back to full speed.
He could see the curve ahead. At this firing rate, they had two more shots at best.
Another flash. This time, he didn’t let up on the gas.
But the gunner hadn’t aimed at the truck at all. A hundred feet in front of the truck, he landed the shell right at the base of a palm tree next to the road. Severed from its newly created stump, the tree fell across the road, blocking the truck’s path. Tagaan stood on the brakes, but it was too late. The truck struck the tree, catapulted over the trunk, and flipped onto the driver’s side.
Tagaan’s front teeth were knocked out when his face smashed into the steering wheel, and he tasted blood as he tried to push himself out of the seat. Then he realized that the immobile truck was now an easy target.
He looked up to the passenger-side mirror and saw the Oregon relentlessly coming toward him.
From the bow, he saw one more flash.
• • •
THE SCREEN in the op center was zoomed in on the truck lying in the road. One second it was there, the next it was gone, blasted into a million pieces by the exploding shell.
“Say good-bye to Typhoon,” Max said with a smile. He turned to Murph. “That was genius taking out the tree to stop him.”
“The guy was getting on my nerves,” Murph said with a shrug as he closed up the plates over the cannon. “Pretty good shot, though, right?”
