AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?” David says from the driver’s seat.
Delia doesn’t get a chance to answer.
An ear-splitting explosion causes Delia and David to recoil in shock. Ten yards in front of the truck, the roadway erupts in a geyser of flame and debris. Chunks of asphalt rain down on the windshield. Both lanes of the road crumble and begin sliding down the steep slope toward the water. The guardrail tears away like it’s made of aluminum foil.
David slams on the brakes, but the armored truck weighs fifty tons—as much as a blue whale—and he can’t stop in time. The vehicle skids into the massive hole in the road and tumbles sideways in the landslide. Delia’s body is thrown against the restraints of her seatbelt as the truck rolls over and she’s turned upside down. She feels like she’s strapped inside a clothes dryer.
The truck crashes to a stop, lying on its passenger side. Delia experiences a brief moment of relief but then realizes that they haven’t landed on solid ground. The truck is sinking into the river, and the cab is beginning to fill with water.
Delia unclips her seatbelt and splashes into the cold liquid. She gasps from the shock, then rights herself. Kneeling against her door, up to her waist in water, she reaches for David’s seatbelt. He has a panicked look in his eyes, paralyzed with indecision.
Delia’s seen it before.
She’s going to have to do the thinking for both of them.
She gets his belt undone, and he falls on top of her, submerging them both in water. The water is halfway up the cab now. She pulls David’s head above the surface and shouts, “We’ve got to get out of here!”
David has the same panicked look, and Delia elbows him out of her way, grabs ahold of the steering wheel with one hand, and clutches the handle of the driver’s door with the other. The door is heavy, not meant to open from below like a submarine hatch. David, finally getting his wits together, helps her, and the two of them wedge the door open. Delia lets David scramble up first, and then she follows, finding it surprisingly hard to climb up and out the door. Vehicles just aren’t built to be exited this way.
They stand for a moment on the side of the truck like it’s the deck of a sinking ship. Only a foot or two more and the whole truck will be underwater.
Delia hears pounding from below and realizes that Seth is still in the back.
TWO
DELIA TAKES A deep breath and leaps into the water.
She swims down to the door lock and fumbles with the keys, which are attached to her belt by a retractable lanyard. She can hear muffled metallic pounding from inside. Seth could open the door, if he wanted to, but he must be panicked.
Or injured.
Getting the key into the lock is more difficult than she ever would have imagined. The truck continues sinking, yet her own buoyancy keeps pulling her toward the surface. She kicks her legs, squints her eyes in the green murk. Pressure in her ears is building, squeezing her head like a vise.
She needs to take a breath.
She refuses to surface.
Seth has gone quiet inside.
Finally, she slides the key in the slot. Putting one foot on the bumper, she pries open the door, a herculean effort with the weight of the water fighting against her. Seth squirms through the opening and pushes toward the surface.
She joins him and they both gasp for air as they tread water.
Delia is faintly aware of two motorcycles zooming up the highway toward the explosion site. She hopes they stop before they crash into the hole, but she doesn’t have time to give the bikers any more thought. She and Seth swim toward shore. It’s not easy to do, weighed down by boots and bulletproof vests, but she reaches the bank. Out of breath, she crawls on her hands and knees in the gravel. Liquid pours out of her waterlogged clothes. David, who got to dry ground first, helps her to her feet. Then the two of them help Seth, who has a bloody patch on his wet scalp, where he must have hit his head as he was tumbling around inside the truck.
Delia, standing with her hands on her knees, trying to get her breathing under control, turns her head toward the truck. A cluster of bubbles rises to the surface. Otherwise, there’s no sign of the vehicle they were just riding in.
Out on the lake, the diver, now wearing the oxygen tank, leaps from the boat into the water.
“What the hell?” Seth says.
From behind them, Delia hears the familiar metal-on-metal sliding sound of someone racking the cocking handle of a firearm.
She turns slowly.
Two men sit astride motorcycles on the roadway at the top of the scree slope, holding compact submachine guns aimed at Delia and her dripping-wet colleagues. Both riders are covered in black leather clothes and helmets hiding their faces. The air around them is clouded with dust and smoke from the explosion.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” one of them says, his voice muffled from the helmet. “We’ve got armor-piercing rounds that’ll turn your Kevlar into Swiss cheese.”
