The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

terror that would otherwise mark their final seconds as the shooting started.
    He thought of it and then discarded it. They would probably post a watch. That person would sit awake for hours, anxious and miserable, listening for footsteps in the dark. And that was its own kind of pain. No need to prolong it.
    He turned to step down from the truck—but stopped.
    He’d smelled something. Just briefly. It’d come to him on the breeze, blowing northward over the cars.
    He tilted his head up and inhaled. Couldn’t detect it again, whatever it was. He tried to place it, based on the trace of it he’d gotten. Somehow it made him think of gun lubricant, but that wasn’t quite it.
    He took another breath, still couldn’t reacquire it, and let it go. Maybe it was the natural odor of tens of millions of cars, mothballed in the desert for all time. It occurred to him only for a second to question that idea—to wonder how any smell at all would still be around after seven decades of sun and wind—and then he stepped down from the pickup and waved the men forward again.
    They rounded the truck’s front end and went south. Finn stopped them again one channel north of the row the others were crouched in, and led them west. They would drop down into the same pathway as Miss Campbell when they were two cars shy, and simply rush them. It would begin and end in seconds. As close to painless as circumstances afforded.
    Travis took the first glove box item from his pocket. He shook it next to his ear. Empty as expected. Even though it was nearly a sealed container, its trace contents would’ve no doubt evaporated long ago, even in the sun-sheltered interior of a dashboard.
    It didn’t matter. The item should serve its purpose here, regardless.
    He lowered it until it was nearly touching the bed of tire crumbs.
    Finn brought the men to a halt at the near edge of one of the broad north-south lanes. He could see the victims’ heat signature against the minivan, one channel south and two cars past the far side of the lane. He was sure all the men could see them too. No need to plan the final move. They knew what to do now. Finn stepped forward into the lane, and simply got out of their way. He sidestepped to the left. Waved them on.
    They advanced, single file, angling across the lane toward the channel in which the victims were crouched.
    Lambert took point as Finn moved aside. He moved slowly, silently, one step per second. No need to rush.
    He came even with the open channel between the last few cars and saw the three targets easily. Two were dead right now if he pulled the trigger. The third—someone small, slender-framed—was crouched at the back corner of the van, halfway around it. That one might create a problem if the shooting started too soon. Might get clear and lead a pursuit among the cars, however brief. Might even return fire—Finn had said these people were armed. Better to take them all in a single action.
    Lambert raised his foot to take another step, and heard a faint suction noise from the ground beneath it. He looked down. Saw nothing there in his thermal vision. Looked up again at the targets, still a good thirty feet away. The largest of them had his hand to the ground. Looked like he was holding something with it.
    Finn took another step aside as the men filed past him. As he did, his heel struck something in the darkness. It made a light, hollow thud. Something big and empty, made of plastic. It spun aside easily under the impact of his foot. He looked but couldn’t see anything. Whatever it was, it was the same temperature as the ground.
    He stooped, felt for it, found it. A smooth container with a handle.
    And a spout.
    He drew it toward his face, and his next breath told him exactly what it was, and what he’d smelled from atop the truck bed twenty seconds earlier.
    Travis was sure the Bic would work—would spark, anyway. Flint and steel shouldn’t have changed at all in Yuma, these past seventy-three years.
    He was less sure that the spark would be big enough, or long-lived enough, to ignite the fuel-soaked tire crumbs.
    He flicked the sparkwheel with his thumb. It generated a tiny flash that barely escaped the lighter’s windscreen—and had no effect on the fuel.
    He flicked it again.
    Same result.
    Lambert pressed forward between the cars. Twenty feet from the targets now. Still no clean angle on the little one behind the van.
    What the hell was the big one holding?
    Lambert could see the