The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

right at the last possible instant, veering past the leader. As he did, he saw the rest of the line begin to destabilize, the Humvees braking or jogging to one side or another—little movements that betrayed their drivers’ confusion. But Travis was passing the formation almost too quickly to notice those things—or to care. Sixty miles per hour, he’d read somewhere, was just under ninety feet per second. With these vehicles moving the other way at the same speed, he was passing them at closer to one hundred eighty feet per second. In hardly more than a second they were all behind him, just shapes in his side mirror, stopping and turning and trying not to slam into each other like cops in an old movie.
    Travis braked hard and took the turn at the end of Main doing thirty, then gunned it again along the secondary street. He could already see the curve ahead that would take them uphill toward Raines’s. No doubt the three men still up there had their guns in hand by now. Travis guessed this vehicle’s shell could withstand 9mm fire, but he wasn’t certain of it.
    He took the curve and saw the incline rising above him, steep as any street in San Francisco. There were houses to his left and right, but just ahead the way opened up on both sides to a broad, empty grassland. Raines’s house was three hundred feet above that point, the redwoods almost at its back wall.
    Travis saw the three spotters. They had their guns. They were positioned way up next to the house itself, maybe ready to duck inside it if they needed cover.
    They wouldn’t. Travis didn’t give them a second glance. He pulled hard right on the wheel and left the road altogether, angling up across the slope to miss the house by two hundred feet. As the redwoods drew nearer, he sized up the gaps among them. At a distance, the trees had been just a visual screen, but at this range he could see several openings that would admit the Humvee. They probably wouldn’t get far into the woods, but any distance was better than none.
    They were still a hundred feet from the trees when the spotters at the house opened up. A burst of a dozen shots hit the window right next to Travis; the pane bulged inward as the glass sandwiched between the lexan layers shattered. Other salvos pattered against the vehicle’s metal sides. Travis aimed for the biggest opening in the trees, and a second later they were through it, deep in the shadows and the green-filtered light beneath the boughs. He angled back to the left; Jeannie had said the mine access was straight uphill from the house. He dodged a trunk that loomed out of the dimness, and saw a gap between two others, just ahead, that for half a second looked wide enough to pass through. Then it didn’t. He stood on the brake and felt the huge tires slide in the sandy soil. He cranked the wheel right, felt the vehicle rotate without actually changing course, and a moment later, sliding almost sideways along its path, it rocked to a halt.
    Travis shoved open his door, heard Paige and Bethany scrambling out of theirs. Far away down the slope, men were shouting and heavy engines were racing; the Humvee column was less than thirty seconds behind.
    The three of them ran. Clambered up the needle-carpeted slope. Scanned the way ahead for any sign of the shaft’s opening. It occurred to Travis for the first time that the thing might be difficult to spot. It might be choked with ferns and low scrub; it might look like nothing but a patch of undergrowth at any distance beyond ten feet—it might be impossible to see that it was an opening at all. He worried about that for five seconds and then Bethany screamed “There!” and shot her arm out ahead, and Travis saw that his concerns had been groundless. The shaft access was an upright opening, like a garage door but a third smaller. It formed the end of a rough, squared concrete tube that jutted straight out from the hillside, its end cracked and worn and showing rebar.
    They sprinted for it as the engines roared behind them. Tires skidded and metal thumped hard against wood, and then doors were opening and voices were shouting again, no more than a few dozen yards back. Beneath all those sounds Travis suddenly heard his cell phone ringing. Jeannie, calling with the information from the old files. He ignored it, pointed his MP5 behind him and fired a quick burst. He heard feet slip and men curse as they went for cover. The access was right ahead now, fifteen feet away, pitch