White Hot (Hidden Legacy #2)(52)

His phone screeched.

“Fuck!” Rogan grabbed the phone. “What?”

A brisk male voice spat out the words, loud enough that even I heard it. “Semi and four ATVs coming fast.”

Shit. ATVs, light armored vehicles, served as the armed forces’ version of a Jeep. They carried personnel and each sat four people and sometimes a gunner, which meant more than a dozen attackers were coming our way. We were about to have company. I grabbed my shirt and threw Rogan’s at him. He caught it with one hand. “Which direction?”

“They just turned onto the west access road.”

The access road let trucks roll up to the back of the warehouses. We used it for tanks and armored vehicle transport. They’d hit us from the motor pool side.

“Correction, not a semi. A tanker truck.”

Better and better.

“ETA?” Rogan barked.

“Sixty seconds.”

Rogan ran for the motor pool, pulling his shirt on.

I ran to the alarm console and hit the internal panic button. A loud metallic screech rolled through the warehouse. I pressed the intercom’s button. “A tanker truck and four ATVs coming at us from the west access road.”

I ran for the motor pool. The two industrial garage doors were up, the light of the street lamp spilling through the rectangular bays. Rogan strode into the pool of light and went down the street. Unarmed.

I keyed the correct sequence into the laptop and the feed from four cameras flared up. I pushed the intercom. “I’m in the motor pool.”

Grandma Frida burst through the door in her yellow rubber-ducky pajamas.

“Grandma’s here,” I added.

“In position,” my mother reported.

“I’m up,” Bernard said from his post in the Hut of Evil.

“We have Matilda and Cornelius,” Catalina reported.

I heard the roar of a tanker truck picking up speed. Out of time.

I need stopping power. I grabbed an AA-12 shotgun from the weapon cage, unlocked the ammo cage, and slapped the twenty-shell drum containing high-explosive Frag-12 shells and grabbed a grenade.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Grandma Frida yank the tarp off of Romeo. Romeo’s real name was M551 Sheridan. He was a light armored tank. He carried nine antitank Shillelagh missiles, and Grandma Frida kept him in perfect health.

I sprinted to the garage door and stuck my head out. The truck tore toward us on the access road, making no effort to slow down. An oblong cistern loomed behind the green cab. There was no telling what the hell was in that cistern. At this speed, the truck could ram the warehouse and rip through the walls like paper and whatever it was hauling would spill over.

I couldn’t let it get to the warehouse.

Behind me Romeo growled into life. It required a four-person crew to effectively operate—a tank commander, a loader, a gunner, and a driver. By the time Grandma swung it around, the tanker truck would have hit us.

Rogan strode down the road. Apparently he’d decided to play chicken with the tanker.

I ran after him. If I could toss a grenade under it, I’d derail it before it reached the warehouse.

The tanker roared toward us.

Twenty yards between the tanker and Rogan.

Fifteen.

“Get out of the road!” I yelled.

Ten yards.

“Connor!”

The truck smashed into empty air. Its hood bent, crushed by an invisible hammer, and tore. The black engine parts bulged out, as if the truck was trying to vomit, and disintegrated from the impact. The top part of its cab folded on itself. Its windshield exploded in a thousand shards, spilling over the exposed motor.

Holy crap.

The tanker truck still revved, trying to push its way forward. Its tires spun, spitting acrid smoke, and burst like two loud gunshots.

Behind us the tank engine growled. I glanced over my shoulder. Romeo tore out of the garage bay and turned left, away from us and the truck, going around the corner to the other side of the warehouse. The attack force must’ve split.

The truck’s engine snapped, crying and screeching, and began to turn back in on itself, folding. The metal popped, groaned, snarled, folding tighter, and collapsing backward, from the front of the hood toward the cab.

I stopped in spite of myself as my brain tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

He was rolling the truck up like a half-empty tube of toothpaste.

A loud thud echoed through the night. Grandma Frida fired Romeo.

Rogan took a step forward. The truck slid back.

Another step. Another slide.

The cistern exploded. The blast wave punched me. I flew back as a colossal ball of fire roared up, blossoming against the night sky, brilliant white in the center, then yellow, then deep ugly orange. I curled into a ball trying to shield my head. The pavement slapped my back and side. Ow. Something in my spine crunched. Chunks of burning pallets clattered around me.

Gasoline didn’t burn when shot. You could unload a full magazine into a car with a full tank and it would just sit there. They must’ve rigged the cistern to remotely detonate. That huge fireball had been meant for my family.

A piece of wood smashed against my arms, burning. Shit. I kicked the chunk of a broken pallet off of me and jumped to my feet.

The street was empty, except for the massive fire. Where was Rogan? Was he dead? Please don’t be dead . . .

The fire growled like an animal. Wind howled and the fireball snapped up, shaping into a tornado of flames. The tornado spun and slid sideways like some crazy colossal spin top. The light of its fire illuminated the warehouse across the street, and I saw Rogan pressed into the narrow alcove next to the AC units.