The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(54)

I roared at the top of my lungs (I don’t know why something like that helps in this type of situation, but it does) and heaved myself up, flinging my right hand past the strap into the pile of wood. My fingertips slipped between two stacks and that allowed me to let go of the strap with my left hand. About a foot was all I needed to gain a toehold on the edge of the truck bed, and then I was on.

No time to congratulate myself and no time to catch my breath. Vosch was a car length behind me, straddling the right and emergency lanes to give Flat-Face the best shot at the taxi. I scrambled over the top of the wood as Samuel, who must have seen me in the side-view mirror, eased off the gas, bringing his door roughly even to my position on the stack of lumber.

I flopped onto my belly at the edge and stretched my right hand toward him. He was shouting something at me, but the roar of the wind tore the sound apart. This would be tricky. We’d have one shot at it with no margin for error and then there was no predicting what the runaway cab might do. But Sam was a former Operative Nine. He already had the next move figured out. He had probably already rehearsed it in his head, seeing it happen in his mind’s eye, and had completed the maneuver a dozen times.

With his right hand on the wheel, he opened his door with his left, struggling to push it open just as I did against the wind. What came next happened very fast.

In the instant before he jumped, Sam whipped the steering wheel hard to the right, put his left foot on the footboard and pushed off, flinging himself in my general direction, trusting me to catch him in the one and only chance I’d have to catch him.

I caught him.

Then I rolled, fingers locked around his wrist, pulling him up.

One of Flat-Face’s bullets found its target, the rear of the taxi jumped, and with a loud whumph! the gas tank exploded.

The flatbed swerved left as the driver reacted to the blast. Sam and I lay on our backs on top of the wood, too winded to speak, contemplating the cloudless sky above.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m thinking . . .” he gasped, “that we should have killed them at the airport.”

“He’s slowing down,” I said, meaning the trucker. I didn’t know if he knew he had a couple of stowaways onboard, but he knew a taxicab had just blown up in the emergency lane and maybe was he going to check it out. “He’s pulling over.”

“That would be counterproductive.”

“Still have the guns?”

“Yes.”

“You take the driver; I’ll take Vosch.”

Samuel rolled over and crawled slowly toward the front of the truck. I looked behind us: Vosch had seen it all, apparently, because he was in our lane and coming up fast. When I rose, he eased the bus over the center line and I saw Flat-Face leaning out the door with his rifle. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Samuel swing into the cab of the truck. We whipped back and forth, as the driver reacted to the dude with the gun appearing out of nowhere, and then Samuel must have told him to floor it, because with a belch of black smoke the truck began to accelerate.

Commandeer truck—check. Time for Vosch.

Canvas straps were spaced four feet apart along the span of the stacked two-by-fours. I scuttled across the top as Flat-Face commenced firing, but the angle was bad: I was too high and partly shielded by the stack.

The first clasp gave me some trouble, but by the third I had the hang of it. I left the last two straps closest to the cab connected to give the stack some stability; otherwise it might collapse completely and send me cascading over the edge with it.

If Vosch understood what I was up to, he didn’t let on. He kept within half a car length of our bumper, jockeying first left, then right, trying to give Flat-Face a decent shot.

My target was a little easier to hit.

The first board was an experimental toss, just to test the force needed to hurl it off the stack. It flipped straight up coming off the back, the far end impacting off the pavement, which flipped it again, the opposite end hitting the front of the bus with a satisfying smack. It startled Vosch. His hands jerked on the wheel, which almost tossed Flat-Face onto the road.

I shoved boards off the stack as fast as I could. Vosch pulled into the left lane and began to accelerate.

Smart: I couldn’t just push the boards off the side of the truck, not with the ends still strapped down, and from that side Flat-Face would have a better shot. Or maybe the idea was to take out the driver and send us barreling off the road.

And I had left both guns in the taxi.

No time to undo the two straps. I fell onto my stomach as the bus came beside the truck bed. One of the loosened straps was flapping beside me. I grabbed it. I waited. I knew he’d come. If it had been me, I’d come.

He came. Vosch brought the bus within two feet of the bed, and all Flat-Face had to do was jump onboard. I crouched in the center, like a running back waiting for the snap, left fist knuckle down on the wood for balance, the strap wrapped twice around my right—for Flat-Face.

He came at me like a crab shuffling across the seabed. He had ditched the rifle; I guessed because he needed both hands for the jump. But now, as he came at me, I saw a black dagger in his right hand.

Saint Michael . . . Prince of Light . . . hear my prayer . . .

I didn’t feel the wind. Or the wood beneath me.

Pardon my sins . . . forgive my trespasses . . .

I didn’t see the bus, the truck, the sky, the road.