Shadow Strike (Pike Logan #20)

Chapter 1

Fate can hang on the most inauspicious decisions. Sometimes it’s a wrong turn like the one taken by Archduke Ferdinand’s driver

sixteen-ounce Pabst Blue Ribbon. He didn’t know it, but it would be fair to say that having a third beer in the broken-down

saloon on a dusty side-street of Panguitch, Utah, quite possibly altered the geopolitical trajectory of the earth just as

surely as Archduke Ferdinand’s driver.

That, and calling a phone number besides 911.

A retired pipefitter from Michigan, currently the only consequence he could see from the third beer was the tongue-lashing

he was taking from his wife, now behind the wheel of their RV. She was in a fine mood, and while he wanted to fight back,

he knew he would have to spend the night with her in the small enclosure, and he’d learned early during their cross-country

trip that she could be an absolute hellion when she was angry—something he’d never had to worry about when he could retreat

to his basement after a fight.

Moving slower than was necessary, purely to aggravate him, she said, “I told you I didn’t want to drive these roads at night.

I said it over and over, and you still ordered the beer. And you made me wait until the game was over.”

Mosby gritted his teeth and said, “I’m good to drive. I finished the beer before extra innings even began. You knew I wanted to see the end, and there ain’t no television at the campground.”

“You’re not good. You can barely see at night as it is, forget about while drunk, and I’ll be damned if we die out here in the middle

of nowhere.”

That set him off. “I’m not drunk Liz, and I can see fine. Fine enough to go faster than twenty miles an hour. At this rate we won’t get to sleep until

dawn.”

Liz said, “You and your baseball. If I knew you’d be glued to every damn game I wouldn’t have agreed to be stuck in this RV,

stopping at a bar along the route to watch whoever’s playing. We should have just stayed home and saved the money.”

She glared at him and said, “I thought this was supposed to be getting away from all of that. Me out of the ER, you out of

the cold. Now, we won’t see any of the lake or the hills. We’ll just get up at the crack of dawn and start driving again.”

The words caused Mosby’s face to redden, precisely because he had sold the trip that way. Liz was a registered nurse who worked nights in an emergency room, and they’d both grown tired of

the grind, with Mosby coming up with the RV trip as an escape.

Wanting to end the fight and not wanting to sleep on the floor—or worse, on the ground—Mosby said, “Okay, okay, it’s not like

we’re on a precise time schedule. Let’s get up when we want, go hike the trails, and leave when we want. Spend another night

if you want.”

Liz smiled and Mosby was pleased to see he’d mollified her. She said, “You’re sure? We might need to skip the next stop and

drive straight through.”

He started to reply, then saw a group of lights headed their way in the darkness, on both sides of the road. He thought it

looked like a blob of aliens, each weaving closer together, then farther apart.

Not cars.

He leaned forward, saying, “What the hell is that?”

Liz peered through the windshield, saying, “I don’t know.

” She put her foot on the brake, and in seconds the lights swooped around them, followed by a throaty rumble of a half dozen engines.

Liz squealed just as a final light sped into the halo of their own headlights.

Mosby caught a flash of something larger than a motorcycle, then a blurred image of a van streaked past, its driver-side headlight smashed, the chrome of the reflector aimed in the air, the bulb dangling out like the eyeball of a corpse.

It disappeared as soon as it entered into view, flashing so fast Mosby wondered if he’d imagined the vision. Liz slammed on

the brakes, and they skidded to a stop, the suddenness flinging Mosby against his seat belt. He sat back up, staring behind

them, the lights disappearing until the high desert shrouded them in darkness again, the rumble of the exhausts fading in

the distance like a bad dream.

Liz said, “What on earth was that?”

Mosby shook his head and said, “Crazy bastards on motorcycles. I hope that’s not a sign about this campsite.”

“You think it is?”

“I don’t know. That’s not what the RV travel website said, and they’ve been pretty good so far. Let’s just get there.”

Liz started driving again, this time picking up the pace as if to get some distance between them and the motorcycles. On the

horizon she saw another light, saying, “What’s that?”

Mosby leaned forward, again, now regretting that final beer. He said, “It’s not a headlight. It’s bigger and off the road.”

They drew closer, the light growing larger, and Mosby said, “It’s a fire. Something’s on fire.”

Liz said, “It’s a vehicle.”

She slowed as they pulled up beside the blaze, Mosby seeing a pickup truck with flames burning furiously, all the way to the

tires. Next to the fire was a figure in the dirt.

He said, “Stop. There’s somebody hurt.”

Liz pulled in front of the burning pyre and said, “Maybe we should just go, call the police and let them handle it.”

“That guy needs help. Pull over.”

She did, and he opened the door, pausing for a moment.

The crisp wind snapped against his face, the acrid smell of burning plastic overpowering the clean desert air.

He leapt down from the RV and advanced slowly, looking left and right and straining his ears but only hearing the crunch of the gravel underfoot and the pop of the flames.

He rounded the end of the burning vehicle and saw the figure feebly moving his arms as if he were trying to pull himself away

from the flames. Mosby looked around one more time, saw nothing, and ran to the figure. He crouched down and saw his chest

covered in blood, a pistol in the dirt about three feet away.

He shouted, “Liz, Liz! Get out here! He’s bleeding bad!”

He heard Liz coming and the man grabbed his collar, his eyes snapping open. The man said, “Call. Call.”

Mosby pushed his arm away and said, “I will, I will. I’ll call 911 right away. Let me help you.”

The man shook his head and pulled a card out of his upper pocket, waving it and saying, “Call.”

Mosby took the card just as Liz arrived. She immediately began triage and said, “Jesus, he’s been shot. Go get some towels.”

Mosby recognized the command in her voice, her going into ER mode, and he let her take over, jumping up and running back to

the RV. He returned with as many washcloths and beach towels as he could rapidly find, and she took them, using them to stanch

the bleeding, saying, “Did you call 911?”

He said, “Not yet.”

She continued to work, saying, “Do it, he’s not got long to live.”

Mosby pulled out his cell phone, checked for a signal, and dialed. He gave the dispatcher what he knew and his location, answered

a few questions, then hung up, saying, “They’re on the way.”

Liz sagged back and said, “No hurry now. He’s gone.”

Businesslike, she stood up and wiped her hands on her trousers, saying, “I couldn’t stop the bleeding. The bullets hit the

femoral.”

Shocked at her lack of emotion, he then remembered where she worked. He said, “I guess we should wait until the cops get here. Tell ’em what we saw and what we did.”

She nodded and said, “At least two gunshot wounds that I saw. One in the chest and one in the thigh. They’re going to want

to know what happened here.”

He had nothing to add. She looked at her hands and said, “I need to clean up.”

After she returned to the RV, he remembered the card. He pulled it out of his pocket and held it into the light of the burning

truck. He saw a bloody fingerprint over an embossing that read “Blaisdell Consulting.” Beneath it was a number. He figured

it was where the man worked, or maybe a contact to a relative. He remembered how adamant the man was, as if he was more concerned

about the call than he was about his own life.

Mosby pulled out his phone and dialed, starting a chain of events that would alter much more than just the trajectory of his

RV trip.