Sea of Greed

Joe raised his hands in surrender, only to be surprised by the deafening echo of a car horn.

Woods flinched and turned instinctively to look behind, Joe was on him before he realized his mistake. Tackling the big man and snatching the gun out of his hand.

Woods threw Joe off like he was a small child, but Joe held on to the gun. He stood and fired. The first bullet hit Woods square in the chest, but the man only flinched and charged forward. Joe fired three more rounds, hitting Woods in the knee, shin and foot.

The bullet to the toes was what finally stopped the charge. Woods tumbled to the ground, rolling away and grabbing his foot.

Leaving him behind, Joe raced to the Mercedes, where he found Priya sitting in the driver’s seat. She’d climbed up and gotten inside without a sound. How, Joe couldn’t be sure, but he vowed not to put anything past her.

She held up a set of keys that she’d found above the visor. “How’s this for a contingency plan?”

“It’s fantastic.”

Joe climbed in and pulled the door shut as gunfire erupted from the open ramp. The men he’d sent out the door had recovered from their unceremonious exit and were rejoining the fight.

The rubber bullets hit all around, ricocheting off the windshield and the walls around them with a strange sound.

“A little help,” Priya said.

Joe stepped on the brake as she started the engine and put the car in gear. As soon as the motor fired up, he stomped on the gas. The big vehicle surged forward, slammed into the powerboat in front of them and promptly bulldozed it toward the opening.

Tessa’s guards fired as they charged and then dove out of the way as the powerboat went tumbling toward them and the Mercedes rumbled down after it.

Priya turned the wheel to swerve around the wrecked speedboat and Joe kept his foot to the floor.

“Which way?”

“Take your pick.”

Priya turned to get them out of the line of fire, drove a hundred yards or so, then turned again. They sped on into the swirling dust, until the wing, engine and tail of another huge aircraft appeared.

Priya swerved, drove under the wing and turned to avoid the dangling engine pod.

“Did we drive in a circle?” Priya said.

“No,” Joe replied. “That’s a different plane.”

Roaring off in a new direction, they soon encountered another aircraft and then another. The aircraft were everywhere. Before they’d finished passing one, another wide-body would appear from the blinding dust. Some had missing engines, others had been stripped of their tails or wings or fuselage panels. Several of them sat on the ground like beached whales, their landing gear long removed.

“I’ve been wondering why we haven’t been spotted,” Joe said. “Now it makes sense. We’re sitting in an airplane graveyard. I doubt anyone would ever look here. And if they did, it would only take the slightest bit of work to disguise the Monarch and make it look like another derelict.”

The farther they drove, the more aircraft they encountered. Each time they passed one, they expected to find a gate or a fence, but, so far, an exit remained elusive.

“This place is huge,” Priya said.

“It’s probably an old air base,” Joe said.

Smaller aircraft appeared. Older transports and Cold War — era fighter planes that Joe recognized as old MiGs.

Finally, a dilapidated fence appeared through the dust. Razor wire crested the top, dangling in places where the fence sagged. Priya took aim. “We should be able to crash through that.”

“Do it,” Joe said.

They sped toward the fence, hitting it between two loose poles and ripping the mesh from the nearest supports. It caught on the hood and they dragged it some distance before it finally scraped across the top of the SUV and fell off behind them.

A service road ran along the perimeter of the fence. It looked as forlorn as the rest of the complex. Priya turned onto it, but Joe let his foot off the gas.

“Turn us around,” Joe said, looking back through the rear window.

“The other direction?”

“No,” Joe said. “Back inside the fence. Hurry.”

“But we just escaped from there,” Priya said, turning the wheel as Joe pushed the gas pedal down once more.

“We escaped from the Monarch,” Joe corrected. “If they find this section of the fence torn down, they will assume we smashed through it and took off. They’ll think we’re running for the hills — or whatever’s out there on the other side of this dust storm — but the moment this weather clears, we’ll be sitting ducks. They’ll spot us with ease, but we can hide back there in the junk just as easily.”

Priya was already turning the wheel as Joe pressed the gas pedal. They were soon back inside the fence, moving through a section filled with smaller aircraft. “We just need to find one of those big old transports and pull up inside it.”

As Joe spoke, his eyes darted from side to side. He caught sight of headlights coming through the dust off to his left. He pointed to the right.