?s fingers to come within a hair of his own, then let the canteen slip.
The boy lunged forward, but the canteen bobbled from his outstretched hand and fell to the floor. He suddenly caught himself and rose up, only to be struck by a left hook that tagged him on the cheek. He staggered against the workbench but quickly pulled his weapon up.
Dirk didn’t give him the opportunity to shoot. He dove into the guard, pinning the assault rifle between their two bodies. The gunman tried to spin and knock Dirk clear, but he didn’t have the strength.
Dirk ignored the weapon aimed inches from his face and clutched the young man’s fatigues, drawing him tight to keep the gun aimed clear, while with his other hand he groped the top of the workbench. Feeling a hard metallic object, he pulled it up and swung it against the gunman’s skull. It took three blows before he fell limp and slumped to the floor.
Dirk looked in his hand and saw he was holding a piston and connecting rod from the disassembled engine. “Definitely a knocking problem,” he muttered, and tossed it onto the workbench.
He sprinted to one of the all-terrain vehicles parked by the door. Each had a small mesh trailer attached for hauling parts and equipment, but more importantly, each had a key in the ignition. He straddled one of the vehicles and turned the key. The motor spun to life just as three men appeared at the doorway.
Dirk reached over and ripped the ignition cable from the adjacent ATV while twisting his own throttle. The little vehicle lurched forward, heading toward the open door. Ahead of him, Dirk saw that the original mechanic had returned, accompanied by a dockhand and a man in fatigues, brandishing a pistol. Dirk goosed the throttle and headed straight for them.
The mechanic jumped to Dirk’s right, while the other two ducked left, around the corner of the building. With the trailer bouncing wildly behind him, Dirk tore out of the warehouse and into the sunlight. He whipped the handlebars left, careening around the corner and after the two men. The dockhand jumped clear at the last second, but the man in fatigues hesitated. The ATV’s flared fender creased him in the leg, knocking him to the ground. Dirk had to swerve right to avoid a wall of fuel drums, which sent the empty trailer bounding onto the prone man. The man cried out as the trailer’s tires rolled over him, leaving him caked in dust.
Dirk had hoped to turn back and drive past the warehouse toward the beach, but was thwarted when the dockhand emerged from the building with the assault rifle.
Cursing himself for not taking the weapon, he wheeled the ATV sharply left and sped down the front of the dock. He waited for a fusillade of lead, but it never arrived. He quickly saw why.
Directly ahead, a half dozen laborers manned the conveyor system. The dockhand didn’t want to fire into his compatriots just beyond. Dirk held his course to increase the distance from the armed dockhand, but ultimately he had nowhere to go. Ahead, the conveyor blocked the width of the dock, while to his left sat towering mounds of gray ore.
He edged close to the dock as the workers at the conveyor began pointing and yelling. Barreling toward the heavy conveyor, he seemed bent on suicide. He wondered that himself, but he had no other choice. Building speed down the quay, he held steady until just a few yards from the conveyor. As the workers ducked behind the ramp for cover, Dirk jammed the ATV to his left.
The all-terrain vehicle’s knobby off-road tires slid on the sandy dock as he threw it into the turn while holding the throttle to its stops. All four wheels began to bite, and the ATV shot forward toward the mound of ore being loaded onto the ship. Dirk was nearly jolted off his seat when the front wheels met the base of the pile, but the ATV proved its mettle by blasting straight up the mound. It shot past an idling front-end loader and climbed past the feeder end of the conveyor. It was twenty feet up the side of the steep pile when its momentum began to waver, and Dirk eased the front wheels to his right. He came dangerously close to flipping the vehicle, but the trailer acted as an anchor and helped him to pivot the ATV around.
One of the laborers ran, yelling, as Dirk sped back down the hill, angling past the far side of the conveyor. A small avalanche of ore crashed to the dock after him and sent the remaining workers scrambling for cover. As it slammed onto the dock at high speed, the ATV bounced high into the air before landing on all four wheels. The trailer was less artistic, breaking free of the ATV’s hitch and smacking into the freighter, then dropping into the water.
Dirk had to throw the ATV into a hard left to avoid the same fate. Braking and skidding, he barely clung to the wheel as the ATV danced and slid. One of the rear wheels struck a bollard, which jolted the vehicle back on track, and Dirk accelerated hard down the dock.
Ahead, he could see the freedom of the open desert, in a gap between the dock and the dormitory. But as he sped ahead, another ATV appeared from around the building’s corner. Dirk slowed and waved as he passed the other rider, who he realized was the smirking gunman in green fatigues from the patrol boat. The gunman gave Dirk an empty stare, and then the light of recognition flipped on. By then Dirk had opened his throttle and was tearing past the building.
Across the dock, scores of men were running toward them, shouting and pointing. The gunman whipped his ATV around and gave chase.
A sharp, rocky cliff backed the lagoon, forcing Dirk to ascend a lesser hill that ran parallel to the dock. Shots rang out from below, peppering the hillside around him. He zigzagged up the hill, generating a billow of dust that obscured his path. Ducking low, he urged the ATV on until cresting the rise and disappearing from view below.
As he turned and angled toward the beach, he ventured a glance over his shoulder. Green Fatigues was hot on his trail, less than fifty yards away.
Dirk squeezed harder on the throttle as the ATV wallowed through a dry wash. Passing the other ATV earlier, he had seen a holster on the driver’s belt. Once again, he found himself weaponless against an armed man. But at least he had the ATV, and he knew where he was going.
Green Fatigues indeed had a holster with a loaded pistol, which he removed with one hand when the vehicles hit a stretch of sandy flats. Steering and accelerating with his right hand, he used his left to fire a handful of potshots, all of which missed by a wide margin.
Over his shoulder, Dirk caught sight of the gun and threw his ATV into a shallow serpentine course. Already kicking up a large cloud of dust, it now sprayed wide walls of brown that offered sporadic cover.
But that maneuver also allowed the pursuer to draw closer until he was choking on Dirk’s dust just twenty yards away. Dirk veered left along a flat rise above the beach, briefly losing his companion in the haze. When Green Fatigues broke free of the dust, he had a clear view of Dirk and fired two shots. One of them hit home.
Dirk heard a loud pop as one of the rear tires burst. The ruptured tire thumped loudly, and Dirk muscled the handlebars to maintain control.
He was as good as finished. Green Fatigues could speed ahead or alongside and finish him off with an easy shot. Weighing his options, Dirk prepared to swing the ATV around and force a collision. But ahead, in the sand, he saw footprints that angled sharply inland. They were his own footprints from earlier in the day and they signaled a possible riposte—one that just might give him a fighting chance.
49
THE SANDY SURFACE GAVE WAY TO DUST-COVERED rock, which rose in an undulating fashion. The gradual inclination concealed the approaching precipice, the one Dirk had climbed that morning. And the one Dirk hoped to use to his advantage.
Over the rocky surface, the ATV’s trailing dust grew lighter, forcing Dirk into a dangerous maneuver. Rather than dodge his pursuer, he angled ahead of him, desperate to obscure his vision.
As Dirk crossed his earlier footprints, he eased off the throttle. The lip of the precipice appeared a second later. He hesitated, drawing the gunman in close, before downshifting and jamming on the brakes. The ATV wavered as its knobby tires skidded across the rock. Dirk swung his leg over the seat, let go of the handlebars, and leaped.
Barely ten feet from the ledge, Dirk’s ATV regained momentum and soared over the side. Green Fatigues’s hard-charging ATV arrived a few seconds later. Too late, he saw the abrupt drop-off. He mashed on the brakes and flung the handlebars over with white knuckles, but to no avail. The ATV skidded off the edge and plunged over the cliff, Green Fatigues flying up and over it, screaming as he fell.