Read Online Flight by Bernard Wilkerson - Free Book Online Page B

And with all these gray clouds? We’re fine.”
    Eva wasn’t so sure.
    The dirt road curved and started
following parallel to a set of railroad tracks they hadn’t noticed
before.
    They continued along the tracks
until they got to a set of power cables. Mark stopped the jeep.
Towers stood on either side of them. The one farthest away from the
freeway, in the direction he wanted to go, was to their right and
sat atop a fifteen foot high bluff. There was no way to get up it
and head towards the hills.
    “Now what, genius?” Eva
asked.
    “That’s why I got a four wheel
drive.”
    “Not even in a four wheel drive
are you going to make it up that hill. If you’re going to try
though, let me out. I’ll watch.”
    They could hike up it, but it was
probably just flat desert on top for miles. Plus, she didn’t want
to abandon the jeep.
    “I’m not that much of an idiot,”
he said with a smile. “But there’s gotta be a place where the
ground levels out, and we can go up it and see if we can follow the
power lines. Just keep your eyes open.”
    It was getting tougher to see. The
sun had almost completely set now, the gray clouds blending with
the grays of night, distance becoming impossible to discern. Eva
wished she’d brought night vision goggles.
    She did the best she could while
Mark focused on driving in the dark.
    “There,” she called out suddenly,
pointing to a spot ahead where she thought the bluff ended. “Cross
the tracks just up ahead,” she said.
    He slowed, squinting in the
direction she pointed. When he thought he saw what she meant, he
downshifted, switched the jeep to four wheel drive, and
turned.
    The jeep easily cleared the hill
up to the railroad tracks, and then they were up and over them and
onto the backside of the bluff. They could see power cables and
several towers heading off to the hills. Mark tore off through the
desert, not even worrying about looking for a road.
    They jounced over scrub brush
until they got even with the power cables again and found a dirt
road.
    “Just like I expected,” Mark
bragged.
    He turned on the road and they
followed it several miles in the dark, without headlights, until it
ended deep in a box canyon. Eva used her flashlight with the red
filter to look around as they drove slowly.
    “This is the kind of place where
the bandits ambush you,” she said.
    “No one knows we’re up here. We
should be safe for the night.”
    He drove until they got to another
power line tower. He parked the jeep behind it, backing them
between the tower and the canyon wall, facing outwards.
    “There. We’re safe here,” he
declared.
    Eva shone her red light up the
steep walls and around the canyon. There was nothing. And it was
completely quiet. Even the tower didn’t hum. It was as if the
electricity had stopped flowing through it. Which was a real
possibility.
    Would someone come back up here to
fix the tower? Had she and Mark been clever enough, turning the
lights off on the jeep as they headed up here, to keep anyone from
detecting them? Would random hikers simply stumble across them? She
didn’t feel safe.
    “We still should take turns
sleeping,” she suggested.
    “I agree. And we should load up
that cannon you brought. By the way, I didn’t bring any sleeping
bags or pillows. Sorry.”
    “No problem,” Eva said. She didn’t
expect to be comfortable “We shouldn’t light a fire,
either.”
    Mark frowned. “No roasted
marshmallows or singing ‘Kumbaya’? It’s gonna be a fun
night.”
    Eva took the first watch. She
wasn’t ready to sleep.
    Her new partner sprawled out on
the back seat of the jeep and fell asleep instantly. One of the
mantras of Agency training. Sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom when
you can, where you can, because you never know when you’re going to
get another chance. She envied those who could fall asleep on
command.
    She loaded the MP23 quietly, in
the dark, feeling good that she had practiced with a blindfold on.
They all had, in