The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

kill us more than they want the cash,” Connelly said.

“Fourteen million dollars? You’re not that big of an asshole.”

Kershaw said, “You didn’t hear him play Little Pink Houses.”

Bruder let the chatter go.

He preferred silence in moments like this, when everything could go to hell in a heartbeat, but some guys needed to keep talking, using it like a reminder they were still alive.

He ignored the banter and watched the road, front and back, with his finger relaxed on the trigger guard.

The road dead-ended into another going north and south, and when they stopped Connelly got out and set the farmer’s phone in a nest of grass and covered it enough so it wouldn’t stand out, but wouldn’t be impossible to find either.

He got back into the truck and Rison turned south onto the road that would take them three miles before ending in a T intersection just west of the main crossroads in town.

Connelly said, “When you get to the road, turn right if you can.”

“I know,” Rison said.

“That’s the fastest way to Nora’s from here.”

“Okay.”

“Unless we can see a checkpoint off that way, to the west. If that happens, turn left. Then a quick right, the first road you see. That’s gonna be Dolan Street.”

“Yep.”

Rison’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

Connelly was talking around what everyone knew: If things turned bad, it was likely to happen while they tried to get across the main east-west road.

Four lanes, totally exposed, with backed-up traffic and flat lines of sight for miles.

They’d all agreed, if the Romanians had a block set up to the west, they probably wouldn’t have another one until the crossroads in the middle of town.

Rison’s job was to get across the highway as quickly as possible, whether that meant going right or left before diving south again and getting off the four-lane shooting gallery.

No other vehicles were on their road, which Bruder found good and bad.

Good, because they didn’t have to worry about more farmers or Romanian patrols.

Bad, because the only moving vehicle would attract more attention.

Especially if the Romanians had mandated some sort of no-fly zone or curfew, and everyone else in town was hunkered down.

The three miles went by fast, and they all watched the main road pull closer.

The houses and blocks on both sides of their road blocked the east-west corridor except for a narrow window, straight ahead, and nothing moved across the gap.

Then, when they were a quarter-mile away, a big rig pulling a livestock trailer idled left to right.

“Okay,” Connelly said. “He just came from the crossroads, and he’s in no hurry. So they got something set up to the west, right?”

“Makes sense,” Rison said. He braced an elbow on the console and pushed himself up, then dropped back down, getting set for whatever he needed to do.

“So plan on going left.”

“I know, I know.”

Bruder watched the road ahead.

When they got to the residential blocks, he checked driveways and garages out the passenger side and Kershaw did the same on the drivers.

If the Romanians had a blocking team staged out here, watching and ready to close off the road behind the truck, that team would be the ones first to die.

“Another truck,” Rison said.

Bruder glanced through the windshield and saw another rig creeping left to right.

Then a car drove right to left, in the far lanes, going a little faster than the truck but still looking like it was in no hurry, prepared to stop once it got to the crossroads.

“Left then right,” Connelly said. “Left then right. Dolan.”

Rison said, “Shut up, I got it.”

They came to the road and stopped.

Bruder saw the western checkpoint off to the right, maybe a half-mile away.

It looked like a pickup truck and a police car parked nose-to-nose, blocking both lanes. Then the police car backed up to let a vehicle through before closing the lane off again.

Rison said, “Oh, shit.”

Bruder glanced at him, then followed his attention toward the crossroads, four blocks to the east.

The van they’d watched pull into the intersection was still there. They could see at least two men walking around, checking the vehicles as they approached and stopped.

Rison said, “Check the rooftops.”

They all bent down to look up and saw two more men standing on top of the buildings at opposite corners.

“I see long guns,” Kershaw said. “And binoculars.”

“Shit,” Rison repeated.

Connelly said, “They must be turning people away further out of town. There should be a lot more incoming traffic backed up.”

“Just the rigs,” Bruder said. “They’re just letting the rigs through. Any cars or trucks we see, they must be local.”

“We can’t sit here any longer,” Rison said. “They’re gonna spot us.”

Connelly pointed on a diagonal to the left.

“Left then right,” Connelly said. “Scoot across and make that first turn. Dolan, right there.”

“Right, I’ll just scoot across…no big deal. You guys ready?”

“Go,” Bruder said, “but easy. Don’t let the truck off its leash yet. Windows down.”

They got the windows down and Rison blew out a slow breath as he pulled onto the four lanes and turned toward the crossroads.

He recited to himself, “Easy. Easy. Easy.”

Another big rig passed on their left.

It would have been nice to have one right in front of them, a lead blocker, but there wasn’t.

Rison feathered the gas along the block and drifted into the far right lane.

Bruder could hear men shouting, but it sounded like communication and orders given in a semi-loud environment, not alarms.

“Okay,” Rison said. “Okay, here we go.”

He eased the wheel to the right, rolling into the turn to get them onto Dolan and off the runway.

Halfway through the turn one of the shouts got louder, more urgent, then something thumped into the driver’s side of the truck.

The rifle crack followed a split second later.

“Go,” Bruder said, and Rison floored it.

Part Three

Chapter Thirteen

When the explosives knocked the wheels off the armored truck, Razvan was a few miles away at the compound eating sausage and toast.

The place was actually a farm, foreclosed and purchased in cash five years prior,