CHAPTER 7: THE BLACKTOP SHIFT
The unaligned left front tire of the sedan hit the expansion joints of the state highway with a rhythmic, metal-on-metal shudder that rattled the dashboard pins. Miller didn’t look at the instrument cluster, where the needle for the engine temperature was already leaning into the solid red block. He kept his heels dug into the floorboards, pulling the wheel hard against the ditch side every time the asphalt dipped toward the unpaved shoulder.
“We’re dropping speed,” Miller said, his teeth clicking together as a large piece of gravel struck the undercarriage with the sound of a pistol shot. “The manifold gasket was already whistling when we left the range sheds. If the oil pressure drops below twenty pounds, the bearings are going to weld themselves to the crank before we hit the county line turnoff.”
The woman didn’t look at him. She had the leather logbook she’d taken off the range official open on her lap, her thumb holding down the thin, water-stained pages against the blast of hot air coming through the broken passenger window. The light inside the cabin was nothing but the green, erratic flicker of the cracked shot-timer screen, casting long, geometric shadows across the column numbers.
“The white truck didn’t go toward the town,” she said. Her voice stayed low, buried beneath the wet, rattling thrum of the car’s exhaust pipe. “They took the industrial bypass. Look at the entry stamps from Tuesday. Every time the range official cleared a lot of heavy duty rounds, a commercial freight carrier named Interstate Logistics registered a container weight discrepancy at the state line scale three miles north of here.”
“Interstate Logistics isn’t an army contractor,” Miller muttered, his fingers tightening on the vinyl wheel rim until the old plastic groaned. “They handle the commercial flatbeds for the manufacturing plants down in the valley. They haul copper wire, scrap iron, and industrial machinery.”
“They haul whatever doesn’t get scanned,” she replied. She reached into her red windbreaker pocket, pulling out the small, notched brass casing she had taken from her brother’s footlocker. She held the rim up to the green glare of the timer screen, matching the hand-filed notch against the terminal manifest numbers written in the logbook’s margin. “Look at the lot number. LGX-09. My brother didn’t write this down because he found a short supply line in his depot. He wrote it down because he watched a commercial freight truck leave his bay with five crates of guidance electronics that were supposed to be destroyed on the demolition range.”
The realization fell between them with the heavy, dry weight of a seized piston. The small, desperate theft ring Miller had confessed to in the diner—the soldiers skimming parts and selling black-market fluid just to pass inspections—was nothing but a layer of surface rust. They were the screen, the loud, obvious corruption meant to satisfy anyone looking for missing inventory while the commercial trucks moved the critical weapon components out through the civilian channels.
Up ahead, where the two-lane highway broadened into the four-lane industrial bypass, a pair of red tail lights appeared through the alkali haze. They weren’t the small, close-set lights of the white pickup; they were the high, wide rectangular blocks of a heavy commercial trailer, its dual wheels throwing up a thick, gray cloud of diesel smoke that blotted out the stars.
The truck was moving fast, its twin chrome stacks spitting short, orange bursts of unburnt fuel every time the driver shifted gears against the long grade toward the state line.
“That’s the midnight run,” Miller said, his voice losing its professional steadiness, dropping into the dry, flat tone of a man who knew he had crossed the line where a military discharge was the worst thing that could happen to him. “If that container gets across the river, it hits the private rail yard. Once it’s on the cars, the manifests are sealed by the state port authority. Nobody looks inside a copper freight car until it hits the coast.”
The sedan began to vibrate worse, the scent of burning oil coming through the fire-wall now, thick and black enough to taste on the back of the tongue. The headlight buckets on the old car were completely dark, but as they closed the distance to the rear of the massive trailer, the white reflection of their own grille appeared in the polished steel doors of the container.
The woman reached down, her fingers closing around the polymer grip of her weapon. She pulled the slide back half an inch, verifying the brass case seated in the chamber by the touch of her thumb against the extractor pin.
“Get us beside the cab,” she said.
“Miller looked at the red temperature light, then at the massive, spinning tires of the trailer less than ten feet from their front bumper. The air between the two vehicles was a roaring vacuum of dust, heat, and the stench of hot rubber.
“If the engine goes while we’re under that chassis, we’re going under the wheels,” he said.
“He didn’t kill my brother for three boxes of truck oil, Miller,” she said, her eyes fixed on the massive side mirrors of the commercial rig ahead. “Move the car.”
