Page 1 of Firestorm

Chapter One

Sarah Hancock slammed the brake pedal of her pickup truck with both feet. The vehicle skidded sideways on the icy road before coming to a shuddering stop. The impact of the sudden action threw Sarah forward. Her seatbelt caught hard around the waist, knocking the breath from her but stopping her momentum seconds before she slammed into the steering wheel.

Her eyes had to be deceiving her. Daylight had broken about an hour earlier. She’d driven straight through the night to reach Idaho. Darkness had hidden the massive cloud in front. Until now.

Not real. Just your imagination. She’d been living off of little sleep and way too much coffee.

And yet. . .

The mushroom cloud was living proof that something terrible had happened.

Sarah knew very little about nuclear weapons except what she’d learned in school. If she could trust her eyes and that was nuclear fallout, then she needed to put as much distance between it and herself, and she needed to do it quickly.

She realized she still had both feet on the brake pedal, her legs locked in place. Sarah slowly lifted her feet and jerked the steering wheel hard to the left. The tires slipped on the road but finally caught, and she maneuvered the truck around to the way she’d come. Once the vehicle was straight, she floored it and flew down the road as fast as the conditions would allow.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, Sarah prayed she could outrun the fallout. Her mind churned out all sorts of lethal scenarios. Someone had nuked the hideout of the people she’d come to for help to save her brother.

She kept a careful eye on the cloud as the wind whipped the truck around. The breeze would disperse the cloud and send the deadly fallout miles from the bomb site.

All she could think about was her brother, Blake. Armed men had taken him from their home in Colorado without so much as a word of explanation. All her attempts to find out where and why they’d abducted Blake had been met with silence. Not even the local police knew what was happening.

But she’d known. When no answers came, there was only one person she could turn to for help. Blake’s unit commander, former Navy SEAL James Cooper. She’d known James since he and Blake first served together, through the following years when those who had survived to return home had gone into hiding. She and Blake had moved to Colorado and changed their names to escape the threat coming after them. James had disappeared in Alaska.

Now, James and the members of the team known as Strike Force had been hiding out near the rugged terrain of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Blake had been in contact with her former commander through the years. James even managed to visit their remote farm in Colorado from time to time.

Rumblings heading her way had her jerking the truck off the road. Someone was coming. She dodged trees coming up fast in an effort to get out of sight. When she’d tucked the truck amongst the trees and so as not to be visible from the road, Sarah stopped and watched the road for the advancing vehicles. So far, it was empty.

The ominous cloud hung in the crystal blue sky. Would James and the rest of the team survived such a horrendous attack?

Please, please, let them be okay.

As bad as she wanted to save Blake, she and James had always been close. They’d flirted around the edges of romance for years. But the life they were forced to live made it hard to think about such things as commitment and a future.

The rumbling grew louder and closer. How many vehicles were heading down this small county road?

Sarah grabbed the backpack from the rear seat and dug inside until she found the binoculars Blake had placed in their escape kit. She focused through the dense tree coverage. A multitude of military vehicles rumbled down the road toward the explosion.Towardthe explosion? She counted at least thirty. What was going on?

Sarah dug out her cell phone from her jeans’ pocket. The screen was blank. The electromagnetic pulse produced by the explosion had wiped the phone out and probably any available cell signal as well. If so, she had no way to communicate with James by phone.

Yet Sarah had come prepared, thanks to Blake who had drilled it in her head to have an escape plan. Thus, the truck that had been purchased under a fake name and the backpack filled with emergency supplies. Several burner phones. Changes of clothes for both of them. Food rations to last weeks, and other needful things along with a portable CB radio, for which she was grateful now because it would provide a means of contact.

The day before those men forced their way into the house and demanded Blake go with them, her brother had destroyed his burner phone used to communicate with James. He’d had Sarah memorize James’ number. Now, she had no way to reach James at the number.

The last of the vehicles passed her hiding spot. Sarah dug into the backpack and pulled out the CB. She plugged it into the truck’s power outlet and switched it on. She’d been a middle-school teacher once—before Blake returned and both their lives changed forever. Nothing about this cloak-and-dagger world Blake and James existed in made sense to her. For a long time, she’d believed it was all a game. Until they’d abducted Blake.

The CB’s reach should be several miles. But if James and the rest of the Strike Force were at ground zero, there was a good chance they hadn’t survived the attack. The thought of losing her friend was gut-wrenching. And if they had survived—had somehow managed to reach the mountains nearby—would she be directing the enemy straight to their location by trying to make contact?

Focus,Sarah,she could almost hear her brother saying.Don’t think about what might happen if you do. Think about what will happen if you don’t.

She grabbed the mic and started working through the channels.

Though she was unfamiliar with the lingo, Blake had written his handle and James’ down and taped the piece of paper to the radio.

“This is Desert Warrior’s sister. Are you there, Charlie Leader?” Static was the only thing she picked up as she continued to scan through the channels. When she reached the final one without answer, Sarah ran a hand through her raven hair. What could she do now? To that question, she had no answer.

She was exposed to who knows what kind of fallout from the explosion, and she had no plan.

Sarah remembered Blake drilling it into her head the steps she’d need to take in case of an attack such as this. Stay inside. The truck was probably the worst possible place to be, but it was the best she had right now. Turn off any outside air flow. Sarah killed the heater and dug into the backpack until she found a mask, then placed their extra clothing over the vents.

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