Rydell stared at him, terror-stricken. “In there?”
“Get in,” Matt roared, raising the gun so it hovered a few inches from the bridge of Rydell’s nose.
Rydell studied him for a beat, then climbed in. Matt glared at him crouched there, cowering, and hit the compacting switch. The hydraulic paddle churned to life and inched its way down, swinging over Rydell and herding him into the belly of the truck.
Matt hit the switch again to block the paddle in position, sealing the hold, then made his way back through the debris to the truck’s cabin and climbed in. Another man appeared, another drone in a dark suit with a big gun aimed at Matt’s face. He fired, the bullets punching through the windshield and hammering the back of the cabin behind Matt’s head. Matt ducked, crunched the gear lever into reverse and floored the accelerator. The truck extricated itself from the battered house and emerged onto the gravel drive again. The man followed, still shooting, his bullets digging themselves into the truck’s thick carcass. He wasn’t doing much damage—the way the truck was built, it was like trying to stop a rhino with a blowpipe. Matt swung the orange beast around and slammed it into first. The truck’s smokestack let out an angry bellow of black smoke—its engine probably hadn’t ever had such a workout—before hurtling down the drive and out onto the narrow lane again.
He was halfway to the main road when the first of the armed response cars appeared, a yellow SUV with a blaring siren and a rack of spinning lights on its roof. The lane wasn’t wide enough for both, and its driver knew it. He didn’t stand a chance. He swerved just as the big Mack reached him, but there was nowhere for him to go. The truck plowed into the side of the SUV and flicked it out of its way and into the trees like a hockey puck. The second armed response car didn’t fare much better. Matt encountered it just before the intersection of the lane with the main road, clipping its back and sending it pirouetting on its smoking tires before coming to a violent stop in a sewer ditch.
He slowed down at the mouth of the lane, picked Jabba up, and motored on, his neurons teeming with life. He had Rydell, which was good, and Matt was still alive, which was even better.
Chapter 57
Washington, D.C.
Too bad, Keenan Drucker thought. He liked Rydell. The man was a great asset, in any circumstance. And none of this would’ve happened without him. The term visionary was bandied about a lot, but in Rydell’s case, he truly was such.
Drucker’s mind traveled back to how it had all started.
Davos, Switzerland.
The two-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-table black tie dinner. The Aberdeen Angus beef and pink champagne jelly. Yet another gathering of the planet’s rich and famous, the powerful elite who aspired to solve the world’s big crises. Insecure egotists and well-meaning philanthropists, getting together not just to assuage their guilt by handing over some money to help a thousand or two poorer souls, but hoping to trigger change that could save the lives of millions.
Rydell and Drucker had sat together, late into the night, going over the growing mountain of data on global warming. Fourteen thousand new cars a day hitting the road in China. The booming industries there and in India building new coal-fired electricity plants every week. The developed world embracing cheap, coal-burning energy more than ever. Congress giving the oil and gas companies back home one tax break after another. The energy companies’ disinformation campaigns helping people duck the issue and avoid making hard choices. Every new study confirming that if things looked bad, they were actually far worse.
They were both in agreement: The planet was hurtling toward the point of no return. We were living a defining moment, the defining moment for our continued existence on this planet, and we were ignoring it.
The question was, what to do about it.
Throughout, Drucker couldn’t escape the feeling that Rydell was testing him, sounding him out. Seeing how far he’d go.
Drucker smiled inwardly as he remembered how Rydell had finally let it out.
Drucker had said, “All this,” gesturing at the lavish setting around them, “it’s something, but it won’t change much. Governments, big business . . . no one wants to upset the apple cart. Voters and share options, they’re the only things that matter. Growth. People don’t really want change, especially not if it costs