But he didn’t wait around to watch the show. As soon as he heard the crack of the first rifle, Kruger scooped up Zarina and dove through the open rear doors of the panel van.

“Shut the doors!” he said as he rushed to the front of the van, knowing they only had a matter of seconds to escape the inferno.

Reaching the front of the van, he heard the rear doors slam shut just as he started the engine. Flames shot out from around the hood at the sudden spark of life from the vehicle. It would explode any second, but he jammed down the accelerator anyway, hoping that there was enough life in it to carry them to safety.

The van shot forward, smashing into the side of one of Loria’s toys with a scraping of metal that caused more flames to ignite. The heat was blinding, like his eyeballs were cooking in his skull. It was like the very air inside the metal shed had turned to fire.

But he kept his foot pressed to floor.

The rear of the building held some offices and a bathroom. The van easily tore through the two-by-four and drywall construction, but then came the real test. He had no idea whether or not the vehicle had the power to push through the side of the metal building, but he figured that the structure must have been built in sheets and if nothing else, maybe the impact would burst one of those free. He knew, however, that if the van struck one of the poles or support braces, then they would cook along with the rest of the poor souls inside the maelstrom of fire and death.

To his surprise, the van punched through with little trouble, but that didn’t mean that they were safe. Any second, the fire in the vehicle’s engine would lead to the gas tank and turn the van into a ball of flame.

He looked back at Zarina, who was crumpled against the van’s rear wall. His heart rate had been steady through the whole event, through betrayal and bullets and explosions; that was merely analysis and reaction. He wasn’t afraid to die, but he could not imagine losing either of his girls.

Kruger jumped to his feet, nearly bent at a ninety-degree angle, almost crawling, as he moved through the back of the burning van. In one motion, he scooped up Zarina’s unmoving form, ripped open the rear doors, and dove from the van onto the desert sand.

The van kept rolling along for several hundred yards before finally succumbing to the flames and exploding.

The desert floor was hard and unforgiving, not really as much sand as a rocky compress of sand and stone. Ignoring the pain, he searched for Zarina. She lay only a few feet away, on her back.

He rushed to her side in a staggering lope, still hunched over, digging his fingers into the ground to propel himself faster. Her eyes were closed, but he could see that she was still breathing. He lifted her up into his arms and cradled her like a child.