Chapter One

Prelude

Mike Wesson, Brad O’Neil, and Charlie Phillips, walked into the First National Bank in downtown Omaha, off Seventh and Dodge. Each man carried sawed-off .30-.30’s under their long coats. Their plan was to get in and out in under three minutes with as much cash as they could. It almost worked.

What they couldn’t have foreseen were two police officers who happened to walk in behind them and that was when all hell broke loose.

Brad and Charlie were gunned down before they had too much time to react. Mike made a break for a side entrance/exit and barely escaped a bullet.

Running blindly, Mike turned left on Eighth Avenue, running like devil was hot on his ass. He could hear the sirens all around him. He knew if he didn’t disappear fast, he would get nailed and this time it would be his third fall: a life sentence. No parole.

The dark rumbling clouds suddenly broke apart and rain started falling heavily. Mike was thankful for that, as it would give him some kind of cover as everyone on the street was running indoors to stay out of the heavy downpour.

Ditching his .30-.30 sometime ago, Mike raced Leavenworth off fourteenth when a lightning bolt arced from ground to sky and hit Mike like he had never been hit before.

What few people who saw what happened, said it sounded like a soft crackle. Other people said the man just evaporated as if he was never there.

__________

Cody Martin had just escaped from a state prison in Nebraska. The horse he had wasn’t the fastest in the world, but he would make-due the best he could. At the moment, he had about a five-minute lead on a posse who was steadily gaining on him.

Cody had one gun with no extra ammo that he took off the fellow who owned the horse, and there was a fully-loaded Winchester in the scabbard.

He knew when it would come time to shoot it out with the six or seven men breathing down his neck, he would have to make every shot count.

Cody was in prison for bank robbery and murder. All the wanted posters always said the same thing: consider him dangerous.

He caught a break when a prison guard started nodding off while he was on a work detail. He saw his chance and knocked the guard out, took his gun and horse and took off, but it took no time at all before a posse was put together and now he was riding hell-bent for his life.

As the horse labored under him, looking back over his shoulder, he saw they were gaining, and he could hear the hunk of horse flesh under him whining and wheezing every ten feet or so. The horse was near ready to fall over. Cody knew there was no way he could outrun them.

Up ahead, he spotted a small ravine that would provide some cover. It was there he planned to make his stand. He would either kill all of them or be killed, but either way, he wasn’t going back to that hell-hole in Lincoln.

In the distance, thunder roared, and the winds began to pick up as dirt and dust started swirling in the air. In a few more seconds, the sky overhead became darker and more menacing.

Just as he made his way to the ravine, he pulled the Winchester out of the scabbard and slapped the horse’s rump, so he wouldn’t get shot, or shot at. The horse did a slow trot about a hundred yards away.

Cody dived behind a couple small boulders as bits and pieces of rock and dirt kicked up all around him from the bullets coming his way. Cody sized up the situation in a hurry. He had plenty of cover. They had none. He had no food. They probably had plenty.

Just when he knew they were in range, he aimed the rifle and quickly shot two of them off their horses. The others fired back at him before they spread out and took positions behind their horses they had lie down on their sides. Not even Cody would shoot a horse.

The winds picked up even more and a few drops of light rain began falling. Taking his time, Cody found another target and was about to squeeze the trigger when a lightning bolt came up from the ground to meet the sky and hit Cody Martin like he had never been hit before.

Later, back at the prison, the posse told the Warden they had never seen anything like it. One man said the lightning must have centered on the rifle he had, but after they went up into the ravine to check to make sure he was dead, all they could find was the Winchester, and the horse he stole about eighty yards away.

Cody Martin was gone. He simply vanished.