The Scorching

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  But the drone wasn’t done killing.

  A flashing ball of fire from an incendiary took the others. Horrified, Kennedy watched them die in the flames, their screams such as he’d never heard, not even in combat. The shrieks died to moans, and a silence fell as scattered bodies looked like black cinders against the rocks.

  Its work done, the drone hummed away and disappeared into the distance.

  Pete Kennedy stood. Of his crew, only Maryann had survived.

  “Pete, what the hell’s happening?” Maryann said. She took her cell phone away from her ear, shook her head, and said, “Nothing.”

  “Nobody around to help us anyway.” Kennedy said. “Head downhill, Maryann. Stay well to the west of the fire started by the drone. Try to make it to the logging road. I’m going after the people who did this.”

  “After them?” she repeated, as if the words made no sense.

  “Yeah, they shot Pranda and Jon Carty, so they’re within rifle range. I’m going to find them, and then I’ll kill them.” He glanced at the sky. “I’ll catch up to them before dark.”

  Maryann’s face was anxious and very pale. “For God’s sake be careful, Pete,” she said.

  Kennedy nodded. “Go now while you still have daylight. Just stay to the west and head for the logging road like I told you.”

  He watched the woman until she made her way down the hill, scrambling wide of the burning pines, and then retrieved his backpack. The deaths of his people had transformed easygoing, sometimes gentle Pete Kennedy into a hard, dangerous man whose gun skills had been forged in the heat of battle. He was once again what the Marines had trained him to be . . . a killing machine. The Ruger was warm to the touch as he checked the cylinder. Six rounds of Hornady 240-grain XTP hollow points, enough to slow down a grizzly or take out a man. The revolver was packed with a belt and holster and six spare rounds.

  An icy calmness overcame Kennedy. The same calm he’d felt during his entire second tour in Iraq, a calm accompanied by rage so intense that it steadied him.

  A fire burned below Kennedy, and to the west there was no vantage point that could’ve given the shooters a view of the talus slope where Pranda Khan and Jon Carty had been shot. But to the east, the mountainside sloped down into a treed valley before rising again to a high, steep bank crowned by a mix of pine and red cedar. From the top of the bluff, a rifleman would have a view of the entire southeastern slope of the peak.

  Kennedy nodded to himself. The killers, whoever they were, had to be there.

  He slowly made his way down the incline. There was little cover, and every yard of terrain now represented a danger. Ahead of him pines burned, and moving on cat feet he angled to his east, away from the fire. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air. Suddenly a bird exploded out of the brush, and Kennedy instantly threw himself on his belly and flattened against the ground. Then he slid like a sled on ice, gravel viciously scraping his chest and stomach as he nose-dived down the slope. It seemed that he’d skidded the best part of a hundred yards before he hurtled headfirst over a rock ledge and dropped about eight feet before landing on the top of his head and shoulders.

  The impact stunned Kennedy, and he lay still for several minutes hurting all over, fearing the worst. When his head stopped spinning, he moved his arms and then his legs. So far so good, nothing broken. He climbed to his feet. His neck pained him a little, but he was still intact, and the Blackhawk was securely snapped into its field holster. Smoke hung around Kennedy like a gray mist, and he was grateful that it cloaked him from prying eyes, at least until he started to move again.

  He was in the narrow valley between the slope of Glacier peak and the adjoining bluff. Fires burned to the west and south, and he feared for Maryann’s safety. It was several miles across treed, hilly country to the logging road and a twisted ankle or some other mishap, could spell disaster. But there were faint hiker trails in that direction, and with luck, the woman may have found one of those. Kennedy put Maryann out of his mind. Now he needed all his concentration for the task at hand.

  He stepped back, took a look at the height from which he’d fallen, and shook his head. “Pete,” he said aloud, “you could’ve broken your damned fool neck.”

  Then he saw them.

  Not fifty feet higher in the bluff, four men, clustered together on a rock ledge. They faced in the opposite direction, looking into the sky at a returning drone. All four wore olive-green coveralls that gave them the appearance of soldiers, but three of them were bearded, and Kennedy had seen their like before in Afghanistan. They had the look of Islamic terrorists . . . and now the attack on his crew and the vague rumors he’d heard about pyroterrorism began to make sense. Those men were there to light forest fires, and he and his people had gotten in their way.

  Kennedy’s hatred for a merciless enemy grew to white-hot intensity. He drew the Ruger and stepped into the open, two-handed the big revolver to eye level, thumbed back the hammer, and aimed at one of the terrorists. It was a relatively easy shot, but he took his time, aiming carefully, wanting a sure kill. He squeezed the trigger, the Blackhawk roared and bucked in his hand, and his chosen target screamed and fell. Almost immediately a bullet spattered a boulder near him, and Kennedy ducked back into the cover of the rock face. But he didn’t plan to stay there. He would take the fight to the enemy.

  Above them he heard the terrorists jabber to one another. They sounded hysterical, screaming their rage, determined to destroy the infidel who’d killed one of their own.

  Kennedy shook his head. Those boys were getting too worked up to think straight.

  And he was right . . . because fatal mistakes were made.

  * * *

  A shattering shower of gravel skittered down the side of the bluff and rattled onto the ground a few feet from where Kennedy stood. Hammer back, he raised the Blackhawk and stepped into the open. Two men slid down the slope, both with rifles, one of them wearing a pair of bright red Nikes. Both saw Kennedy at the same time, and they dug their heels into the dirt, frantically trying to brake to a halt.

  Moments later the terrorists learned that a frontal attack on a trained and angry Marine with right on his side was a bad idea. Kennedy shot fast and accurately, working the Blackhawk like an old-time gunfighter. One of the terrorists dropped, shrieking, with a bullet in his belly that took him out of the fight. But the man in the red Nikes managed to stand and get off a fumbling shot from his AK-47. A miss! But Kennedy’s own round crashed into the man’s chest, and his rifle went spinning away from him. The terrorist rode a second bullet into hell.

  The gut-shot man slid down the hill feetfirst, and he was in a sorry state. His white teeth clenched, he clutched at his belly with scarlet hands, screeching, and his kicking feet chewed up the ground. Kennedy put him out of his misery and then reloaded the Ruger. There was one killer left, and he wanted him . . . wanted him real bad.

  * * *

  Attacking uphill into the rifle of an entrenched enemy is never a good plan, and Pete Kennedy liked it not. There was little cover, and he’d be an easy target. The daylight was fading, and now the question was: Will the man pull out when darkness falls, or spend the night on the slope, hoping for a clean shot at his unseen enemy come morning?

  Damn him, the ball was in the terrorist’s court and that rankled.

  Throwing caution to the wind, Kennedy darted out from the rock face, snapped off a wild shot, and dived back again, rolling into cover. A rifle cracked, and a bullet thudded into the ground where he’d stood a moment before.

  The terrorist hadn’t pulled out. He was still there.

  Then a man’s voice, heavily accented.

  “Coward! Show yourself and fight like a warrior!”

  Kennedy grinned. “You come and get me, Abdul!”

  “Telhas teeze!” the man shouted.

  Kennedy had picked up enough Arabic to know what that meant: “Kiss my ass!”

  The sun was going down, and smoke smudged the fair face of the still bright sky
like dirty thumbprints. Somewhere in the brush a quail called. The forest fire crackled, now driven by a west wind, away, Kennedy noted with some relief, from the settled areas around his hometown of Leavenworth. The wind direction had changed, and he estimated that fire in the valley would spread to his present location in no more than three to four hours. The terrorist up in his high perch on the slope would need to move before then.

  Kennedy hunkered down, the Ruger Blackhawk close at hand. He’d wait until darkness or the flames forced him to move, whatever came first. He had a protein bar in his pocket, and he ate that for energy. It tasted like sawdust.

  * * *

  Night fell, the darkness made lighter by the amber glow of the blazing forest fire.

  Pete Kennedy rose to his feet and stepped into the open. He was made invisible by the gloom, and no shots were fired, nor had he expected any. He studied the barren, rugged slope. A man could climb it in the dark and get close to his enemy. And then it would come down to who shot better. The Blackhawk, carried only for bear, was not a familiar weapon to him. A single action’s first shot was fast, but follow-up shots, cocking the hammer before pulling the trigger, were relatively slow. He’d seen experts fire single actions with amazing speed, but he was not one of them. Kennedy looked at the slope again. He could only make the best of what he had.

  Unless . . .

  Kennedy stood at the bottom of the incline, and his eyes searched the darkness. It took several minutes before he spotted halfway up the slope a sudden surge of firelight glint on blue metal. The dead terrorist’s AK-47 had spun away from him when he was shot, and the rifle had landed in a patch of brush. Kennedy holstered the Ruger, and, on all fours, began to climb, at any second expecting to feel the impact of a bullet. But none came. He stood and pulled the rifle from the brush, remembering the familiar kick-ass feel of it in his hands, an unlovely weapon designed to be both lethal and reliable.

  Kennedy turned and instinctively dropped to one knee as his gaze moved higher up the slope.

  He and the terrorist saw each other at the same instant. Both of them surprised, they faced each other across thirty yards, and there was no doubt in the mind of either that within seconds one of them would be dead.

  The terrorist was tall, gaunt, with gray in his hair. He wore a full beard, and his eye sockets and the hollows of his cheeks were deep in shadow, so his face looked like a skull. Kennedy was aware of the crackle of the fire and rustle of the west wind in the pine branches, the tang of smoke.

  The man had come hunting for him . . . the moment had arrived.

  Kennedy raised the rifle, prepared to fire from the hip. The terrorist did the same.

  The margin between them was slight. Kennedy had been a trained as a soldier, the terrorist as an assassin. They fired at the same time.

  * * *

  Flashlight beams angled into the darkness, now and then crossing together like light sabers. “Pete!” a woman’s voice called out. “Pete Kennedy, can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you, Maryann!” Kennedy yelled. “I’m down here.”

  “I brought help,” the woman said, lowering her voice as she drew closer.

  “Too late for him,” Kennedy said, pointing the AK-47’s muzzle at the man at his feet.

  Maryann gasped. “Pete, he’s all shot to pieces.”

  “Five . . . or maybe it was six rounds of full metal jacket will do that to a man,” Kennedy said.

  Two sheriff ’s deputies and a firefighter Kennedy didn’t know joined Maryann and him on the slope. Kennedy used the rifle as a pointer again. “There and there, two more dead, and another up on the rock ledge.”

  “What the hell happened?” one of the deputies said. The name tag on his tan windbreaker read CLARK.

  “These men are arson terrorists. They killed my crew, and I killed them,” Kennedy said.

  Clark was trained to react to any given situation, not to think about it too deeply. He took Kennedy’s bald statement in stride and said, “That damned fire is getting close.”

  “Too close,” his fellow deputy said, looking over his shoulder at the advancing flames. His name tag said ANDERSSON. He was blond and blue-eyed and looked Swedish.

  Kennedy nodded. “If we want to make it back to the road, we’d better leave now.”

  “What about the bodies?” Andersson said.

  “You want to lug them out, Joe?” Clark said.

  The deputy shook his head. “Hell no.”

  “Then let’s get the heck out of here,” Clark said.

  * * *

  After Pete Kennedy returned to the base at Winthrop, he was interrogated by the local police, and a detective hinted darkly that, as far as he was concerned, murder charges were not out of the question.

  The following morning three calls were placed.

  One, from the highest reaches of the Justice Department, ordered the cops to lay off Peter Kennedy.

  The second was to Kennedy himself from Jacob Sensor.

  The third was placed to Nasim Azar, informing him of the martyrdom of four Islamic operatives on Glacier Mountain, Washington.

  CHAPTER 19

  “The fire warriors were not under my command,” Nasim Azar said. “But I deeply grieve their loss.”

  “They are now with Allah in paradise,” Salman Assad said. “That should console you, master.”

  “It does,” Azar said. “Very much so. I’m told that the faithful were killed by a single crusader, a man named Peter Kennedy who has already murdered Mujahideen in Iraq and Afghanistan, curse his name forever.”

  “Then he is another I will kill for you,” Assad said. “He will join the infidel Cory Cantwell in death.”

  Azar shook his head. “No, Salman, you are my bodyguard and very precious to me. Leave Cantwell to the Ukrainian.”

  “But we don’t know this man,” Assad said.

  “No, but we know of him,” Azar said. “His services are very much in demand, and that tells us much. Twenty-five thousand dollars, Salman. That’s what he charges for a kill, and I’m told by the Brothers of the Islamic Jihad in Beirut that he’s worth every penny. He is of a mild disposition, a man so soft-spoken that in Tehran they call him the Whispering Death. His most distinguished kill for the Iranians was Adel Shaker El-Tamimi, a close ally of a former Iraqi prime minister.” Azar smiled. “He leaves no trail behind him and will serve us well.”

  “When will I meet this man?” Assad said.

  “He flies in from New York tomorrow,” Azar said. “I have made arrangements for him to be picked up at the airport and brought here. He may even meet Mike Norris, another of his future targets.” He made come-hither motions with his hands. “We must draw them in, Salman, draw our enemies into our web, and then we will kill them all.” He touched his tongue to his top lip. “Perhaps destroy them all at the same time. How sweet that would be.”

  “Pah, I can shoot Norris at any time,” Assad said. “The man is a pig.”

  “Curb your enthusiasm, Salman. Norris can’t be killed until he’s taught my men the ways of the forest fire,” Azar said. “The scorching we set in motion will make this nation whimper for mercy. Think of it, Salman, the American people will demand an end to the jihad and peace at any price . . . and that price will include the utter destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.”

  “Allahu Akbar!” Assad yelled.

  Azar smiled. “Yes, God is great. But in the meantime, we will give Him a little help by using Norris.” The man shrugged. “And then you and the Ukrainian can execute him at your leisure.”

  “That will be a pleasure,” Assad said, grinning. “We’ll make him know he’s dying.”

  “He comes to the warehouse today to see the drones,” Azar said. “Do not provoke him.”

  “He provokes me by his vile, infidel presence,” Assad said.

  “Patience, my friend,” Azar said. “Your time will come.”

  * * *

  “Did Corky amuse you, Mr. Norris?” Nasim Azar said, smiling.
“She always did me.”

  Mike Norris ignored that, his weekend with the prostitute lost without a trace in a sea of booze. “I’m here to inspect the drones,” he said. His stare moved to Salman Assad. “Call off your dog, Azar,” he said.

  The bodyguard’s jaw clenched and his black eyes blazed hatred, but Azar’s voice was calm as he said, “Return to your post, Salman. I’ll call out if I need you.”

  The man nodded, glared thunder at Norris, then turned on his heel and left.

  “Mr. Norris, be wary of Salman,” Azar said. “He’s extremely dangerous and at times quite unpredictable.”

  “It will be a cold day in hell when I let a camel cowboy son of a bitch put the crawl on me,” Norris said.

  Azar smiled. “Just so. Your courage is not in doubt. Now, shall we inspect the drones?”

  “Is that nerd kid here?” Norris said.

  “Randy Collins? Yes, he’s been working with them since six o’clock this morning.”

  “Keen, ain’t he?”

  “As you say, he’s a nerd.”

  The warehouse had a large, open area on the ground floor, but above that was a maze of what had once been cubbyhole offices and storage rooms. Azar led Norris upstairs to one of the larger rooms where an overweight teenager with an untidy shock of straw-colored hair stood at a work bench. In front of him was a large, heavy-lifting drone with six motors.

  Azar introduced him to Norris as, “Randy, our expert on all things drone-related.”

  The kid wore jeans and a Star Trek geek T-shirt with food stains on the front. He smiled and stuck out a hand that Norris ignored. “Where did you find him, Azar? In his parents’ basement?”

  “I don’t know where he lives,” Azar said. “He answered a help-wanted ad I put in the paper.”

  “I live with my parents,” the youth said. “But I have my own room with my own computer and TV.”

  “All grown up then, ain’t you?” Norris said. He said to Azar, “That thing is way too big. We only need small drones to take out the observation cameras.”