Krieg could only nod from his cowering position, and hold on for dear life.
- 49 -
LITTLE RABBIT
“YOU MISSED HIM,” the girl who called herself Melody said.
She was right. He had.
Wolf was not a particularly good shot. He never had been. In fact, generally, he was a pretty terrible shot. The only thing he’d been really good at was killing with a knife blade in his hands. And that sort of killing meant having to get up close and personal to deliver death, and not do it from the safe distance allowed by a gun sight or from behind a scope, or even from the air with bombs and missiles meant to kill indiscriminately. No, killing with a knife blade in your hands was raw and visceral. The closest cousin to it was the trauma inflicted on snipers. They too saw those that they killed up close and personal and knew that the moment they squeezed the trigger, a deliberate act was about to end another human life. But killing with a blade was different from being a sniper. With a knife, being up close also meant feeling the warm blood of life as it leaked slowly away, knowing that you were the one sharing that last, intimate moment before death.
But Wolf did not want to admit any of this to the girl. Now was not the right time nor the right place. She had to believe that he was infallible and invincible in all things. He knew, though, that like every other human being on the planet, he wasn’t infallible nor invincible. Perfection was reserved for movies and daydreams.
So instead of admitting to weakness, he said, “I missed them on purpose. We will be playing my game now, not theirs.”
She nodded her supposed understanding while examining a scratch on her arm. She was so small, so in over her head and not prepared for this horror. But he was there to save her. He hoped she understood that. He knew also that fate must have intervened on her behalf as much as it had on his. Still, fate aside, he had to find a place she could remain hidden while he did what horrors he was loath to do. If it were only to get away from that man, Krieg, then maybe it might have made sense to try for the fence. But this whole thing wasn’t just about Krieg. Abdullah al-Sayid had killed dozens if not hundreds of innocents and even Wolf’s grandmother would have understood the need—that a man like him had to be neutralized, with—as the much overused expression goes—extreme prejudice.
He scanned the way forward. In the near distance, the high ground dipped into a slight depression lined with overhanging oaks. Beyond that was a watering hole in the crux of the clearing. The last time they had run through it, the animals nearby had all scattered and the birds had taken flight. To take the same path again would be like signaling to those chasing him exactly where he was. Which was something he figured they would be expecting, and that made it something he could take advantage of.
Keeping to the hard-packed dirt so as to not leave an obvious trail to follow later, he avoided the brief patches of sticky mud nearest the watering hole. As he and the girl passed by this time, he made noises to get the animals stirred up and raising dust and moving in various directions. They had just about reached the shelter of the oaks and scrub when one of the tree trunks in front of him exploded into splintered fragments, taking a large chunk from its side. Not looking back, he grabbed the girl by the hand and shoved her hard toward the denser scrub ahead while sprinting there himself. The rifle dangling at his side suddenly exploded just as the tree trunk had done, but instead of wooden splinters, it exploded into metal shards, and something pricked him in the back of the thigh, but he kept pushing, driving them both toward better, deeper cover. She reached his targeted location first and ducked behind the large bush and spun around into the cover of the first massive tree. He followed her as the trunk beside him took two bullets, but those two just skipped off, doing little damage other than leaving brown streaks in the bark. He then heard the rounds make that tumbling noise that assault rifle rounds made as they went whizzing through the bushes beyond.
The girl drew up close at a small dip behind another sprawling oak, passed him, and stepped between the tree roots. He followed her there and pulled in behind, ducking low. When he looked back where they had come from, he saw nothing. He held a hand up for silence and heard nothing either.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered when he lowered his hand.
He glanced briefly at her and down at his leg. The combat rifle slung at his side had become a piece of defanged metal and plastic. The entire lower section had been torn away by the bullet strike and somewhere along their path the magazine had fallen off. All that was left was the barrel and the plastic telescoping stock.
Useless.
He threw the weapon to the ground and rechecked his leg. A fragment of jagged metal had ripped a gash in his flesh. He could feel it opening wider when he flexed and knew that if he did not get the fragment out of there, it would continue to worm its way deeper and tear up the meat of his thigh from the inside out.
He glanced at the girl. She was breathing heavily and had turned away from him. She was pale and sweating profusely. But could she help?
Maybe.
She could cut the shrapnel out with his knife. Unfortunately, there was no time to even think of sterilizing the blade. He’d have to deal with the consequences later.
Wincing, he stood up straight and held himself against the tree.
“Should we keep going?” she whispered.
“Give me a minute,” he said, drawing a breath and holding onto it as he slipped the knife from its sheath.
He decided to do it himself.
Forcing his eyes to remain open, he jabbed the back of his thigh with the tip of the blade. Every bit of the intense pain shot through him like he’d been jolted with electricity as the sharpened point sliced through fresh skin and into muscle, which lit his already stressed nerves on fire. His hand trembled slightly and he couldn’t make it stop. He clamped his eyes closed and gritted his teeth against any reflexive resistance that would cause him to pull away, then sliced deeply, prodding and poking with the blade’s tip, feeling around with it for the solid tink of the metal fragment. With an escalation in the shooting pain, he realized that he had located what he had been searching for. He dug just a hair farther and withdrew the blade and winced even harder as he poked his thumb and forefinger into the gap he had created, pinched the fragment, and yanked hard.
Nearly falling over from a fresh new wave of fiery pain, he gasped a couple of labored breaths, then flung the tiny piece of shrapnel away with disgust and held the oozing wound closed with his fingertips. With his free hand, he ripped at his shirt and began to tear away a strip from it to make a bandage.
It was then that he noticed the newly vacant expression on the face of the girl who called herself Melody. She had collapsed onto her knees and was kneeling there with her hands on her lower abdomen. Blood was dribbling down her leg and growing into a pool at her feet.
He’d been so preoccupied with his own injury, he hadn’t taken notice of her and the fact that she’d been hit too.
“I can’t feel my legs,” she burbled.
Forgoing his own injury, he limped his way over to her and tried to prop her up, but she began to crumple in his arms. He helped her to gently lay down on a patch of soft grass and then lifted the corner of her pink shirt to inspect the extent of her injury. She’d been shot through the back and there was an exit wound in her upper abdomen. It was burbling red lifeblood.
And there was more.
Her belly was becoming distended, a sure sign that she was bleeding internally and at a rate that would not stop without immediate surgery. He had seen such wounds before and knew what they meant.
Minutes. Maybe seconds.
But there was still a chance. There was always a chance. His mind raced to find a solution. He needed to do something fast.
He could cut her open and—
No.
He could—
No.
He needed to get her out of there, away from danger. But his own leg was injured, and he could not scale the fe
nce. Not now. Nor would it be an easy trek to the front gate, where maybe—
“Hey,” the girl said. She smiled thinly, up at him.
“What?” he asked.
She did not answer.
He stared at her for a bit before realizing just what had happened. Her eyes were glazing that sickening white he recognized, and her body had relaxed completely.
He checked her pulse just to be certain. She was indeed gone. Her spirit had begun its long journey to meet her ancestors.
He gazed up to the Heavens and closed his eyes. Then he looked back down at the lifeless body he held in his arms.
“Goodbye, little rabbit,” he breathed.
He cleaned his fingertips on his shirt, then shut her eyelids. This was all his fault. He was to blame. If he would have just gone for the fences when they’d been there…found a way through.
If only…
He had let this happen. He was responsible. It was all on him, not her. She’d been right. He’d been wrong.
Ignoring the intense pain in his leg, he picked up the girl who had called herself Melody and took her deeper into the shelter of the mighty oaks and scrub, and there, he hid her body as best he could.
Off in the distance, he could hear the aged sound of the Land Rover’s engine. It was moving slowly, which meant that the two hunters had not left the vehicle to pursue their prey through the bush on foot.
But they would soon. Wolf would make sure of it.
He backed away from where he had set the girl’s body, realizing that it was time to go. He would lead those men away from her. He would not let them know that they had won.
Looking skyward, he swore to any of his ancestors still listening to him that he would kill those who were responsible, and kill anyone else who tried to stop him.
Anger building, seething, he tested the bend of his leg. It was still bleeding, but he could move it without feeling the same shooting pain he had felt earlier. Sure, it hurt like hell, but it was only an external pain, and that kind of pain meant nothing to him now. It only served to sharpen his resolve.
Hunched low, he began to move through the canopy of oaks and scrub. The two men who were chasing him now were about to learn an important lesson.
They were about to learn that they had attempted to tree a wolf.
- 50 -
BLAME THE WIND
“THEY CANNOT BE far,” Krieg said, staring at the tablet screen in the palm of his hand and trying to hold it steady.
Not only were his hands shaking, but Sayid was still at the wheel of the Land Rover and they were bucking and shimming as they ground their way over a field of stones in low gear and clawed their way up the bank of a dried riverbed.
Krieg said, “Camera 118 has registered movement in the past ten minutes. But it was not them. It appears they’ve been taking out the cameras as they go, but they have not been able to get to all of them. Not too bright of them. What they don’t seem to understand is that the pattern of destruction will tell us where they have been and most likely where they are headed. I suspect…east now, deeper into the preserve, which is that way.” Krieg let go long enough to indicate which direction he meant, and then reaffirmed his grip on the dashboard handle as he slid the tablet sideways between his legs.
They had almost gotten their prey earlier. It even sounded as if they had hit them. But he had fired the big Weatherby in haste, thinking his target would be moving instead of standing still by the time the bullet reached the man. The bullet, he had thought, was supposed to have taken a little less than a second to cover the almost five-hundred-yard distance, which caused him to lead the big man slightly. And, if his shot hadn’t been too far to the right, he would have dropped his prey where it stood, right in the small of the back, blowing apart the spine of the man called Wolf.
Krieg had made his excuses to Sayid, blaming the miss on the wind, which was now gusting to a few miles per hour and blowing puffs of dirt into the air as it passed over the Texas landscape. But he knew it had been completely his fault that he had missed. He was a better shot than that. He should have known better, and they should have been closer. Next time, he would wait until the conditions were more favorable.
Sayid had fired also, at the girl, at least three times. But none of the shots appeared to have hit her. The man had sworn in another language, it seemed, and had also blamed the wind for his misses on the girl.
“There, stop,” Krieg said. He pointed out the side window to his right. “See that?”
Sayid stomped on the brake pedal and the Land Rover screeched and slid to a halt. He arched up a pair of binoculars, and Krieg ducked low while Sayid scanned the indicated location.
“It is him,” Sayid declared. “He just went into that grove of trees. I did not see her, but she must be somewhat ahead of him. What is on the other side of those?”
“There is a small clearing and a watering station. For the zebras, if I am not mistaken. Just be careful to avoid the rhinoceros that is sometimes there. It can be dangerous.”
“How do we get there?” Sayid asked.
“That way, but it will take time to circle the grove in this.”
“We cannot go through it?”
“No, there is no way to drive through that. It has to be around.”
“Can we go on foot?”
“You, maybe, but not me. And we need to stick together. So, this is the only way. We must go around.”
Sayid nodded to himself. “We drive. For now.”
- 51 -
VOICES OF THE WIND
WOLF HAD ONCE heard his grandmother say that when the winds came, they never blew steady. Sometimes they could bring destruction if they blew too hard, or stagnation if they did not blow hard enough.
Life was much like the wind.
She had told him to listen to the wind and to learn all its voices, and then he would truly understand the meaning of what she had told him—that we all exist somewhere in the middle, between the calm breezes and the howling gales.
Right now, he was the brewing storm.
When he left the soft soil of the clearing behind, he realized his feet were making an obvious trail in the bent grass, but it could not be helped. His injured leg hurt too much to put all his weight on it, so he was forced to limp along as best he could. He had hidden the girl’s tiny form back in the grove of trees, down inside the grassy bedding that a mother deer had once used as the shelter for her young. It seemed fitting. And from a few feet away, even he could barely see the small body still dressed in a pink T-shirt, running shorts, and colorful sneakers. He vowed to return for her when the job was finished.
And finish the job, he would.
Brushing against the scraggly mesquite of the narrow trail, he trekked forward, disturbing dead leaves and twigs as he made his way from the trees to an upslope that led to a rugged stone formation sticking out prominently from its surroundings. He clawed his way up one side, using shoulder, arm, and back muscles to bear most of his weight, following the steepest and most difficult path his injured leg would allow him to take, which would make pursuit by foot difficult, if not impossible. From below, the topside looked as if it would give a good vantage point to better understand the terrain of the entire ranch. It would also give him the high ground, which was almost always advantageous.
But, before he could crest the formation, he felt a tingling breeze that caused him to stop cold. Then he heard a crackling voice over a radio, so he dropped back low and squatted behind an outcropping of rock and sent an unspoken thanks to the powers behind the winds that had stopped him.
He waited.
He did not have to wait for long.
Above him, he heard someone moving about and the squeak of fabric on vinyl. Then another quick, broken radio call. Slowly, he inched his way up to the top edge and peeked over.
A guy was sitting on the back of an ATV. Unlike the others with the cowboy hats, this guy wore a camouflage baseball cap. He had a pair of extra-large binoculars out a
nd was scanning the terrain below him. Fortunately, he still had his backside to Wolf, and was probably thinking the steep embankment behind him would provide security from behind.
It hadn’t.
Wolf searched the hillside near him for a rock. He found one of appropriate size and measured the weight of it in his hand. Then he crept back over the top, raised his arm, and threw the hunk of stone at the back of the man’s head with as much force as he could generate. The rock sailed the ten yards between them in the blink of an eye, and Wolf was greeted with the sweet sound of impact, and that of a sickening crunch.
The guy’s head lolled forward and, silently, almost in slow motion, the man slid sideways off the ATV and slumped to the ground. He lay there unmoving, one booted foot still propped up and touching the ATV.
Wolf scrambled up and over the side of the cliff, watching the guy for movement. There was none. But just as he drew close and dropped to his knees behind the guy, the man started moving again. He was not dead, not unconscious. The guy’s legs slid into the dirt as he attempted to push himself up with his hands. Blood already wetted his hair and neck and there was a visible dent in his skull where his hat had come off his head after he’d hit the ground.
Wolf crabbed a few feet on his knees and picked up the same rock he had struck the guy with. He returned, arm raised to strike again, and then he stopped himself.
Could he kill the guy? Should he kill the guy?
Then the guy moved again. He was now struggling to lift himself enough to roll over. He was moaning something and it was getting louder. The guy pawed at his side, slapping his hand against his hip, trying to get to the gun he had holstered there.
Wolf sucked in a breath. His throat was hot and raw, he dripped sweat, and his heart was pounding painfully in his chest, but when he thought of the girl and pictured where she lay all alone, he knew what he had to do.
He raised the rock to strike.
- 52 -
DEATH GROUND
WITH A COUGHING grunt, Krieg lifted himself back into the running Land Rover and glanced at Sayid.
Wolf Who Walks Alone: A Raymond Wolf Mystery Novel Page 21
