by Jack Carr
CHAPTER 43
REECE SCANNED THE VALLEY but saw no sign of movement. He would skirt the ridgeline to his left until he had eyes on Raife and, assuming that he was ambulatory, would cover his movement out of the kill zone. His brain had made the conscious decision to rise but his body had yet to respond when the world around him exploded. A searing heat slashed across the back of his calf amid a deafening blast of sound. On instinct, he rolled away from the fire and found a slight depression that gave him momentary defilade. He spun to his right, searching for targets, and the image in his scope became a collage of greens and browns. Shit. His optic was still on full magnification. He fired three quick rounds before grasping the power ring and quickly dialing down to 1x to address the closer threat.
He was taking accurate fire from extremely close range, and his available cover could be measured in inches. If one of them had a frag to throw, it would be over in seconds. Reece’s world was all muzzle blast and dust, with rounds landing all around him. He fired ten rounds, trying to push his enemies behind cover. His eye caught movement as one of the shooters moved laterally to achieve a better angle, one that would put Reece directly in his line of fire. Reece moved the rifle to engage but, before his finger found the trigger, he watched the man’s head explode in a shower of bone and brain tissue. His body fell like a dropped sandbag as his brain discontinued its instructions to the muscles that held him upright. A rifle’s report, audibly louder than that of the AKMs, boomed twice more.
Jonathan Hastings was charging through the pines, firing his battered FAL from the hip like he had done during countless ops as a young man. Reece had never seen him look so alive.
Reece rose to his knees and watched as Zulu pounced on a downed man, the canine’s powerful jaws locking on his enemy’s throat. Jonathan kicked the man’s rifle clear and held the muzzle of his 7.62mm battle rifle to his chest. Reece safed his rifle and stood. As he did, he was reminded of the wound to his leg. It hurt, but he could run, and he sprinted forward to link up with the Selous Scout.
The attacker appeared to be gut shot and had also taken a hit to the upper leg. He held his bloody abdomen with his wounded hand as he fought with the other to break away from the hound’s death grip.
“Zulu, release!” Jonathan snapped. The dog complied instantly, barking in the wounded man’s face as he did so.
“Good boy, Zulu. Find Raife. Find Raife, Zulu.”
The dog considered the command for a moment before putting his nose to the ground and making ever-widening circles in search of a scent trail. Within a minute, he was thundering down the valley toward the spot where Raife had entered the creek. He barked at his pack and boots. Reece took a knee and searched for additional threats as he heard the downed man mutter in a language that he could not decipher.
“It’s Russian,” Jonathan said, without being asked. He jabbed the man in the chest with the flash hider of his rifle. “How many others?”
The man shot back a look of confusion. Jonathan repeated the command in Afrikaans and received the same nonresponse.
Reece looked back into the valley and saw the hound trailing the creek toward the log that had been Raife’s Alamo.
“I’ll go check on Raife,” Reece said.
“Right. I’ve got this bloke.”
Reece didn’t run directly into the valley. Instead he took the high ground that made a sweeping path to his left, following in the footsteps of the assault team. He held his weapon at the low ready as he ran, just in case any of the bad guys decided they were no longer dead, remembering more than a few soldiers had been killed that way. It took two minutes for Reece to cover the distance to where the bodies were scattered. As he arrived, he yelled out to announce his presence to Raife. No sense getting shot by your best friend.
“Raife, it’s me!”
Reece checked each body as he approached, tossing weapons aside as he moved. The first stared skyward with lifeless eyes and the second hadn’t stirred from his face plant since Reece had hit him with Black Hills’ finest 77-grain projectile. He held his weapon at the ready and gave the boulder a wide berth as he approached the third figure, but his efforts were unnecessary; the head shot had been immediately and predictably fatal. The last downed man had been the one Raife shot before Reece had arrived and, despite what looked like a serious chest wound, he was still alive. Reece kicked the man’s rifle away as he fought for breath. Reece would render aid only after he was sure that his friend was safe and the fight was won.
He watched as Raife rose to one knee and changed magazines, relieved beyond belief that his friend was uninjured. Reece strode down the hill toward him and felt a smile spread across his own face as Raife clambered to his feet. Raife walked to where he’d ditched his bow and held it up in two pieces, its limb split by gunfire. Zulu stood nearby, his tail wagging so hard that it swung his torso like a pendulum.
“I thought you were going to kill that buck today?”
“Guess I’m slipping.”
“Maybe you should put some shoes on, in case there are any more bad guys to kill.”
“A rifle might be a good idea, too.”
“Good plan. We have two wounded,” Reece said, changing subjects. “This guy here and one Jonathan has detained up on the ridge.”
“Where’s Annika?”
“She’s okay. She’s with Katie, Liz, Thorn, and your mom at the house.”
“Good, Mom can take care of them, but we need to get back there, now.”
Raife worked his way up the creek bank to retrieve his boots and pack and, within minutes, had linked back up with Reece. Reece had a basic aid kit in his pack and was working to assess the man’s wounds. Saving this man’s life was a simple matter of necessity; they needed information. Raife shook his head as the man expired from the shot that had taken out both his lungs.
The last living attacker was seated against a pine tree. Jonathan was standing over him doing his best not to pull the trigger as the two SEALs approached.
“Jonathan, can you bring the truck down? Let’s throw this guy in and get to the house.”
The attacker was pale and his BDU top was soaked with blood. Reece unbuttoned the surplus uniform and cut through the undershirt. Beyond the blood, the man’s entire chest and abdomen were covered with crude ink: prison tattoos.
Reece did a primary assessment, noting the gut wound and an entry wound six inches above the knee. The leg was contorted, and Reece guessed his distal femur was shattered. He heard the sound of a vehicle approaching as Jonathan pulled the Cruiser into a nearby clearing and opened the tailgate. He carried a blanket from the SUV and spread it out next to their prisoner.
“Raife, can you grab a tourniquet from the driver’s-side door?”
“Sure thing, mate.”
Raife tossed the tourniquet to his friend, who quickly applied it six inches above the wound. Reece then stuffed some gauze into the hole in the man’s stomach.
“Let’s move him,” Reece said, positioning him and rolling him onto the blanket.
Their detainee screamed in pain as his severed femur ground into the flesh and arteries of his leg when they loaded him into the cargo area of the Toyota. A swift rifle butt to the head from Jonathan knocked him back into unconsciousness.
“I’ll drive,” Jonathan said. “Raife, we’ll stop at your truck so we can have a secondary if we need it and you can grab your rifle. Whoever these terrs are, it’s time to kill them all.”
* * *
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Helpless and alone, Grey thought that after all the failures that made up his life, he should be used to it by now. His adrenaline high had crashed and morphed into a state of depression as the transponder on Reece’s vehicle raced away from the highway ambush site. Somehow, someway, he had escaped. No one was that vigilant, unless the team on the ground had made an unfathomable error or he had been warned.
Things went from bad to worse as he watched Reece’s vehicle travel back to the main hous
e and then directly to a remote area where the second team had conducted their ambush. He called Dimitry’s phone; there was no answer. He then called Vitya, who couldn’t explain how Reece had evaded the ambush; everything had gone perfectly until that cowboy had pulled over and the target vehicle had reversed course and drove away. His team had stolen the cowboy’s truck and were now heading to the ranch to finish the job. Grey didn’t need to ask what happened to the cowboy. Without a doubt he was dead.
Even though the first attempt had failed, the mission was far from over. There were still two hit teams on the ranch. Their targets were outmanned and outgunned. Barring some miracle, James Reece and Raife Hastings would soon be in the ground.
CHAPTER 44
Kumba Ranch, Flathead Valley, Montana
DEFENDING THE HOMESTEAD WAS something that was bred into Caroline Hastings’s very being. As a child of Rhodesia, she’d watched her mother chase lions off the family farm while her father was away. Later, during the long and bloody Bush War, it was she who had defended the family’s lowveld ranch while her husband was at war. On the Dark Continent, self-reliance meant survival, and as a woman of both the African frontier and American West, Caroline was no stranger to the way of the gun.
The home’s spacious vault was built from thick concrete reinforced with yards of steel rebar and would withstand anything short of an air strike. Caroline marched her fire team directly to the gun room. With military precision born of practical necessity she handed Thorn an AR-15 with iron sights, knowing that he would be familiar with it from his days as a marine in Vietnam. It was essentially the same weapon as his old M16A1.
“Keep your deer rifle with you. We are going to high ground to keep them off. Once they get in close or into the interior, drop it and go with the AR. Here are your extra mags,” she said, handing him an old LBE belt and harness filled with loaded 5.56 magazines.
“This brings back memories,” he said. “Just like we had in Nam.”
“Liz, take this,” she said, handing her a scoped AR and three magazines. With a proficiency instilled by her military training, Liz pulled back the charging handle and pressed the bolt catch. A quick glance confirmed it was unloaded so the former Army Aviator inserted a magazine and released the bolt catch, slamming a 5.56mm round into the breech.
“Annika,” Caroline commanded. “You take downstairs. Hold on that front door. Use the hearth for cover. That thing will stop an artillery round. Stay down and only fire if they make it to the house.” Annika was already pulling the Benelli M1 Super 90 from the rack and shouldering a bandoleer of shotgun rounds. “Take my body armor,” her mother-in-law continued. “I know yours is in your house.”
“You sure, Mom?” Annika asked.
“Protect that child,” the Hastings matriarch ordered. “But if you die this day, die bravely.”
Who is this family? Katie wondered as she watched the scene unfold. These people were prepared for war.
“Katie.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Katie answered quickly.
“Can you shoot, dear?”
“I’ve shot a Glock a few times at the range, but that’s it.”
“Then take this,” Caroline said, pulling an AR with an Aimpoint optic off the wall and performing a press check. “It’s loaded and this is the safety. Just flip it, like so, and pull the trigger. You have twenty-eight rounds in the magazine. Liz, take Katie to your guest room at the end of the hall. You are our rear security on the lower level. Tuck inside the bathroom. These walls are stone and thick wood. Use that to your advantage. If we hear you shooting, one of us will come to reinforce. Katie, just put the stock in your shoulder, aim this red dot at whoever tries to come across the back garden, and shoot them until they go down.”
Katie stared wide-eyed at the woman who just a day ago had seemed like a western version of Martha Stewart; she had transformed into a warrior.
“Are we clear?” Caroline asked, looking each of her newly minted recruits in the eye. “Good. Remember. No one is coming. It’s up to us. Take your positions.”
Caroline opened the bolt on her Brno rifle and pulled it back far enough to confirm that there was a round in the chamber. The magazine held five rounds of the venerable .375 H&H. Another was in the chamber ready to go. Ten more rode in a leather belt around her waist and she’d stuffed another ten in her pockets. The rifle had served her well since she’d first picked it up in 1971.
The home was still and silent, many of the windows open to let in what might be the last warm air of the season. Caroline had positioned herself on the second floor, inside a dormer window that faced the most likely enemy avenue of approach. She didn’t have to wait long to hear a diesel motor and tires gnawing at the dirt and gravel road.
A blue pickup came into view, its motor accelerating. She didn’t hesitate, dropping into a seated position and resting the rifle’s forend on the windowsill. Unlike the CZ 550 and most modern rifles, the Brno safety needed to be pulled back to fire. Caroline’s thumb clicked the safety into position, her cheek dropping to the weathered Turkish walnut Lux pattern stock, and centered the front post with the 200-meter leaf of the express sight on the driver’s-side window.
The Brno was made in Uhersky Brod, Czechoslovakia, when it was under Soviet occupation in the late 1960s. Now a rifle built in the ashes of the Prague Spring was about to be unleashed on a new Russian enemy. The heavy rifle barked, the recoil pushing into her shoulder as her round turned the windshield into spiderwebs. Though she couldn’t see from her perch, the 270-grain bullet took the driver in the throat. She cycled the bolt quickly and sent a second round through the center of the glass, which gut-shot one of the men in the backseat. The driver’s foot came off the gas pedal thanks to his severed spine and the big Ford began to slow.
With their leader in violent death throes, his severed artery splattering the truck’s cabin with hot blood, the rest of the men panicked. When the fourth round shot away the rearview mirror, the four assaulters who were still able to move bailed out of the vehicle as it came to rest. They had trained for and expected to deliver a violent ambush, not be ambushed themselves. Taking cover, they fired wildly on full automatic, spraying the large home with 7.62mm rounds. With no leader, the men didn’t communicate, they didn’t maneuver, they didn’t flank; they just hunkered down and burned through their ammunition as they continued shooting into what moments before had been a beautiful mountain home.
Caroline was single-minded in her purpose, firing a single round before moving to a different room and finding her next target through a new window. After the initial volley, she was careful to stay well back so that her rifle’s protruding barrel would not give the enemy a target. Her objective was to keep them pinned down so that they couldn’t approach the house. If they set it ablaze or moved inside, she would lose the tactical advantage.
It hadn’t been a question of what to do when the attack came. It was all about executing a preplanned emergency response, habits instilled in a different time and place, habits born of necessity in the African bush. That plan and those skills now kept her family alive. She remembered her own mother tucking her into bed and explaining the reality of life in Rhodesia: if someone with mal intent enters our property, they have declared war on our family.
These terrs had declared war.
A shooter found the courage to roll out from behind the truck’s rear wheel, firing as he rose to charge forward. Caroline’s next shot took him in the chest. She topped off the rifle with six more rounds as she moved into an adjacent room, looking for her next target.
CHAPTER 45
OLEG GUSKOV WAS ITCHING for a fight. As the youngest member of the crew he had something to prove. The other five had military or police experience, albeit rudimentary, or had come of age in the 1990s, the heyday of Russian organized crime. He’d had to endure listening to their stories of what amounted to urban combat as the gangs fought for control of the new Russia, carving it up in a Darwinian contest for control of the under
world.
Oleg had looked over at his boss when the bullet took Vitya in the throat. He watched as the man who had helped train him for this mission went white, his eyes bulging, mouth struggling to bring in oxygen in an attempt to delay the inevitable.
Oleg felt another round as it passed between him and the dying driver and heard Pavel grunt from the backseat.
The truck veered left and ran up and onto a stump, arresting all forward progress. As Oleg watched his team leader die, the rearview mirror exploded just inches from his face.
What now?
Another round impacted the vehicle.
He heard and felt the rear passenger doors open as the gangsters bailed out to find cover. Oleg followed suit, trying to figure out how to open the huge vehicle’s door, groping to find the handle and throwing it open just in time to avoid the .375 round that took out his headrest.
Falling to the dirt, he low-crawled to a rock by the side of the long driveway, propped himself up, and depressed the trigger. Nothing happened. He could hear his comrades return fire, spraying the front of the house with bullets. He looked around long enough to see Boris charge forward from behind the truck and take a round to the chest. Serov and Taro were behind cover, continuing to let loose with their AKs.
Ah, the safety. Oleg pushed the safety to “fire” and watched as his rounds hit fairly close to his intended target, the far right upstairs window. He was surprised at how quickly his magazine ran dry.
He had to move. He had to make a name for himself. If he could get to the house, he knew he could kill everyone inside. That would make the Pakhan proud. Maybe he would even rise in the ranks?
He remembered Vitya and Dimitry say that a moving target was harder to hit. When he heard his comrades send another long volley into the upper level of the house, Oleg got up and ran.
* * *
“Stay barricaded behind this doorjamb,” Liz said. They could hear Caroline or Thorn engaging from upstairs. Single shots. And they could hear the return fire from outside.
