So instead of standing, he allowed his weight to sag to the street. He groaned low and weak, keeping his right arm protected as best he could by his body.
Jerome waited for the attack.
Max saw the man lying flat, making the sounds of a dying animal close to its end. The smell of blood was rich and fresh and tempting. But his attack, although perfectly aimed and executed, had failed to sever tendons or rip through the artery. There was too much muscle guarding the vital mechanics he had intended to destroy. His second attack had missed completely, the man being faster and stronger than Max had anticipated.
The bullet had come nowhere near Max, but subconsciously he understood, on a primitive level, the deadliness of the weapon. For all their frailty, man was a tricky, dangerous beast. Max wanted nothing more than to rush in and tear out the man’s throat. And since he lay not twenty feet away, hidden by the angle of the road, the dark and the grass, it would be simple. A lesser hunter would have done it and been killed by the man. Max wisely stayed his position, watching, taking in all his senses could capture. The blood flow was far too low to incapacitate such a foe. And although he groaned and weakly flailed about as if nearing unconsciousness, his heartbeat was strong and steady, the smell of fear, with its adrenal release, was absent. The man was trying to draw him in.
Max lay his muzzle on his front paws and waited.
I heard the gunshot and sat up in my bed. The mountains made it hard to tell exactly how far off it was, but it sounded close, maybe a hundred or so yards down the road.
Pilgrim lay sound asleep in his bed by the kitchen, but Max, of course, was gone.
And that scared me.
What had he gotten into?
In a rack, just inside my hall closet, I keep a decked out AR15, with Picatinny Rails (which is a military standard rail interface system that provides a mounting platform for firearm accessories… in other words… it holds things on guns) , dual thirty round magazines, a suppressor and a top of the line holographic mounted site with night vision. These days, what with all the media hype on mass shootings, people think AR stands for Automatic Rifle, when in fact, it actually stands for ArmaLite Rifle after the company that developed it back in the fifties. I took the AR and a little .380, with two spare mags I slipped inside the jeans I tossed on. I slid into some hiking boots, dropped my cell into my front pants pocket, and went out into the night, shirtless, looking for my dog.
Not much of a moon, just a thumbnail high overhead, stingy with its light. Good. I prefer the dark. I went off road, going over the hill to the west and down to a little valley set between a screen of trees. I moved quiet and fast, calling on my war-time experiential knowledge to guide me, letting instinct lead me to the sound of the shot.
South and west, I heard something, low, like moaning, brought on a warm wisp of breeze that was there and gone. I moved in that direction, hopping over a small tussle of rocks and leaping over a gurgling creek before moving up a slight incline and back toward the road.
A fell of pine trees hid the road as I broached the lip of the hill, but I heard the unmistakable sound of a man, hurt and groaning not far away. I slipped the rifle to my shoulder and looked through the night sight with its guides and little red dot in the center. In the dark of night, with no street lights or headlights from cars to mess with its optics, the picture was brilliant. I saw the silhouette of the man on the ground, moving weakly back and forth. The features of his face were unrecognizable in the green of the scope, but his shape and size were not. It was Jerome.
But then I saw something else, there on the far side of the road.
Max.
27
Jerome knew something was wrong. The dog hadn’t left, he was sure of this, but it hadn’t attacked. He let his arms fall to the ground and lay perfectly still. The blood puddling under him was uncomfortable, his pants sticking to his flesh. The ragged wounds were beginning to ache and throb.
Closing his eyes to slits, he tried to hold his breath, feeling the sweat bead on his head and roll down past his ears.
Nothing.
At least ten minutes had passed since the dog struck. What was it waiting for?
He sat up, looked around, seeing only the dark and shadowy form of branches waving in the breeze in the distance.
Time was not his friend here. He stood, pointing the gun out in front of him as he turned in a tight circle. If he could just see it for a second he could end this.
The gun exploded in his hand, metal splinters spraying his arm and face, almost knocking him to the ground. He stumbled and held his numb hand in the other as the unmistakable sound of a ricocheting bullet skipped off the street next to his foot. He jumped back, almost falling again, and ran for the side of the road as two more high velocity rounds chipped against the asphalt just behind him. His ankle twisted in the loose dirt, spilling him face first into the grass and scrub. He hit and rolled, coming up against a spindly aspen. A chunk exploded out the back of the small tree as a .223 round punched through an inch above his face. Jerome rolled away and gained his feet. He ran in a low crouch, cringing each time hot lead sizzled past his ears, cracking against trees as he neared them. A bullet creased his ribs on the left side and the pain made him flinch and trip so that he smacked headlong into another aspen. The shock snapped him back so hard he landed on his butt, the darkness spinning around him.
Pushing with his hands, he tried to stand, but stopped. The low growl sounded directly behind him, followed by a wave of hot breath and a thin line of saliva that slid down the back of his shirt. A ripple of goose flesh tickled up his spine and he actually thought he might wet himself.
All thoughts of grappling with this death machine were gone. The idea of grabbing it and crushing it to him was as impossible as embracing a raging fire. His legs had turned to rubber and his muscles refused to move at all.
Jerome was suddenly a little boy, alone in his room, running from his nightmares and his mother’s men. Helpless and afraid of the monsters that hunted him.
Max scented the Alpha on the hill behind his prey before he heard or saw him. So he held off his attack and waited. The big man eventually stood up and started turning in a circle, and then there was a loud sound and the big man ran straight at Max, tripping and almost landing on him. Max didn’t move. He watched as the big man rolled clumsily across the ground and then got up and started running again. Max followed at a safe distance. He heard the bullets fired from the Alpha’s gun, but none of the missiles came near him so he paid them no mind.
The man fell, hitting a tree. Before he could get to his feet, Max stalked up behind him. He placed his nose against the man’s spine where the vertebra connected to the skull. All he had to do was lunge forward, twist with his powerful neck muscles, and the man would die.
The impulse activated his saliva glands and the genetic drive of centuries pushed him to attack. Only the primal order of the pack kept him in place.
When I got to them, Max was keeping Jerome Larkin at bay with his teeth at the base of his skull. I wondered what that must feel like…didn’t like it at all, and pushed the thought as far away as I could.
“Easy, Max,” I said. “Good Job, boy. Platz.”
I activated the attached muzzle light on the AR15 and shined it on Jerome Larkin.
“You take it easy too,” I said.
He turned, slowly, still sitting, and looked at me through squinting eyes. He held a hand up to block the light and I saw blood on his hand.
“I can’t do that,” he said.
“Can’t do what?”
“Can’t take it easy. I have to find Clair.”
“Who?”
“Clair, my little girl. The girl you stole from me.”
“Keisha? The girl you kidnapped?”
“I didn’t kidnap her. I saved her.”
“After you murdered her mother.”
He didn’t answer to that for a few seconds. Then he said, “Yeah, I killed her mother. That was the job. But I
didn’t know about Clair. They was gonna kill her. I stopped them. She’s mine now.”
“That’s not how it works,” I said, and I kind of wanted to put a bullet through his head.
“They gonna kill her,” he said.
“Who’s going to kill her?”
“Bloods.”
“Why do the Bloods want her dead?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “They just do. Won’t stop till she dead.”
“No,” I said, “she’s safe.”
“Ain’t no such thing as safe less she with me. They gonna kill her. Only I can keep her safe.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s going to be pretty hard since you’re going to be caged inside a prison cell for the rest of your life.”
“No,” he said as he stood to his feet, “that ain’t gonna happen.”
“Sit back down.” With the slightest of shifts, I pointed the suppressed muzzle at his heart.
Max watched him silently, and I knew he was a hair’s breadth from attacking.
“No,” he said. “You gonna tell me where to find her and how to get her back.”
“Or,” I said, “I can just kill you here and now.”
He wasn’t squinting anymore, just staring over the light as if he could look into my eyes. I’ve seen resolve in men before. Total commitment in a belief or a cause, and I was seeing it, here and now, in Jerome Larkin. He was about to attack. He knew I had a high powered rifle pointing at his chest and an attack dog from the depths of Hell by my side. He was hurt and tired and had no chance, but still he was going to go for it. All for a little girl he had no right to.
“Before you try it,” I said, “understand this. I’m not going to kill you after all. Instead, I’m going to blow out your knees. You’ll never walk the same again. And Max here, he is going to rip pieces off your body. Big pieces. Pieces you wouldn’t want ripped off. Pieces that shouldn’t be ripped off. Pieces you wouldn’t think could be ripped off. And it’s going to take a while for help to come. A long while. You will be hurting that whole time.”
“Don’t matter,” he said. “You should think ‘bout this; I’m not gonna kill you either, not till after.” He looked down at where Max lay. “Him I’m gonna kill right off. But not you. First, you gonna tell me what I need to know. Then after, I’ll kill you. But that killing can go one of two ways. You give up now, tell me, and it can go quick and painless. But you make me hurt to get it… you waist time I ain’t got…and I swear, I’ll spend some extra time I ain’t got to make you pay.”
In my experience, I have found it wise to take people at their word when they are threatening you.
I let the muzzle drop to his right knee and took up the very minimal slack on the trigger.
Headlights splashed the trees overhead and I heard the sound of engines coming up my mountain. More than one.
28
Van Blake had seen his share of war. He’d been Spec Ops back when that really meant something. After that, he did a stint with the DEA, working the jungles of Columbia. He got in a spot of trouble with a woman and some cocaine over there and got drummed out of the agency. He signed up with a private firm and shipped back over to the sandpit for two more tours before getting caught ripping off some locals of their drug money. So now he did the merc gig. It paid better than all the others combined, although sometimes the work could be spotty. Still, there were no rules and he liked that. It suited him.
Van was a big man with big muscles. He kept his hair high and tight, just like back in the day, and his body ready. He put in six hours a week on the range and could strip and reassemble any auto or semi-auto in less than a minute.
He surveyed the group of men around him in the SUV; all mercenaries like him. Men of differing backgrounds and builds and specialities, but all warriors of the highest caliber.
The group had been brought together a few days earlier and had been stationed on 24/7 call ever since, just waiting for the summons. They were moving five minutes later, weapons loaded, with night gear attached. They had been stationed in a safe house a few minutes away from the target location, and at this time of night, there had been little traffic to impede their progress.
It seemed like a lot of manpower to take out one man. Van thought it was overkill, but hey, overkill was a good thing in combat. He checked his Commando’s magazine set for the third time and made ready for battle.
The SUV started up a winding hogback and he slipped his night goggles down from their helmet mount and over his eyes. He’d studied the maps of the terrain and knew exactly how far it was to the house. The plan was simple. Kill the dogs with suppressed fire and make their way into the house. Kill the man, Gil Mason, and place the drop guns and a few red bandannas to make it look like a gang attack in retaliation and get them the flip out of Dodge. Easy-peasy. Only Van knew that sometimes things didn’t go the way you expected them too, hence the goggles already in place. He scanned the countryside as they progressed and was the only one to see the hot outlines of the men off to the side of the road a good distance from the house at the top.
Speaking through his helmet mic, he ordered his driver to stop and for the first car to keep going to the target location. His group would exit and neutralized the threat. Van didn’t know if this was Mason or a dad and son out walking their dog from a nearby house, but it didn’t matter. There could be no witnesses.
Hudson was first out. He was an arrogant kid with a badly scarred, acne-cratered face, but he was a good shot with good tactics. Parks and Stanson were right behind him when Van heard Hudson’s first shot followed quickly by three more.
By their instant reactions, Van thought both targets had been hit, but then saw them disappearing behind trees. The SUV in front of them suddenly swerved to the side and slipped out of view. Van heard the crash, even over the gunfire, and figured that fire team was out of the fight.
Like he thought a moment ago, things didn’t always go according to plan.
29
Bullets pelted the trees and brush around us and I dove for the largest trunk I could see, just as big divots were torn from the bark. Larkin made it to a ditch just behind him and Max vanished like the shape shifter he is.
They were pros, these guys, no simple band of gang-banger street thugs. Their rifles were suppressed, keeping the clatter down to a dull roar, and they had to have been using FLEER or some other type of night vision in order to spot us the way they did. What they didn’t know was that this was my mountain and that I had night vision of my own.
I sighted in on the lead SUV and put a round through the driver’s forehead. The vehicle swerved sharply to the right and went straight over the cliff, hitting about thirty feet down and bursting into flames before tumbling the rest of the way until it crushed up against a big boulder.
About a million slugs smacked into my tree and I went down to the prone position, spotting three men advancing from the road. Two others had already made it to the trees. I figured them for body armor, so I aimed low for the pelvic girdle and cranked off three fast shots. My first round struck home and the guy whirled and fell, screaming like he’d just been shot, but trees or something must have deflected the other two bullets because his buddies returned fire hard and fast. I found the reticle of my scope just in time to see a kneeling soldier behind a tree. I put a round through his face and saw a man next to him sighting in on me. A bright green blur shot from the trees and took the target at the throat. He went down and was lost behind a screen of bushes.
A sharp chunk of tree exploded next to my face, blinding me for a second, followed by a barrage of fully automatic gunfire that made me keep my head down. As soon as it stopped, I re-sighted in that area and saw Jerome Larkin grab the guy’s gun and shoot him, the weapon still on full auto. The bad guy danced a strange jig before falling without a sound.
Dirt exploded next to me and the tree splintered. It was time to move.
Van Blake moved into the draw thirty yards to the west of the drop-off where the le
ad SUV had disappeared. He almost fell at the abrupt change in terrain, but being an old pro, stayed on his feet. Suppressed gunfire sounded all around him, and for a second, it was like the old days back in the sand pit with his fellow soldiers taking on the towel heads. He was innocent back then, before his screw ups, and the booze, and the drugs, and all the death. Those early days were good days. He was a knight in shining armor, avenging his country’s virtue at having been violated by these ancient enemies. But somewhere along the line, he’d allowed himself to be compromised. It started with little things — insubordination, drinking, slacking — and then escalated quickly into theft and assault. Until one black night, when he was so boozed up that he botched a raid, and two of his once-buddies were seriously injured. And that was that. He could have done time in the stockade, but because he had been a good soldier once, the Army let him out with a dishonorable. Saving him jail time, but leaving him with the guilt and the memories and the bad habits that had gotten him into trouble in the first place. He’d come to terms with a lot of the past since then; gotten out of the drugs and most of the booze. The one thing he’d lost, and somehow never been able to reclaim, haunted him from time to time…his honor. But the pay helped make up for it. Van was a good leader, tactically sound and immensely competent. He’d only lost two men in all the years he’d been a mercenary and that had been on a hairy mission in deep Africa, going against high odds. He no longer felt like a shining knight, that was true, but he had three houses on two continents and the biggest high resolution TVs money could buy. And nobody in the world could beat him at Call of Duty.
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