Closer. Five yards. Now just six feet. The length of a man.
No breath. Abe wasn’t allowed to breathe this close to his prey.
Arm’s length. Just the fence between him and the sentry.
“No,” the sentry griped. “I heard like a fucking loud bird or—”
Abe’s boot skimmed the top of a sharp rock. The faintest little scrape.
The sentry jerked his head around.
Abe lunged, rattlesnake-quick. Left hand clamped behind the sentry’s neck, yanking him forward into the fence, pinning his rifle to his body. He’d wanted the knife to sever the spine, but he was face-to-face with the sentry and the spine wasn’t an option.
The sentry’s mouth gaped, all the air drawing into his lungs for a shout.
Abe rammed the blade up under his chin. He felt the resistance of the roof of the man’s mouth, but he’d punched the knife hard, and it cracked under the point of the blade, plunging up into sinuses and brain matter, and pinning the sentry’s jaw shut.
A strange death-noise bubbled up from the sentry’s throat. Abe rotated his right hand off the grip of the knife and clamped it down over the sentry’s mouth, holding him with the intensity of strength that a snake constricts its prey.
The man’s voice vibrated through Abe’s palm. Spit. Blood. Lubricating his grip.
Abe sandwiched the man’s head between his two hands as though trying to crush the skull. The ferocity of his energy made his arms tremble with the effort. The twin tubes of the sentry’s NODs gazed at him emotionlessly.
Nug’s voice in his ear: “Abe’s got the sentry down. Move in, move in.”
Abe held on. The body in his grip twitched and thrashed, but Abe knew well the sensation of a body in its death throes.
The scuff of boots behind him, rapid, stealth now giving way to urgency.
A hand on Abe’s shoulder. Menendez swooped in beside him, vaulted the fence in one fluid maneuver, then grabbed the body of the still-twitching sentry under the armpits and started hauling him for the concealment of an old water trough, the liquid inside looking black as ink.
Abe swung over the fence as Breck and the other six men followed.
“Abe,” Nug said. “Primals are moving into my pos. You’re gonna have live fire in about twenty seconds.”
“I copy. Abe to all units on overwatch, we’re in. Take out the sentries. Fire at will.”
Abe slid into cover behind the water trough, the dead sentry between him and Menendez. He sheathed his knife, then swung his rifle off his back and posted, bringing the reticle up on the dark figure of the patrolling sentry as he approached.
The others in Abe’s team were still scattering like cockroaches.
The approaching sentry spotted them. Stiffened. Rifle coming up.
Pink mist erupted from the back of his head, cast in neon by the backlighting of the moon. The mobile patrol toppled forward, and as he fell the sound of Nug’s suppressed shot reached Abe’s ears: The scrape of the supersonic round splitting the air, followed by the muffled thump of the report.
This sound was immediately followed by several others, so rapid that they sounded like one long crackle of electricity.
“IR’s on!” Abe spat out, snatching the chemlight on his shoulder and cracking it. He reached up and lowered the NODs on his helmet over his eyes. The world became bright and green and clear, the shadows dispelled. Around him, one by one, the IR chemlights were activated, invisible to the naked eye, but shining like beacons for he and his team as they all activated their nightvision.
“On me,” Abe said, moving around the trough towards the side of the main barn that dominated this section of Triprock. “Main building. Weapons free. We’re moving.”
Out to the east, a burp of unsuppressed gunfire told Abe that stealth was out the window.
***
“You got me?” Nug couldn’t help it from seething past his lips as he forced himself to stay in his scope, even as he felt Scots’s hot brass skitter across his neck and shoulders, and heard the movement of primals tearing through the woods.
“I got you!” Scots shouted back, pivoting rapidly and firing into the darkness.
Nug’s perception of reality kept trying to widen out to encompass what was happening behind him, but he forced it back to the magnified image in front of his right eye. The reticle. The target. That was his world.
The sentry on the western side of Triprock had called the alarm, shouldered his rifle, and began firing at the corner of the destroyed barn where Abe and his team were stacking up. Nug fitted the reticle snugly over his chest and squeezed.
The blat of his suppressed rifle.
Flight time.
Snap. The sentry staggered, then crumpled around the hole in his chest.
The comms in Nug’s ear: “Overwatch!” Abe called out. “We’re taking a lot of heat from that main building! Give us some breathing room!”
Nug grit his teeth. Beside him, Scots accidentally nudged his foot into Nug’s side, skewing his aim for a fraction of a second. A long string of rifle fire over Nug’s head.
“Reloading!” Scots gasped.
Nug got his sights on the main building. A big rectangle right in the middle of Triprock. Nug keyed his comms. “The side of the building facing south, Abe! It’s got no windows! Go for it when I put ‘em down!”
The stamp of rapid footfalls, coming in from Nug’s left.
Oh, Jesus…
“Up!” Scots screamed, and immediately fired on full-auto.
Nug felt something tumble to the ground, just a few feet to his left. Heard the wheezing, inhuman gurgle. He stayed in his sights. Put that reticle on the window of the main building that was sprouting a rosette of yellow fire, tracer rounds punching at Abe’s position.
Nug couldn’t see the target. He let fly with three rounds, evenly spaced, right on top of that muzzle flash. The chatter of machinegun fire ceased. Nug didn’t look to see if Abe and his team was moving—they would be. He shifted his sights to the next window, waiting for any sign of life to appear.
A shadow of movement. No positive ID, though. It could be anyone through that window.
“Nug!” Scots yelled. “Help!”
Nug had no choice. He rolled onto his back, his big rifle coming up. A massive shape loomed through the darkness. He couldn’t use the scope. He pointed the barrel, point-blank, and let it rip. The big round blasted the center of the primal’s chest out, causing it to stumble in its charge.
Scots pivoted, firing a burst that stitched the primal through its sternum, neck, and face, and pitched it to the ground beside Nug.
Nug let the rifle go. Swept down and yanked his pistol from its holster, coming up onto his knees. The shadows surrounded them like swirling shapes in a storm. They were eerily silent as they moved, only the huff of breath, and Nug could hardly tell whose breath he was hearing—his, or Scots’, or the primals’.
He fired at shapes as they came at him, aware that they were surrounded, aware that even as the one he was pumping 9mm rounds into directly ahead stumbled, there was another looping around to his back, and another to his side.
Nug and Scots scrunched tighter and tighter as the noose tightened around them. Shoulder to shoulder, back to back, they fired. Slides and bolts fell on empty chambers. Hands grasped at spare magazines. They did not speak anymore, did not call their reloads. They both knew what was about to happen to them.
The shadows closed in, and enveloped them.
***
Target identification. That was Abe’s entire world.
The rest of reality bled away in the half-light glow of his night vision. He mounted the steps to the main ranch house, the sides of it still pocked with the hundreds of rounds that had been shot through it months ago when he and Lee had taken over this very same settlement from the cartel.
He could hear the boots on the deck boards behind him—Menendez and his team falling in, ready to take the building.
Windows empty of glass. A
shape in the one to the right of the main door, which hung open on its hinges. Abe snapped his rifle up, his infrared laser aiming device blooming on the chest of someone wearing a black polo and armor plates. Abe twitched his aim up and sent three rounds into the neck and head, spilling the man back into the house.
Abe sidestepped the open front door as the shell casings clattered to the deck. “Frag it,” he snapped over his shoulder. Menendez was one step ahead of him, his rifle tucked under his arm while his support hand chucked a grenade through the broken window.
Abe hunched against the coming blast, cinching his shoulder up to cover his exposed ear.
The explosion rocked the house, billowing tattered curtains out of the open windows and slamming the front door shut. With the sound of shrapnel and detritus still peppering the walls, Abe took a single sideways step and mule kicked the front door open.
Menendez flowed past him, straight into the smoky breach, and Abe rolled off of his shoulder. Menendez went left. Abe went right. Straight into the room that had just been fragged. Three bodies in a circle around where the grenade had detonated. One of them was still moving. Abe could not see a weapon, but he saw body armor, and that was identification enough. He put two rounds into the head as he stepped into the room, then scanned the rest of it.
A couch in the center of the room. He couldn’t see behind it.
Gunshots from elsewhere in the house. No verbal commands—no shouts to show hands or surrender. That’s not what they were here for.
Abe was aware of Breckenridge, to his left. Abe pointed to the couch, then took two big strides towards it and front-kicked the left armrest, sending the entire furniture piece skidding backwards. It thumped against something behind it.
A body shot up, hands in the air. “Don’t shoot!”
Black polo. In the green of nightvision, the red Delta symbol of Cornerstone looked like a neon sign.
Abe and Breck both shot the man twice. He crumpled back behind the couch.
Abe stepped around the couch, muzzle following the path of where the man had fallen. He lay, curled on his side behind the couch. Still writhing. Abe put him out of his misery.
Abe saw no other places where a body could hide in this room. “Clear.”
The sound of a door slamming.
Shouted curses. A smattering of gunfire.
The comms in Abe’s ear clicked: “We got a runner!”
***
Lee tore through the night, heading north. He was close enough now that the radio in the Humvee’s center console was picking up the squad chatter.
“We got a runner!”
Shit, shit, shit!
The road ahead was long and straight and dusty. To his right, Lee could see the valley in the Texas hill country where Triprock huddled in the darkness. He knew the death and destruction that was descending on that place, but he couldn’t see it. No muzzle flashes. No fires burning.
Lee pressed his thumb to the PTT on the radio handset and shouted, “Lee here! I’m on the western side of Triprock—where’s the runner?”
Pedal to the floor, the engine roared. Lee strained to see through the midnight distance between him and the moonlit shapes of the settlement in the center of the valley—less than a mile from him now.
He couldn’t see anything. No bodies running.
The radio chirped. Menendez’s voice: “He just squirted out the back! I lost sight of him. Running northwest.”
“Hold on!” Lee called to his passengers and then yanked the wheel to the right, sending the Humvee careening over the shallow shoulder. It slammed its way across the uneven terrain, jostling the occupants.
Lee pointed the grill of the Humvee towards the empty space northwest of Triprock. The headlights flashed across low, scrubby hills and stands of brush that slashed the sides and undercarriage of the vehicle. He still couldn’t see a runner.
“Overwatch,” Lee transmitted. “Can anybody get eyes on that runner?”
There was a pause over the line. No one responded.
The Humvee hit a berm and vaulted, going airborne for a sphincter-puckering second before crashing down, the wheel jerking around in Lee’s hands.
Abe’s voice now, urgent: “Check the arroyo! There’s one that runs north out of Triprock!”
Yes. That made sense. A runner with half a brain wouldn’t run across the open landscape, exposed. He’d take the landscape feature that offered him some cover.
The headlights slashed over a dark schism in the landscape—the arroyo. Lee jerked the wheel to the left to keep the Humvee from crashing into the dry streambed. A flash of movement, far ahead.
The soldier that had taken the turret shouted down: “I got him!”
“Take him out!”
The M2 thundered overhead, the tracers arcing through the blackness. They went every which way, a haphazard pattern of uncontrolled automatic fire. The Humvee was moving too much for the gunner to control his muzzle.
Lee lost sight of the target as he roared along the left side of the arroyo. But not for long.
The gunner spat rounds at a more even pace but they were still flying without accuracy.
“I can’t aim!” the soldier shouted.
But Lee wasn’t going to stop the Humvee.
Another flash of movement. The headlights struck the pale flesh of a man running—his clothes were as black as the night around him, but Lee could see his arms pumping, and the back of his neck. Lee accelerated again, feeling the grip of the Humvee’s tires loosen as he pushed the vehicle to its off-roading limit.
Distance estimation…
Seventy-five yards? Maybe a hundred?
Another berm of dirt sent the Humvee up. Lee felt his ass leave his seat, his head crunching into the ceiling. The steering wheel got squirrelly in his grip and he barely kept the Humvee from pitching over the side of the arroyo.
He got control. Accelerated again.
Fifty yards. Twenty.
Another burst from the M2—no joy.
Lee swore, knowing he had to stop. He was close enough now—wasn’t he? A sudden wave of doubt slammed him as he stamped down on the brakes and sent the Humvee skidding through a cloud of its own dust.
Can you make that shot?
Lee was out the door. Rifle in hand. Left leg screaming in pain at the misuse, but Lee gave it no quarter. He heard the shouts of the Humvee’s occupants behind him, confused, wondering if they were supposed to follow him, and then simply doing it.
Lee posted on the painfully-hot hood. It seared his exposed elbow. He forced himself to relax. His ruined eye made it hard to estimate distance, but he only needed one eye to shoot his rifle.
The shape of the man, still running, approaching a bend in the arroyo.
Lee’s red dot was overbright in the darkness—still set for daytime. Rookie mistake. Another tidal wave of doubts clenched his stomach, a sensation he was wholly unaccustomed to. He didn’t bother adjusting the optic’s brightness. He had no time, and the runner was well within reasonable range for a quick shot.
A shot that would’ve taken Lee less than a second before his injuries.
Red dot, square on the back.
The turret thundered, its rounds more controlled now, but still striking wide.
Lee pulled his trigger. One shot.
He saw the body jerk, then fall out of sight.
Lee came out of his sights, already moving for the arroyo. “On me!” he shouted to the others. The lip of the arroyo was only four feet tall. Normally, Lee would have just lept into it without thinking. Now he hesitated for a split second, then went down clumsily onto his right hip so he could slide gracelessly to the bottom.
Dust and pebbles filled his boots. His mind told him Run! but his body was only half able. He heard the others clattering down into the arroyo with him. He hitched his way along, and only as he approached the bend in the arroyo did he realize that getting into the stupid ditch had been a bad choice.
The cavalcade of doubts and hesitati
on had clouded his usually-clear thinking.
He was reactive, not proactive. He fucking hated it. Cursed himself for an idiot.
Rifle up. He slowed as he reached the bend. He knew that he’d landed that shot, but the body wasn’t there. Maybe the hit hadn’t been as damaging as he’d thought, or maybe the man was wearing armor.
Scuff marks in the loose soil. It looked like someone had scrambled through it on all fours.
“We’re with you,” one of the soldiers said from behind him.
Lee tracked the disturbed dirt to where it disappeared around the bend. Best to take the corner hard. Right? Or was he about to make another stupid decision? Why wasn’t he able to just trust himself like he used to?
He took the bend in the arroyo as aggressively as he could.
A straightaway. An alley with dirt walls on both sides.
A shape, thrashing along, fifteen yards ahead. Farther than Lee would have thought that someone could crawl. But crawling he was—on all fours.
A weaponlight speared the gloom. Not Lee’s. The soldier to his right shouted, “Lemme see your hands!”
Lee had no such compunctions. He fired on the shape, three rapid rounds, right up the ass. The figure pitched forward, face-planting in the dirt, his backend still up in the air.
There was a gasp of shock from behind him. It sounded like the civilian woman. That tiny noise seeped into Lee’s consciousness as he pushed himself into a jog, keeping his muzzle as controlled as possible.
Why had she gasped? Did she think they were taking prisoners?
The man in the dirt, still alive. Still moving. Lee heard a noise of agony as he ran up. The man’s legs moved like they thought they could still run, even though his upper body seemed limp. He only managed to pitch himself over into a fetal position.
Lee’s mind was on fire. The doubts at his own abilities, the moral accusation of that woman’s gasp, the fury that coursed through him as he thought about someone getting away and destroying his carefully laid plans—they all clashed in his brain.
Lee reached the body. Heard the ragged breathing. Still alive. Hands now curled up into his chest. Lee activated his own weaponlight. What was in the man’s hands? What was he clutching to his chest? A weapon? A grenade?
Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed Page 9
