140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  The gunfire erupted the second the cabin appeared clearly on the monitor, remorseless large-caliber rounds raining down on the SUV from somewhere up ahead. I crouched lower and floored the pedal, aiming at the house as bits of the car and of Tomblin exploded all around me, showering me with all kinds of debris, hard and soft. Some rounds found their way to the Kevlar panels and punched into them, hard, kicking them back onto me, but I kept the pedal floored and kept it moving until the car shuddered and plowed into the ground for a full stop. Then the shooting stopped.

  A panicked voice in my earbud blurted, “Reilly? Reilly! Jesus, are you OK?” It was Kurt, back at the clearing, at the controls of the Phantom.

  The plan had worked in the sense that I’d made it up to the door of the cabin in one piece, but I needed to stay that way, which meant I needed to take one of those big guns out. Given the sound they made, the cycling rate and the damage they’d caused, I figured it was something like one of the M240 family of machine guns, positioned under cover outside rather than inside the house to allow for a quick repositioning and a bigger playing field.

  “I’m fine, relax,” I whispered into my throat mike. “What do you see?”

  “You’ve got two gunmen—on either side of the cabin.” He was flying it lower now, although I didn’t think it was visible or within earshot yet.

  “The one to my right. I need a lock on him. Where is he, off the car’s nose?”

  “I’d say, two o’clock.”

  “I need more precision than that, Kurt. Give it to me in minutes. And be accurate, for God’s sake. I’m only going to get one shot at this.”

  “OK, OK, hang on. I think, uh, thirteen.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, yes. Thirteen.”

  I quickly asked, “Distance?”

  “OK, uh, it’s around, uh, thirty yards. Yeah, I think that’s about right, I’m measuring off the length of the car. He’s behind what looks like some fallen logs.”

  “OK. Hang on.”

  I focused on my positioning, imagining the front-to-back axis of the car and locking it in my mind relative to everything around me. Then I closed my eyes and conjured up a mental picture of what Kurt had told me about my position relative to the shooter. I’d only get one shot at him and it had to count.

  I adjusted my position and got the M4 ready, then I pulled out a stun grenade, pulled out its pin, focused my concentration, then lobbed it out the opening where the front windshield used to be, to the left of the car, the opposite side of the shooter I was going for. Flashbangs had very short fuses, two seconds in this case, so the small, perforated cylinder had barely left my hand when it went off in a deafening bang and a blinding flash. I knew its effects wouldn’t be as disorientating as they would if this were inside a room, but the blast was so powerful that, even inside the car, I was rocked by its concussion wave. It instantly created the desired result as more rounds erupted from the trees, but were directed away from the car. With my eyes closed, I spun around and came up from my crouch, M4 ready and already aimed in the direction and at the distance Kurt had spotted for me—and I opened my eye, looked through the scope, and there he was, for a second, the top of his head and the barrel of the gun barely visible through the light snowfall, the red dot inside the optic aligned on his forehead.

  I squeezed the trigger and saw his head snap back in a burst of crimson.

  One down, maybe two—and Roos—to go.

  “Guide me out of here, quick,” I rasped.

  “OK, I’m looking at your side of the car. There’s that large rock to your right that we saw before, at one o’clock,” he added, “and the trees are just beyond that, about ten yards farther.”

  “Got it.”

  The belts these guns used held a couple of hundred rounds at best, and given that they fired at upward of six hundred rounds per minute and seeing as how many hits the car had taken before this last onslaught, I figured whoever was manning them should be needing to restock their feeding tray by now. Regardless, I had to move fast. They now knew I was alive and in the car. I sucked in a couple of quick, deep breaths, then I pulled on the door handle and kicked the door out, following it out in the same frenzied move. I rolled on the ground before coming up in a crouch and I sprinted towards the rock, bullets kicking up the slush around my feet. I didn’t shoot back, saving the rounds of my M4 until I had something viable to shoot at. I made it to the rock just as more bullets ate into it, sending shards of it flicking around me. The shooter was on the other side of the house from me now and I knew the rock would protect me. I had no idea where the third guy, if there was one, was, nor if Roos was in the cabin or elsewhere.

  I figured I couldn’t stay where I was for too long and I couldn’t cut across in the open, so the best option seemed to be to get to the cabin and work my way around it or through it to take out the guy with the big gun on its opposite side. I peeked out, took in my position. I couldn’t see any movement. I figured that if I took the direct route to the cabin, I’d be exposed longer than if I went parallel to its side initially, then cut across to it—longer, but safer, unless there was a shooter in one of its side windows. It had three—two on the ground floor that gave on to the porch and a third on the floor above. I debated going the extra ten yards away and using the edge of the tree line, but the soil there would be less even than the clearing I was in; more snow would have settled there under the bare branches, and I’d be moving less confidently while risking a fall.

  I steeled myself for the move, then sprinted out from behind the large rock, running parallel to the side of the house. Snowflakes licked my face as gunfire erupted immediately from the same shooter but, surprisingly, nothing came from the cabin. I ran as fast as I could and, within seconds, the shooting stopped as the gunner lost his bead on me. I cut across the field, headed straight for the cabin now, and hurdled onto the porch before slamming to a stop against the log wall.

  Everything went silent again.

  I didn’t like it. Playing cat and mouse like this, facing an unknown number of shooters who’d brought major firepower to the fight. Then Kurt’s voice came through my comms, and his words only made things worse.

  “Reilly! Reilly,” he hissed.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “I just sent the drone on a quick perimeter swoop. The two SUVs, the ones with the heavies? They’re back.”

  66

  I couldn’t worry about that right now. I had enough to deal with here. And the sooner I cleared this kill zone, the sooner I could start figuring out how to deal with the new threat.

  I used the stock of my carbine to smash through the window closest to me, then I chucked in another flashbang. Between four walls, its effect was much more potent this time and I charged in after it, loosing quick bursts left and right. And hitting nothing.

  The space was empty. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness. I was in a large, open area, typical of an old log cabin, with a large fireplace as its central focal point and six-point buck heads staring down from the bare wood walls. I scanned around, looking for signs of life, but saw and heard nothing. I sensed the cabin was empty—it didn’t offer enough cover to make tactical sense to remain in it. The forest outside was a much better option. Still, I advanced cautiously, if quickly, swinging my weapon from side to side, my senses alert to any disturbance. I was all the way across to the opposite side of the cabin, the side of the other shooter, when I heard a rustling outside. I rushed to the side of the window and slammed against the wall just as something crashed through the glass and flew into the room.

  They’d wanted to draw me into the cabin all along. That was their kill zone. And now that I was inside, one of the bastards had just fired a grenade launcher at me.

  The lead SUV veered off the main road and bounced onto the trail that led up to the cabin, its big tires kicking up a spray of slush onto the windshield of the second vehicle, which was right on its tail.

  It accelerated uphill, its powerful engin
e propelling it up the gentle slope with ease, and about twenty yards before the trail veered right around a large rock outcropping, its tires suddenly hit something and shredded to bits, causing the heavy car to crater into the ground and come to a shuddering halt.

  The driver of the SUV behind it, his vision already hampered by the slush flying onto his windshield, didn’t have enough time to react and just plowed into the back of the lead vehicle, hard.

  Which was about when the gunfire started.

  I didn’t think. I just reacted.

  Pure instinct, zero lag time. Just neurons firing an instantaneous reflexive order and muscles reacting without hesitation.

  I launched myself through the glass of the window shoulder first and was airborne when the blast tore through the space behind me.

  I hit the porch hard, curled into a roll, my ears and my skull reeling from the explosion, but I couldn’t let it affect me just yet—I needed my senses to function for just a second or two more; I needed to push away the heaviness and the ringing and the blurred vision and just focus every nerve ending I could muster to lock onto my target while he was within striking range and before he could get a shot off at me.

  I caught him at the edge of my perception, a wraith with a white face and dark camo gear, and my arms somehow managed to bring the carbine up and line it up on him and my finger pulled back on the trigger as I aligned the red dot of the CCO sight on his chest. He staggered back as my three-round burst punched into him and dropped out of sight just as I rolled onto my back and shut my eyes to try and recalibrate my senses.

  The whine in my ears was manageable—I’d had worse—and I guess the helmet had helped dampen the full brunt of the blast on the insides of my skull. I stayed like that for a few long seconds, breathing in, letting the blood rush around and reboot my shocked operating system.

  I hit my comms and said, “Kurt?” but there was no answer.

  I called out again, but nothing came back.

  I pulled the transmitter out of its shoulder pouch and checked it. It was cracked. I switched it on and off, tried again, and got nothing. My heavy landing must have busted it.

  I was on my own.

  I pushed myself back on my feet and, hugging the log wall, I crept to the back of the cabin and the forest beyond.

  I still had maybe one shooter out there, then there was Roos.

  I scanned left, right, couldn’t see any movement. The ground rose away from the cabin in undulating hillocks and the tree cover was dense, some of it with good visibility in the case of the deciduous oaks and maples, other parts much darker under the evergreen firs, spruces and beeches. The snow cover was accordingly irregular and patchy: thicker and whiter where the leaves above were bare, and thin to nonexistent where the canopy was forbidding. More flakes were falling, though, and they were getting meatier.

  Then I spotted something: tracks, in the messy scree around the base of the porch. Boot prints, one pair, leading away from the cabin, into the forest.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Roos had only brought ten men with him and not eleven.

  Ten, a round number. An excessive one, if you asked me. I mean, I really didn’t think I merited that much of an effort. Eleven—that was just overkill.

  I checked my carbine, slammed in a fresh clip just in case, and headed out.

  I’d barely taken a step when distant machine gun bursts cut through the silence, angry, intense volleys echoing out from behind me. In that split second, I noticed a flash of movement, a shift of tones, a silhouette that was darker than its backdrop of leaves and branches, about thirty yards ahead of me, high up. I dropped to one knee and brought the M4 up just as several bullets cut through the space my upper body had been occupying and slammed into the logs behind me.

  I squeezed the trigger, and the silhouette jerked before dropping thirty feet to the ground. He’d been waiting for me, up in a tree stand.

  There had been eleven after all.

  I was pretty sure Roos was now on his own.

  And I was coming for him.

  Deutsch let rip with full dedication.

  She’d set up the spike strips at the end of first relatively straight stretch of trail, before it swept gently right around a large rock outcropping that served to shield her parked Crown Vic and to offer her a great vantage point from which to unleash her assault.

  She knew what she was facing, but it didn’t worry her. She was committed, and she was ready. She was kitted out in helmet, ballistic vest, comms; she had the M4 carbine with its suppressor in place and its laser sight ready and she’d laid out her gear within easy reach around: five extra magazines, flashbangs, a fully loaded handgun, even the big knife.

  Everything she needed to maximize the kill.

  She started firing mere seconds after the long metal barbs of spike strips had shredded the SUV’s tires, just as the vehicles were immobile, before the doors even cracked open. She wasn’t off to one side but was almost in front of the cars, at a slight angle perhaps, which allowed her to cover both sides of the vehicles. Anyone trying to get out from either side would be within her reach.

  She started with the two men in the front seats of the front car, moved to the two in the front of the rear vehicle, then came back to the front car and its back seat passengers before returning to the rear vehicle and the final two targets.

  Thirty rounds per clip, three-round bursts, ten bursts per clip. Ten different targets, ten chances to take out an enemy. Six clips, one hundred and eighty rounds, sixty chances to take out the eight targets. If she connected with one out of seven bursts, if one out of twenty-one bullets managed to find its mark, they were all out of play.

  Her mind was clear, her focus full, her aim true. With each red dot aligning on a target, with each pull of her trigger, she thought of Nick Aparo and nothing else. With each splatter of blood, she thought about what men like these had done to him. She allowed no other thought any breathing space, none whatsoever. She was just fully, totally, exclusively committed to wiping out each and every one of those sons of bitches that appeared in her sights.

  The last two required a little more effort. She had to use stun grenades to rattle and tame them, had to come out from her cover and climb down to the kill zone and execute them at closer range. She didn’t mind it, though. It was what she was there to do. And after it was all done, after all eight of them had taken their last breath, a voice cut in and intruded on her serenity.

  Kurt was hailing her through her earbud. “Annie?”

  He needed to call for her twice before she responded. “What?”

  “Annie, I can’t reach Reilly. I can’t see him either.”

  Her mind folded itself back into reality and she started moving towards her car. “When did you last hear from him?”

  “About ten minutes ago. Then we heard that explosion.”

  “I know,” she said as she reached her car. “I heard it too.”

  “He might need help,” Kurt said.

  “I’m heading up there now,” Deutsch said as she slammed the car into gear and floored it.

  67

  It was eerie and uncomfortable.

  It was also slow going. Very, very slow going.

  Making my way up the mountain wasn’t easy. Loose footings, boulder fields, slippery rock outcroppings, and the snow, heavy and damp on the ground, in patches of irregular thickness and consistency. It wasn’t too easy to see either, what with the continuous snowfall layering a ghostly veil on it all.

  It was desolate and quiet, the bare trees and the rough terrain giving it a grim, otherworldly feel, the dense evergreens then changing it into one that was brooding and mysterious. I knew the area was teeming with wildlife, and the multiple tree rubbings I saw confirmed it. But I didn’t see any bears, deer or elk. Not even a turkey. The only wildlife up here right now seemed to be two predators who were out hunting each other. It was as if the rest of the animal kingdom had vacated the mountain to give our confrontation plenty of room to play
itself out. Maybe the blasts and the gunfire had just scared them off. Or maybe they knew better and didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire.

  My senses, still jarred by the grenade’s blast, were doing their best to cut through the haze and stay focused, to try and pick out the tiniest movement, the smallest sound.

  Roos was out here, somewhere.

  This was his territory.

  It was where he hunted, and the realization made every step I took more hesitant.

  He knew these woods. I didn’t. But I wasn’t leaving here till I found him.

  Roos huddled under the blind he’d built at the mouth of the rock tunnel, listening intently as he scanned ahead for any sign of Reilly.

  He didn’t have to worry about his back. He knew Reilly would be coming up the mountain. All he had to do was wait. Then he’d just pick him off and make his way back to civilization.

  Waiting for a kill wasn’t new to Roos. Far from it. He was a natural hunter, a talent his father had spotted and helped nurture ever since Roos was a young boy. Stalking prey, whether on land or at sea, was a feeling he was very familiar with, a hobby he enjoyed greatly, and one he’d been able to indulge to his heart’s delight ever since his father, a successful dentist who’d ridden the popularity surge of orthodontics in the mid-70s, had bought that huge piece of land for a song after Hurricane Camille had savagely devastated the area in 1969. An only child, Roos had inherited the lodge from his father after the man had died prematurely from a heart attack almost ten years to the day after buying it.

  He’d put it to good use, for all kinds of hunts.

  Over the years, Roos had built many blinds across his property. Nature provided a lot of the materials that made the best blinds: trees torn down during heavy storms, densely leaved branches from conifers, large boulders to tuck in against. He’d build them early in the season, give the animals time to get used to them. Then he’d go up and spend hours huddled inside them, watching, waiting—making sure no noise and no smell scared off his prey. Then they would appear, out of the trees, oblivious to the danger he posed. There was nothing more satisfying than watching a bull elk or a white-tailed doe walk by, mere feet way, so close he could reach out and touch them. Observing them at eye level, stretching out the time before the kill as long as he could, toying with their lives before he took them away.