Ready to Kill

by Andrew Peterson

  Suddenly sensing they were no longer alone, the two lead gunmen stopped running.

  Raven yelled, “Shoot him!”

  In a purely instinctive move, Nathan sucked in a huge lungful of air, dropped to one knee, and toggled the laser. But the man on Raven’s left was faster. Before Nathan could level his pistol and acquire a target, the gunman’s pistol came out of its holster in a fast-draw motion quicker than Nathan had thought humanly possible.

  The handgun flashed twice, and Nathan steeled himself for the ugly result. Contrary to common belief, getting shot doesn’t automatically end a firefight. The human body can sustain a fair amount of trauma and still function, at least for a while.

  The darkness of night saved Nathan’s life.

  Both shots missed low and left, giving him the half second he needed.

  He held his breath, painted Fast Draw’s chest, and squeezed off a two-round burst. One of the bullets whistled away after finding the gunman’s M-4, but his target’s good fortune ended there. The second round slammed home. The man jerked from the impact but didn’t go down. Nathan double tapped him again and released a labored breath.

  Eleven rounds left in the Sig.

  Raven fired from the hip and bolted for the edge of the road.

  The concussion of sniper rifle report shuddered Nathan’s body and slammed his ears. His NVGs showed a green javelin of fire reaching for him.

  Five yards short and left, the rocky surface exploded. Even though he wore NVGs, he instinctively raised an arm to protect his eyes. The move saved his goggles. His left forearm took a stinging blow, from a chunk of rock, he hoped, not a bullet fragment.

  Even with three center-mass wounds, Fast Draw managed to aim his handgun in Nathan’s direction and get two additional shots off. Both bullets sailed high. The slower of the two men who’d preceded Raven up the slope had initially frozen in indecision, but he now joined the fight.

  In eerie detail, Nathan saw Slow’s forefinger enter the trigger guard of his assault rifle.

  Had Nathan not been winded from his sprint up the mountain, he could’ve easily ended the threat. But as he sucked in a precious lungful of air, he realized he’d never be able to line up on Slow in time.

  A split second before Slow’s M-4 erupted, Nathan dived left, aligning his body to offer the smallest profile. The M-4’s flash suppressor did its job, creating a menacing flower of hot gas and blinding light. Nathan felt his body vibrate like a guitar string from the concussions and braced himself for the crippling result. But the gunman’s rounds—dozens of them—skipped off the ground where he’d just been.

  Slow stood his ground, ejected the empty magazine, and reached for a new one.

  Nathan was slow to return fire because his freshly injured forearm had landed on a sharp rock.

  Shit!

  He aimed from a prone position and squeezed off a fifth round.

  At the same instant he fired, the laser’s dot vanished from Slow’s chest. His bullet flew wide. He’d pulled the shot.

  His lungs screamed for air.

  Holding the same breath, he ignored the hideous sensation of suffocating, fired again, and scored a hit.

  His bullet plowed into Slow’s hip before the guy could insert the magazine. The man shuddered and made a second attempt to jam the magazine home. Nathan shot him again. The laser had been dead center on the man’s chest, but it drifted off target and found the outside edge of Slow’s left shoulder. The guy’s tactical sling kept his rifle from falling to the ground when he let go of it.

  Eight rounds left.

  Close to passing out, Nathan exhaled and took several quick breaths as he instinctively rolled away from his current location. He couldn’t continue fighting like this—especially against Raven. He needed cover and needed it quickly, but he saw nothing available in this open expanse of gravel and rock.

  Raven had dropped out of sight over the edge. Nathan felt certain the scope he’d seen atop his adversary’s rifle was NV capable. At this very moment, Raven would be relocating below Nathan’s line of sight. Within seconds, his former student would have a clear bead on him. He was tempted to finish off the men he’d shot, but he didn’t have time. The stopwatch in his head was ticking down to zero. He couldn’t wait out in the open for Raven to reappear, because he had no way to know where that would occur. If he didn’t find immediate cover, he’d have no chance of surviving the next few seconds.

  Nathan whipped his head around and scanned the area again. This expanse hadn’t been created from a road cut, it was a flattened spoil dump from a mine. No more than ten yards behind him, the area of deep shadow he’d seen earlier was a dark opening into the rock face and it represented his only hope of survival. Without knowing where Raven was, running toward the edge of the road was paramount to suicide.

  Gritting his teeth, he made a beeline for the pitch-black hole.

  CHAPTER 32

  Nathan ran in a zigzag pattern toward the opening. As he did so, he considered scaling the exposed rock face rather than going inside the mountain. In daylight he might’ve been able to climb the wall, but he’d never manage it now, especially in his fatigued condition. Like a fly on a window, he’d make an easy target for Raven.

  Just inside the mine’s entrance, an ore car sat atop narrow rails. Its rusty form would offer waist-high protection. He had no idea if rifle rounds would penetrate its iron plating, but his options were severely limited. He reached down and pressed the transmit button.

  “Harv, do you copy?”

  Nothing.

  Four strides left.

  “Estefan! Do you copy?”

  Shit! The terrain blocked his transmission.

  Just ahead, an area of finer, powderlike dirt covered the ground. Nathan purposely angled toward it and left Harv a footprint. He and Harv always removed specific cleats from the waffle patterns of their boot soles for this very purpose.

  From behind him, where he’d shot the two men, Nathan heard the distinctive sound of an M-4 bolt being released and knew he had mere seconds to reach the ore car. An M-4 could be handled with one arm but not as accurately. He didn’t know which of the two men he’d shot was wielding the rifle, and it didn’t matter. He didn’t think it was Raven, because Raven would be using his sniper rifle, likely his old Remington 700. If so, it packed quite a punch and its slugs might cleave through the ore car—at least one side of it.

  Two strides from the car, Nathan’s world transformed into a maelstrom of sparks, high-speed chips of rock, and choking dust as bullets slammed into the wall in front of him. Fortunately, the shooter was twenty yards away, and his bullets went high. Unfortunately, Nathan felt half a dozen wasplike stings as shrapnel peppered his chest and legs. None of the wounds felt too serious, and thankfully they’d missed his face and groin, but they were definitely going to draw blood, especially the deeper wound on his thigh.

  From the length of the burst, he knew the shooter had emptied the magazine. He cried out and cursed loudly, faking like he’d been shot. He purposely fell, got back up, and hobbled the last two steps.

  Nathan tucked the Sig into his waist, maneuvered himself behind the ore car, and got his feet on the steel rails just in time.

  The shooter fired two quick bursts, more accurately this time. The ore car vibrated as bullets pinged off its surface. Several rounds whistled down the tunnel, reverberating in eerie whines. Nathan couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think any of the bullets had breached the metal. He was sure his right calf had taken a fragment. Aside from the fresh puncture wound, he was otherwise unscathed by the latest barrage. Rather than expose himself over the top of the car to return fire, he used its mass as a moving shield and pulled it deeper into the mine.

  Nathan heard a familiar whoomp as the wall of the mine exploded at knee level. The trailing end of the ore car absorbed the bullet fragments with a metallic thump.
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br />   Son of a bitch!

  Before Nathan could shield his face, Raven fired again.

  The ceiling ignited in a shower of sparks and dust, breaking a bare light bulb. Glass rained into the ore car.

  As much as Nathan disliked backing himself into a tunnel, if he hadn’t moved deeper inside, he’d have been bleeding even more. Or dead. Even though he’d retreated beyond Raven’s direct line of sight, the man had aimed his shots quite deliberately. And the effect of those strategically placed rounds was unnerving. Nathan had been on the wrong end of gunfire many times, but this was different. With no place to go but deeper into the mountain, he’d just entombed himself in an oversized coffin.

  Screw this.

  Nathan pulled his Sig, leaned out from his hiding place, and activated the laser.

  The result churned his stomach. The suspended dust turned his beam into a bright green vector, pointing directly to his position.

  He released the button and returned fire, walking his eight remaining bullets across the open expanse outside the tunnel. Scoring a hit was a long shot, but it might buy him a few extra seconds. Each suppressed shot flashed in the narrow tunnel, producing stroboscopic vertigo. Nathan closed his eyes for his last four shots and ducked behind the car again.

  A third bullet from Raven’s weapon shrieked down the tunnel, impacting the mine’s wall somewhere behind him.

  Nathan coughed and hacked from the dust. He needed clean air in a hurry. Abandoning all stealth, he hauled the ore car even deeper into the mine.

  Fifty feet inside the mountain he found better air—it was also cooler. He stopped pulling the car at a shallow alcove in the tunnel’s wall. About the size of a household refrigerator, it held half a dozen sledgehammers, pick axes, and shovels. Estefan had said they broke the ore by hand before hauling it down the mountain. It would be cramped, but he was certain he could get his entire body into the indentation.

  The near absence of light severely hampered his NV, but he wasn’t willing to activate its infrared flashlight because Raven’s NVGs would easily see it.

  Using feel only, he took a few seconds to insert a new magazine into his Sig and evaluated his tactical situation. From this point on, he believed he’d be facing Raven only. Fast Draw had taken three rounds in the torso. If the guy wasn’t down for the count, he soon would be. The other man had one crippling wound, possibly two, and wouldn’t be any use to Raven except to guard the entrance to the tunnel.

  What would he do if he were Raven?

  Wait it out?

  Collapse the tunnel?

  Neither tactic would end well for Nathan, and the latter was too terrible to contemplate. No, he had to get Raven to come in here after him. And do it fairly quickly. A prolonged silence might mean he was retrieving explosives. Nathan had no way to know where the dynamite was or how long it would take Raven to go get it.

  From the safety of the alcove, he took a deep breath and called out in Spanish, “Hey, Franco, I’ve got your gold from your safe. All twenty-six bars. Does Macanas know about your private stash? Maybe I’ll just tell him.”

  Raven didn’t respond.

  Of course, Nathan was lying about having all the gold, but by simply proving his knowledge of it, he’d given Raven an urgent reason to come in here, neutralize the threat, and reclaim any gold that Nathan possessed.

  Silence from outside the tunnel.

  Nathan decided to up the stakes. “And that worthless cousin of yours? He’s bleeding out.”

  Raven’s voice echoed in the tunnel. “You aren’t Estefan Delgado. So who are you?”

  Knowing his foreign accent had given him away, Nathan said, “Only one thing matters for you. I’m the guy who’s got the goods on your ass.”

  Raven’s response arrived in the form of a fourth bullet. It whistled past his alcove like an angry hornet, followed by a concussive boom.

  “Go ahead and waste all your ammo.”

  Provoking Raven gave Nathan a measure of satisfaction, but he felt terribly cramped inside the alcove and the air quality had degraded from the latest blast from Raven’s sniper rifle. Worse than that, the tunnel seemed to be constricting around him. He jabbed his thigh wound and used the sensation of pain to ward off the illusion. Nothing had changed, the tunnel wasn’t getting smaller.

  From outside, he heard muffled voices but didn’t see any movement. Because his field of vision was narrow, he could only glimpse a tiny portion of the outside world. The reverse was also true, Nathan reminded himself. His enemy saw only the black opening of the mine.

  He decided to make a bold move, one that involved substantial risk. In the closed confines of the alcove, he managed to shuck his pack and pull out a single gold bar. To reinforce the ruse of being wounded, he pressed the ingot against his thigh and smeared it with blood. Keeping his Sig up and firing a round every third step, he dashed for the entrance. He stopped well short, threw the bar out of the mine, and hustled back to the alcove, firing over his shoulder as he ran.

  Back in the safety of the alcove, he peered toward the opening.

  Nothing happened.

  “There’s your proof,” Nathan yelled. “I’ve got twenty-five more.”

  Nathan saw a black form sweep across the entrance and simultaneously scoop up the bar, too quickly to make for a hittable target.

  Bright light appeared on the ground near the entrance. Nathan knew Raven had likely activated a small LED flashlight. Nathan used the time to reload his Sig.

  “Looks like you’re leaking.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “What do you want? Maybe we can make a deal.”

  Knowing his response wouldn’t be well received, Nathan pressed himself as deep as he could into the recess. “I want you and your boss in a prison cell together for the rest of your lives for murdering Pastor Tobias.”

  Raven didn’t respond; his mind was probably racing.

  “Did you hear me? You’re going to rot in prison with Macanas. You—”

  Nathan’s world erupted again, this time from a fully automatic M-4 that Raven must’ve taken from one of his wounded men.

  The M-4’s sound was beyond deafening.

  Son of a bitch!

  Nathan covered his ears and ducked his head away from the fireworks display tearing past his position. Bullets pinged off the ore car and more overhead light bulbs popped.

  When the gunfire ended, Nathan felt as though he’d been run over by an eighteen-wheeler. His body buzzed from the teeth-fracturing barrage. No more than eighteen inches away, forty hypersonic slugs, each producing its own sonic boom, had quite literally pounded his eardrums into mush. With a little luck, blood wouldn’t be oozing down his lobes.

  Think, man! React and overcome!

  With a start, Nathan realized Raven could be using the suppressive burst to advance into the tunnel. He stole a look around the edge of the alcove but didn’t detect any movement. To hear Raven after that auditory assault would be hopeless. Still, to be on the safe side, he fired a blind round toward the entrance. It zinged off the wall.

  He sucked in a dust-filled gulp of air and tasted burned gunpowder. “Nice try, numbnuts, but it’s not going to be that easy.”

  Raven didn’t respond.

  Nathan peered in the opposite direction, but his NV couldn’t see beyond ten yards or so. He didn’t know much about underground mines but believed there’d be other tunnels connecting to this one farther down the passage. From talking with Estefan, he seemed to recall they were called crosscuts or drifts. Turning his NVGs to maximum gain, he looked deeper into the mountain and saw only telltale speckling on the tiny TV screens. The photocathode plates weren’t receiving enough light to amplify the image.

  If there were other tunnels deeper inside the mine, could he find another way out of here? The thought gave Nathan a glimmer of hope, but he dismissed it. Althou
gh he was no expert at judging cut and fill volume, there had to be several thousand cubic yards of blasted rock outside the mine’s entrance. The flattened expanse had been the size of a tennis court. And even if there was an alternate exit, what were the chances he’d find it? It could be on a different level—higher or lower. Or nowhere. He’d be forced to use either his infrared illuminator or a light stick, either of which would give Raven a huge advantage. And escaping didn’t solve the problem of neutralizing Raven. As unpleasant as the thought was, his best bet was to stay semiclose to the entry point and wait for his enemy to make a mistake. The trick was getting Raven to do it.

  He focused on his immediate area and saw that the walls and ceiling were jagged and uneven from being dynamited. A thick layer of dust covered every surface. There were no timbers for support. He flashed back to a childhood memory of a Knott’s Berry Farm ride into the depths of a mysterious and colorful gold mine, but this grimy place was neither mysterious nor colorful. Pitch-black and dirty, it had a musty odor—probably from water dripping from the ceiling.

  Nathan’s blood and sweat had combined with dirt, thoroughly trashing his MARPATs. Adding to his stress, he was already experiencing the early symptoms of anxiety from being trapped in an enclosed dark place.

  As he considered his options, an idea formed. He only hoped he had the strength—and time—to pull it off. He fired two more rounds toward the entrance, stepped out of the alcove, and put a shoulder against the side of the ore car. He pushed with all his strength and was a little surprised when it tipped over without too much effort.

  It clanked against the rock wall and, to his horror, stayed like that. For his idea to work, Nathan needed it flat on the ground. He silently cursed himself for not anticipating this. Sensing Raven was about to unleash another salvo, he pulled his Sig and fired three shots toward the entrance, purposefully skipping them off the ceiling. He wanted his bullets to go whistling out of the entrance and hit the ground.

  He tossed the handgun into the alcove and hefted the car just enough to unseat its side wheels from the rail. The ore car clanged as it fell onto its side. In two quick jerks, he muscled the ore car sideways across the tunnel so its wheels faced the entrance. As he’d hoped, it was a near perfect fit. He now had solid cover three feet high, and he’d be able to run in a crouch deeper into the mine. As he ducked behind the overturned car and prepared to reach for his handgun, a short volley of bullets slammed into his newly created cover. He crawled inside the cast-iron box as two more salvos hammered its exposed belly. Raven was firing in short controlled bursts that banged the ore car like a drum and filled the tunnel with the forlorn cries of deformed slugs. For the third time in as many minutes, he endured the horrid feeling of helplessness. At least he was protected on five sides. Flecks of rust pelted his exposed skin as the ore car took more impacts. He ran his fingers along the iron where fresh dents had formed. No holes, yet. If Raven switched to his larger caliber sniper rifle, though, the bullets might punch through.