Next of Kin

by Sharon Sala

  Emerson blinked, a little surprised that they were leaving one of their own behind, but he wasn’t the one in charge, and he quickly got back inside.

  The two-car caravan continued upward, moving past homes that weren’t much more than shacks by the side of the road, while other houses, even if not elaborate, seemed well cared for. They passed a large metal sign on the side of the road with an arrow pointing up a track to the left, indicating the way to the Foley Brothers Mining Corporation. The trees grew taller the higher up they went, while the underbrush got thicker and the road rougher. There were potholes and old ruts that hadn’t been graded out in years. One stretch of the road appeared to have recently been filled in, but when they drove over it, the drop was so deep that the undersides of the SUVs banged against the ground.

  Silas cursed. All he needed was to bust the oil pan, but when he glanced back in the side-view mirror, he didn’t see any evidence of leakage or any car parts lying on the ground.

  As they topped the next hill and started down, Pudge darted out of the woods behind the SUVs and quickly pulled up the spike strips that had been concealed under a thin layer of sand, then disappeared back in the trees.

  Silas kept a close eye on their surroundings the farther up they went, but it didn’t appear to him as if anyone lived up here anymore—no one but a fugitive, and they were on her trail.

  Just as he started around a sharp curve, his vehicle began to pull hard toward the right. He fought the car back onto the road, his ears registering a regular ka-thump.

  In the rearview mirror, he could see that Taggert was experiencing similar difficulty staying on the road. Before he could manage to stop, one of his tires blew out. The sound was startling, and he grabbed the wheel with both hands, fighting to keep the car in the road instead of careening off into the trees.

  Silas signaled for a halt, but Taggert had already done that on his own a few yards back. Taggert got out, cursing, then stared at the wheels in disbelief. One tire had blown out and the other three were going flat.

  “What the fuck?”

  He looked up at Silas’s car a few yards ahead. All the tires on that vehicle were going flat, as well. Instinctively, he crouched, his hand on his holster as he scanned the tree line, looking for the enemy.

  Silas had come to the same conclusion. He didn’t know how it had happened, but this wasn’t a coincidence. These yokels had managed to take out both their cars, leaving them afoot.

  It was humiliating, and it also explained Mason’s sudden disappearance.

  Silas was a soldier. He’d fought more wars on foot than any of these men combined, except maybe Taggert, but he’d underestimated the enemy.

  “What happened?” Warwick asked, as he got out of the second SUV.

  “See for yourself,” Taggert said, and pointed to the hatch. “Get the weapons out. We’re packing them in on foot.”

  “How will we get back down?” Farmer asked, as he grabbed his baby, an American rocket launcher that had gone missing from a New Jersey armory five years earlier.

  “We’ll go back down on rims if we have to,” Taggert said. “For now, we’ve got a job to do.”

  Silas shouldered his pack, as well as the one Mason would have carried, and waited for Emerson and Bordain to get their own packs strapped on.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Ready,” they echoed.

  “How far are we from the target?” Bordain asked.

  Silas scanned the GPS. “About three miles as the crow flies.”

  “Are we taking the road or the trees?”

  “We’re done with the fucking road,” Silas said. “And if you find yourself a hillbilly hiding in the trees, take him out.”

  Nineteen

  Nathan Walker was up in one tree about a mile and a half from Grandpa Foster’s old house. His brother Moses was in another tree about fifty yards farther up. Their brother Paul was on the ground, covered up in leaves and grass so completely that Nathan was looking at the location where he’d watched Quinn put him and still couldn’t see where he was at.

  They were the Walkers from the redheaded side of the family, so they were all wearing black or green sock caps to keep their hair from giving them away. It was a common understanding that John Walker’s three sons were the best sharpshooters on Rebel Ridge, except for their cousin Quinn.

  Nathan shifted slightly, easing an ache in his left leg, and hoped the action started soon. He’d been up this tree so long, he was afraid if he had to come down, he would be too damn stiff to run.

  The theory was that the killers’ tires should all be flat by now, forcing them to go the rest of the way on foot. And since the cousins could see the road from the treetops, that would give Quinn’s little mountain army the opportunity to pick them off one by one before they ever reached the house where Beth was hiding.

  A trail of ants kept moving past Nathan’s right hand, carrying tiny bits of grass and seeds up the tree. He would pick a tree with an ant den inside. Damn but he hated bugs.

  All of a sudden he heard movement about a hundred yards down the slope and grew still while his heart began to pound. They were coming, but not by the road. He glanced once in Moses’s direction and could tell that Moses had heard them, too.

  His rifle was ready, and he knew the drill.

  Shoot to kill.

  The hair on Silas’s neck was standing at attention. He felt like a sitting duck, even though they had good cover among the thickly growing trees.

  His men were moving in a grid pattern, twenty yards between them as they walked up the mountain. They’d come at least a mile and a half without encountering anyone or anything unusual, but he still felt uneasy. They were making good time, but going in on foot had not been part of the plan, and they were already nearly an hour behind schedule.

  Suddenly something dropped to the ground a short distance ahead, and he gave the signal to stop, quickly scanning the area. Taggert signaled, then pointed up at a small squirrel that was jumping from tree to tree above their heads as fast as it could go.

  Silas nodded, scanned the area one last time, then gave the signal for them to continue. It was his best guess that they were still about another mile and a half from the target. His plan was to encircle the house so no one could escape, then turn Farmer and his rocket launcher loose to blow the place and everyone in it to kingdom come.

  All of a sudden there was a loud crack, like a bolt of lightning striking too close. Bordain was down with a neat round hole in his forehead, the back of his head splattering on the tree behind him as he fell.

  Another shot from a different direction knocked Emerson backward so hard the others heard bones break as someone hit the trees behind them.

  Silas was shouting orders as they scattered and began to fire, but it soon became apparent that they were just wasting ammunition, because no one was firing back.

  Silas was flat on the ground with his rifle still in his hands. He hadn’t seen anything to shoot at but trees. He keyed up his walkie and began calling roll.

  “Warwick.”

  “Here!”

  “Farmer!”

  “Here.”

  “Taggert!”

  “Here.”

  “Emerson!”

  No answer.

  “Bordain!”

  No answer.

  Silas was getting nervous. He was down three men and had yet to see his enemy’s face.

  After about fifteen minutes without making a move or a sound, they retreated a hundred yards downhill and took another trail, moving on the diagonal toward where they needed to go.

  Uncle Fagan’s boys had heard the gunfire. It made what they’d set out to do a reality. People could be dying. They hoped to God it wasn’t any of them.

  Mike notched an arrow and then crouched down in a thicket just off the trail. If they came his way, he would take out the last one in line and then disappear.

  If they did what Quinn had predicted, though, they would have shifted th
eir trail again after the gun battle, and that would take them to where Pudge was waiting at his new location.

  Pudge took a deep breath, remembering his cousin Beth and how the Feds had nearly gotten her killed, and proceeded to be pissed all over again. That was all it took. He was ready and waiting for whoever came up the deer trail.

  Silas wanted to run straight for the target, turn Farmer loose with the rocket launcher and get the hell off this mountain, but they couldn’t take a chance on walking into another ambush. However, if they did, at least this time they would be ready with something more than bullets. Grenades weren’t particular. They took out anything within the radius of the blast. Fucking hillbillies. They wanted to play war? He would show them what war was all about.

  They were less than three-quarters of a mile from their target when Silas heard a grunt, then a thud.

  He pivoted in a crouch, saw Warwick on the ground with an arrow sticking out of his back, and pulled the pin on his grenade and flung it as far as it would go.

  “Take that, you motherfuckers!” he screamed, as the other men let fly with grenades of their own.

  Quinn had set himself up as the last line of defense between Beth and the attack, but when he heard the grenades go off, it sent him right back into a war he thought he’d left behind.

  He hit the ground with his rifle in his hands and started to belly-crawl into the hole he’d dug for himself. He flopped down inside, then rose up just enough to aim the rifle over the edge, took a deep breath and blocked out everything but the enemy who was coming closer.

  When the first sounds of gunfire erupted, Beth panicked. Like Quinn, the sounds had thrown her back into a mind-set where the only thing she knew how to do was run.

  Ryal caught her coming down the hall and spun her up against the wall, his gaze frantic.

  “Beth! Stop! All that means is they’re out there, not in here. Quinn and the men have them pinned down away from the house. That’s what we want, honey. That was the plan, remember?”

  Beth was looking at Ryal’s face. She saw his lips moving, but she couldn’t focus on what he was saying for the sound of gunshots echoing in her head.

  Once again Ryal was facing how deeply she’d been traumatized by what happened to her before they got her to Kentucky. Her eyes were wide, her pupils fixed and dilated, and he could feel every muscle in her body trembling. Talking hadn’t worked, so he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close against his chest.

  “It’s me, Bethie. It’s me. You’re not in L.A. anymore, you’re home with your family and with me, back in Kentucky. Hear me, baby…we won’t let you get hurt.”

  He looked over his shoulder and out through the living room window, scanning the clearing for signs of anyone coming close. He was worried about his cousins, and about Quinn. Part of him wished he was out there blasting the bastards to hell for the fear they’d put in Beth’s heart, but he wouldn’t leave—couldn’t leave, not and count on her being there when he came back.

  “Come with me, love,” he urged. “I need to keep watch at the window. You can watch with me. See all that open space between the house and the trees? There’s no way they can get here without me taking them out. No one’s that fast, okay?”

  Still shaking, but reluctant to be alone, she let him lead her into the living room, where they crouched at the window. At his bidding, she dropped to her knees beside him, but she didn’t look out. She kept her gaze on Ryal. He was her anchor to sanity, and she had to keep him in sight.

  Silas was hunched over and running, with Taggert on his left and Farmer on his right. Farmer was carrying the rocket launcher cradled in one arm and his rifle in the other, while bullets and arrows flew past their heads and into the trees beside them.

  The roof of the house was now visible to them. All Silas needed was to get Farmer close enough to take aim, and then the rocket would do the rest. Once that fireball went up, their pursuers wouldn’t be interested in taking them out. They would be too busy trying to find survivors.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Taggert vault over a downed tree and then suddenly drop out of sight. A second later, Taggert let out a scream that caused Silas to stumble. The scream continued in one long, frenzied breath, until it finally dissolved into a bubbling gurgle and went silent.

  Silas’s gut roiled. He was beginning to realize he might not live through this foray after all, and it didn’t make sense. How could a bunch of mountain men outwit and outfight seasoned soldiers? All of a sudden he and Farmer reached the edge of the forest and got a full view of the house, and he spun and hit the ground on his knees.

  “Set up here!” he yelled, as he began shooting into the trees behind them to give Farmer some cover.

  Farmer skidded to a halt, loaded the rocket and swung around to take aim.

  At that moment Farmer jerked, then screamed, as his leg went out from under him. He fell with the loaded rocket launcher trapped beneath him. He rolled over and tried to stand up, only to see the lower half of his leg lying on the ground beside him. He passed out before the pain reached his brain.

  Silas screamed in rage and emptied his automatic into the woods behind him in a sweeping spray of bullets.

  Vance Walker was coming up on the right behind Quinn when a bullet caught his shoulder and spun him backward onto the ground.

  Nathan had the shooter in his sights and pulled the trigger just as one of Silas’s bullets cut through his side. He cried out as he fell, and then belly-crawled back into cover while trying to quell the gush of blood between his fingers.

  The bullet Nathan fired missed Silas by a hair, but it amped Silas’s need for retribution. His men were down and he might be next, but he wasn’t about to kick the bucket alone. He was taking that damn house and its occupants with him.

  It didn’t take long for Silas to assess the damage. Farmer was unconscious, and from the looks of the blood gushing from his leg, he wasn’t going to wake up. He rolled Farmer off the rocket launcher, swung it to his shoulder and took aim. He squeezed the trigger a millisecond before Quinn’s bullet went through the back of his head. He was dead before he hit the ground, but the rocket had been launched.

  “No, no, no!” Quinn roared, but it was too late.

  The rocket was only seconds away from its target as Quinn went running toward the house.

  “Get out! Get out!” he kept screaming, and then the house went up in a ball of flame.

  Ryal saw two armed strangers pause in the trees opposite the house, which meant at least two attackers had gotten past Quinn and everyone else.

  That wasn’t good.

  He thrust his rifle out the window and took aim, although he feared he was too far away for a clear shot. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, the man dropped to the ground.

  Good, Ryal thought, and tried to get a shot off at the other one, but the man was on his knees and the grass between them was too tall.

  The gunfire was constant, and he felt helpless so far away, unable to watch his brother’s back or aid any of his cousins.

  He could feel Beth clutching his leg, but she hadn’t made a sound.

  All of a sudden he saw the last man bend down, and when he came up standing, he had something big resting on his shoulder. The moment Ryal realized what it was, he grabbed Beth by the arm and yanked her to her feet.

  “Run, Bethie! Run with me, and don’t look back!”

  They flew through the house and out the back door, clearing the steps in one leap. They were less than thirty yards from the house when it went up in a ball of flame.

  The impact of the explosion sent them flying, and then burning debris began raining down around them. He heard Beth groan, then saw her starting to move. He shoved her back down and rolled on top of her just before the world went black.

  The house was a wall of flames by the time Quinn arrived. His chest was heaving, and there was a bullet wound in his thigh he had yet to acknowledge. He wouldn’t let himself believe they were dead. Ryal was sma
rter than that. He would have seen. They would have run. Surely to God they would have run.

  He turned in a circle. His cousins were coming out of the trees and running toward the house. By his count, two were missing. He wouldn’t let himself go there. Not yet.

  He kept thinking it was a blessing that they’d gotten so much rain or this explosion would have set the mountain ablaze.

  He stomped out two small fires in the grass as he circled the burning house, telling himself that any minute now he would see Ryal and Beth coming toward him hand in hand and it would be over. The war on Rebel Ridge would be over.

  But when he reached the back of the house, he saw nothing but burning debris. Tears clogged the back of his throat and blurred his vision when he called out, “Ryal! Beth! Answer me! Where are you?”

  The fire was roaring at his back as he walked farther toward the woods.

  “Ryal! Beth!”

  Then he heard a sound—the sound of someone crying.

  “Beth! Bethie! It’s me, Quinn! Where are you, honey?”

  This time the sound was clearer. It was Beth, and she was calling out for help.

  He started running and was almost on them before he saw Ryal’s body lying in the tall grass, with Beth’s legs caught beneath it.

  “I’m here, Beth. I’m here,” Quinn said, as he dropped to his knees. He pulled Ryal’s motionless body off her and began checking for his pulse.

  Beth sat up, sobbing and grabbing at Ryal’s shoulder. “Ryal! Can you hear me? Oh, my God, Quinn, is he breathing? Can you feel a pulse? Please, God, don’t let him be dead.”

  Quinn rocked back on his heels. “He has a pulse.”

  Beth couldn’t quit shaking. “We got out before it blew,” she said. “But the debris! It was falling and burning, and he rolled on top of me. I felt him jerk, and then he didn’t move.”