“There’s only one left,” Henri Farbeaux called from the tree line to Jack’s left. “And he’s decided to call it quits.”
Collins stood and saw a lone man shove a large Zodiac into the water and then jump in. Collins aimed and fired, but the man was too fast as he started the large outboard motor and streaked upriver, bouncing over the rough surface.
“Son of a bitch used his remaining two men as a shield, stupid bastards.” Punchy stepped up to Collins and looked him over. “You’ve got a pretty good gash on your forehead, old friend,” he said as he turned and made sure the boatman wasn’t making a return trip.
“You all right?” Jack asked Alexander as he wiped blood from a six-inch gash just into his hairline.
“Nothing a seamstress can’t mend,” he answered with a grimace as he pushed down a large rip in his right pants leg. Blood was soaking through the wet material in a pretty good spread.
“Short Stuff, get over here and see if you can give Punchy a hand before he bleeds to death. Henri, Carl, let’s see if we can find the doc, Mendenhall, and Ryan.”
“Goddamn it, Jack, we flew right into that one. We must be getting old,” Everett said as he pulled the magazine from his weapon and looked in it. It was empty so he tossed it onto the rocky shore. “I’m out, so if that bastard tries again, I have to chuck rocks.”
“Well, this is the place for it,” Farbeaux said as he and Sarah joined them at the river.
Collins saw Sarah was fine, a little bruised, but intact. Henri was the same except for three large scratches to the left side of his face. He nodded his head at the Frenchman in thanks for pulling Sarah out of the plane.
“I don’t give your professor Ellenshaw much of a chance, Colonel,” Farbeaux said as he checked the number of rounds in his own weapon.
They all turned at once when they heard someone coming from the tree line.
“Whoa, hold your fire! We didn’t survive that magnificent crash just to get shot by our friends!” Ryan said as he, Mendenhall, and none other than Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw the Third held up their hands.
Jack shook his head when he saw his people, happy as hell they had made it through.
“You crashed, Mr. Ryan. So, tell me how in the hell that makes you a friend?” Jack asked, only half jokingly.
“Now, how did you get into the tree line?” Everett asked as he assisted a limping Ellenshaw to the ground, relieving Mendenhall and Ryan of their burden.
“Well, Will and myself took an ‘E’ ticket ride in what was left of the cockpit, skidding along the water, and then rolling to beat all hell onto the riverbank and then into the forest. Thank God for seatbelts.” Ryan kneeled, still shaking from their ordeal.
Mendenhall leaned down and patted Ellenshaw on the back, making a sloppy wet sound as he did.
“As for the doc here, we found him playing dead about a hundred feet away from us.” They all looked at Ellenshaw: He had lost his hat, his thick wire-rimmed glasses were bent so out of shape that one earpiece was dangling down the side of his face, and his hair looked at if a bird had started putting a nest in it.
“I most assuredly thought I was dead, Lieutenant,” Charlie said as he removed his bent glasses and then covered his eyes. “That was a horrendous way to land a plane, I must say.”
Jack was grateful everyone was alive. He looked at the river and saw no sign of the wreckage. The Grumman and all of their supplies would wind up in Vancouver by the end of the week. He took a deep breath and looked around. The store looked as if it had taken gunfire—the icehouse next to it was leaking what could only be liquid hydrogen from several gaping gaps in its woodwork. There wasn’t any movement or other signs of life from the fishing camp and Jack feared the worse for the people here.
“Well, let’s go see what those people were doing here, and if they left anyone alive.”
Jack, Everett, and Punchy Alexander moved separately into the open, spread out as far as possible to make sniping at them a singular event. Carl was the first to come to one of the four bodies that lay crumpled on the stony ground nearest the river. Everett rolled the body over on its right side, bending over and retrieving the AK-47 from the man’s frozen grasp. He slung the weapon over his right shoulder and then turned and felt the neck for a pulse. The bearded face was frozen in shock and the eyes were wide open. The captain was getting ready to continue on when he saw that one of the bullets that had struck the dead man had hit him in the upper left arm, exposing something colorful underneath. Tearing away some of the material, Carl quickly wiped away the blood from the bullet wound and then exhaled deeply. Just under the hole where the 5.62 millimeter round had entered the arm, there was a tattoo. A red hammer and cycle, the old Soviet state symbol—only this one had a gold lightning bolt running through it. Everett released the arm and then looked around at the other bodies, betting they all had the same markings.
“Jack,” Carl called out, halting Collins in his tracks. “Check the upper left arm of that body.”
Collins, who had just checked the dead man at his feet for a pulse and then picked up the AK-47 and chambered a new round into its breech, leaned down and tore the camouflage fatigue at the shoulder. The material ripped away revealing a hammer and sickle, complete with a gold lightning bolt.
“What the bloody hell is it?” Punchy asked a few feet away as he kept a wary eye on their surroundings.
“Spetsnaz,” Jack said looking around him, more appreciative of the enemy they had faced. “Old school; tattoos are from the old Soviet days.”
“What in the hell are Russian commandos doing here?” Alexander asked, becoming even more aware of his surroundings and now feeling far more vulnerable than he had just a second before.
Jack didn’t answer Punchy’s question; he straightened and then continued toward the general store. He stopped a moment and looked back at Ryan and Mendenhall. They were huddled with the others just inside the tree line. Mendenhall held the only M-16 in the group and was watching the riverbank to their rear. Collins gestured to Ryan and made a trigger movement with his finger, indicating that he should relieve the other two dead men of their weapons. Ryan understood and sprinted from the trees toward the remaining bodies.
Alexander was still thinking about the Spetsnaz and the rumors of their capabilities. As an intelligence officer, he had run up against the newer versions of the commando group, but most Western nations knew them to be a ghost of their former selves, sloppy and inefficient compared to the old fellas from two decades ago. He looked at Jack and saw that the element of the Spetsnaz hadn’t made a dent in his hastiness to hurry their group along. He shook his head and followed Collins.
The colonel quickly went straight for the large front steps of the general store, waving as he did for Everett to go left and check the icehouse. Punchy Alexander followed Collins onto the large front porch and then to the left side of the open door as Jack went to the right of the still closed one. They immediately saw two bodies and Punchy recognized the green uniforms. He mouthed the word “Mounties.” Collins took a shallow breath, shaking his head at the horrendous murder of more men, and then before his thoughts wandered even more about life’s injustices, he quickly reached out and opened the door. A small bell chimed and Collins grimaced: He knew mistakes like that cost men their lives, and he had just made one of the biggest. He looked at Punchy who was standing there smiling and rolling his eyes.
“I told you we were getting too old for this, but then again, I didn’t think about that, either.”
“For whom the bell tolls,” Jack whispered and then before he could think about it, went inside and then quickly to one knee as he scanned the interior of the large store. Alexander followed just a second later taking aim at the higher points of the store.
Collins didn’t see any movement as he slowly scanned the area to his front. Then he stood and gestured for Punchy to take the left side of the store, and he would take the right. The counter area is where he would have set up the initial stag
es of any ambush, so that was the first place he looked. He slowly lay down and then rolled silently toward the closest end. He saw a can of pork and beans lying on the floor that had fallen from a small display case after the glass from the plate-glass window had struck it. Jack closed his eyes as he easily reached the can, not daring to take a breath. He picked up the red and white labeled can and then opened his eyes, and then pulling it back as if it were a grenade, he eased it through the air until it struck the counter at the far end. As it did, he rolled the rest of the way around the far end of the counter and quickly aimed—nothing. Collins stood and shook his head at Punchy, who returned the gesture. Then he turned and looked to where Collins was looking.
Straight ahead was a large steel door of the walk-in freezer or refrigerator. Jack could hear the hum of the motor as it engaged. He also saw there were two clean round holes where two bullets had punched through it. Collins raised the AK-47 and pointed it at the door and advanced. Punchy kept his M-16 pointed at the upper floors of the store where he suspected the owners living quarters to be. It was another great ambush spot.
Jack reached the door and stood to the right side next to the large handle. He reached out and pulled on it.
“If you open that door, we’ll kill your man,” came a girl’s voice.
“Go ahead and kill him, he’s not our man.” Jack grimaced, hoping beyond measure he had responded the way he should have. “We killed his companions outside.”
“I’m not falling for that bullshit, you want him dead. Just try me, you Russian prick!”
Jack looked over at Alexander who was watching from a distance, he shrugged his shoulders, as if saying Jack was on his own on this one.
“Listen, my name is Collins, I am a colonel in the U.S. army. I have a man here from the Canadian authorities and we’re looking for an American woman—that’s why we’re here. Our plane was just shot out of the sky, and it was that man’s friends who did it, so I really don’t care if you kill the bastard or not.”
There was complete and utter silence coming from the refrigerator. Jack glanced over at Alexander and nodded toward the door.
“Ma’am, I am Jonathan Alexander, an agent for CSIS in Quebec. The man is telling the truth. Come out, you won’t be harmed, not by us.”
“My grandmother is hurt. One of those bastards shot her in the arm,” came the voice, and then that was followed by another, more husky, but feminine protest.
“I’ve hurt myself worse with a kitchen knife.”
Jack heard the first voice—that of a much younger person—shush the second. Then he heard the door handle pop, but it still remained closed. Jack took a step to the front and raised the Russian-made weapon. Finally, the door opened and Collins heart raced for a second when he saw a man in the same camouflage fatigues as those outside. He just stood there, his eyes opened, and then just before the colonel fired his weapon, the man simply fell forward.
Jack’s eyes moved from the body to a smallish girl holding an older, heavy woman in the center of the large walk-in. “You were bluffing, he was already dead,” Jack said as he bent over and made sure the commando was indeed as he looked.
“He was hit almost as soon as he took us in here to murder us; must have been stray bullets,” the girl said as she started to assist the old lady out of the cold of the icebox.
Collins, with the aid of Punchy, moved the dead man out of the way to allow the women out. Jack slung his weapon and then went to the other side of the old lady and assisted the girl with the weight.
“That was pretty good, but what if we were the bad guys?” Jack asked, looking around the ample bosom of the grandmother to see the young, brazen girl dressed in bloody overalls and a knitted cap.
“I wasn’t thinking that far ahead,” Marla said as she eased her grandmother into a large desk chair just to the rear of the sales counter.
“Check the register, dear, and see how much those Russian bastards made off with,” the old woman said as she held a hand over the bullet wound in her left arm.
The girl rolled her eyes as she reached into the large desk and brought out a first-aid kit. “I don’t think they were here to rob us, Grandmother,” she said as rummaged through the kit.
“Well, you never know,” the old woman said as she grimaced.
“You said you were looking for an American woman?” Marla asked as she found the small packages of alcohol wipes and antibacterial ointment. “Was her name Lynn?” she asked, not looking up.
Jack took a deep breath and then leaned heavily against the counter; he found he had no voice to answer the girl.
Punchy saw Jack’s distress and then stepped up and took one of the alcohol wipes from the girl and started cleaning the old woman’s wound. It was just a graze, so he wiped and spoke at the same time. “Yes, her name was Lynn. It’s his sister.”
The girl looked up and into the blue eyes of Jack Collins. “Yes, I can see that you are her brother, you have the same eyes.”
“Is she . . . she . . .”
Marla took a deep breath and then handed Punchy a tube of antibacterial cream. “She was fine yesterday when she left with those other Russians.”
Jack closed his eyes and then turned away just as the soaking-wet Mendenhall and Ryan, followed by Sarah, Farbeaux, and Doc Ellenshaw, came to the front of the store. Mendenhall and Farbeaux leaned over and was checking the bodies of the two Mounties outside, and Ryan stepped in and leaned over and checked the others.
Sarah saw Jack as he walked around a few of the stacked shelves full of dry and canned goods. She took his arm and stopped him.
“She was here; the Russians took her upriver,” he said as he finally looked down at Sarah.
“Then we have a chance of getting her back,” she said.
She saw Jack’s lips move but didn’t hear the one word he kept repeating.
“What? What are you saying, I don’t get it,” she said questioning his tone and his look.
“He says, my dear Sarah, that his sister is in the hands of what’s known to soldiers around the world as, Spetsnaz—specialized killers from the Cold War. Their own bloody government created them and now they don’t know what to do with the ones they discharged. The Russian government is terrified of them.” Farbeaux looked around at the bodies, “Evidently, they have found gainful employment.”
Sarah McIntire turned to face Farbeaux, who was looking at the tattoo he had uncovered from the dead Russian only a few feet away. Farbeaux tilted his head as he stood and nudged the dead Russian with his boot.
“And this new development is unsettling to say the least.”
Jack and Sarah both looked at the Frenchman; only Sarah had a question written on her face.
Farbeaux smiled, but there was no humor there. “I dare say the men that are holding your sister are far more aggressive than I was first led to believe.” He looked from Sarah to Collins, his smile gone.
“You can leave anytime you want, Colonel,” Jack said still staring at him.
Farbeaux tilted his head as if in deep thought. “No, I believe I’ll stay a while, and if things get too hot, I can always trade you for me.”
Jack turned away and left. Sarah just looked at Henri, shaking her head.
“I know I don’t disappoint you, my dear—you know who and what I am.”
“That’s what gets me, Henri, I know who you are, and you still go lower and lower in my estimation every time you open your mouth.”
Farbeaux watched her leave to follow Collins, and then he turned and saw the young girl looking at him from the porch. She had heard the exchange between the three and the look in her eyes told Farbeaux that he hadn’t made a friend with the smallish teenager.
Marla watched the Frenchman turn and leave, eyeing the icehouse and going in that direction; she then turned and looked at her Grandmother who was getting her arm wrapped by Alexander. “Has the world gone over the edge?” Marla asked as she shook her head in disgust.
“The world has always
been insane, honey; we just isolated ourselves from it.”
Punchy straightened after he finished tending to the old woman’s wound.
“In case you ladies haven’t noticed, you’re not isolated anymore.” Punchy stepped back and then retrieved his weapon and then looked at the young girl who was angry and staring at him.
“Believe me, Mr. Ottawa, we’ve noticed.”
Jack stood on the porch and surveyed the fishing camp. His eyes roamed over the rock-covered ground and into the tree line. A stiff breeze picked up and made the trees sway against the deep blue sky of the early morning. Everett was busy checking out the icehouse, the small warehouse, and the equipment shed with Jason Ryan. Will Mendenhall and Sarah stood just off the large porch with Charlie Ellenshaw in an attempt to get the soaking-wet, stray-haired professor under some form of control—the man could not stop shaking. Sarah used Charlie as an excuse to give Jack the time to think things out. She looked up from Ellenshaw as Henri Farbeaux stepped from inside the store.
“In case you were thinking about using the radio, Colonel, I regret to inform you that its aerial has been disabled and that dead Russian there placed a bullet into the set before he closeted himself in the icebox. The old woman is fit to be tied.”
Collins didn’t turn at the sound of Farbeaux’s voice. He was still watching the trees around the camp. Then his eyes went to the Bell Jet Ranger sitting a hundred yards from the water’s edge. He saw the bullet holes in the engine housing and knew that the commandos would not have left that radio intact after so thorough a job on the camp’s equipment. Out of the seven cell phones on his Event personnel, not one was receiving a signal. Jack was finally realizing that his nonplan for getting his sister back had placed a lot of his people in jeopardy.
“I believe I am beginning to know how you think, Colonel Collins; as they say, know one’s antagonist and you shall know yourself.”
“Word games at this stage of the trip, Henri?” Jack said still hearing the rush of wind through and around the trees, his eyes moving at every twitch of movement.
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 25
