Destroyer (The Bugging Out Series Book 9)

by Noah Mann

  We kept our heads down and listened, the rumble of the single truck growing louder on the road a hundred and fifty feet below us. We waited. And waited.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  Neil nodded. The sound was directly below our position now. Our time to act had come.

  Twenty Six

  We both rose from behind the rock outcropping and took aim at the vehicle and those around it. In unison we began firing, squeezing single, aimed shots to conserve our ammunition. I concentrated on the cab of the truck with my first few rounds, punching holes in the roof above the unseen driver. The beefy vehicle lurched forward and swung to the left, careening off the road and rolling over on the rocky shoulder, tumbling violently until it splashed into the crystalline waters of the lake.

  The foot soldiers who’d survived our first volley, eight in number, abandoned their wounded and dead comrades on the road, scrambling for cover. Across the lake, reacting to the sudden assault, one of the SAWs was opening up, its rounds falling wildly short across the wide body of water.

  “They’re pushed up against the slope,” Neil said. “Out of sight.”

  The eight survivors, cowering now, were in good cover. That was about to change. I picked up one grenade and pulled the pin, releasing the handle and setting the fuse to sizzle. I lobbed it over the natural parapet before us and watched it bounce once, twice, then, before it could impact the asphalt road it detonated.

  Screams rose as some of the shrapnel found its mark. More importantly, those who’d been in cover ran into the open. Two actually went to their knees and brought their weapons into the fight, one an AK and the other a pump shotgun, the latter ill suited to the battle now unfolding. I fired at the fighter wielding the AK, as did Neil, dropping the man with a combined four shots. We shifted our focus to the man with the shotgun, who turned out not to be a man, the woman’s long red hair billowing in a sudden gust as she stood defiantly and fired at our position until her weapon ran out of ammunition. A single shot from my friend dispatched the woman, dropping her in the middle of the road.

  The movement below us ceased, just muffled moans left to mark the results of the ambush we’d sprung.

  “They’re regrouping,” I said.

  Neil looked across the lake and saw what I did. The two other trucks were turning around, about half the fighters climbing aboard while the others began running to reach our side of the lake. The SAW had stopped its pointless waste of ammo, some discipline coming to the reaction.

  “Bryce is over there,” Neil said. “He’s maneuvering them. Look.”

  My friend was right. The disciplined group running to confront us was dividing into sections, three groups of four, one moving into the tree line to conceal their movement. The former Air Force PJ was putting his experience to use.

  And we had to be ready for that.

  “Let’s move,” I said.

  We gathered only our weapons and ammo. I pocketed the remaining two grenades and followed Neil as he began working his way up to the second position we’d scouted a hundred feet higher up the mountain, staying low to use the cover afforded by boulders and slabs of volcanic rock which covered the slope.

  “You think we’re lucky enough that Perkins was in that first truck?” Neil wondered, waiting through the silence that was my response. “Yeah, me neither.”

  In five minutes, as we were about to reach our second position, the incoming fire started up again, more accurate this time, chunks of rock splintering both above and below us. A quick look placed the source of the fire, and it wasn’t from the element which had initially moved south.

  “The reserves are moving,” I said.

  There were twenty of them by my rough count, pouring out of the woods along the road, closer than the elements which Bryce was presumably leading. They weren’t as well ordered, but they weren’t fodder, either, moving and covering as they bounded toward the trail which would allow them access to the positions we’d staked out.

  Neil knelt behind a low, gnarled basalt boulder and squeezed off four rounds before ducking away from a volley of fire that was almost on the money. Twenty feet to his right, I surveyed the damage through a space between a pile of rocky deposits left by some old avalanche.

  “One down,” I reported.

  “The math isn’t going to work in our favor,” he said.

  With the limited amount of rounds we had, our weapons would run dry before the last of Perkins’ fighters were upon us. Our shots had to count. Every last one of them.

  “We pop up and each fire once,” I said. “I’ll take the front of the group, you take the rear. We’ll meet in the middle.”

  Neil nodded. I readied my AK and looked to my friend. We needed no silent countdown. Just a look signaled when we were both ready, and we quickly rose above our stony shields, squeezing off a single shot each. Before I dropped back down amidst bullets whizzing past and ricocheting off the surrounding rocks I saw my target fall.

  “One down,” I said.

  “I missed,” Neil said, shooting me a frustrated glance.

  “Get ‘em on the next one,” I said.

  Once more we looked to each other, waiting for the right moment, both of us ready to rise once again. But neither of us did.

  The sound of the aircraft buzzing directly overhead kept our heads down. It had come over the top of the slope we were pressed against, its approach hidden until the last second. It was the Cessna that I’d arrived on, in possession of Perkins’ forces now, the craft circling back toward us after flying out over the lake.

  “They called the bird in on us,” Neil said.

  “It’s going to be their eye in the sky,” I said.

  Spotting us from the air and radioing our position and movements would turn the already formidable odds against us into something almost insurmountable. Yet we couldn’t waste ammunition hoping for a lucky shot to bring the aircraft down, or at least drive it off.

  “We could use Grace right about now,” Neil said.

  She’d taken down the attacking helicopter back in Montana with a single shot from a hunting rifle, her true aim eliminating the pilot. This was different, though.

  “This target’s a little faster,” I said.

  “I’d still put money on her,” Neil said.

  The Cessna was barreling down on us again, but we still had the advancing fighters below to deal with. And those led by Bryce not far behind.

  “Another round on us?” Neil said.

  I nodded. We readied ourselves and rose up, firing a single shot each, a pair of our enemy falling as the Cessna screamed overhead and the mountain around us exploded.

  Twenty Seven

  For an instant I didn’t realize that the sound and the fury suddenly enveloping us wasn’t simply from the rounds we’d fired. Then, in the next instant, with the concussive force of the blast knocking me twenty feet down the trail we’d climbed, that part of my brain which processed such things uttered a single internal word.

  Bomb...

  “Fletch!”

  Neil had recovered from the explosion and was racing down the trail toward me, both my weapon and his in hand as he hunched low to avoid the increasing fire. He reached me and pulled me to a sitting position against the rocks, checking me over quickly.

  “You’re not hurt,” he said. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  I looked to him, still stunned, though the shock was wearing off.

  “He’s coming around again, Fletch. We’ve gotta get off this slope.”

  My wits quickly returning, I looked around, understanding what my friend was saying. Up here, where we’d believed we held an advantage, we had unintentionally made ourselves the perfect target for an aerial attack. With no friendlies surrounding us, the Cessna could make pass after pass, dropping explosives upon us until one found its mark.

  “We’ve gotta get down there and fight close,” Neil said.

  I looked to him and nodded. There was more than agreement in the gesture—the
re was acknowledgement. An acceptance of what that course of action meant.

  We would be able to fight, but there would be no coming out the other side for us. The measure of success would not be our survival, but rather how many of Perkins’ people we could take with us before we were killed.

  This was the end.

  I reached out and took my AK. Neil held out one of the two remaining grenades.

  “I’m good with just this,” I said, readying my AK.

  Neil kept it and pulled the pin.

  “We’ve gotta hoof it fast,” he said. “You ready?”

  I came to my feet, crouched low with my AK ready. Neil popped up and threw the grenade down toward the closing fighters and ran past me, taking the lead. I followed, both of us scrambling down the trail we’d just come up, rounds zipping past us as the grenade exploded below. I glanced quickly toward our enemies and saw them take cover only momentarily before moving again, weapons up, firing at us. I stopped for a second only and fired two shots, one person at the head of their advance crumpling to the ground.

  “Covering!” Neil shouted. “Go!”

  He’d dropped to a knee next to a smooth boulder and fired back at our pursuers as I dashed past him, leapfrogging ahead twenty yards.

  Then the plane came back.

  I looked up from just past our first position and saw three or four objects fall from the Cessna, each arcing ballistically toward us, one different than the others, smoke trailing from it.

  Dynamite...

  The slender cylinder of explosives hit the slope above us and bounced down toward the trail we were on, its fuse burning. Higher up the other objects detonated, shrapnel from each peppering the area we’d just left. They were grenades, I realized, but there was no time to say so aloud as Neil and I dove for cover.

  The dynamite exploded on the slope above and between us, sending a rockfall cascading down over the trail. It was far enough and blocked by terrain that there was no concussive effect this time, but the obstacle it had created between my friend and me was formidable.

  “Neil!”

  “Go down, Fletch! I’ll work my way around the back side!”

  The trail we’d followed split into a second avenue of approach just before the obstacle on Neil’s side. It was a harder path to egress, but there was no choice for my friend. Were he to try and scramble over the mini avalanche he would be fully exposed to fire from below. I hated the fact, but for the moment we would have to split up.

  “I’ll see you at the bottom!” I shouted.

  I began to move again, rushing to reach the base of the trail before the advancing fighters could cut me off. Every fifty feet or so, with withering fire pouring in, I would pop up and fire a few shots, maybe a third of each volley finding their mark. By the time I reached the base of the trail I’d burned through two magazines and had only one spare to go with the full one in my AK.

  Then, once more, I heard the plane coming in.

  I was in the trees now that followed the shore to the west end of the lake, and the Cessna was high above to the east, setting up for another run. Bits of dead trees all around me splintered with dozens of impacts from bursts of automatic fire aimed at me. Moving from tree to tree, and rock to rock, I kept looking past the base of the trail to the deep gulley that ran down the reverse side of the slope. Neil should be coming out there. Should have come out from there already.

  But he hadn’t.

  Steady fire from our enemy kept me from moving that way, and the sight of the Cessna now descending, its nose pointed directly at me, forced me to shift more to the west into a thinning stand of trees which provided little cover. In that moment I realized that whatever trouble Neil was in, whatever test he was facing, my situation was no better. I was about to be hit from the air and overrun on the ground.

  I brought my AK up and squeezed off rounds between the trees at any movement I saw, a wall of muzzle flashes facing me less than a hundred yards away. And from the corner of my eye I could plainly see the Cessna closing in, almost diving, setting up for another bombing run.

  Then, I saw something else. From the same corner of my eye. Another aircraft. The other aircraft. The grey Cessna 172 swooped in from the south, lining up alongside its white twin and slightly behind. I swore I saw bright pulses from the new arrival, but could they be what I thought they were?

  Muzzle flashes?

  What happened next made it very clear that I’d been correct. The Cessna that had been setting up for an attack on me wobbled suddenly, as if in the throes of some spasm, then it rolled over on its side and nosed down into the center of the lake at a steep angle, trailing a thin ribbon of smoke. The impact obliterated the small aircraft and sent a geyser of water briefly into the air, marking its watery grave.

  It also gave me a brief reprieve, but one with seemingly deadly consequences.

  The advancing fighters who’d been pushing toward me stopped and directed their fire into the air, zeroing in on the Grey aircraft that could not avoid the phalanx of rounds being sent its way. It, too, shuddered midair and banked sharply, swinging from west to east, dropping rapidly as billowing white smoke poured from its engine, which sputtered and died just as the plane came down hard along the south shore of Medicine Lake. The tail was sheared off, the back half of the aircraft ripping away as it slid to the right, one wing crumpling in a ball of fire as spilling fuel ignited.

  The threat to me from the air was gone, but that on the ground was still there, and it was moving again in my direction. Worse, though, was the reality that this force stood between me and Neil. If we were going to go down, which we’d mentally prepared ourselves for, I’d rather that happen together, and I knew my friend felt the same way.

  I fired and moved, once more shifting south, though any further movement in that direction would negate the entire purpose of our strategy—to keep Perkins and his followers away from the innocent family. The fighters adjusted their own advance, following me through woods that began to mimic the field of blowdown Neil and I had come across the previous day. That afforded me more opportunities for cover, but slowed me greatly. As I positioned myself behind a low pile of decaying logs I squeezed off a series of rounds, noting only one enemy falling. Worse still, my magazine ran out and I was forced to insert the last one I had.

  Thirty rounds were all that stood between me and certain death.

  boom...

  The explosion was distant and muffled. Mixed in amongst the waves of automatic fire, both near and far, I could not be certain that it was a grenade detonating, but it did sound like that. Neil had the last grenade, and I wondered if I’d just heard him laying waste to those threatening him, or employing the device as a last resort to take out the enemy overrunning his position.

  I wanted desperately to be at his side, and to have him by mine, but what I saw out in the woods made me realize that was never going to happen. The enemy was splitting into three elements, some more coordination occurring. If Neil was correct in his estimation of the man, it would be Bryce directing this part of the battle. It wasn’t a simple flanking maneuver I was facing, it was two, combined with a frontal assault, a full forty fighters moving on me. Echoing my friend’s assessment just from just minutes earlier, the math wasn’t on my side.

  Until it was.

  I heard the fire before I saw anything, a volley of controlled bursts coming from behind and to my right. Across the field littered with dead trees I noticed the enemy ducking, and then the eruption of impacts on the decaying pines became apparent as incoming rounds tore into their ranks. I heard screams and saw Perkins’ fighters drop, first in ones and twos, and then in whole lines as they began to run. I chanced a quick look behind, and that was when I saw what, and who, had forced their retreat.

  Six men had emerged from the woods on the south side of the lake. Two moving to the burning Cessna to pull the pilot free as the others directed expert fire upon those who’d been ready to take me out. I could only make out the barest details o
f the unknown force which had appeared from nowhere, noting that there seemed to be no standard attire among them. No shared uniform. But they moved and operated as a cohesive unit.

  Next, I heard single rifle shots emanating from beyond their position near the downed plane. A sniper was firing. Another look toward the enemy allowed me to see three drop, and then a fourth as the long rifleman found his mark again and again. As I watched this I began to realize that not only were Perkins’ people on the run or dying, the slice of land they’d abandoned was exactly the route I needed to cross to reach where my friend should be.

  I had to find him. I had to get to him.

  Staying low I moved to my left and bounded from tree to tree, seeking cover as I ventured into the woods that, until a minute ago, had been swarming with enemy. The fire from the unknown unit continued behind me and seemed to be shifting east along the lake shore, though I could no longer see any of it. Return fire from Perkins’ followers had slowed, and with every twenty yards I crossed the volume of resistance seemed to decrease.

  When I saw the bodies I understood why.

  The fire from the new arrivals had not just been coordinated—it had been hellishly accurate. Dozens of fighters, men and some women, lay close to each other, some piled upon others, only a few still breathing, though their last breaths would not be long in coming. I gathered five spare magazines from the bodies and disarmed those who had not yet passed, wanting no surprise fire from behind. It could be said that I should have dispatched them with coup de grace shots, but I did not. The basic humanity I still held dear, though, was not what prevented me from doing what was tactically warranted—I simply did not want to announce my presence with fire in the no man’s land. That would have been far from wise. Instead I moved quickly but cautiously, checking my six until there was no more to scan for.

  I had reached empty woods.

  In many ways that was more unsettling. Even with the bursts of distant fire signaling that the fight was still on, the swath of grey terrain I moved through felt eerily empty. Even isolated. But it wasn’t either, and I learned that first hand when the wooden butt of a swinging rifle glanced off my left shoulder and smashed against my face.