The Sword of God - John Milton #5 (John Milton Thrillers)

by Mark Dawson

  He felt a little better. The painkillers had numbed the pain from his arm, and his belly was full.

  Better.

  He was ready.

  He gathered the things that he needed and hurried across the camp to the adit that led into the darkened maw of the mine. As he reached the steps, he fancied he heard the sound of a dog barking.

  He hurried inside.

  Chapter 36

  THE DOGS yelled and yammered and dragged Walker Price down the slope. Lundquist and the other six men followed behind them. He felt his pulse racing until he could feel his heart slamming in his chest. Milton was here. The dogs knew it.

  He knew it.

  “Eyes open,” he called out. “This is one slippery bastard.”

  He had decided that it was too dangerous to try to climb the falls. There was no way of knowing if Milton was still up there, waiting at the top with George Pelham’s gun. He couldn’t have many rounds left to fire, but he wouldn’t need many. As soon as a man popped over that lip, he was liable to have the top of his head shot off. Lundquist wasn’t prepared to take the risk.

  He had split the party. He had ordered Randy Watts and Archie McClennan to stay back and guard the falls in case Milton decided to wait for them to leave and then tried to climb down again and slip behind them. Randy and Archie were good men, solid and reliable, and Lundquist had sent them back into the tree line so that they wouldn’t be visible from the top. If Milton did try to descend, they would shoot him.

  He had led the other seven men as they had retraced their steps. Walker Price knew the terrain, and he had directed them east, following the line of the ridge for a mile until they reached a draw that cut up through the ridge all the way to the plateau on the top. It was still steep, and Lundquist was sweating at the end of it, but at least they were up. The diversion had taken them ninety minutes. Lundquist was frustrated, but it had been necessary. Price had assured him that there was nothing else like the falls between here and the lake, no other feature of the landscape that Milton could use against them. They doubled back to the falls, but the dogs caught the scent before they got there, dragging them back up to the north.

  To the old mine.

  Lundquist knew that was Milton’s final destination.

  It had to be.

  “Michael,” he called out.

  His boy jogged across to him.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “The mine. What did you boys have up there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Guns.”

  “Shotguns. Milton used one to cover us on the way back.”

  “Does he know that the others are there?”

  “Found them all.”

  “So he’ll have one?”

  “Won’t be able to use them.” He grinned. “He disabled them. Took the barrels off.”

  “Anything else? You have a rifle? A handgun?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing with longer range?”

  “Didn’t need anything like that.”

  “Ammo?”

  “Just shotgun shells.”

  All right, he thought. Assume that all he has is a handgun and a limited number of rounds.

  There were eight of them. They were all armed. Lundquist had a rifle. Michael had a rifle, too, and the army had trained him to be an excellent shot. He’d had plenty of practice, out there in the sandpit, and he had been given a medal for one shot in Iraq, plugging a raghead from a thousand yards. They would stay behind in the tree line and cover the others going in. It would be a turkey shoot. The men would flush Milton out of cover, and him and his boy would pick him off at range.

  The trail led them down and around, and then the trees thinned out, and he saw the lake and the old mine buildings laid out before him. The old place hadn’t changed in forty years. He looked out at the lake, the wind curling the surface into spume-topped breakers and the rain hammering into it. There were the two huts backed up against the tall shoulder of bedrock that hemmed in the lake on its western border, one of them overwhelmed by the water. The buildings were almost hidden by the trees and underbrush around them, a smothering blanket of vegetation. He saw the fire pit that the boys had been using.

  “Stop,” he called out.

  The men did as they were told. The dogs yipped and growled, frustrated to be held back so close to their quarry. Lundquist gestured that the men should gather round.

  “You sure he’s down there?” he asked Price.

  The man nodded down at his dogs. “They are. Look at ’em. That’s good enough for me.”

  “If he is,” Lundquist said to the others, “this is the end of the road for him. He’s got the cliff to the west and the water at his back. There’s nowhere else for him to go.”

  “What are we going to do, sir?”

  “Me and Michael will stay up here with the rifles. The rest of you, you go down into the camp and find him. Search the huts, the trees at the back, all the way down to the water. He’s in there somewhere.”

  “With a gun.”

  “A handgun, with maybe a couple of rounds. He pops up, I promise you he’ll get shot. I can shoot, and Michael was a sniper in the army.”

  “That don’t fill me with confidence,” Larry Maddocks said, “the mess he’s made of things already, dragging us all the way out here in weather like this.”

  Michael faced up to Larry and took a step closer to him. Lundquist put a hand on his shoulder. “Enough, Larry. And calm down, Michael. You know what Milton can do. You think we stand a better chance if we start bickering among ourselves?”

  “Yes,” Larry said. “I do know. That’s why I’d be much happier if it was me staying up here and you and him going down there.”

  “That’s the way we’re going to do it. You got a problem with it, Private?”

  Larry sighed in frustration. “No, sir.”

  “Where are your bikes?” Lundquist asked.

  “Around back,” Tom Chandler answered. “There’s a grove. We put them in there.”

  “Does Milton know where they are?”

  “Probably. He had a good look around.”

  “Well, you need to keep that in mind. He might run.”

  Michael took his rifle. It was a lever-action Winchester Model 94, and he already had a cartridge in the chamber. “If he gives me a clear shot, I guarantee you, I will hit him.”

  MILTON SAW them come down the slope. There were six of them. The man with the dogs was in the lead, his animals pulling hard at their leash. Tom Chandler was behind him, a shotgun aimed out ahead, and behind him came another four men. Milton had counted ten of them when he had looked down from the top of the falls. Lundquist must have left some of them back there in case he tried to double back. How many, though? Two? Three? Four? And where was he? Had he given himself that duty, the safer option? Lundquist hadn’t struck Milton as craven, but maybe he was more bark than bite. In Milton’s experience, it happened that way sometimes. You never could really tell until the chips were down and the bullets started to fly.

  Didn’t matter.

  Milton would find him wherever he was.

  The lead man slowed at the fringe of the tree line, pulling back to halt the dogs.

  Deep breaths. Milton picked up the bow and held it in his left hand. He stood at a right angle to the target, his feet shoulder-width apart with his back foot slightly forward. He slipped an arrow into the rest, pushing it back until the nock clicked into the bowstring. He straightened his bow arm, raising it until it was parallel with the ground, and, using his upper back, drew the bowstring straight back. The effort of holding his left arm stiff sent a shudder of pain across his numbed muscles, and the bow jerked off to the right. He gritted his teeth, tried to ignore the pain, corrected the aim, and pushed his arm out to the target.

  They were still in cover, just among the trees. Milton watched as another man came into view, just for a moment. The man had a rifle. Visibility through the rain was dreadful, but Milton recognised the bul
ky frame.

  Lundquist.

  He disappeared again.

  The dogs barked excitedly.

  The man with the lead started forwards, the hounds drawing him down the slope at an easy jog. The five other men followed.

  Shotguns.

  Pistols.

  Milton held the bowstring up against his cheek and nose and aligned the sight with his target.

  He opened his hand, and the arrow raced free.

  LUNDQUIST LAY flat on the slope, the rifle laid out ahead of him so that he could sight down the barrel. Michael was alongside him in a similar position. He thought he had imagined the flash of movement. It was so fast and so stunningly quiet that he didn’t register what it was until Walker Price tottered backwards, his hands clutching the long shaft that had suddenly appeared in his chest. He released the leash, and the dogs sprang away, then stopped, confused. Price weaved around until he was facing back up the slope. Lundquist saw the fletching on the shaft and realised, with horror, that it was an arrow.

  Michael had seen it too. “Oh shit,” he gasped. “Oh shit.”

  “What, Michael?”

  “I forgot that.”

  “You forgot what?”

  “My bow. He’s found my bow.”

  “You had a bow down there?”

  “Sure. We were hunting.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had a bow!”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t what? You didn’t think. You never think.”

  Walker collapsed onto his knees, and his dogs scattered, howling.

  The other five men were halfway between the safety of the tree line and the shacks that made up the camp. Walker had been in the lead, so they had all seen what had just happened to him. They were a little closer to the camp. They should have made for shelter there, but they all assumed that Milton was in that vicinity, and their instinct was to go back in the direction from which they arrived. At least they knew that there was safety there.

  Lundquist knew that was wrong.

  “No!” he screamed. “Keep going! Get into the camp!”

  Larry Maddocks broke first. He turned, but as he tried to push off, his foot skidded through a sheet of mud, and his leg flew out from beneath him. He splashed into the mud, face first, and, as he pushed himself up and scrambled on hands and knees, a second arrow streaked through the air. His slip saved his life. The arrow missed him by fractions, flying into the trees.

  Someone shouted out a strangled, “Fuck!”

  Maddocks ran for cover.

  Thomas Chandler, Leland Mulligan, Dylan Fox, and Harley Ward were in the open.

  “Get into the camp!” Lundquist yelled as loud as he could.

  Michael stared down the sight of his rifle, sweeping it left and right. “You see him?”

  “Get into the camp!” he screamed at the men. “He can see you there!”

  Tom Chandler turned first and headed the other way, going for the shacks. The other three followed.

  Lundquist stared into the slanting rain and saw a quick flash of movement.

  “There!” he said. “In the mine.”

  They both fired, again and again. Lundquist held his Ruger .223 steady, pulling back the bolt handle in his open hand, the jacket ejecting past his right ear, pulling the trigger, repeating, the rifle always held against his shoulder. He fired until he was dry.

  “Did you get him?” he yelled out as he fished in his pocket for another magazine.

  Michael was more selective, pulling and firing until the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. “I don’t know,” he said, using a stripper clip to reload the magazine.

  Lundquist’s hands were shaking. “Keep him penned in. The others can flank him.”

  MILTON PRESSED himself against the rock wall. The barrage from Lundquist and Callow peppered the walls and ceiling of the adit, but he had moved out of sight, and now he could just wait for them to run dry. At least one of them was firing wildly, indiscriminately, and he was happy to see them waste their ammunition. He was badly outmatched in that department—he only had another four arrows clipped into their slots on the bow, plus two “specials”—and if their hysteria brought them nearer to parity, then that was to be welcomed.

  But the firing stopped.

  That second arrow had only missed by two feet, but it had missed. A moving target, at medium range, in these conditions, with a bow and arrow? It would have been a difficult shot to make if he had been healthy. The pain in his arm was affecting him badly, even with the ibuprofen, and it had been all he could do to ignore it and hold his arm straight enough to fire. But he had missed, and that meant at least nine of them were still alive: Lundquist, Callow, the five survivors who had come out of the trees and the two men who must have waited for him at the falls.

  The noise of the rain was all he could hear. He glanced back down into the corridor. The tiny fire that he had set was burning, the smoke sucked down towards a vent in the wall at the end.

  Milton had seen Chandler, the young cop, and the two other men sprint ahead, to the camp.

  He had expected them to do that.

  He had hoped that they would do that.

  Lundquist would try to pen him here and send his men to flank him. If Milton allowed that, he would be at their mercy. There was no way out.

  He didn’t plan on allowing it.

  He had another arrow notched and ready to fire. Running to the cover of the shacks had bought them just a few extra moments to live. He would have picked them off otherwise.

  A temporary reprieve.

  The two shacks were fifty feet away from him.

  There was a natural shelf in the corridor at the same height as his head. It was sheltered and dry. He unnotched the arrow that he had readied, reached across and took the first of the two modified arrows that he had left there. He had used medical tape to fasten a stick of dynamite to the shaft between the fletching and the arrowhead. He had balanced it as well as he could, but it was ungainly, and it would fly with poor accuracy, but that was acceptable.

  He didn’t need it to be accurate.

  Thunder boomed outside the entrance to the mine. The clouds were down low, right overhead, and the clap was louder than Milton could remember.

  Rain cascaded down, the run-off pouring down from the rocks above the adit, screening him.

  He reached down with the arrow and held the short fuse in the flames until it hissed and popped and fizzed.

  He quickly notched it, drew the drawstring back, aimed it, and let it go.

  The arrow arced out of the entrance, a graceful parabola, reaching up and then curving back down as gravity clutched it.

  The rifle fire started up again. He pivoted back into cover.

  LUNDQUIST FIRED and worked the bolt, fired and worked the bolt, but before he could run dry again, he saw a third arrow launch out of the darkened entrance and slide through the rain, apparently aimless.

  But it wasn’t aimless.

  It landed on the roof of the first shack, the arrowhead piecing the rotten old shingles, the shaft quivering. Lundquist stared at it. Something was wrong. He saw the tiny pinprick of light alongside the fletching, swaying back and forth as the arrow oscillated.

  Oh no.

  A second arrow was loosed from the mine, landing between the boards of the wall of the other shack.

  That one, too, looked strange.

  “Run!”

  The first stick of dynamite exploded with a massive boom, a sudden cloud of dark grey smoke and debris billowing out. The shack was blown apart, the planks and shingles and the wooden frame torn into a million fragments and scattered for a hundred feet in all directions.

  Lundquist pressed his arms over his head and pushed his face down, his mouth and nostrils in the wet muck.

  The next stick detonated. This shack was closer to their firing position, and the shards of broken wood pattered around them, larger fragments caught in the branches of the trees overhead.

  Lun
dquist looked up. Harley Ward and Dylan Fox had been right behind the first shack, and there was no sign of them anymore.

  Tom Chandler had seen what had happened and had sprinted away from the second shack just before it, too, was destroyed. The blast must have picked him up and helped him on his way, for he had been flipped around and thrown down to the water’s edge. He was rolling onto his belly, slapping the sense back into his head.

  Lundquist could smell gunpowder, heavy and acrid, hanging in the wet air.

  There was a crashing through the undergrowth, and Lundquist swung the rifle around, his finger ready to pull back on the trigger. Leland Mulligan appeared from out of nowhere, his clothes and hair scorched from the explosion, and fell down beside Larry Maddocks.

  “What the fuck!” Leland gasped, the words gushing out and fear obvious in his wide eyes.

  Michael had saucer eyes, too. “Pops?” he asked. “What do we do?”

  He pressed himself to his hands and knees, mud dripping from his face. He held onto his rifle with shaking hands.

  “Run,” he yelled. “Run!”

  Chapter 37

  MILTON CAME out of the dark entrance to the adit.

  They had fled. He had watched them scramble back up the slope, heading for the ridge and the long run back to the south and the relative safety of the town.

  Milton grimaced.

  What had they been thinking? That this was going to be a simple manhunt? Chasing a one-armed man up here until he ran out of places to hide, put a bullet in him, and be done with it all? Lundquist had probably expected that this would be easy.

  More fool him.

  Other people had made that mistake before.

  It was a mistake you only made once.

  Lundquist would know that he had changed tactics. He wasn’t running any more. He had lured them up to the mine and trapped them. They had been fortunate. Three of them had been killed. More of them should have been dead. Lundquist knew a little more of what Milton was capable, and what he was prepared to do. He would know, too, that he was coming for them. That would make things more difficult. There would be no more complacency.