Moments ago, Kane had warned of the approaching threat, giving Tucker time to set up this ambush. His furry teammate had similarly gone to ground thirty yards ahead, lying low in a gully, awaiting a command. Tucker held off until the two passed Kane’s position and approached the red rock boulder where he hid.
Through Kane’s camera audio, he heard the two conversing, believing they were alone.
“Did you see the way that guy’s skull exploded when Hawk shot him?” one asked with a wheezing laugh.
“Yeah, burst like a ripe pumpkin. Hawk sure taught that old Indian that we mean business. Betcha the guy’s spilling the beans now. And did you get a good look at his granddaughter?”
“Sure did. Now that’s what I call some ripe pumpkins.”
More snickering laughter. “Let’s find that damn dog.”
They continued past Kane’s position. From the brief exchange, Tucker had assessed plenty enough, especially his targets’ murderous intent. Whoever they were, they had killed someone and held at least two more hostages. Upon learning this, Tucker felt no compunction against using deadly force. Still, with his heart pounding, he holstered his Desert Eagle. He needed to do this quietly, so as not to alert these bastards’ cohorts.
As the second man passed Kane’s position, Tucker subvocalized a two-word command into his radio. “Silent. Takedown.”
Through his goggles, he watched a low view of desert scrub brush sweep past the view of Kane’s camera. Even with the acute sensitivity of the camera’s audio, Tucker heard no sound as the shepherd rushed to close the distance on the trailing man. He pictured Kane’s paws landing on firm rock, his sleek body avoiding any brush of branches that might alert his target.
Then at the last moment, a low growl.
Done on purpose.
Startled by the noise, Kane’s target turned—only to find a massive dog leaping at him. Kane barreled into his chest, knocking the man off his feet and onto his back.
Tucker was already moving. He rolled out from behind the boulder, coming to stand only steps away from the man who had been leading the pair. The gunman had his back to Tucker, drawn by the commotion.
Kane’s jaws were already clamped to his target’s throat, crushing the man’s windpipe, his fangs dug deep into the soft flesh. The man thrashed, his rifle trapped under his back. Kane held tight, riding the man like a wild bull.
Tucker’s target had momentarily frozen at the sudden ambush, at the savagery of Kane’s attack. By the time the man raised his pistol at the dog, Tucker was on him. He hooked an arm around the other’s throat. Startled, the man dropped his pistol and grabbed for Tucker’s arm. Tucker jerked him off his feet and swung him around, slamming his head into the boulder that he had been hiding behind.
Bone cracked with a satisfying crunch.
Tucker dropped the limp body and rushed over to Kane. He yanked out his Desert Eagle as he reached the struggling pair. The man mewled on his back, his face purpling from the strangling clamp on his throat. Tucker used a boot to press the man’s head to the side, grinding a cheek into the sand. Then he raised his pistol and bashed its butt behind the man’s right ear, breaking bone with a muffled blow.
Like thumping a ripe pumpkin.
Tucker whispered a command to his partner. “stand down.”
Only then did Kane release his hold on the man’s neck. The dog backed a few steps, his gaze steady on Tucker, still at full alert.
Tucker quickly collected the rifle and slung its strap over a shoulder. He then crossed, picked up the pistol—a 9 mm Glock—and tucked it into the back of his pants. He weighed the time it would take to gag and tie up the men here, but they weren’t waking anytime soon, and he wagered, even if they did, these two wouldn’t be heroes. Unarmed and woozy, they’d more likely slink away into the desert and do their best to vanish.
So he left them in the sand.
Earlier, he had heard the distant grumble of an engine receding into the desert. He didn’t know what that meant, but he sensed time was running short for whoever was being held hostage.
That is, if they were still alive.
There was only one way to find out. He set off again, sending Kane scouting ahead. The trail from here was easy to follow. The two men hunting for Cooper had made no effort to hide their tracks.
Tucker and Kane moved swiftly across the desert, traveling in tandem, two becoming one again in the chill morning. Still, despite the present danger and need to focus, he could not escape the ghosts of the past.
Tucker flashed back to that painful moment in Afghanistan. He again felt the pop of his ears as the rescue helicopter had lifted off from the snowy mountaintop of Takur Ghar. Aboard the chopper, he had clung to Kane, both of them bloodied by the firefight, by the exploded ordnance. But as the helicopter rose from that mountaintop, Tucker had never taken his eyes off Abel below. It had been Abel who had knocked Tucker and Kane clear before the buried IED detonated.
Now they had abandoned him.
Abel raced across the cold mountaintop, limping on three legs, searching for an escape. Taliban forces closed in from all directions. Tucker had strained for the door, ready to fling himself out, to go to his friend’s aid. But two soldiers pinned him, restraining him inside the helicopter.
Tucker yelled for Abel. Hearing him, the dog had stopped, staring up, panting, his eyes sharp and bright, seeing him. They shared that last moment, locked together.
Until that bond had been severed forever.
Even now, Tucker’s grip tightened on his Desert Eagle, using its weight and solidness to anchor him to the present. A few years ago, an army therapist had offered insight, refining the root cause of Tucker’s PTSD to a condition known as moral injury, where Tucker’s fundamental understanding of right and wrong had been violated by his experiences in Afghanistan. He was told this condition manifested as shame, guilt, anxiety, and anger, along with behavioral changes, such as alienation and withdrawal—which certainly described him to a tee. Tucker suspected his recent path through life was an ongoing attempt to find his center again, to make amends—not so much for what he did, but for what he had failed to do, whom he had failed to save.
While he had lost his partner back then, he intended to do his best to right whatever wrongs he could. But to do that here, he needed to focus.
He topped a slight rise and discovered a low, wide wash below, likely worn away by centuries of flash floods during the rainy season. Kane hovered at the arroyo’s edge, stopped by a command from Tucker when his partner’s camera revealed a campsite on the gully floor. Four tents circled the ember glow of a former campfire. A green Jeep Wrangler was parked nearby.
Movement drew him flat to the wash’s rocky edge.
On his belly, Tucker pulled out a slim set of binoculars. Through the lenses, he spotted two figures seated on logs, their arms bound behind them. One was a black-haired woman, maybe midtwenties, her hair in a long ponytail, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt under a field vest. The other was a gray-haired older man in cowboy boots and a navy-blue windbreaker.
Tucker paid closer attention to the two men guarding the pair with rifles, a dusty match to the two Tucker had already dispatched. He knew there had to be more than just those two. He shifted his binoculars and focused across to the far rim of the arroyo, to the hazy trail of dust hanging in the air. He remembered the earlier grumble of an engine. He followed the dust trail toward a tall rise of broken red rocks and sheer cliffs. He didn’t know where those others were headed and left that mystery for now. He returned his attention to the campsite, took full measure, then lowered his binoculars.
He scooted to his knees and turned to Kane. He pointed down and around, issuing a chain of commands he knew Kane could follow. “Circle. Hold position. Guard on my mark.”
Kane panted, gave a single savage swipe of his tail, and dropped over the edge of the arroyo. Tucker took off in the other direction. He slipped down an old dry streambed that drained into the wash, sticking to the
deepest shadows cast by the low-lying morning sun. He held the confiscated rifle—a Bushmaster carbine—to his belly in both hands.
If there were any other gunmen, he imagined they were all aboard the departed vehicle. If he was right, those others would not hear any gunshots here. Good. Taking this into account, Tucker knew what he had to do to, what was necessary to safeguard the hostages.
His attack here would have to be swift and brutal.
Tucker glanced off toward where Kane had vanished and corrected this assessment.
Our attack.
(4)
6:20 a.m.
Seated on a juniper log, Abbie watched a scorpion scuttle from one shadow to another. She wished she could do the same, find somewhere to escape, somewhere to hide. But more so, she wished she had a scorpion’s sting.
She glared over at one of the two men, the one called Bo, who kept eyeing her up and down as if sizing up a prized heifer. He caught her looking and sneered back at—
His face vanished in a mist of blood and bone, followed a fraction later by the echoing crack of a gun.
The other man, Randy, dropped to a knee and swung his rifle at her, as if she were somehow to blame. The motion saved his life as another gunshot followed the first. The round grazed the top of Randy’s head, knocking his cap off.
Startled, Randy fell on his backside, but his rifle remained centered on Abbie. He fired. Expecting as much, she had rolled behind the log as he squeezed the trigger. The round blasted into the wood where she’d been seated.
Randy dropped to one elbow, his rifle at his shoulder, aimed at Abbie. He shouted to the unknown assailant. “Come out or—”
To the left, a form exploded from a dense bramble of pinyon and leaped headlong across the space and hit Randy’s arm. Jaws crushed wrist bones. The weapon went flying. Randy screamed as a huge shepherd used its weight and momentum to roll, throwing Randy over like a rag doll. Randy landed on his face in the campfire, scattering red embers far.
Then another figure ran low from the other side, appearing from behind one of the tents. He came with a pistol raised and sped to the dog’s side. Once there, he growled a firm, “Release.”
As the dog let go, the newcomer coldly shot Randy in the back of the head, a single pop that made the man’s body bounce, then his form lay still, smoldering atop the fire.
The stranger stayed crouched, weapon raised, his dog panting at his side. Only now did Abbie note the shepherd’s dark camouflaged vest, sprouting what looked like a camera on a stalk.
“Are you both okay?” the man asked.
Abbie had no idea who their rescuer was, but from the viciousness of his attack, he scared her, left her breathless. It was Dr. Landon who spoke first. Like her, the physicist had flung himself off the log and huddled behind it.
“I . . . I think so,” Landon said and glanced toward Abbie.
She simply nodded, still on her side in the sand.
“Where are the others who attacked you?” the stranger asked.
Abbie sat up, finally finding her voice. “Gone. They took my grandfather.”
The man turned to her. His eyes were hard diamonds, his dark blond hair disheveled. “Dr. Jackson Kee?”
She nodded again. How did he know my grandfather? And more importantly— “Who are you?”
“Tucker Wayne,” he said. He removed a dagger from a sheath on his belt and quickly set about cutting them free. He ended by pointing the knife tip at his companion. “And this big boy is Kane.”
At the mention of his name, the shepherd wagged his tail twice.
Landon rubbed his wrists and glanced off to the open desert. “How . . . how did you find us?”
“Kane made a new friend,” Tucker said and related a thumbnail sketch of the gunshot, the sudden arrival of Cooper, and his and Kane’s overland hunt for the parties involved. “Before setting out, I alerted outside authorities, someone I trust. But until I knew what was going on, I had him hold off sending in the cavalry. As open as these lands are, I feared any approach by police helicopters or trucks with flashing lights could have . . . well . . .”
He trailed off, so Abbie finished, “The bandits would’ve shot us and run off.”
Tucker stared at her for an extra breath. “What about you all?” he asked. “Why are you out here? Why did they come after you?”
“For this.” Abbie crossed to her backpack. She opened it and removed a fist-sized chunk of fire agate. She held it up to the sun, where the light refracted brilliantly off its surface, polishing it to a fiery opalescence. “It’s worth tens of thousands of dollars, if not far more.”
“And according to Brocky, that stone is but the tip of the iceberg.” Landon waved at Uncle Oro’s body, which Randy had covered with a sleeping bag, as if that would somehow absolve him of the murder—or maybe it was just to keep the blood from drawing flies. “The old prospector claimed there was a whole treasure trove of such rocks out there.”
Abbie shook her head. “They must have heard Uncle Oro’s story. Ambushed us. Demanded to know where that mother lode is located.”
Tucker nodded, staring correctly at the distant ridge of broken scarp. “And they kidnapped your grandfather to lead them there, holding you here to keep him properly motivated.”
“Those bastards needed him as a guide,” Abbie admitted. “We’re in the most remote corner of the Sonoran national forest, two million acres of desert, rock, and cliffs. That ridgeline marks the gateway into a hundred square miles of gorges, ravines, and towering slabs of red rock. My tribe, the Yavapai, call this area—when they speak of it at all—Ingaya Hala, or Black Moon. Though the older connotation is simply the Land of Nightmares, which is appropriate considering how easy it is to get lost there, not to mention the dangers from flash floods, sudden rockfalls, treacherous drops.”
“And it’s there that your dead friend claims to have found that rock’s mother lode?” Tucker asked.
“And maybe something more amazing,” Abbie mumbled, earning a warning look from Landon.
Tucker seemed not to have heard as he bent down to search Bo’s body. He stood back up with a confiscated radio in hand and pointed it toward those badlands. “I assume, as treacherous as that terrain sounds, that the ones who took your grandfather would need to continue on foot once they reached that ridgeline.”
Abbie nodded.
“Then there’s a chance to catch up with them.” Tucker turned and pointed to the Jeep. “It that yours?”
“My grandfather’s.”
“Do you have the keys?”
She frowned. “He leaves them in the visor.”
Tucker headed over, drawing Kane with him. “I’ll let the authorities know where you are,” he said. “But the best chance to save your grandfather is not to wait for them here. Once your grandfather has taken them to the mother lode’s site—”
“They’ll kill him,” Abbie said, following at his heels. “I’m going with you.”
Tucker reached the Jeep and turned to her. “I can track them.” Then motioned to his dog. “We can track them on our own.”
He opened the door, but she slammed it back closed with a palm. “You—” She pointed to the shepherd. “And you, too. Neither of you know these deserts like I do. And I’m not about to risk my grandfather’s life on your inexperience.”
Tucker stared silently for a breath, then reached to the small of his back and removed a pistol. He held it out. “Do you know how to handle this?”
She scowled and took the weapon. “This is Arizona.”
Landon rushed over and grabbed the rifle near Randy’s body, then joined them.
Tucker eyed the weapon, then the man.
Landon hefted the rifle higher. “Native Arizonian. Going back three generations. Also put myself through school on an ROTC scholarship.”
Tucker simply shrugged, opened the back door, and whistled his shepherd into the rear. “Then let’s go.”
(5)
6:32 a.m.
Tuc
ker drove the Jeep roughshod over the rocky terrain. The elevation climbed steadily toward the towering broken cliffs. They sped across an open land of cacti, prickly pear, and blooming spreads of wild heliotrope and lupine.
He held his satellite phone cradled to his ear with his shoulder, needing both hands on the wheel to keep control of the bucking Jeep. He had already updated Painter Crowe on all that had happened. “You’ve still got my GPS?” Tucker asked.
“We’ve been tracking you since you left your campsite,” Painter confirmed.
Of course, you’ve been.
“Then go ahead,” Tucker said. “Rouse the local authorities in Sedona. Get them moving. But don’t dispatch anything by air. Not until we’ve secured Dr. Kee.”
Stealth still remained their best chance to safely recover Abigail’s grandfather. As murderous as these bastards were, at the first thump of a police helicopter’s rotors, they would put a bullet in the old man’s skull and vanish deep into those badlands. Speed was also essential. Tucker did not have the time to wait for the authorities to arrive overland, and even if forces did come by air, they’d likely still get here too late. Instead, Tucker needed to quickly close on those bandits—led by a man named Hawk—before that mother lode was found. After that, Jackson Kee’s life would be forfeit.
Still, it wasn’t only Tucker at risk now. He glanced over at Abigail, who was seated up front with him. She nodded. He got the same confirming nod from Landon in the back with Kane.
They both understood the situation.
For now, we’re on our own.
“I’ll set everything in motion,” Painter promised. “Including air support.”
“But I said—”
“I’ll have helicopters dispatched with instructions to maintain a ten-mile perimeter from your position. Once we hear word that you’ve secured Dr. Kee, they’ll swoop down on your signal.”
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