The Mad Mick: Book One of The Mad Mick Series

by Franklin Horton

  Conor rode at a brisk canter, secure in the knowledge he was on the right path because he was still finding the broken branches Ragus left for him. The boy was smart enough to not bother with them during the uneventful sections of road where no direction was needed, but he was meticulous in his route-marking anywhere clarification was needed. Despite the rapid pace, Conor scanned for threats with a practiced eye, weapons handy, and ready to steer his horse into the brush at the first sign of trouble.

  Then the corpse caught his attention.

  Conor remained in the road at first, sitting on his horse and taking in the scene where Howell's body lay. He watched and listened. His horse became skittish, perhaps sensing death, but Conor forced it closer to the body. He examined it from horseback initially and, even at that distance, cause of death was clear. This poor bastard had been strangled.

  It raised a lot of questions. Had Ragus killed the man? Everyone he’d killed so far had been shot with the Henry, a .22 caliber round or two ending their life. Why was this one different? Why had he gotten special treatment? If this had been Ragus, there could only be one reason for breaking his mode of operation. Something had gone wrong.

  Conor slid from the saddle, rifle in his hand. While most of the area was overgrown with weeds, this spot where people used to park was sandy dirt and was enough the grass was slow to grow back. There was a fire circle of blackened stones. A couple of crushed beer cans with some of the paint burned off lay among stubs of partially burned firewood.

  Starting at the body and walking in widening circles, Conor examined the ground thoroughly. Near the body, the silty soil was compressed and footprints were obscured. It was as if someone might have laid there or rolled around on the ground. Closer to the road there were indications that a lot of horses had stopped here. A lot of grass had been pulled up, as if the horses had a moment to grab a bite while their riders stood still. Their shod hooves pawed at the ground while they stood there but it didn’t appear they all dismounted. Most of the horses never left the shoulder of the road.

  Conor returned to the body and examined it closer. He rolled it to its side and pulled up the shirt as he had with the previous body to look for signs of livor mortis. Beneath the body a glint of gold caught his eye and he frowned. He brushed at the dirt, removed a tactical glove, and plucked a delicate chain from the soil, a charm dangling from it. It was the shamrock pendant he’d given his daughter on her sixteenth birthday. It had been a reminder to hang onto her Irish heritage. She’d been wearing it all the time lately, figuring she needed all the luck she could get.

  There was the sound of movement in the brush and Conor reacted before he even took the time to process what it might be. He could figure that out from the safety of cover. He rolled away from the body and scrambled behind a tree, throwing his rifle up, ready to fire. The sound continued and Conor tried to interpret it. It sounded like a man moving through thick brush.

  He waited several moments, safety off, but the noise didn’t get closer. He wondered if it was a bear or deer. Conor slipped from behind the tree, his rifle at high ready, and moved steadily across the clearing, barely even breathing. He took cover at another tree and listened. The noise was still there, but moving no closer.

  The rustling continued coming from the same direction. It was close but the position didn’t vary. Conor stalked through the underbrush, moving silently toward the noise while praying he didn’t run up on a snake. The bastards were thick along rivers and he wasn’t sure he could contain a childish scream if he were to step on one. Even a big, bad, bomb builder had his weaknesses.

  There was a snort and a whinny, telling Conor there was a horse and it had picked up his scent. It still didn’t tell him if there was a rider on it, or worse, a rider who was now on foot and watching him at that very moment, waiting for a clear shot. When he finally saw branches moving, Conor could see that a leather rein was tied to a branch at chest level, where a rider might naturally tie it as he dismounted. The branch was high enough off the ground that when the horse plucked at the sparse grass it tugged on the branch.

  While that solved the puzzle of the noise, it didn’t solve the issue of the missing rider. On high alert, Conor watched the woods for any movement, knowing the rider might he camouflaged. Hell, he could be wearing a ghillie suit for all Conor knew. His eyes returned to the horse, which had lowered its head again, trying to reach the next tuft of grass.

  With its head lowered, Conor got a better view of the saddle. He didn’t recognize it but he certainly recognized the gear tied to it. There was the pack he’d given to Ragus as a go bag. A half-full water bottle hung from a strap looped over the saddle horn. He recognized that too. Conor approached the horse, stroking its flanks to reassure it. He was tempted to call out the boy’s name but he couldn’t make himself do it. He didn’t want to call attention to himself in case there were other people around.

  He removed the boy’s gear, stashing it in the bushes and covering it with a garbage bag from a side pocket of the go bag. He knew it was there because he’d put it there when he packed the bag for the boy the first time. He covered the gear with the saddle, the saddle blanket, and then released the horse. There would be more of them. The only thing that worried him was the possibility that the boy might be wandering around here somewhere and that Conor was stranding him by releasing the horse, but it just didn’t seem likely. He had to assume that, after all this distance, the boy was either on Barb’s trail or dead. He’d also not found the Henry rifle. He had to assume it was with the boy. At least he hoped so.

  The condition of the body told him it was only a few hours old. Perhaps less than two. Maybe today was the day this all ended.

  Before mounting his horse again, Conor rechecked his gear. He confirmed mags for his primary and secondary weapons, confirmed the presence of his fixed blade knife and his tactical folder, checked for his tourniquet and blowout kit. He unfastened the flap on each pouch on his plate carrier and confirmed that smoke, flash-bang, and fragmentation grenades were where he expected them to be. That was shit he’d never have if not for his previous line of work. He accepted lots of forms of payment. Sometimes people had an off-the-books job and the form of payment they had at hand was munitions. Conor loved munitions.

  When he was certain his kit was in order, he dug into his pack and removed a long canvas bag with a drawstring at the top. He unfastened it and drew out a tactical tomahawk. It clipped onto the back of his plate carrier with the handle accessible above his shoulder. It could be awkward to wear in stealthy situations, the handle snagging on branches and other gear, so he only used it for special occasions. It reminded him of Celtic warriors and the hand-to-hand combat that was his heritage. He expected this to go hand-to-hand. He expected to wield that tomahawk before the day was over. Getting his daughter back and inflicting justice upon the men who took her would be one of those special occasions.

  Riding at a brisk pace, the spare horse following on a long rope, Conor studied the GPS strapped to his forearm. Knowing his daughter was close by, he wanted to be as familiar as possible with the terrain. He wanted to know what lay ahead of him in terms of advantages and disadvantages. They were approaching a more mountainous area carved by a river gorge. The nearly vertical hills were lined with hemlocks, poplars, and oaks. With this steep terrain, most residents lived in the bottom of the valley, near the road. The chances of encountering random strangers and locals was getting higher. That was the last thing he wanted. He hoped the very sight of him, a heavily-armed and hopefully terrifying rider of the apocalypse, discouraged conversation.

  He’d gone perhaps seven miles PDM—Post Dead Man—when he found horse manure on the road that looked significantly fresher than anything he’d seen up to that point. Without a thought, he climbed off his horse and nudged it with his toe. Whatever information that gave him prompted him to drop to his knees and sink a finger into the fragrant horse apple.

  It was still warm.

  No expert on the
rate of heat loss in equine droppings, Conor nevertheless interpreted this as a sign he was closing in. He sprang back onto his horse and took off. Every time he got to a rise in the road he’d raise his binoculars and scan the path ahead of him. Most of the time he saw nothing. Still expecting nothing, his heart skipped a beat when he saw there was indeed something filling the glass of his binoculars. It was a large group of riders and pack horses. He’d found them.

  “Got you, fuckers.”

  He studied them as best he could through the binoculars, trying to glean any useful piece of information he could, but he was too far back. He studied his GPS. The riders were several miles ahead of him. They’d be crossing a bridge over a decent-sized river before the day was out. The bridge looked like it might make an excellent spot to ambush them. The lines on the topo map of his GPS indicated extremely steep ridges on either side of the road. It was a perfect chokepoint.

  This would take some thought. He couldn’t set some kind of trap that might put the captured folks at risk. He would have to get more intel. He needed to see how the group traveled, how the kidnappers rode in relation to their cargo of women.

  Part of him thought the best way to run this operation was at a distance. Figure out who the leaders were and remove them with precise shots from cover. He was comfortable shooting this particular rifle to four hundred yards. He could probably drop several of the men before they figured out what was going on if they were close enough to each other. That would be cold and surgical. It would be too removed from the fight.

  But it wasn’t just about that. Sniper shots would give them warning and they would hole up. This could become a long, drawn out affair, a battle of tenacity. Worse yet, it could become a hostage situation where they started killing captives to force him to give himself up. He couldn’t fight that way.

  There were no rules of engagement, no mission parameters. He would wade into this fight. He would let the men see there was one killer and one executioner. He would free his daughter and, if he was alive, free Ragus. They would fight together. As much as he wanted to spare his daughter the violence, he knew a little about how a child of his would process her experience. She needed vengeance to put this to bed. She needed satisfaction and closure. That would come with spilled blood. That would come with knowing that the men who had taken her could never, ever do it again, to her or anyone else.

  24

  The blow to his head had not significantly injured Ragus. He briefly lost consciousness after he was struck and woke strapped across the horse. Most of his current pain was due to the awkward riding position. He felt like his ribs had been crushed and it had been difficult to breathe while in that position, but knew those were not permanent injuries. He’d known worse pain. He also intuitively understood it was to his advantage to pretend to be more injured than he really was. Perhaps it was instinct, perhaps it was the influence of movies and television, but as long as he appeared to be somewhat addled he would not be considered a threat and no one would watch him as closely.

  When the prisoners mounted up, being tied to their saddles again, Ragus was allowed to ride in the proper position. No one prevented him from riding beside Barb but conversation was prohibited. He learned this the hard way when he asked Barb a question and one of the kidnappers shot him with an airsoft gun. While it was not a life-threatening injury, it stung enough to serve as a deterrent.

  Barb and Ragus patiently established a means of communicating with whispers, hand signs, and nods. Ragus found that being there beside Barb made it all worth it. If he had to do it all again, he would. If he had to die for her today, or another day, he would. He’d never had a girlfriend before and was inexperienced in such matters, but he knew what he felt. Seeing her and looking into her eyes reaffirmed for him that he loved this girl. Now there was only the small matter of convincing her to see things the same way. Then, of course, there was the other matter of getting back home alive.

  Through their discreet communications, Ragus managed to tell Barb he had not seen or directly spoken to her father but had left clear route indicators along his path. If he was on their trail there was no way he could miss the signs Ragus had left. Barb asked him how he could be so certain but Ragus didn’t want to explain how he’d used dead bodies as pointers. Of course, knowing how tough this girl was, he wondered if she’d even bat an eye at it.

  She told him about the kidnappers who had been left behind for various reasons and never caught back up with the group, and thought it must be a sign her father was on her trail. When Ragus didn’t respond, she gave him a sideways glance.

  Ragus pointed at himself and nodded, admitting he killed those men. An unusual look crossed Barb’s face. It was one thing to know a man had risked his life to try and save you, pursuing you for days on foot and horseback. It was quite another to know a man had taken lives for you. The boy had crossed a line for her and it was a line he could not cross back. It was a gesture she could never forget.

  It reminded her of something her father said, commenting how Ragus reminded him of himself when he was younger. Barb could see that now. She could see the determination, the willingness to kill when it had to be done, and his unfailing loyalty to family and friends. That was Conor. Apparently it was Ragus too.

  Barb offered him information he knew was important when he heard it, despite not having the tactical wherewithal to ask the right questions. She pointed out who was in charge of this group and where she thought they were going. She told him she’d overheard they were to be used for farm labor and should not be injured. Ragus was uncertain as to whether that commitment to not harming prisoners extended to him. It clarified for him that until the moment to strike was at hand, his best odds of survival came from being as little trouble to these men as possible. If he became a pain in the ass, they’d just shoot him and leave his body behind.

  That raised the question for him of why he wasn’t already dead. “Why didn’t that guy kill me when he caught me?” Ragus whispered.

  Without looking toward him, Barb whispered back, “The two lead guys have a beef with each other. I think the number two guy wants to take out the number one guy. He’d been claiming for the last day or two we were being followed but the number one guy, they call him Top Cat, wouldn’t send anyone back to check. The second guy, Lester, decided to leave me and that rapey bastard behind as bait. He only brought you back to prove a point to the rest of the men. He wanted to prove he was right and Top Cat was wrong.”

  Ragus let some time pass, making sure they weren’t drawing any attention. “Do you think the disagreement between them is anything we can exploit?”

  Barb made a sound of dismissal.

  “You don’t think we could get in Lester’s head?” Ragus hissed.

  “I’m going to get in his head alright,” Barb replied faintly. “With a rock, a knife, or whatever the fuck else I can find. We’ve tangled already and I won’t go home until I’ve spilled his blood.”

  The comment was a reminder to Ragus he shouldn’t see Barb as a scared victim here. While she was indeed on the losing side of this situation right now, she was probably taking it more in stride than he was. She seemed braver and more determined. It occurred to him she might not accept victory by escape. She might require victory by conquest. She was, after all, her father’s daughter.

  They fell into silence. Everyone in the group, captive and captor, was lost in the mire of their own thoughts. Ragus lost track of time until he noticed the sun on the shoulder of the mountain, the light going orange and angular before fading. His watch said 6 PM. The warmth of the day quickly disappeared. They were due for a heavy frost soon. It would be unpleasant if it came tonight.

  They came upon a massive suspension bridge spanning a turbulent river. Exploring the possibility of him and Barb escaping by jumping off the bridge, Ragus looked over the edge and quickly thought better of it. It was a very long drop to a boulder-strewn river. It was nearly a certain death. Ragus didn’t mind the odds being against hi
m but there were no odds there at all.

  The riders at the front of the pack halted on the bridge and Top Cat rode back to face his captives.

  “We’re staying here tonight,” he announced. “I’m putting guards on either end of the bridge. Should you think jumping is an option, think again. You wouldn’t survive it. You’ll be cut loose from your bonds as soon as someone can get to you. We’ll bring food when it’s ready. Sleep is wherever you find it.”

  Ragus didn’t have any sleeping gear. He expected he’d stretch out on the hard pavement and try to stay as warm as he could. No way was he asking Barb to cuddle up with him to stay warm. The look she’d give him in response might be colder than anything this fall night had to offer.

  Shortly, a gruff man with a hunting knife came around and cut loose the leg that was bound to a stirrup. With a flick of the blade, he severed the zip ties binding each of their wrists. Ragus rubbed his, trying to restore the circulation and ease the cramping. He bent over, stretching his back and then his legs. The riding had been miserable.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he mumbled.

  Barb shrugged impassively. “You’ll take it as long as you have to. Toughen up, buttercup.”

  He’d meant the remark as more of a conversation starter than anything else, still not entirely comfortable with this bold young woman. Stung yet again by her remarks, he sat down against the guardrail and withdrew into himself.

  “You can’t be sensitive if you’re going to be around me,” Barb said, taking a seat beside him. “I’ve got my own type of people skills. They weed out the squishy bastards.”

  “I’ve noticed,” Ragus said, not meeting her eye.