by Chuck Dixon
“I already said you’re right, okay?”
“And I don’t want to veer off our return route. We don’t have the drone anymore, so we should stick to the land we know.”
“You mean follow that dry riverbed back?” Lee said.
“Draw them out on it to the choke point,” Jimbo said.
“We’ll have high ground and a free fire zone with scarce cover for them and room for us to maneuver.”
“That means a hard push for you and the others, Cochise. An all-day hump. We do not want these fuckers catching us out on that river bed.”
“Then it means a hard push. If we don’t, we’ll have them on our ass all the way to the San Gabriels. We can’t make that in the shape we’re in carrying wounded.”
“Makes sense. It sucks, but it makes sense. Me and Chaz will cover your ass. But you need to get to that dam even if it’s on your knees.” Lee turned to trot back to where Chaz walked drag.
Jimbo joined the others struggling with the travois. They were having a hard time navigating between the trees over uneven ground.
“Good news. We’re moving downhill to level ground,” Jimbo said and took the ends of the trailing poles to lift Ricky from the ground.
“Bad news? There’s always bad news,” Bat said. “We’re going to have to stop half-assing it and make some time.” Jimbo tried to smile. It came off like a controlled snarl on his drawn face. “Shit,” Bat said.
She and N’itha took the weight of the crossed poles where they were lashed together at the apex of the triangular platform. They lifted the poles on their shoulders. Byrus grabbed the other trailing end and, together, the four lifted the burden and picked their way downslope for the silvery band running along the middle of the dry bed below.
The going was easier on the flat surface of the river bed. They dragged the travois on the highest part of the bank where the ground was firmer. The center channel was broader now, swollen with the rain from the night before. The ground was swampy to either side of it. It was hotter out in the open and away from the shade of the forest. Jimbo rigged up a canopy from a ground sheet so Rick wouldn’t broil, exposed as he was.
Rick was unconscious but not feverish. He surrendered to the exhaustion of their two-day march and slept. They only awakened him to take sips of water when they stopped to drink. He dropped back into deep slumber within seconds.
Except for stops to rehydrate, the four moved on, sharing their burden at a steady, mile-eating pace. To Jimbo, this was a hump, plain and simple. The easiest mile was behind you. The hardest mile was the next one.
His mind dropped into the nether zone he developed on long marches in training at Benning in Georgia and Elgin down in Florida. Tramping under full loads through forests, over mountains, and across swamps. He had learned to shut out the pain and fatigue while keeping his situational awareness, his combat radar, on high alert. The compartmentalization of his own physical suffering had been drilled into him by tireless instructors. Men a generation older than him and seemingly made of cold steel and hard wood. Near the end of those fire route marches, his lungs had been on fire, his leg muscles twisted, and his back aflame with pain. Yet those instructors, old enough to be his father, were still moving double-time, back and forth along the ragged columns and screaming abuse at the top of their voices. A youth spent running around the high desert around the Pima reservation had made him tough but not Ranger tough.
All that hardship made him capable of humping forty miles in full battle rattle, engage in a firefight, and ask for seconds. Over in Iraq and Helmand, he and his unit, including the men with him today, performed the tasks that soldiers have engaged in since the time of the ancients. They marched hard, killed the enemy, and held the ground.
This slog to the base of the dam and their tactical chokepoint was harder than any he could recall. He was hurting and beat. An instructor at Benning had told them that he once met a vet from the French Foreign Legion—some tough bastards, that bunch. This guy told the instructor that the philosophy of le Legion was that when a man thought he’d given his all, he’d actually only given seventy percent of his all. That stayed with Jimbo, and he thought of it often when on extended hikes under heavy loads.
He was nearing ninety percent of his tolerance by his own estimation. The others were probably as bad off. Bat wore the mask, burying her weariness and ache deep. Byrus stayed to Jimbo’s right and still offered his familiar grin whenever their gazes met. N’itha was only concerned for Rick and pushed harder than the rest. The girl was probably the toughest of them all. It took a degree of mean dog orneriness to survive in this world of giant predators and blood-crazed primitives. She’d been born Ranger hard.
Their spirit buoyed him, and he made a new commitment to make their destination well ahead of their pursuers. And if the inspiration of his comrades wasn’t enough to spur him on, Jimbo could hear more and more hunting horns growing closer from the trees behind them.
The first of them emerged from the woods along the north bank of the river bed. There was no order to their advance. These weren’t scouts, just the fastest arriving first with the rest following behind. First one then another came down out of the tree line and onto the broad muddy path snaking west. There were a dozen or more milling around looking for any sign of human passage.
A few were the blue-dyed men from the village where the captives had been taken. But there were less familiar varieties here. Some dudes with bushes of matted hair atop their heads and masks of black ash painted across their eyes. Another tribe or some kind of sect. Cousins to the blue bastards. Some of these carried the same stone hammers as their brethren. Most had spears six feet or more in length with spade-shaped blades of hammered iron.
A third, smaller, portion of the group distinguished itself with a coat of lime over every inch of their naked hides and faces painted black with charcoal. This branch of the family wore rows of animal teeth and claws about their necks. They carried no weapons. They moved oddly, crouched and sometimes on all fours in imitation of beasts though they were clearly men. They made a show of sniffing and studying the ground as they loped over the mud and splashed through the stream at the center of the bed.
These were the trackers.
It was one of these who found the twin furrows left by the travois. He barked for the others and hopped around, waiting for them to gather.
Lee’s first shot took the tracker through the head.
The others jumped away as the spray of blood and bone spattered them. The blue men were the first to run. They’d seen this before. The black masks and lime-asses, as Lee took to thinking of them, stood dumbly looking down at their near-headless pal twitching out his last at their feet.
Lee dropped another with an intentional wounding shot to the hip. In another hide, farther along his side of the river bed, Chaz opened up, bringing down two more with center mass shots. The rest got the idea and went haring back to the trees on the other side. Lee took a last one in the thigh. That left behind two wounded but not ambulatory to shriek out their pain for the others to hear.
And that was enough. They were low on ammo. Maybe three hundred rounds between them for the M4s. They needed to conserve. Each shot had to count now.
The idea was to slow the fuckers down, make them think twice. Maybe scare them off.
Lee watched and listened. No movement on the other side. Just a damp wind through the leaves. The two poor suckers rolled around and screamed for their buddies. Their cousins had either wised up or just didn’t give a shit. Sorry, bro. Nobody’s coming to save your blue ass today.
Calls began rising from inside the trees. Answering calls came from deeper within. The long bleat of a hunting horn came from up slope. A second and then a third sounding further off with each reply.
The hunt was on for real.
That was the signal for the Rangers to move. Lee rose from his hide and, picking his way low through the shadows of the trees, followed the bank of river bed westward. Ahead of him, C
haz would be doing the same thing.
Stick and move, stick and move. Halt the enemy where they could, harassing them, keeping them off their pace.
If it worked, it would buy Jimbo, Bat, and the others time enough to reach the choke point ahead of him and Chaz. If not . . .
Well, there was no use thinking about that.
48
Shanghai Blues
“I’m bored. Tell me something I can think about,” Morris said.
“Samuel visited us,” Caroline said over the sat phone.
“Whuh—where you are?” Morris almost mentioned the Ocean Raj, the ship they called home.
“He had some words of advice for us all.”
“You’re killing me here, Sis.”
“You asked me to tell you something you could think about, Mo.”
“But not something to drive me crazier than I’m already going.”
“We’ll have the team back soon. We’re pushing the schedule up as much as we can. Then we’ll come to terms with this Taan guy.”
“He wants us to work for him.”
“I know that.”
“Will the team agree?”
“Dwayne says they’ll put it to vote. He’s pretty sure how it’ll come out. We’ve all come this far, right?”
“Right,” Morris agreed though he wasn’t convinced. It just seemed too much to ask these men to take another risk for his sake.
“This is what they do. It’s not like any of them were going to retire,” Caroline said.
“Yeah.”
“Stephen’s woke up. I’ll give him a kiss from his uncle.” The line went dead before he could respond.
Morris was playing the back nine at Augusta on a virtual golf course set up in the media room of his suite. Though he never had any interest in the game before, he was getting pretty good at it. He was trying to break ninety and might just manage it if he could get on the green in two on the eleventh.
Two men entered the room unannounced. Another pair of Taan’s army of muscular toughs. These guys were dressed in black Armani like the others with buttoned-up white dress shirts and no ties. One removed the golf club from Morris’ hands. The other held the door open. Neither said a word, but the intent was clear.
They all took a ride down in the elevator to the garage level where a stretch limo waited. A third tough opened the rear door and nodded his head for Morris to enter.
Taan was seated in the deep leather seat that curved along the rear of the luxury car. The two toughs who had retrieved Morris pushed him down on the bench seat across from Taan then took seats on either side of Morris. This was new. Something was up. Mr. Taan waited until the door was pressed shut before he spoke.
“I think you would agree that I am a patient man,” Taan said.
“Gracious even,” Morris offered with a weak smile.
“But all things have a limit. I feel your sister and her associates are not treating this situation with the gravity it requires. In short, they are stalling.”
“They’re not, Mr. Taan. There are complications that you can’t—”
Mr. Tann lowered his eyes and raised an open hand. “Your sister is clever, maybe more so than you. We have tried to triangulate her current location during your many telephone calls. It would not surprise you, I’m sure, to learn that she routes those calls through many satellites and earth stations.”
Morris felt beads of sweat forming in his hairline despite the pleasantly cool interior of the limo.
“And so, I regret, we must increase pressure in the only way we can.” Taan frowned with what looked like honest regret in his eyes.
The car engine hummed to life, its gentle vibrations felt through the plush carpet beneath Morris’ feet.
“Um, where are we going, Mr. Taan?” Morris said, poorly feigning idle curiosity.
“I am going nowhere.” The door was pulled open, and Mr. Taan exited the limo. The door was slammed closed after him.
49
The Pack
N’itha saw them first and froze.
She was at the lead of her group rounding a sharp bend in the river. Before her, the pack was resting and drinking around a broad pool formed by the rain the night before. Jet black with silver fur about their mouths. A full pack with their cubs napping by mothers sunning on rocks along the banks. N’itha had no name for them though she had seen the skin of one worn by a hunter in her village.
Jimbo recognized them from one of the picture books. Dire wolves. A hundred or more within a hundred yards of them and blocking their way.
Jimbo took N’itha’s wrist and, together, they began backing away slowly, returning the way they’d come toward the shelter of a huge deadfall trapped against the curve in the bank.
Too late.
It was a cub that spotted them first. It raced toward them yapping, rousing the adults in the pack who stood with ears peaked atop broad skulls. Their wide set eyes studied the open river bed, and the pup rushing toward a pair of figures, moving away now at a run.
The wolves were up and streaming toward the unexpected prey. They rushed headlong in a rough wedge, the pack leader snarling and snapping to take his place at the lead, drawing blood from brother and sister alike in his fight to be the first to the kill. They rounded the deadfall in a baying torrent of fur and fangs, yelping and grunting.
Jimbo shot the lead wolf through the chest, spilling the big animal to the ground. The .458 Win Mag round blew an exit hole the size of a fist through the big canine. It fell stone dead, spraying blood and bone fragments over the racing pack. Some of the wolves following close behind stumbled over the collapsed form of their leader. The rest either leapt the collision or eddied around it intent, on fresh meat and hot blood.
He stood and chambered another round to bring down a second wolf. Its skull opened like a bloody flower. The only effect was to spur the others on to greater speed. The pack split around the second carcass as it skidded on the mud to a rest. They joined together once again to aim for Jimbo like the point of a spear.
Running was of no use. They’d only drag him down after a few steps. And Bat and the others were still making their way up the slope into the woods above carrying the burden of an unconscious Rick Renzi. He worked the bolt and took down another wolf with a shot from the hip. The creature spun like a top, colliding with others rushing up behind. These were big animals. Lean in the body like coyotes but broader in the chest like a mastiff. Their jaws were wider, more gape-mouthed than the wolves he knew. The eyes were pale as moonlight against ebon coats. They were seconds away from tearing him apart unless he could change their minds.
He chambered the last round in the magazine and put the hammer down on the nearest wolf. It went end over end before falling to the slurry kicking and convulsing, its spine shattered. Jimbo took the rifle by the barrel and flung it at the snarling mass now spreading out to rush about his flanks for the kill. A wolf yipped when the heavy rifle impacted on its skull, but the onrush did not slow in the least.
Jimbo drew the stone hammer he’d stuck in his belt earlier and crouched to receive the charge, wishing once again that the Pimas had a death chant. The mass of slavering jaws grew larger, tongues lolling wet, eyes hungry.
He sensed something off to his blind side. A hand touched his wrist, sliding something between his fingers. The rubberized grip of the .500 revolver. Jimbo turned his head to confirm what he already knew. Byrus stood braced with the tomahawk in his fist. His good eye was here to watch his flank. The Macedonian would never leave his side in a fight. The big wheel gun bucked in his hand as he sent one fat load after another into the mass of the pack. One, two, three animals were down. The point of the pack closed the gap in three leaps. He felt a heavy mass strike him in the chest, and he was bowled over. A vice-like pressure gripped his arm, making him drop the club.
The revolver was pressed between him and the beast pinning him to the ground. He kicked out a booted foot and felt the bone of a second attacker snap under the bl
ow. Dangerous as it was, he depressed the trigger on the .500. The heat of the blast scorched him across the mid-section with a muffled roar. The body atop him was lifted off with the force of the point-blank blast. Jimbo kicked clear, conscious of sharp pain in his left forearm. Hot blood seeped through his clothes to the skin. Some of it was his own, he knew.
By him, Byrus was swinging the tomahawk to ward off the snapping jaws of the last two wolves remaining on the attack. A third lay feebly spasming in the mud at his feet. The rest of the pack had done the math and were running off, tails down, as fast as they could, back the way they’d come.
Byrus caught one of the two animals still dogging him across the snout sending, teeth and blood dashing away in a shower. The second beast saw its opening and leapt. Firing freehand from a recumbent position, Jimbo caught the animal in mid-air with a shot that ripped through its midsection. The wolf landed on its side, snapping and snarling at the greasy mess of entrails cascading from its rent gut sack. The Macedonian dropped to straddle the remaining wolf. He raised and dropped the tomahawk until he was covered in blood and flesh and the brute lay unmoving in the river muck.
Vision swimming Jimbo rose to his feet. The pain from the bite to his arm was taking hold now and sending fingers of white-hot fire the length of his arm and into his chest. He hobbled to where the thrown rifle lay and shoved the hot revolver into his waistband to free his good arm to lift it. He almost fell again and felt something gripping him around the ribs.
It was Bat. She was smiling up at him, but her eyes wavered with fear and tension.
“You are out of your fucking mind,” she breathed.
She and Byrus helped him to the shoreline where they put him down by Rick’s travois. N’itha crouched there, knife in hand to defend her man to the last breath. Byrus left them to run down the hill. He returned weighed down with the carcass of the largest wolf across his shoulders as well as the discarded Winchester. No one asked him why he wanted the dead wolf. They were all too damned tired to be curious.
