"I'm here," he said, rushing out the door and skipping down the steps. He had all his gear with him, though he was still struggling with straps, buckles, and Velcro. He paused for a moment, listening as if he had to verify what she'd reported to him.
"I told you I heard a chopper. Can't you hear it? We need to get moving." She wasn't fully panicked yet but she was headed there.
Ricardo flipped his nightvision down, twisted the power knob, and pointed toward the front gate. "That way."
"We don't have a key! How are we going to get through?"
"There's a patch in the fence. We can cut it out. I'll grab some bolt cutters from the shop and meet you there. Go!"
Ricardo dashed further back into the compound, heading for one of Conor's open tool sheds. Valeria ran in the other direction. Even over her pounding heart she could hear the chopper was on the move again and coming in their direction. She wanted to shout at Ricardo again, to scream at him that he needed to get moving.
She reached the gate and rattled it desperately. There was no room for her to get through the gap or climb beneath it. The razor wire that topped it glistened with moonlight in the glow of her optic. That wasn't an option either. She cursed and gave the gate another frustrated shake.
She looked back over her shoulder and sucked in a breath to shout at Ricardo. The words froze in her throat as the chopper came into sight over the trees. Her eyes dropped to the shop building, ready to shout a warning. Just as Ricardo appeared in the door, bolt cutters held victoriously in one upraised hand, the chopper exploded above them.
The blast knocked Valeria off her feet, slamming her face-first into the fence. She slid to the ground, disoriented by the white flash that filled the twin tubes of her nightvision. A wave of heat hit her as the chopper fell into the compound with an earsplitting, grinding crunch of metal.
There was a secondary explosion as the fuel tanks went. Valeria felt another wave of heat pass over top of her. There was the sound of shattering glass as the windows were blown out of the main living quarters. Cabins near the landing pad burst into flame. Valeria shoved her optic out of the way and looked toward the last place she'd seen Ricardo alive. In the firelight, she saw the toolshed had been knocked askew by the explosion, the walls folded over and the roof sagging.
Ricardo had to be in there somewhere. Could he still be alive?
There was a screech of metal and the hull of the burning chopper shifted. The still-spinning rotors caught the steel cables supporting Conor's radio tower. The cables snapped like strings ripped from a guitar and the entire tower shook from the bottom to the top. Then, to Valeria's horror, the tower began a lazy arc downward, slamming into the toolshed, and nearly flattening it to the ground.
Valeria opened her mouth and screamed in horror.
52
Jewell Ridge, Virginia
When the chopper headed back down the mountain, retreating away from them instead of pursuing, Conor pulled alongside Barb's horse. "I suppose that's Browning come to pay us a visit!"
"You think?" she snapped.
"Stop for a second."
Barb reined her horse in, stopping beside her father. "What is it?"
"Think about it. Why would he go behind us, Barb?"
She considered his words and then it hit her. "To drop a team."
"Correct, and what purpose would be served by having a team behind us?"
She grinned as it dawned on her. "Browning wants to drive us into a trap."
"You got it. You want to wait on our pursuers?"
She didn't have to be asked twice. She liked fighting a lot more than she liked running. She threw her leg over her horse and slid to the ground. "I'll tie my horse off in the woods and prepare a little welcome party."
"I'll keep moving forward. I expect they'll try to get ahead of us here in a minute and lay in a trap. They might be running thermal on that chopper so take that into account, Barb."
She didn't feel like she needed any more coaching. Barb was ready to get on with it. She climbed the shoulder of the road, leading her horse through the high, damp grass and tying it off to a poplar sapling. Hopefully, it was far enough off the road that it might just be out of thermal scanner range if the chopper was moving low and fast.
Digging into her saddlebags, she found the bivvy sack, the waterproof cover that kept her sleeping bag from absorbing moisture when she slept on the ground. With its reflective lining, it doubled as a good survival blanket. In a pinch, it could also hide someone from a thermal optic.
She headed back to the road in time to hear her father disappearing up the mountain, his horse at a gallop. She positioned herself alongside a boulder on the high bank above the road. She could still hear the chopper thumping in the distance. After several minutes of not changing pitch, the sound grew louder again. The chopper was coming in her direction.
She keyed the mic on her comms. "They're headed back up the mountain, Dad. The chopper is getting louder again."
"Roger that."
Barb focused on making sure all of her limbs were covered by the reflective fabric, but the chopper didn't even slow as it charged over her position. The scenario appeared to be playing out exactly as Conor had believed. She had to give her father credit. Sometimes he did know what he was talking about. These people were intent on getting ahead of them and setting up a trap.
With the threat from above gone for the moment, Barb threw the bivvy sack off her and repositioned to get a better view of the road. She rested her rifle on the edge of the boulder, giving her a steady rest for shooting. Then she waited. Several minutes passed, during which she imagined the chopper was either letting more men off along the road or proceeding straight to the compound so they could work their way down from the top.
Suddenly, a powerful blast shook the ground beneath her. She twisted and looked up the mountain. Despite the miles that separated her from the compound, her nightvision picked up the flare of a blast illuminating the night sky. She felt a moment of panic, wondering if this was the missile strike they'd been warned to expect. Had they just lost the compound? And what about Ragus and Shannon? Were they far enough away?
She keyed her mic. "You hear that, Dad?"
"Affirmative. I'm not sure what happened but I think the chopper blew up."
"On the mountain or at the compound?"
"Unknown."
That wasn't the answer she wanted. Barb didn't like the unknown. "I'm settled in alongside the road. I'm going to wait and see if I have guests or not. Have you tried reaching Ragus and Shannon by radio? Maybe they took that chopper out?"
"There's still too much mountain between my position and the dog-hole mine. Even if they're outside the mine they won't pick me up from here. And I doubt they're responsible for that blast. I don't have any surface-to-air missiles."
"You need to correct that. There's obviously a need."
"Obviously."
"That blast would have woke them up, even if the chopper didn't. Keep trying them, Dad. They need to know what's happening so they don't get caught in the middle of it."
"I will. Conor out."
Barb refocused her attention on the road. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the other guests to arrive.
53
Jewell Ridge, Virginia
Ragus, Shannon, and Wayne knew the explosion at the compound must have been unexpected when two of the three men who'd dropped from the chopper came running back in their direction. Their plans had changed. They were shouting between themselves, trying to figure out what was going on.
When the pair ran into his line of sight, Ragus lost it. He'd had all he could take. He threw up his rifle and opened fire on them without a word to his companions. There was no coordination and no plan, no discussion of who was taking out which target. He just started banging away with rage. Now Shannon and Wayne had no choice but to jump in with him and hang on for the ride.
The men in the road hadn't expected to come under fire and were caught unprepar
ed. One caught a round to the chest, grunted, and fell, then staggered back to his feet.
"Armor!" Wayne grunted. "Don't waste your shots on center mass."
The man who'd been hit once already stumbled and went down again, while the other fled back downhill. Shannon chased him with rounds, but never saw any indication that she hit him. In the gnarled and overgrown Appalachian landscape, he was out of their view in seconds.
The man who'd fallen in the road got back to his feet yet again, running on fear or adrenaline. He leveled his rifle in the direction of their muzzle flashes and fired from the hip. It wasn't the move of a trained combatant, but the futile and enraged shooting style of Al Pacino's Scarface. It was a furious effort to overpower his attackers by sheer volume of fire.
Wayne threw Ragus and Shannon to the ground as full-auto fire swept the trees around them. Shredded leaves and twigs rained down on them until the man had expended his mag. Wayne popped up to his knees during the break in the fire and sighted on the man. The combatant in the road had ejected his mag and was fumbling to jam another into the magwell.
Wayne got the reticle of his optic on the dark mass of the man's face and helmet, then squeezed off a round. The man's head snapped and his body stiffened. He dropped the rifle and went sprawling over backward. Wayne watched him through his optic for a moment and saw no movement, heard no screams.
"I'm going after the one that got away," Wayne said, getting to his feet.
"Two!" Shannon reminded him. "There were three originally. There are two out there now."
"I'm going after them."
Ragus staggered to his feet and put his rifle on safe. "What should we do?"
"You two head for the compound. I don't know if you can reach me on your radios, but let me know what you find. There could still be people up there so be careful. Don't bite off more than you can chew. I'll get back to you as soon as I can." Wayne took off running.
Shannon headed out of the woods, Ragus on her heels.
Wayne jogged to the road. He nudged the body of the fallen man to confirm he was out of the fight, then continued down the mountain. Wayne didn't run now but walked quickly, scanning the full breadth of the area in front of him with his nightvision. His rifle was held high and his heart pounded. Was the second man still running away or was he lying in wait for one of them to come after him? And what about that missing third man?
In the distance, Wayne saw a rutted logging road headed up the mountain on the right. It was a newer road, made of fist-sized rocks compacted into the rich black soil of the forest. Wayne's nightvision didn't penetrate the thick forest, the tree canopy blocking any of the ambient moonlight that his optic required to see in the dark.
Even if his eyes weren't providing Wayne with any information, his gut was. His death could be waiting for him in those woods. The entrance to that logging road was as ominous as the dark recesses of a basement viewed by a child standing at the top of the stairs.
Wayne stood there in the road, not moving a muscle, all of his attention focused on the logging road. Even though he couldn't see into the woods, he'd passed that entrance many times in the daylight and knew what lay just beyond the range of his sight. Piles of culled logs and displaced boulders. It was practically a fort.
A shot rang out and Wayne caught a muzzle flash in the dark woods. A bullet whistled by his head, missing him by mere inches. A second ricocheted off the pavement but he was already airborne, diving into the ditch alongside the road. In the chaos, he lost the spot where he'd seen the muzzle flashes, but that didn't stop him from returning fire. He sent several rounds into the darkness, hoping to provoke return fire, hoping to provoke his attacker into giving up his position.
Finally, after a half-dozen rounds, that approach paid off. The man concealed in the log pile sent a barrage of fire in Wayne's direction. Wayne was flat in the ditch and the rounds sailed over his head, pinging off rocks and sending flakes of shale whistling through the air. Wayne kept his head low but caught just enough of a flash to help him focus his return fire.
He raised his rifle and dumped five quick rounds on the target. He'd hoped to be rewarded with a scream of pain, the curses of an injured man, but there was no reaction at all. Wayne wondered for a moment if he'd killed the shooter and he'd slumped over and died without so much as a sound. Those wishes were dispelled when the man again began dumping rounds in Wayne's direction.
Wayne let out a groan, expecting he was going to be here for a while. With this man entrenched behind cover, there'd be no quick end to the firefight. Wherever that third man was headed, Wayne wasn't going to reach him anytime soon.
54
Jewell Ridge, Virginia
Long before she ever saw the men she was waiting on, Barb heard the gunfire higher up the mountain. She didn't know if it was her father or someone else. She didn't know if it was someone under attack or waging an attack. She waited for a call on the radio, for someone needing help, but no requests came so she stayed on her post.
She wasn't the only one who'd heard the gunfire. The men she was waiting on had heard those shots too. Now they were afraid they were missing all the action and were rushing up the road to the best of their physical abilities. They were slowed, however, because one of the three had apparently landed badly as he was hoisted to the ground.
The injured man limped along between his buddies, an arm thrown over each of their shoulders. Though his eyes were obscured by his nightvision, she could see the way his mouth twisted in pain with each step.
Broken ankle, she thought.
Amid his grunts of pain, his companions cursed and complained.
"Just let us leave you here," the man on the left said. "We'll come back."
The man desperately shook his head. "No way! Browning won't come back. You know what they say about him. He'll leave me here. I'll be stuck here and these hillbillies will kill me."
"We may be stuck here anyway," the man on the right complained. "It sounded like the chopper blew up."
"Bullshit!" the injured man said. "That had to be the explosives we brought in. They said they were going to blow the place."
"No way he had time to set those charges," the left man said. "It had to be the chopper. Maybe the guy we're hunting had a rocket launcher."
"You better hope we're not stranded here," the right man said. "They say these hillbillies have gone cannibal. They eat people."
Barb couldn't help but smile as she overheard their conversation. Idiots.
All of the men fell silent and walked faster, fixated on being trapped in the land of hillbilly cannibals. The injured man had his rifle slung over his back. The other two carried their weapons in their free hands. Barb had them in her sights and knew she could take them out. She'd kill the uninjured men first, then swing back to the middle for the man with the broken ankle. After all, this wasn't conventional warfare and they weren't bound by the Geneva Convention. They weren't taking prisoners and injuries didn't merit special treatment.
Still, she couldn't pull the trigger on them. She had her crosshairs on the face of the man to her right. He was the closest to cover. She could go right, left, then center.
But she didn't. It just didn't feel...sporting.
She knew that was a ridiculous thought. This wasn't hunting and it certainly wasn't a game. These were enemies. These were invaders most likely there on the mountain to kill her, her father, and their friends. They certainly wouldn't have cared about fairness if it was them staring down the barrel at her. Then again, maybe it wasn't about fairness for her either. Perhaps it was about satisfaction.
Would pulling that trigger give her the satisfaction she wanted or was that best obtained in a more personal manner? Even with the more rational part of her brain urging her to pull the trigger and be done with it, she didn't. She let the trio pass in their slow stagger, looking like three drunks leaving the bar after a long night.
Only when they'd moved past her position did she ease off the high bank and move dow
n to the road. She fell in behind them, her soft-soled desert books deathly quiet as she stalked the men. She drew her combat knife, the razor-sharp blade barely whispering as it slid from its sheath.
It wasn't until she was mere steps behind the men, nearly within reach, that one of them heard or sensed her. It was the man toward the outside of the road, toward her right. He carried his rifle in his right hand, making him slightly more of a threat than the man on her left, who carried his weapon in what she presumed to be his off-hand.
The man on her right turned slightly, hardly more than a glance in reaction to something. When he spotted her menacing presence in the eerie glow of his nightvision, he flinched and cried out. He let go of his injured buddy and tried to swing his rifle to bear but Barb let loose with a high, spinning kick. Her boot caught him in the face. His nightvision broke loose from the mount, sending it spinning off into the darkness.
The injured man fell to the ground as he was released by his other buddy. The man to her left took a step back from her, still trying to process what he was seeing. He understood he needed to get his rifle back to his strong hand and shoulder, but he hesitated, fumbling as his adrenaline surged. Barb rushed him, stepping on the face of the fallen man between them. His nightvision came loose from the mount too. Beneath her boot, it ground into his face and crushed his cheekbone.
As the fallen man cried out in pain, the man to her left backpedaled. Barb closed the distance and lashed out with the knife before he could get his rifle up. That first slash severed his right bicep. His arm flopped uselessly and his rifle clattered to the ground. On the backswing, Barb buried her knife in his neck and twisted it. When she yanked her blade free, the man tried to stem the flow of blood. He got one hand to his throat but his other arm no longer responded to commands.
Ultraviolent: Book Six in The Mad Mick Series Page 36