Lex Talionis

by Peter Nealen

  We could hear the rumble of engines as the armored vehicles trundled up the dirt road from the East Gate. I had little doubt that the other element would be along soon, since Eddie had blown the bunkers at the North Gate. They were a bit discombobulated, thanks to losing their TL, but they’d rally if they were any kind of professionals, which they appeared to be.

  Tom led the way, jogging around behind the house and past the barns. Fortunately, we didn’t have far to go to get to the woods, where those armored vehicles couldn’t follow. They’d have to dismount and follow on foot, and we knew the hills better than they did.

  With one last glance back from the treeline, I caught a glimpse of a dark hulk rumbling up to the front of the ranch house, before I turned and plunged into the shadows under the trees.

  We’d be back. We’d wreaked our vengeance on the narco assholes who had ordered Jim murdered. We’d catch our breath and deal with these fucksticks, too.

  Chapter 10

  It was a tough slog. We had a nine-thousand-foot tall mountain to climb, and we weren’t going to be able to stop once we reached the top. And we had to expect to be pursued the entire way.

  It was getting dark, and the trees and the terrain would deny our adversaries the use of their vehicles, along with the heavy weapons and high-powered night and thermal optics that went with them. But as I hiked up the rocky slope of the mountain, sometimes half supporting myself on the trees growing just down-slope, I could hear the faint buzz that announced the fact that our pursuers still had drones up. They’d probably launched a couple new ones since the gates had been evacuated. Those little quadrotors weren’t that expensive, especially for somebody who had managed to assemble and equip a mechanized paramilitary force like that.

  The people and the equipment weren’t the only factor I was thinking of, either; they would need the sort of money and influence that gets Federal law enforcement to look the other way. There was no way this was legal. Which was why my conscience wasn’t bothering me that much about smoking any of them without warning. It wasn’t like they’d come to the gate and presented a warrant.

  The terrain necessitated a single file. It was too damned steep for much else. Tom was up front, leading the support people with a couple of the newer teams. I’d seen Mia with them, briefly, so she’d made it, at least. Eddie and I were in the rear, with our shrunken teams, looking over our shoulders for pursuit, wondering if we weren’t at least half hoping that they’d come after us. They might be well-equipped to beat down doors, but coming after us with LAVs and MATVs didn’t speak well to their preparedness for the mountains. We trained up in the Beartooths for fun. We knew those hills like the backs of our hands.

  I was actually really looking forward to one of their forward scouts running into a grizzly. They’d been seen more frequently in the area lately, and more than one training patrol had had a close encounter with one, fortunately without anybody getting mauled. Somehow, I doubted that our friends down there had considered that factor. The only problem with my rather uncharitable hopes was that they were probably making too much noise for a bear to let them get that close.

  Eddie and I were letting the others get ahead, while we paused more often for short security halts, essentially leaning against the side of the mountain, or wedging ourselves against trees and watching and listening for our enemies.

  Some of the halts were more impromptu than others. As a drone buzzed by overhead, we flattened ourselves against trees, hoping the evergreen boughs would be enough to shield us from thermals, if the drones were carrying them and not glorified GoPros. For all the mythologizing that Hollywood has done, thermals can’t see through foliage. Not well, anyway.

  I took a knee next to a tall, wind-twisted spruce and aimed my rifle back the way we had come, using the tree as something of a rest. I kept moving my attention from our back trail to the sky, though I couldn’t see shit through the tree branches, especially in the dark. That quadrotor was up there; I could hear it plainly enough that it had to be only a hundred yards away at most. But it wasn’t going to be showing lights, and it was just too dark to see.

  I don’t know how long that thing loitered up there, weaving back and forth over the mountainside, but it felt like an eternity. I had my skullcap mount on, and was peering through the trees with NVGs, waiting for the bad guys to come through the trees. If they had thought it through, they could just keep the drones running back and forth across the mountain all night, and keep us in place until they caught up.

  That thought almost got me up and moving before the faint buzz of the quadrotor faded away down the draw. But I stayed put. The last thing that any of us needed to do was panic; they’d catch us and cut us down like grass if we did.

  As the sound of the drone faded, I strained my ears for sounds of pursuit. My hearing wasn’t what it used to be; too many explosions and too much gunfire. But unless they were real woodsmen, I should still be able to hear something if they were getting close.

  The only sounds were the faint, receding noise of the drone and the wind in the treetops. If they were on our trail, they were still a good distance behind us.

  My knees had stiffened as I’d crouched there, waiting, and the left clicked a little as I levered myself to my feet, hoping that nobody else saw me using the tree to help myself up. I needn’t have worried, though; as I turned around I saw Eddie doing the same thing. He looked up as I turned around, and while the NVGs masked both our faces, I got the fleeting impression that both of us were about to bust out laughing at having caught the other moving like an old man.

  The moment of levity didn’t last. Our situation was still too dire. I pointed uphill and Eddie nodded. Tom and the rest should have been a good distance ahead by then. With the drone gone and pursuit still not having caught up, we needed to open up that time-distance gap. It was going to suck; the mountain only got steeper as we got higher. But that was where the rendezvous was.

  Legs burning, we kept going.

  First light was less than an hour away by the time we reached the RV point. Most of the new guys were holding up well, better than some of us older guys, truth be told. Several of the support people, including Mia, were visibly exhausted. It had been a punishing climb; if it had been a patrol rather than an escape, I probably would have split that movement into two nights, hunkering down in a hide site somewhere on the side of the mountain for a day. Instead, we’d pushed all the way up to the grassy top of Tibb’s Butte in about eight hours.

  The Broker was waiting with transportation just as he’d promised, though it probably wasn’t what most of the support guys, or even some of the shooters, had had in mind. But we were in the backwoods, so trucks or even four-wheelers weren’t ideal. This way was slower, but fairly reliable over rough terrain and a good deal quieter.

  We also weren’t going to be able to rest much until we got where we were going. Horse-riding and mule packing are still work.

  The Broker’s guys already had the horses saddled and the mules had pack frames set up so that we could drop our kit in the pouches and go. It took a few minutes, and a little bit of whining and grumbling from all hands, including some of the self-proclaimed hardasses, but we got everyone saddled up and ready to go. Or, at least, as ready as they were going to be. We had done a little bit of horse work in the backcountry just because, but few of us were what you’d call accomplished horsemen.

  Fortunately, the gelding that I’d gotten was a good-tempered and docile animal, and responded readily to my clumsy and hesitant direction. I brought the horse up next to The Broker, who, in the faint gray light of pre-dawn twilight, looked as perfectly at ease on horseback, dressed in jeans and a Carhartt jacket with a broad-brimmed felt hat on his head, as he had in a suit, sitting in a posh, five-star restaurant in Panama City.

  “We’ve only got about four miles to go,” he said quietly. “I’ve got a camp set up, well-concealed, on the other side of the Butte. We should be under the trees and out of sight by the time the sun’
s all the way up.”

  “They’ve got drones up,” I pointed out. “We’re going to stand out crossing four miles of open country.”

  “They are probably looking for a group on foot,” he pointed out, turning his horse toward the long, low slope to the west, “not a group on a horse packing trip. To make matters more interesting, I have several similar groups moving around the nearby hills for the rest of the morning. That should give them more than enough to look at.”

  I just nodded. I was exhausted. The night air in the mountains had chilled down, but the hike had been murderous enough that I was soaked in my own sweat. I wanted nothing more than to lie down on the rocky ground and pass the fuck out. But my own still-simmering anger and determination to live through this and wreak bloody vengeance on the motherfuckers who’d come trying to knock down our door kept me upright in the saddle and my aching eyes searching the horizon and the sky for enemies.

  We rode with the rising sun at our backs, making decent time but keeping the pace slow enough that we didn’t have too many accidents. A few of the less-capable riders fell off their horses, anyway. Eric seemed to have drawn a mare who liked to blow up her stomach when she was being saddled, then relax once the cinch was tightened. His saddle kept sliding to one side or another, and we had to stop to tighten it twice.

  Finally, we descended into another draw on the far side of Tibb’s Butte, getting off the open ground and back into the trees. I’d felt like there were eyes on us the entire ride, especially as we’d heard drones a couple of times, though they never got quite close enough to spot. That didn’t mean anything; they would be equipped with top-of-the-line cameras that could have picked us out from miles away. I just hoped that The Broker’s plan to camouflage our movement worked.

  The Broker led us about three hundred meters down the slope and through the trees, to a small bowl in the mountainside, lined with pine and spruce. There was a camp there, though it was all but invisible until you were right on top of it; the shelters were covered in brush and pine boughs, and there was very little in the way of equipment out. Several of The Broker’s shooters were on security. I wondered where exactly he was getting his personnel, but a man of his obvious resources would have his pick of operators with the price tag he could probably offer.

  Reining in beneath the trees, we slowly, painfully dismounted. A couple of the new guys were rather less than graceful, and Herman, one of Eddie’s guys, managed more of a fall off his horse than a dismount. He lay under the horse and groaned for a long moment before Eddie hauled him away from the animal’s hooves.

  I swung down, feeling every muscle in my body, including a few that I could have sworn hadn’t existed before. It took a few minutes to get everybody situated, while maintaining our own discreet security. So far, The Broker had played straight, but I was not in a particularly trusting mood, and neither were Eddie or Tom.

  Mia looked like she wanted to talk to me, but as soon as she leaned back against her pack, she was asleep.

  The sun was filtering down through the trees, having risen above the bulk of the butte behind us. Eddie, Tom, and I joined The Broker inside one of the shelters.

  “Have you contacted Renton since this started?” The Broker asked.

  I shook my head. “Renton’s organization is as leaky as a sieve,” I said. “Considering that it was because of his people that our identities got spread all over the hell-and-gone in the first place, I can’t trust them.”

  “Certain members of his organization are certainly compromised, at least morally,” The Broker said mildly. I didn’t comment on the incongruity of an international underworld shadow facilitator talking about moral compromise. “But Renton is still clean. You can trust me on that.”

  “I hate to say it,” I replied, before Tom could say anything, though I caught his wintry warning glance, “but trust is in very short supply right now. I know, you pulled our asses out of the fire back there, but just based on your own statement, I can’t trust that your agenda is anything more than saving us as sacrificial lambs for later, when it suits you better.”

  Even Eddie gave me a look at that, but The Broker maintained his bland smile. The son of a bitch was impossible to ruffle. “Your paranoia is impressive, Mr. Stone,” he replied, “if slightly misplaced. Yes, your continued life and freedom does play a part in my plans for the future. I would not have expended the resources and risked the exposure of operating on American soil otherwise. But you need to think; have I ever, to your knowledge, demonstrated such depth of caprice, such stupidity, as to go to this kind of effort on a lark? You gentlemen are a valuable asset; far too valuable to throw away.” He sighed, the first sign of frustration I’d ever seen him indulge in. “If I wanted you disposed of, do you really think that I couldn’t do it in a more straightforward fashion? I would have done exactly what the people who sent that task force out there did, except that I would have done it more competently, and you would not have seen it coming until it was far, far too late.”

  He tilted his head slightly to one side, in that odd sort of way he had, and continued, in a slightly warmer tone. “You do have friends, Mr. Stone. Few and far between, perhaps, but you do have them. Though it is ultimately up to you to decide whether or not to trust me, and therefore trust my word that Renton is also trustworthy, I would suggest that the weight of evidence is on my side.”

  He had a point, and even through the fog of fatigue, I could see it. I still didn’t especially like it. I knew what this man was, and the fact that he was one of our only real friends bothered me, almost as much as my near-murder of that gangbanger in the barn had. My defensive wall of killing fury weakened by weariness, the thought snuck through, What the hell is happening to us? How did we end up here, where our only friends are shadowy networks of spooks and international underworld kingpins? We’re supposed to be the good guys, dammit!

  I quashed the thought as quickly as it came. There would be time for self-examination and recrimination later, if we survived. For the moment, the world was the way it was, and we were going to have to roll with the punches.

  But even as I thought it, I felt a tiredness that went deeper than my physical exhaustion. I hadn’t taken up the gun thinking I’d end up here, hunted in my own country, buddying up with shadowy conspiracies and criminal kingpins.

  I suddenly remembered a brief conversation with Jim, back in Nicaragua, while we’d been hunting down Reyes, the drug kingpin who had been the lead that drew us into the hunt for the shadowy, and illusory, El Duque. Jim had been the oldest of us out in the field, and he’d wondered if it wasn’t getting past time to get out.

  He hadn’t. He’d been brutally murdered before he could.

  I needed to focus on the task at hand. Fortunately, everybody else was just as smoked as I was, so I didn’t think anyone else had noticed my little reverie, though when I looked The Broker in the eyes, I suddenly thought that he at least suspected what I had been thinking. The guy was scary smart, and you didn’t dare do or say anything around him that you didn’t want getting added to the dossier in his head.

  “Fine,” I said. “You’ve got a point.” I rubbed my aching eyes. “We’ll contact Renton, but not until we’ve had some time to rest. It’s been a long forty-eight hours.”

  “We should be secure here,” The Broker said mildly, as if there had been no clash of wills at all. “Get some chow and some sleep, but don’t take too long. Things are moving quickly, and we don’t have a lot of time to spare.”

  We might have simply called on a sat-phone, of which The Broker had several, from the campsite, but at the same time, I wanted to both avoid the possibility of being back-tracked electronically and get a bit better view of the lay of the land. We’d concentrated on the task force’s local dispositions around The Ranch, for the obvious reason that the immediate threat needed to be dealt with or otherwise counteracted first. But there was no way that any kind of paramilitary force, particularly one that size, was going to be operating without
a support base somewhere, and I wanted to know where it was.

  I was pretty sure I knew just where to start looking, too, and my suspicions just made me angrier.

  So, just before dawn, after far too little sleep, Larry and I saddled up and headed down the mountain. Both of us were dressed to appear more like regular old mountain trekkers, rather than mountain fighters; we’d ditched our chest rigs and were riding with pistols only. They’d be less than ideal if we got in a firefight, but if the drones that were still up were looking for dudes decked out in the latest in Tacticool Fashion, they might overlook two guys in Carhartts and broad-brimmed hats on horseback, not visibly armed.

  It was a long ride, over some not insignificant terrain. While the Beartooths got a lot steeper and rougher to the north and west, the draws and slopes we were covering were still plenty steep enough to make riding difficult, especially for two not-so-practiced riders as Larry and me. We were both staying in the saddle, but between the steepness of the slopes, the rocky ground, and the piles of fallen trees we often had to work our way around, we weren’t comfortable. I doubted Larry’s horse was all that comfortable, either. He was a big dude, and it had to be rough going hauling his enormous frame up those mountains.

  We worked our way west, first, crossing the steep-walled canyon that led down toward Deep Lake, and swinging north around Sawtooth Mountain. By the time we hit the Morrison Jeep Trail and headed southeast, it was already late morning. The sky was clear, and I was keeping an eye turned upward, though I was careful to keep my hat brim at such an angle as to obscure my face from any great distance.

  I had good reason to. Even as we cleared the treeline and rode out onto the grassy meadow, the faint buzz of a drone overhead got louder. They knew we’d disappeared into the mountains, and they were searching for us.