by Jack Carr
CHAPTER 40
RAIFE’S FEET WERE SOAKED and numb from stalking through the icy creek. It was the only way to stay below the buck’s vision. He moved at a painfully slow pace to reduce the noise signature, the glacial stream freezing his calves. When he was within one hundred yards of the deer, he set down his bow and moved carefully onto the grassy bank. He unlaced his boots and set them aside on the dry land. Ordinarily he would have made his final stalk wearing just his wool socks, but, given their saturation, he was afraid that they might make a squishing sound, betraying his presence. He removed them as well and laid them out on the stalks of grass to air dry. He pulled the knit wool cap from his head and tore a handful of vegetation from the ground. Weaving the long strands into the fabric, he transformed the simple hat into a crown of local camouflage.
He was on all fours now, crawling in the long grass the way he’d watched lionesses hunt in Africa. He wondered for a moment how many men had crawled through this same valley, bow or atlatl in hand, in pursuit of deer, elk, or even mammoths. It wasn’t uncommon to find the flint artifacts of hunters past when the soil on the ranch was turned over by spring rains.
He pulled the powder-filled sock from his hip pocket and gave it a shake to test the wind; it was light but holding. He slipped it away and continued his slow crawl, his bow in his right hand. He put his weight on his knuckles so as not to damage the bow as he moved. It was slow going but now was not the time to rush. Sneaking a peek, he saw that he was sixty yards from the branches of the fallen pine. A good shooter with a compound bow could take a shot on an animal of this size from where he knelt but, with a recurve, even an archer of his talents needed to cut that figure in half. Raife eased back into a crawl and began to close the final yards.
Forty yards. He slipped an arrow from the leather-covered quiver attached to the bow’s frame and carefully nocked it onto the braided bowstring. He held the bow in his left hand, his pointer finger holding the arrow securely on its rest. In ten more yards, Raife would rise to both knees to keep his hips on a level plane and bring the bow to full draw. The buck would stand up and Raife would have a split second to release the shot before the animal bounded out of range. His breathing was rapid, and his mind was totally focused on the next move, the next soft spot to place his hands and knees. Despite the cool morning temperatures, rivulets of sweat ran down his face. To Raife, there was no feeling more natural, more human, than the stalk.
He wrapped two fingers of his right hand around the string and purposefully relaxed his left hand’s grip on the bow. His body rose slowly but deliberately, his eyes focused on the spot where he knew the buck’s shoulder would be. Raife’s head was just clearing the crest of the grass stalks when he saw the buck lurch to his feet; it was always shocking how big these animals were at close range. Raife froze. Something had spooked the buck, but his focus was over Raife’s head toward the ridge behind him. The sixth sense. Morphing from hunter to warrior in less than a second, he sprinted forward as the ground around him came alive, eruptions of dirt showering upward and the unmistakable crack of supersonic rifle rounds passing nearby.
Instincts, hardwired from nearly two decades of sustained combat, took over. His hands released the bow as he sprinted toward the tree that had been the buck’s hiding spot, the Colt coming effortlessly from its leather holster as he ran. He could hear the incoming rounds chewing into the earth around him. Halfway to the tree, he dove the remaining yards, his body going fully horizontal as it flew for the only available cover.
He hit hard on his belly and knees and rolled back the way he’d come, pressing his body against the trunk of ponderosa pine. Rounds impacted the thick wood fibers but, thanks to the velocity they’d lost on their way to the target, none penetrated completely through.
There was no “why me?” or “why now?” clogging the former commando’s consciousness. Instead, he was entirely focused on prevailing. He was lying on his side, body parallel to the trunk of the tree. He turned his head to ensure that no one was moving in on the ridge behind him.
Take a breath, look around, make a call.
Raife took a moment to take stock of the situation. Multiple bad guys with Kalashnikovs; he’d been shot at by them enough times to know exactly what they sounded like. No sign of a belt fed, which was good news. He hoped that they didn’t have an RPG. If there was a sniper among them, he’d already be dead, which meant they probably didn’t have anything more capable than AKs or AKMs.
He had a handgun that was designed when Taft was in the White House. It held seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. Two more magazines were stowed in a leather pouch on his belt. The ridgeline where the fire was coming from was an honest 300 yards from his position and it was farther, almost 500, to the next ridge behind him. He was essentially in the bottom of a gigantic bowl, hiding behind one of the only available pieces of cover. It wasn’t good, but it could have been worse; it can always be worse.
The creeks such as the one through which he had just waded all flowed into a swampy area to his left, which would be chest-high with water at the moment. That meant that, when these guys started trying to flank him, they would have to do so from his right. The volume of fire coming his way became more sporadic as his attackers began to change magazines. He could hear someone yelling in a language other than English, no doubt their leader taking command of the situation. He must have directed them to conserve ammunition because the full-auto bursts were replaced with a steady stream of semiautomatic fire designed to keep him in place so that they could maneuver to make the kill.
Raife low-crawled to the extreme left end of the log and slowly began to ease his way forward until he could see one of the shooters. The first figure was prone, the dust from his rifle’s muzzle blast giving away his position. He continued to push himself forward with his toes as he brought his 1911 to bear, searching for a larger target at this extreme range. The third figure he spotted must have been the leader; he was up on one knee, directing the other members of the team with his left arm.
Raife was in what was known as the rollover prone position, an incredibly steady way to shoot a handgun. The distance would have been unfathomable to most shooters, but Raife’s dedication to training with the 1911 at extreme handgun ranges was about to pay off. His thumb pushed down on the safety unconsciously as his hands brought the pistol to full extension. His eyes found the serrated front sight and held it at the midway point of the target’s torso, the steel blade rising halfway above the rear notch to accommodate for the distance. He exhaled deeply and trusted the area wobble of his sights, all focus on the front post as his finger pressed evenly back against the trigger. The shot broke, and he completed his follow-through before shifting his eyes to the target in case a correction was needed. His ears registered the hollow sound of a large bullet slapping flesh, and he saw the distinctive Russian weapon drop to the ground.
* * *
Reece raced down the dirt roads with both hands on the wheel, Jonathan directing him at each turn. He was familiar with the ranch, but no one knew the land the way Jonathan did. Reece could see Raife’s parked Land Rover as they came around a tight bend, and Jonathan motioned for him to stop. He rolled down the window to listen and Reece shut off the motor. They heard the unmistakable sound of rifle fire in the distance. Jonathan considered the terrain for a moment and pointed forward on the track.
“Drive up to this ridge and drop me off. You continue down this road and you’ll likely come up on whoever is after Raife. I know you can handle yourself.”
Reece cranked the motor and sped up the incline ahead. The road took them up a ridgeline that ran parallel to the direction of the gunfire. The ridge appeared to be the highest terrain feature in the area, so Reece would most likely come in above the action. Several hundred yards up the ridge, Jonathan motioned for Reece to slow down. He opened the passenger door while the Cruiser was still rolling and prepared to bail out. As soon as the vehicle stopped, his boots were on the ground
. Zulu jumped between the seats and followed his master out the door.
Reece sped forward. He rolled all of the windows down and, thanks to the Cruiser’s effective exhaust system, could hear the gunfire clearly over the engine. By the sound of it, he was getting close. He braked to a halt just below the military crest of the next hill. He grabbed his carbine and climbed out of the SUV. Running to the rear of the vehicle, he opened the back hatch to retrieve a small backpack before moving on foot toward the sound of the guns.
CHAPTER 41
THE TEMPO OF FIRE increased, indicating the flank had begun. This was small-unit tactics 101: one element provides a base of fire to fix the enemy in place while the second element moves to close the distance and gain an improved fighting position. The covering team then leapfrogs ahead and takes up the next advantageous position until everyone on the objective is dead.
Downrange, if found in such a scenario against a numerically superior force, Raife and his team would have used all of their firepower, as well as whatever fire support was available, to break contact with the enemy. This was different. He had no team, no real firepower, and certainly no fire support.
Oh, to have a radio and an AC-130 gunship circling overhead right now.
He turned his body around so that his head was facing the right side of the tree and eased his way forward, ever so slightly gaining an angle on the opposing ridge. The lead figure was running obliquely downhill toward Raife at somewhere past 150 yards, AKM swinging as he sprinted forward. Raife lay prone, his abdomen flat on the ground, and his body aligned with the moving figure. He waited for the attacker to stop, since even he couldn’t hit a moving target at this distance. The man took cover behind a boulder that left only his head exposed and immediately began raining accurate fire on Raife’s position. Raife fired quickly, rushing the shot just a bit, and saw dust fly in the man’s face as his bullet impacted the rock. He fired another round and slid back behind his rapidly disappearing cover just as a burst of fire stitched the ground in front of him, sending clods of dirt and pine fragments into his face. Raife was about out of time.
Another assaulter got a little too confident as he bounded past his team member behind the boulder. Taking a knee in a spot high enough to allow him a direct line of fire into Raife’s position, he was rewarded with a hardball to the lung that quickly took him out of the fight. These men were not fanatical Fedayeen hopped up on amphetamines; they were street thugs used to getting by on bravado and intimidation. Raife didn’t know how many men he was up against, but it sounded like fewer than ten. He’d hit at least two of them. Still, the odds weren’t good. Taking advantage of the moment, Raife pulled a fresh magazine from his pouch and performed a tactical reload. He stuck the partially loaded mag in the back pocket of his pants, where he could reach it if necessary.
The fire was intense, with multiple shooters putting rounds directly into Raife’s position. Only his attackers’ mediocre marksmanship skills and a slight dip in the ground were keeping him from getting hit. He made himself as small a target as possible, hugging every inch of the terrain as rounds hissed and cracked over his head and pounded the ground in front of him. There was a lull as one of the shooter’s magazines ran dry and Raife snuck a peek; two men were bounding in to within one hundred yards at a dead sprint. He snapped off two rounds in their direction, which sent them diving for cover.
He didn’t think about the fact that he’d survived multiple combat deployments targeting Al Qaeda and ISIS and was about to get killed on his own ranch in Montana. Nor did he think about his pregnant wife just a few miles away. Instead he thought about improving his fighting position and exploiting every technical and tactical advantage he could. If this was his last stand, he wasn’t going to make it easy on them.
* * *
The Teams had a saying: “Don’t rush to your death.” There was hardly ever a good reason to go barging into a target at full speed without carefully assessing the situation. The one big exception was a hostage rescue mission, where safety was sacrificed for speed in the name of protecting the hostage. There was another exception: when your friends were in trouble. From the sound of it, Raife was in a really bad spot. Reece heard at least a half-dozen rifles firing from multiple positions, interrupted only by the occasional pop of what must have been Raife’s .45.
He slowed his progress just for a second as he reached the top of the ridge, and crawled the final few yards so as not to silhouette himself at the peak. The noise from the rifle fire rose abruptly as he cleared the rise, the sound waves no longer absorbed by earth and trees. Reece saw a group of three men ahead, bounding toward the only piece of cover in the valley below. There was no time to make a more thorough assessment; they were moments away from overrunning Raife’s position.
He had a pair of range-finding binoculars in his pack, but he wasn’t going to waste precious seconds retrieving it. Reece estimated the camouflage-clad shooters to be about three hundred yards away so he dialed the scope’s magnification to six-power and found a solid prone position. He held for two mils of elevation on the optic’s Christmas-tree-shaped reticle and sent a 77-grain round into his first target, which toppled to the ground from a dead run. The suppressor mounted to his rifle didn’t mask the supersonic crack of the bullet, but it did disguise the muzzle blast, making his location difficult to pinpoint. The shot caused immediate confusion among the members of the assault element, and the firing came to a precipitous halt. Reece heard Raife’s pistol boom in response. He was still in the fight. Reece fired another round into the fallen man to keep him down for good, then shifted left to acquire a new shooting position.
Firing resumed from below, a long burst echoing across the valley. Reece spotted the source, a proned-out figure just uphill from the one he’d just put down. His first round fell short, sending a visible geyser of dirt skyward. He made a slight correction and fired three more times at a steady cadence. Reece watched the man writhe violently through the scope as his body fought against the unseen force that had shattered bones and severed organs.
The last man saw the fate of his teammates and took cover behind a boulder, sneaking single shots in Reece’s direction before disappearing once again. Reece cranked the scope up to its full magnification and shifted his body to a more stable position. He put his weight on the rifle’s magazine, digging it into the ground like a monopod for stability. The shooter’s exposures from cover were random, a bit like a game of Whac-A-Mole, but there were only so many options. Reece exhaled, put his finger on the trigger, and took up most of its weight as he waited for the target to appear. He saw the muzzle first and knew that the head would follow. The AR’s sear broke from its tension just as the shooter’s head was moving clear of the boulder. Reece saw chunks of brain matter take flight and heard the smack of the bullet’s impact a moment later.
CHAPTER 42
DIMITRY’S ARM HURT LIKE hell but it bled very little. The bullet had hit his forearm just below the elbow, rendering the arm all but useless.
Who in the hell could shoot a pistol like that?
He held his weapon awkwardly in his left hand now, but his job was to command, not necessarily to shoot. He had kept one man back with him to make up the base element as the maneuver element pushed toward Raife Hastings.
Dimitry watched as the assault team bounded to within one hundred yards of the target. They had him flanked. It would all be over in a matter of minutes. Dimitry saw one man go down. He would have to be left behind, since they had no ability to carry his body out on foot. None of his men carried identification though the tattoos would give them away as bratva if killed or captured. By that time, the rest of the team would be across the Canadian border and possibly already in the air, bound for safe houses on the other side of the Atlantic.
Observing the final assault through binoculars, part of him wished he’d stayed in the army, but the officer bullshit outweighed the fighting by too heavy a margin.
There was no sign of movement behind the
log where he’d last seen Hastings take cover.
Maybe he was already dead?
His eyes saw another man fall as a shot echoed across the canyon.
What in the hell?
Dimitry lowered his binoculars and scanned the ridges for a shooter.
A pistol reverberated in the canyon and another three rounds tore across the open bowl from the new rifle in the fight, the sonic report bouncing around the terrain like a pinball. Whoever was shooting had to be to Dimitry’s left. He barked at the Russian next to him and told him to change magazines. He flipped his own weapon upside down and held it between his knees so that he could change its magazine left-handed. That painfully slow process complete, he motioned to his comrade to follow him.
They jogged forward, side-hilling just below the crest of the ridge that circled the valley. It was tough going and both men were quickly winded. Dimitry heard another shot, but this time he could hear the muffled muzzle blast. The hollow sound that echoed back from the valley below told him that another of his men had fallen. Shit!
Dimitry knew the shooter was close so he bent downward as he ran, using his muzzle to motion for his comrade to do the same. They cleared a small rise and his eyes quickly found the new source of gunfire. The man was prone behind his rifle and focused on the valley below. Dimitry stepped behind one of the large pines that dotted the landscape and braced his wounded right arm against the bark to steady his aim. The sniper was only fifty yards away.
Dimitry was right eye dominant and struggled to find a good sight picture from his left shoulder. He’d closed his right eye, and the blurred figure filled the crude open steel sights of the AKM. He began to press the rifle’s heavy trigger when the last member of the team opened fire to his left, the sniper disappearing in a cloud of dust and debris.