Now the shots followed in rhythmic succession, smashing through the windows and into the far wall. Some lodged in the log understructure; others buried themselves in the heavy timbers supporting the roof. They burned in the wood with a bright intensity, suffusing the gray smoke with a blue-white luminescence. Linda irrationally thought about how beautiful it was. The room filled with the acrid smell of hot metal mixed with the pungency of burning pine.
Duane Marshall stepped forward, raising his hands, and begged for their attention. “Please be calm. If we remain calm, we will be safe. Make your way into the kitchen, and one of the staff will lead you to the machine shop and the equipment sheds. These are metal buildings. I repeat, you’ll be safe.”
“What about that bastard who’s shooting at us?” someone said.
“Good question. He’s out front. He can’t cover the front and the sheds in the back. And let me tell you this. He’s a dead man. Our security chief and his men are already looking for him. Now, I’d like four or five volunteers to help our security staff hunt him down and take him out. We can use the hunting rifles from the gun case against the wall. We have ammunition in the tack shed by the corrals. The rest of you please follow Archie, over there.” Marshall pointed to a stringy blond man in staff garb, who raised his hand.
“I’ll be along in a minute.” Marshall reached into the cabinet and removed a .458 Winchester Magnum, a custom-made Holland and Holland double-barrel rifle, handcrafted in London. He’d paid eighty thousand dollars for it. It was a work of art as well as a heavy-caliber hunting rifle. Unfortunately, Marshall failed to recognize that it was the wrong weapon for the task at hand. It had enormous power, meant for elephant and rhino, but the heavy bullet had a drop of close to five feet at four hundred yards. Beyond that range, it was next to useless, but the feel of it in his hands gave him misplaced confidence. The things he killed didn’t shoot back.
The hastily assembled antisniper squad traipsed through the kitchen in orderly fashion. For a moment, the booming of the rifle fire had stopped. Marshall and his squad of empty weapons went out through the kitchen door and trotted toward the corrals to retrieve some ammunition.
The rest of the group crowded around Archie, who was explaining that, for safety’s sake, they were to space their exits, leaving at least three yards between them. Then the heavy booming of the large weapon resumed. At that point, some of the members jammed through the doorway, drowning out Archie’s call for order. “Stand back!” he shouted. “Stand back and let Mr. Combes get through, for God’s sake.” They stood back shamefaced, making room for Combes and his wife. Smoke drifted into the kitchen from the dining area.
Cynthia Combes led her husband to the raised threshold at the kitchen door. “I need some help here, please.” Her voice was sharp but calm. Archie and three or four others stepped forward to assist Harlan Combes over the threshold onto the open cement porch and then down the two shallow steps to the ground. Combes’s wheelchair was battery powered and weighed in excess of two hundred pounds; the inert form of Harlan Combes added at least another hundred and seventy. It would require two of them to get Combes through the door and down the steps, one pushing and one pulling and guiding the front wheels.
Combes anticipated their efforts and put the chair into motion before they were ready. One of the front wheels cleared the threshold, but the other went sideways, jamming the metal chair in the doorway. Combes kept pushing on the toggle switch, wedging it tighter into the door frame. Archie climbed over Combes, who swore softly under his breath. Now they would have two of them to lift the chair from the front and free the other forward wheel.
The first person in the group that had rushed out the door ahead of Combes suddenly crumpled to the ground as he reached the machine shop. This was followed by the distant sound of a discharging firearm. When the second man toppled to one side, blood splattering from his head, the rest panicked, breaking into two groups. Several ran forward toward the metal sheds. Archie shouted at them that he had the keys, but his words were drowned out in the confusion. The remainder turned back and ran for the kitchen door, where Combes and his chair blocked the way. Half a dozen guests had reached the nearest shed and began frantically pulling and banging on the corrugated iron door. Two of them went down almost simultaneously. A third fell, regained his feet, ran toward the ranch house for twenty feet, and was suddenly propelled face forward onto the ground and lay motionless, the back of his head blown away.
The others had reached the kitchen door and were attempting to climb over Harlan Combes to regain the temporary protection of the kitchen. Those trapped on the inside, which was rapidly filling with smoke, pushed in the opposite direction. Then one of the outside people flopped forward in Combes’s lap. Gouts of blood and brain matter flew into the people struggling to get out. Those stranded on the open cement began screaming and swearing at Combes to get out of the way.
“Stop it, or we’ll all die right here. Stop it!” Linda shouted, somehow making her voice heard. She caught Archie’s eye over Combes and the body of the dead man lying in his lap. “Back them off. We’ll have to pull the chair back and try again.” She turned to two of the men standing near her, one large, young, and oafish, the other fortyish and fit. “Grab the chair,” Linda ordered.
“Here, at the handles.” Cynthia Combes indicated the rear handholds.
“We have to straighten it. You push forward,” Linda said to the older man. “You pull backward and to the side,” she said to the younger one, who seemed relieved that someone had taken charge. The older man gave Linda a hard look but did as she asked. The chair straightened in the opening, and they yanked it back into the kitchen, Harlan Combes’s head bouncing about on still shoulders. As soon as the doorway was clear, the remainder of the group in the kitchen, including the older man who had helped free Combes, jammed through the door and ran at the locked sheds. Anything to keep from burning to death.
“I better go. I’ve got the keys.” Archie looked at the two women and the younger man, who had helped Linda and Cynthia Combes with the chair.
“Go!” Linda nodded.
Archie sprinted through the doorway and into clean air and raced for the shed.
“Come on, if we do it right, it should be a piece of cake.” Linda grinned at the young man, who smiled back. The two women positioned themselves at the back of Combes’s chair. Their male counterpart stepped through the doorway and turned his back to the invisible shooter.
He may be short on brains, but he’s long on courage, Linda thought. Cynthia Combes bent over her husband. “Ease up to the sill, Harlan.”
“Then hit the power on the count of three,” Linda added.
Combes was coughing in the smoke. Tears ran down Linda’s cheeks, blurring her vision. They would have to hurry. She could hear the fire behind them now. There was a crashing sound, and a blast of cool air swept into the kitchen through the open door. The dining room window must have gone and reversed the draft. Then she felt an explosion of heat as the fire roared to new life.
“Okay, here we go. One. Two. Three.”
47
•
Seth Parker watched the struggle at the kitchen door with rising disgust. He knew the man in the wheelchair was Harlan Combes, NRA advocate, mover, shaker, and big game hunter. Right to own fully automatic weapons? Combes was for it. Fifty-caliber sniper rifles? Absolutely. Armor-piercing ammo and incendiary ammunition? Why not? How do you like the results, Mr. Secretary? He put the reticle on the doorway and waited for Combes to emerge.
Why not let him live? Parker thought. Killing Combes would be a mercy killing. Mercy killing wasn’t his mission. Let him rot. Parker rested his head against his forearm, the headache insistent, just barely under control. Soon, it would be a favor if someone put him down before the pain drove him to do it himself. He had worked that out, too.
He watched listlessly as the hunt club members clustered around the machine shop door. They banged at the hasp and lock with a rock tha
t kept disintegrating into smaller pieces. He caught the rock wielder in the reticle and squeezed, placing the round in his temple. Blood spattered against the corrugated iron door as the man slammed into the building and slid to the ground.
One of the staff members dressed in khaki came running toward them. He centered the sight on him, then hesitated. This one had courage. He’d been helping the women at the door with Combes. He could choose who lived and who didn’t. So I choose him. How odd, he thought. The man has no idea I just saved his life. He glanced at his watch. Four minutes to withdrawal. He felt oddly detached, as if none of it mattered. Perhaps it didn’t.
Sand flew up into his face, and a piece of gravel pinged into his glasses from the impact of a large-caliber round that struck the rocky slope a couple of feet below him. How about that! Someone had found him. Good. There would be some challenge after all.
He searched the grounds and sheds, then the corral area. The window of the tack shed was partway up. It hadn’t been before. He adjusted the scope for five hundred yards, shifted his body two yards to his left, and rested the .270 on one of the sandbags he had filled and placed when they had reconnoitered the area earlier in the week. He reached into his pocket and removed a small mirror. He angled the mirror at the sun, guided a sunspot onto the side of the tack room, and wedged the mirror in place near his previous position. He waited less than a minute for the muzzle flash. Low again. The shooter had failed to track his first shot. He put his sight just below the windowsill and fired. He worked the bolt smoothly without spoiling his sight picture and fired again. He waited. No return fire. Target neutralized and no one to report to. Okay. Good shooting, Seth. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he whispered under his breath. He checked his watch again. A minute past disengagement.
He returned his attention to the ranch house. Flames were pouring from under the eaves. Seven bodies lay motionless in the early afternoon sun. “ ‘The Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, / And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed,’ ” he murmured to himself.
Harlan Combes’s wheelchair lay on its side near the edge of the steps. Parker watched as the two women who had freed Combes from the doorway dragged him toward the machine shop. He’d have to put them in for the Silver Star, and the foot soldier and the big kid who’d helped them for the Bronze Star. The rest would get the dead yellow bird. He drew back from the edge of his blind and scrambled down the hill until he hit the faint trail that would take him back to his dirt bike. He was terribly tired, and he needed to check on John.
48
•
Frank waited for the .50 to fire again. The shooter had to be somewhere along the ridge across the canyon from the ranch house, probably near the summit overlooking the floor of the canyon. His BLM vehicle with the AR-15 and the twelve-gauge pump was parked in front of the ranch house in the line of fire. Trying to approach it would be suicidal. He would be facing the shooter armed with a handgun, but it wasn’t a complete disadvantage, since the big .50 caliber sniper rifle was next to useless at close quarters. That meant stealth was essential.
An ATV roared into sight from behind the ranch house. Ewan Campbell was hell-bent for the far side of the canyon, on his way to silence the sniper with the .50. Now was the time for him to make his move. He began trotting across the open area, away from the vehicles, exposed but unnoticed—he hoped. His skin prickled in anticipation of the shot that would end his life. He needed to get past the fear and clear his mind for what was coming. He had to get close enough to the shooter for the handgun to be an advantage rather than a handicap.
To his right, he heard the report of a rifle. Someone had taken up a position in one of the shooting blinds. The .50 boomed in reply. Several shots crackled in response. Campbell’s security people had forted up and were returning fire. Frank headed for the low saddle between the high ridgeline and the crest of the hill overlooking Sand Canyon. The best approach would be to cross over the ridge out of the immediate line of fire and work along the backside, staying under the shoulder of the hill. From the direction Campbell had been heading, there was a chance they could catch the shooter in a crossfire. He wished they were in communication. He was pretty sure Campbell was unaware that he was coming up the northwest slope.
If the shooter was Parker, Frank knew that he wouldn’t consider his position as having a front line. Snipers frequently worked inside enemy lines. They were trained to think that the enemy would approach from any and all directions. No safe zone. On the other hand, Parker had his hands full, Parker or his pal, whoever was on the .50. Where was the other guy? As far as Frank could tell, there appeared to be only one shooter. If he could get within fifty feet, Frank figured he had a better than even chance.
He reached the base of the slope, checked the terrain, and readied himself to move on the shooter. He didn’t have a ghillie suit, the special camouflage clothing that made snipers all but invisible, but he was wearing khakis in a country of tans and grays. He placed his Stetson carefully on its crown in the lee of a clump of sage and weighted it down with a fist-sized rock. The hat was a 10X Stetson, a gift from Linda, and he planned on coming back for it. He put his yellow shooting glasses in his shirt pocket and picked up handfuls of loose dirt, tossing dirt and dust into the air and letting it rain down on his head. He was taking a dust bath, covering himself with the color of the desert. No shiny spots. He made sure his St. Christopher, his mother’s gift, was tucked inside. He reversed his belt buckle and rubbed dirt and gravel into his brightly shined ankle boots. An hour’s work down the drain.
49
•
John Gilman watched the smoke billow out from under the roof. Soon the ranch would be cinder and ashes. The destruction he’d brought about made him giddy and uncertain. The rattle of rifle fire from the towers fronting the hunting blinds interrupted his moment of inaction. The rounds fell short, kicking up puffs of dust below his position. Amateurs, he thought. They were shooting uphill and failed to compensate.
He shifted positions, brought the heavy rifle to bear on the nearest tower, and began a steady barrage of incendiary rounds. The heavy recoil and the steady thumping of the rifle prevented him from noticing that he was taking fire from his immediate right until a round tore through the top of a sandbag in line with his head. A wave of fear wiped away his sense of invulnerability. He’d almost been hit. He hugged the ground, afraid to move.
This was no good. Eventually he’d have to move, and the invisible shooter would kill him. He reached for his spotting scope and squirmed along the ground, where the sandbags offered greater protection. He removed the tripod and wedged the scope between the sandbags and searched the slope to the south of his position. At first the hillside appeared to be absent of human activity, but then a small cloud of dust rose from behind a ridge of rock about halfway up the hill, where the ground became steep.
He adjusted the magnification on the scope and carefully examined the rock formation. The red, white, and blue of the Sand Canyon logo briefly jumped into view. The logo adorned the hats and shirts of all Sand Canyon staff members. He decreased the magnification and refocused. The logo slipped out of sight, momentarily reappeared, and then slipped away. It came and went according to the position of the person’s head between the rocks either side of the narrow slot where he had set up shop.
Gilman worked the .50 into position by folding back the bipod and extending the muzzle between the sandbags. He waited for the logo to make an appearance. The rifle fire had stopped. His opponent was probably waiting for him to resume fire with the .50. This was it, the most dangerous game, and he was up for it. He tossed a rock into the sandbags nearest where the .50 had been set up, hoping to raise some dust and draw fire. A tiny puff rose into the rising breeze and disappeared. Nothing. They waited, each hoping for the other’s mistake. Gilman knew that movement brought the invisible into view. He wore desert camouflage, no logo or color to give him away. If he carefully restricted his movements, he would remain unseen. Then
it occurred to him to run a couple of rounds into the sandbags with his Glock .40. It was loud, and it would raise a hell of a dust cloud. The Glock wasn’t as loud as the .50, but the noise and the dust might provoke fire. He extended the Glock with his left hand, maintaining a careful sight picture with the sniper rifle, the reticle fixed on the slot where he had seen the logo. He let two rounds go into his former position. A substantial cloud of dust rose into the air.
The response was almost immediate. Two rounds tore into the hillside that he had just vacated, followed hard on by the double crack of the rifle. The muzzle flash wasn’t visible in the brightness of the sun. The logo failed to materialize. He fired into the sandbags again, three shots in rapid succession. He waited, trying to account for the number of rounds the other shooter had used. The logo probably appeared when the shooter turned his head to change magazines. The red, white, and blue patch popped into view. He squeezed off a round, being careful not to hurry his shot. The logo disappeared.
A round tore into the sandbag closest to his face, burying gravel into his skin. It hurt like hell, and for a moment he thought he’d been hit. His damned opponent had faked him out. He removed his goggles and wiped them free of dirt, then exchanged the incendiaries for armor-piercing and trained the .50 on the crevice. He focused the sight on the rock face and emptied the magazine. He heard the rounds ricochet as they careened away into the valley. Now or never, he thought. He quickly reattached the bipod and the carry handle and prepared to make a run for it.
Shadows of Death Page 24