by JT Sawyer
He sat up in a half-squat and looked out at the storm cell, which had begun moving to the west, the rain overhead slightly decreasing. He retrieved the compass from his pack and then moved out from under the cusp of the juniper slightly to spy a landmark. With the next lightning flash, he focused on a distant butte to the west then dialed in the bearing on his compass. “I sure as hell wouldn’t mind holing up here for a few hours but we need to push on. I’d say it’s only about nine miles to the interstate.”
He grabbed his pack and removed a headlamp from a side pouch, flicking on the red light feature. He had maintained light discipline up to this point but needed to focus on the bearing to walk a straight line to the butte. The red light would enable him to have a low visibility tool for glancing down at the compass and avoiding falling into any crevices. He also removed the night-vision goggles from the pack that he had obtained from the driver of the jeep, waiting for the time when the lightning had passed and he could employ the device. They filed out from under the trees and trekked into the night, the storm clouds roiling off behind them and the thunder growing more distant with each step.
Chapter 19
Six miles to the south, on a parched butte, Drake was leaning his shoulder against a large boulder to stabilize his vision as he scoured the landscape below with a night-vision scope on his suppressed .300 Win-Mag rifle. Time was still on their side as sunrise was nearly seven hours away and their night-vision capabilities and drones would facilitate the capture of their prey. Having worked protection details on Ritter’s oil platforms in the jungles of South America, he preferred the open terrain of the desert which allowed for long-distance surveillance. It was far easier to pick up a person’s movement miles away in this land of sandstone than in the dense canopy of the tropics.
Even the heat felt less intense with the lack of debilitating humidity. Drake had entertained the idea of buying a small retreat outside of Joshua Tree where he could go to unwind during his rare down time away from Aeneid. Most of his colleagues in the mercenary industry that were still alive opted for blowing their contractor pay on brothels and gambling in Thailand, spending six months relishing the cheap pleasures and then finding work again to start the cycle all over. Drake had had his fill of that life in younger days. When he sought the company of a woman, he would request one of the escort girls that Aeneid kept on speed-dial for their visiting executives.
Drake’s pastime interests revolved around fine-tuning racing motorcycles. He had a collection of eleven bikes stored in the secure workshop below his loft in Fullerton, compliments of Nelson Ritter. Ritter provided him with whatever expenses were required to handle his security and excise anything that threatened to tarnish Aeneid’s reputation.
This particular kill mission would allow him to have the funds to purchase a rare Indian motorcycle of which there were fewer than fifty left intact. He didn’t plan on riding it, he just wanted it to round out his collection.
Schiff, one of his more experienced henchmen, came up beside him, still deferring to him instead of Perry for his orders. “We should have the portable drones up within the next few minutes. They aren’t functioning well out here with the electrical storm but we should be able to pinpoint their location.”
“Good, good,” he said slowly as he tilted his rifle to the left, focusing on something he saw moving over a ridgeline a half-mile away.
“What is it?” said Schiff, lifting his own rifle to study the terrain where Drake was focused.
The dull thunk of the suppressor lasted only a micro-second. Then Drake studied the lifeless mountain lion whose front shoulder was nearly obliterated from the ballistic round.
“Never bagged me a big cat before. Shot about everything else—even a sleeping gazelle in a rich fucker’s private zoo outside of Vegas—but never a mountain lion.” He lowered his rifle to the ground and leaned it against the boulder. Then he tilted the brim of his cap up while grinning. “Cats are just rare as hell in the desert. This is starting out to be a good night after all.”
Perry came up behind Drake and tapped his meaty shoulder. “Hey, ape-man, did you forget about not drawing attention to our location here?”
Drake turned, his lips pulled back against his teeth, which he was grinding. “This is my operation. I don’t recall the boss putting you in charge of anything except giving us the location of the girl with your facial recognition software and tracking the bitch.”
He moved inches away from Perry while opening his vest to reveal the hilt of his pistol. Perry swiftly reached forward, yanking the man’s weapon from its holster and smacking him with the butt across the nose. Drake backpedaled, thrusting both hands up to his broken beak, which began leaking blood onto the sand.
Perry held the pistol up towards him. “You know some people just take for granted the ability to breathe clearly.”
Perry heard the voice of one of the men back by the vehicles who was manipulating the drone controls. “Hey, it looks like two of our guys up on the mesa are out of commission.”
Perry rushed back to the rear of the jeep, tucking the pistol in his waistline while the injured brute slowly meandered over, cursing and wiping the blood off his mouth with a bandanna. Perry studied the green laptop screen, noting the inanimate figures that were splayed on the rocky ground, their bodies not showing any heat signature.
“They checked in with me about sixty minutes ago so it shouldn’t be hard to triangulate the whereabouts of their jeep.” He tapped his thick finger on the screen, indicating an area to the north that had just been overtaken by a fierce thunderstorm, the black tentacles of the rain images streaking across the green monitor.
“Focus all efforts and teams on everything between that mesa and the interstate. The noose just started to close.”
Perry grabbed his rifle and placed it inside his vehicle then motioned for the other five men to accompany him while the remaining three would stay behind to man the drones and mobile command center. “Ape-man, you’re driving so I can study the ground,” he said, tossing the keys to Drake.
As they drove down the jarring dirt road that led off the ridge, Perry scanned the terrain ahead with his night-vision goggles.
Driving by the area where the mangled corpse of the mountain lion rested, Perry focused his attention forward on the mesa in the distance and hoped he would have his captives in hand by midnight without losing any more men or being sidetracked by the impending weather. He didn’t need bodies scattered all over the desert and more cover stories to fabricate. The woman was all that mattered. As for Mitch, he would cross that chasm when he came to it. Why did he have to be tied up in all of this? He would have made a good wingman if I’d become bureau chief. Maybe he would’ve even come on board with my outfit once I left this God-forsaken country. Perry shrugged his shoulders. Then again, he’s too much of a fucking throwback with his cowboy code of ethics. You were born two centuries too late, my friend.
Perry could see the horizon ahead getting darker and heard a few raindrops pelting the windshield. He looked at the drone image on his laptop screen again as the jeep bobbed along the rocky pathway, noticing that the road coming off the mesa wound over several drainages which would serve as natural chokepoints for an ambush.
The rain began coming down in small drops at first, followed seconds later by sheets of water. Drake increased the pace, climbing out of the mucky canyon bottom until he leveled out on the mesa. Four miles further, the rain had intensified, swelling the arroyos in the region and putting a halt to their progress. Perry knew they wouldn’t be making any more mileage and the drones had already gone offline, probably pulverized against the rocks somewhere.
He motioned to Drake to pull over near the canyon rim. The rain was pummeling the jeep so hard he had to shout at the men in the vehicle. “Each of you, out—set up a perimeter and keep an eye out below when this storm clears.”
All of the bruisers looked at him and then at the pelting rain on the windows before climbing out into the sq
uall. “You too, ape-man,” he said to Drake. “The cold will help that broken snout of yours.”
Drake slammed the door and disappeared into the downpour. Perry knew a perimeter was of little use and the men wouldn’t be able to see more than twenty feet but he also didn’t want to spend the next hour holed up in the tight confines of the jeep with a bunch of sweaty thugs he’d grown to despise. He wasn’t like them—mercenaries. He kept telling himself that throughout the night as he studied the path of the storm on his laptop screen and waited for sunrise.
Chapter 20
The first plum-colored fingers of dawn were stabbing through the clouds as Dev and Mitch climbed halfway up a small butte. It would be easier to go around it but quicker to scurry up and down the other side if they could maintain their same pace. Stopping at a knee-high pile of scree twenty yards from the rim, Dev removed her encrypted cellphone from her shoulder bag and powered it on. Mitch squatted beside her and swept the narrow dirt road below with his rifle scope. He was exhausted but they were almost at their destination and the sound of traffic blaring along the interstate was within earshot.
A few minutes later, there was an incoming text. Dev sighed and hastily typed back a reply.
“Besides a cup of coffee, I could use some good news this morning—whatcha got?” Mitch said.
“A support team of mine is inbound along the interstate. They are tracking my phone now and it looks like they’ll be at the bridge there in thirty minutes,” she said, pointing at a two-lane overpass about a mile away.
“God, I’ve driven over that bridge a thousand times. Never thought I’d be racing to reach it on foot from this side.”
Between their location and their exfil location were hundreds of acres of thick cactus and cholla. He was about to suggest a route when the trunk of a large mesquite tree splintered into pieces, sending a shower of woodchips to his feet. He ducked beneath the rocks, trying to identify where the rifle shot had come from as another round impacted the slab in front of him.
Dev was crouching low beside Mitch, peering through a crevice in the rockpile. “They’re down in the ravine along the road, about a half-mile away—maybe four or more guys.”
Mitch craned his head up at the ridgeline behind them. “We need to get up and over then make an all-out sprint for the interstate. Go first and I’ll cover you.”
“I can cover you,” she snapped back.
“You think your sharpshooting skills are superior to mine?” he barked.
“We’re wasting time, now go.”
He grabbed her arm as Dev was about to position the M4 he’d given her. “My weapon can reach out farther than yours so get your ass over that ridge,” he said, patting the stock of the scoped Remington 700 rifle in his clutches.
“Pfff,” she mumbled while getting in place to scurry up the butte. Mitch let loose a volley of rounds into the region below where he’d located several muzzle blasts. After his sixth shot, Dev was out of sight.
Another barrage of machinegun fire ricocheted off the surrounding rocks near his head as he reloaded his weapon. He got on his elbows and moved eight feet over to a different opening in the rock cavity. With the gunfire below ceasing, Mitch resumed shooting off more rounds and then spun, kicking loose the foundation of the scree to create a small rockslide, then began his sprint up the incline. The boulders around him were shattering from incoming shots and he felt his legs being pelted by rock shrapnel while the twang of ricochets echoed off the slabs.
As he cleared the ridge and ran out of sight of the shooters below, Dev was nowhere to be seen. The compressed rocks on the ground indicated her direction of travel and he followed those for fifty feet until he saw her squatting in the shade of a tree, her weapon fixed on the road below. Upon his arrival, she began walking in a zig-zag pattern down the side as he followed a few feet behind, keeping his eyes on her hands.
“I was wondering where the hell you went. I was hoping it wasn’t to hitch a ride without me,” Mitch said, knowing that he had bought them some time with the rockslide, which would temporarily block the road.
“Why would I do such a thing? That’s not how I work.”
“I barely know you, lady. You needed me to get you across the desert and now you’re nearly home free with your buds on the way. How do I know that they’re not gonna give me a dirt nap when we reach the vehicle?”
“You are a trusted friend of my father’s. That’s why he sent me to you in the first place. Besides, you are a skilled warrior and I am in need of such help.”
As she turned sideways to face him, he studied her face for a moment but her hardened expression left no room for interpreting if what she was saying was true. His gut feelings told him to continue forward with her but he was reluctant to take her at her word. “Just stay close to me.”
“You’re right, you don’t know me. You could have shot me back at the ranch when I was on your porch or you could’ve left me in the desert and walked out to save your own hide but you didn’t.” She stood still and gave him a hard stare. “Why not?”
He was growing irritated with her as her questions prodded at the veneer of allegiance he felt towards his job as a federal agent. “When I find out, I’ll let you know, believe me. Now let’s push on. There’s only the one dirt road around this butte and those guys will find a way to get back on task.”
Once they reached more level ground where the butte and valley below met, they began trotting through the gnarly terrain, frequently glancing over their shoulders as the two-lane bridge grew closer in their vision. The roar of vehicles on the interstate echoed off the valley and he knew they had only minutes to make it off the exposed terrain to the ravine beneath the bridge.
Dev glanced at her Smartphone again while continuing to jog. “Extraction in seven minutes. This is going to be a close one.”
This endurance run reminded Mitch of his SERE course at Fort Bragg where he underwent a five-day survival and evasion trek while being pursued by civilians bent on his capture. The students who lasted the longest were the ones who possessed above-average aerobic capacity and could simply outrun the “hostiles.” Only then there weren’t armed mercenaries sending rounds downrange and a mysterious woman for a companion. He detested the former and still wasn’t sure how he felt about the latter.
Chapter 21
“We just have to hold them off a little while longer,” Dev said, looking at her cellphone again.
With the sun above the horizon, Mitch could make out the approaching jeeps driven by the hostiles through the scope on his sniper rifle. They were heading along the winding dirt road that skirted below the rim about two miles distant.
“I’ll drive a few rounds through the engine blocks as soon as they’re in range,” he said, adjusting the elevation and windage dials on the scope then racking a .308 round into the chamber. He scanned the nearby terrain for a landmark that was approximately 800 yards out. Spying the upright skeleton of a dead saguaro cactus near the road, he locked it in on his mental map and prepared for the shot. He welded his cheek to the rifle stock and then began pacing his breathing, falling into a four-count rhythm.
As the lead vehicle rounded the last bend in the canyon, he zoomed in on the tan grille. Waiting until the jeep was directly under the saguaro, he fired a single round into the front then racked another round and fired at the second vehicle. Both came crashing to an immediate halt, slamming into patches of knee-high cholla that littered the dirt shoulder.
He refocused his attention on the men scrambling out of the lead vehicle and lined up the crosshairs on the front passenger, who had disembarked. Mitch blinked hard and gulped down a breath. What the fuck? He squinted into the reticle and stared at the face of Perry, who was barking orders at the other men running behind nearby boulders. He pulled back for a second, shaking his head, then refocused his gaze to be sure of what he saw. Perry is in on this! He swallowed hard and then yelled back to Dev, who was covering the area towards the interstate.
“
That contact you traced to Phoenix? What was the name?”
She hesitated and then blurted it out. “Kovac—Perry Kovac. At least, he’s the one I suspected of being Aeneid’s inside man.”
“How the hell can this be?” he muttered, taking his finger off the trigger and balling his fist.
“Does that name ring a bell?”
Mitch didn’t answer and only clenched his jaw, trying to clear his mind enough to focus on the scene in his sight. He saw the men dispersing amongst the boulders and flowing along the side of the road. They split into two teams, with one hugging the terrain near the road while Perry’s group darted cross-country along an old rockslide which provided ample concealment.
Mitch swung his rifle back to the other group opposite Perry’s location. Picking out a rail-thin goon darting from tree to tree, he shot the man clear through the sternum, dropping him back onto a fallen log. This caused the man in front to pause long enough for Mitch to drive a round through his upper left pectoral, obliterating most of the shoulder joint, which caused the arm to dangle like a rotting tree branch in the wind.
The rest of the men took cover behind boulders or cottonwood trees. Mitch shifted his attention back to Perry’s group, catching his colleague in the crosshairs. Perry was close enough now that the scope revealed his tan face and square jaw. Mitch eased off the trigger for a second and took a deep breath. You son of a bitch. He fired a round onto the boulder beside Perry, spraying rock shrapnel up into the man’s face. He saw Perry drop back, clutching his cheek, and then he disappeared behind a dead tree trunk. We’re not done here. I need your ass alive.