Before he could get a follow-up arrow on the string, the man realized what had just happened and dropped to his knee and unleashed a burst of automatic rifle fire in his direction. Mitch dove to a prone position and crawled behind a fallen log as bullets cut through the leaves and tore bits of bark off trees and branches all around him. He was quite sure that the man had not actually seen him; he was just laying down fire in the vector he knew the arrow came from. He was trying to force Mitch to keep his head down and keep him from getting off another shot, and it was working; at least for the moment.
Mitch knew he couldn’t wait to see what happened next though. His dad had taught him basic gunfighting tactics that he had learned both in his dangerous backwoods law enforcement job and in his former days as a Marine. Mitch had no doubt his opponent had similar knowledge and skills, based on the way he’d seen him check out the campsite. If he was right, the man would make a move soon, thinking he had every advantage with the firepower of his automatic rifle. Against an opponent armed only with a bow, he could lay down a heavy barrage of fire to prevent a counterattack as he moved in for the kill. But the one thing he didn’t know was that he wasn’t going up against just a bow. Mitch slid the AR-15 sling around his shoulder as he stayed pressed as close to the ground behind the log as possible and placed the longbow in the leaves beside him. He had just brought it to his shoulder when the next burst of AK fire came his way. This time it was only three rounds. And a few seconds later, another short burst of the same, and then another. The man was coming closer now; ducking from the cover of one tree trunk to the next as he fired his short bursts each time he moved. The bullets were ripping high over his head and Mitch was sure his attacker still hadn’t seen him and didn’t know exactly where he was. But he would be on top of him in a moment where he couldn’t miss. He couldn’t afford to let him get that close. When he stepped out again, Mitch opened up with a double-tap of the semi-automatic AR and saw the man spin and fall, crawling for cover behind the base of a big oak after he hit the ground. Mitch fired two more rounds and was certain he hit the man in the thigh or hip and likely the lower leg too before he dragged himself fully behind the tree. He heard him suppress a scream of rage and pain, and he knew his enemy must have been surprised indeed to get hit by rifle rounds when he thought arrows were all he had to worry about. Mitch kept his sights on the tree, ready to fire again at the first sign of any attempt to return fire. The distance between them at this point was barely over thirty or forty yards. Any attempt to get closer or move laterally would be extremely risky if the man was still able to shoot back, but Mitch wasn’t sure he was. The high-velocity 5.56mm rounds could do a lot of damage even with a leg shot, and with any luck at all he might have even hit the femoral artery.
He watched and waited. It was a familiar game, just like hunting, where a wounded animal would sometimes freeze in hiding for many long minutes before either making a dash to escape or succumbing to blood loss. But Mitch didn’t have all day. In fact, the day was about to run out and the low angle of the sunlight filtering through the trees told him it would be dark in an hour, and there would be too little light to read tracks even sooner. After a good fifteen minutes and still no sound or movement from behind the tree, Mitch knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He began slowly backing away, keeping low and never taking his eyes off the big oak tree. He would go back into the forest downstream and then make a wide circle around where the man was hiding and make his way to the campsite from the other side. He knew if he was careful, the wounded man would never know he had left. Mitch absolutely had to find out what happened to April before it was too dark to see. Finishing this guy off could wait until later; if he didn’t bleed out on his own by the time Mitch found the information he needed.
Twenty-eight
JASON BURNS HAD FINALLY convinced Mitch’s sister, Lisa that there was no point in trying to follow him down the trail of the those guys he was tracking. He knew Mitch wouldn’t want her to be anywhere near danger like that if it wasn’t necessary, no matter how much his little sister might want to give him a hand. He said their time was best spent trying to find David, who had mysteriously vanished after Jason and Mitch had last seen him unconscious on the riverbank. But though they scoured the area for clues, there was no trace of David other than a single set of footprints leading straight into the creek. They looked on the other side for indications he had crossed it, but on that side was the big sandbar that was already covered in tracks made by April, David, the four strangers, and then Mitch. It was a confusing jumble of footprints that had frustrated Lisa for the better part of the afternoon and she still had no idea where the injured man could have gone after he apparently woke up on his own and walked into the creek.
They had eventually given up while there was still enough light to find their way back to the farmhouse, but Lisa had insisted on returning early the next morning, this time alone with Jason, so they could search farther up and down the banks on both sides and try to pick up a trail David might have left. Mitch had not returned, of course, and Lisa was still arguing that they should have followed him yesterday, because he might have gotten into a situation he couldn’t handle, having four bad guys to deal with all on his own.
“I’m telling you, Lisa, we did the right thing! We might have just messed things up and made it worse if we had followed. Mitch knows more about this stuff than all of us put together. He’s going to be okay. You’ll see. I’ll bet he gets back early today, and with April and her kid too.”
“I hope you’re right, I’m just worried about him, that’s all. The whole time he was with April before, it seemed like he was in danger. Now, she comes out here, apparently looking for him, and here he goes again.”
“Well, it’s not like he had much choice. He would have done the same for any woman and child he saw taken by men like that.”
“Yeah, I know, I was just hoping we could all just lie low on the farm and avoid these kinds of situations. You know how risky it is. You were beaten half to death yourself.”
“I was, and if it weren’t for Mitch and April coming along when they did, I would have died there on the side of that road. And no telling what would have become of you and Stacy.”
“Well, since we can’t catch up to Mitch or the men who took April, the least we can do is keep looking for David and not give up until we find him. If Mitch does bring her back, she’s going to be glad to see him. And the little girl will need her daddy.”
Lisa and Jason were back at the spot where David had last been seen shortly after sunrise, and this time Lisa planned to methodically search both banks in the upstream and downstream direction. She didn’t think David had gone far, and she knew he wasn’t deliberately trying to elude them, but she had heard her father talking about manhunts for fugitives in the woods and some of what he said stuck with her. One of the oldest tricks around to throw off trackers and dogs was to wade into a stream at one point and then travel a considerable way either up or downstream before exiting. It would at least slow pursuers down, while they looked for the exit point, and if it was done well might throw them off the trail entirely.
The hours went by as they scoured the banks this way, first on the same side of the creek they knew David had started from, then on the opposite. Around a bend downstream, they found a place where a canoe had landed and saw more confusing footprints, but none they could positively identify as David’s. After giving up there, Lisa just wanted to continue downstream at least a mile or two, reasoning that if he had floated or swam a greater distance than expected once he entered the water, then downstream was the only logical direction he could have traveled. They were about to give up and go back to the house when both of them heard the sound of voices from somewhere even farther down the creek.
“We’d better check that out,” Jason said.
Keeping several yards within the forest but still close enough to see anything that moved on the water, the two of them slipped quietly along, carrying their weapons
at ready. The voices had stopped momentarily, but then they heard them again. The tones were low and could not be at all far away.
“I think whoever it is, they’re coming closer,” Lisa whispered.
“I think you’re right. Listen! Did you hear that?”
“Yes.” The sound was unmistakable for anyone who had spent much time around a creek like this in the summertime. It was a the clank of a paddle or some other object agains the hull of an aluminum canoe. Lisa knew for certain that’s what it was, but it was unusual for anyone to be coming upstream against the current.
“Maybe it’s Mitch bringing them back in the canoe the men took,” Jason said.
“Maybe, but we’d best not take a chance. Let’s just wait right here and keep down until we see.”
They did not have long to wait until sure enough, a canoe suddenly appeared from downstream. It was not Mitch and April though. Two men occupied it, both with long hair hanging over their shoulders and thick beards that obscured most of their faces. The man in the bow was sitting, doing nothing, while the one in the stern, who looked much older, judging by his nearly white hair, was wielding a long pole. The man clearly knew what he was doing, and the canoe shot upstream with each push as easily as most people could paddle one downstream. But something else surprised Lisa and Jason even more than the ease with which the man was making headway against the current. Tied to the other end of a taut rope that stretched from the stern of the canoe, was a second canoe in tow. And in it was a woman Lisa and Jason both immediately recognized as April, sitting there holding a small child in her arms.
* * *
April was becoming more despondent with every day that passed. It had been nearly two weeks since that day that Lisa and Jason led her and Benny and Tommy back to the Henley farm, and still Mitch had not returned. Nor did they have any idea what became of David.
When Lisa and Jason had hailed her from the bank after figuring out she was not a prisoner of the two rough-looking men towing her canoe, she had been shocked to learn that Mitch was looking for her. It seemed incredible that she had been so close to him that day that Wayne and the others took her and Kimberly, and yet she never knew it. She never knew that even as she was so terrified of the uncertain future that lay ahead of her in the hands of those men, Mitch was hot on their trail and doing everything he could to rescue her and her child. But if he was that close, so close that he had seen the whole thing as it unfolded, then where was he now? What had happened to him?
After sitting on the bank discussing the whole scenario with Jason, Lisa, Benny and Tommy, they concluded that all the gunfire they’d heard the day before in the vicinity of the place Benny had killed Wayne must have been connected to Mitch. He must have caught up with the other three and there must have been a gunfight. April wanted desperately to find out, but there was no way she could put Kimberly at further risk. Crossing paths with Lisa and Jason meant she had found her way, and Lisa said the farm was not all that far. April couldn’t walk anyway without assistance, and even after nearly two weeks her ankle still hurt when she spent too much time on her feet.
The very next day after they were all safe at the Henley farm, Jason and Benny set out for the two-day round trip by canoe to the campsite where Benny and Tommy had encountered Wayne. They were hoping to find Mitch or at least determine what had happened during all the shooting they’d heard, but they found no one alive in the vicinity.
Wayne’s body was lying where he had fallen when Benny shot him, and scavengers had already found him.
“Dogs or coyotes, most likely,” Benny said. They found another dead man just a short distance downstream, lying in the mud, his eyes picked away by vultures. If he had been carrying weapons, someone had taken them.
“I’d bet anything he was one of the four,” Jason said.
I’m betting you’re right,” Benny said. “Look, that wound in his throat wasn’t made by a bullet. It’s cut too clean. It looks to me like he was killed by an arrow, and it either got lost or whoever shot it picked it up. I’ll tell you something else too; that was one clean kill—a perfect shot if I ever saw one.”
“It had to be Mitch,” Jason said. “He’s incredible with a bow and arrow. But if it was, where did he go?”
They searched and searched but didn’t find the answer to that question or any clue to the whereabouts of the other two. Benny offered his best guess though.
“You know, when I first found April and her little girl, she said we ought to go upstream because she knew those fellows had a camp somewhere downstream they were taking her to. It was good thinking on her part, and for sure wouldn’t have been what they expected. I’m thinking your friend, Mitch wouldn’t have expected that either. I’m thinking that he came along and saw the dead one I killed and saw the canoe was missing too. He probably thought somebody else took the two of them downriver. Most people would think like that.”
“And if Mitch didn’t kill the other two, they would be looking down that way too, right?”
“Yep.”
“How are we ever gonna know then?”
“I reckon we ain’t, really. If them fellows did get the best of Mitch in all that shooting we heard, his body could be almost anywhere within a half a mile of here, the way gunshots carry so. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack out here in these woods. And going downriver would be just as useless. Those river bottom swamps down there just get wilder and wilder the closer you get to the Pascagoula. I’m thinking all we can do is is just go back to the house and wait. If he is alive, he’ll show up eventually when he doesn't find any sign of April down that way.”
When Benny and Jason returned to the farmhouse with news of what they found, April knew Benny was right. Mitch wouldn’t give up until he exhausted every possibility in his search, if he was still alive. When they described the other dead man, April knew it was one of the other two, whose names she did not remember or care to recall. It was somewhat encouraging to know that the man had definitely been killed by an arrow, and she had no doubt it was Mitch who did it. But with the other two unaccounted for and all that shooting noise, she knew something could have happened to him after that. What if the other two men managed to get the better of him? After all he was one against three, and at least one of them, that Gary guy, was a real tough customer, and armed with a machine gun. April had to face the possibility that Mitch was dead, and that he died trying to save her.
The thought tore at her soul as she waited, and waited and waited, each day and night passing interminably slow on the Henley farm. She had her Kimberly, and for that she was grateful. But Kimberly didn’t have her father and April didn’t have the one she’d thought about almost constantly for the entire seven months since she’d last seen him. She spent hours rocking her child on the porch of Mitch’s family home, sitting with her in the antique caneback rocker that he’d told her had belonged to his late grandfather. After all she’d gone through and all the risks she’d taken to finally get back to this place, the one she’d come here to find was no longer here and might never return. Tears rolled down April’s face as she sat and rocked, despite how much she tried to keep her focus on the fact that for now at least, she and Kimberly were safe.
Twenty-nine
MITCH HENLEY WAS NOT a quitter and had never been one to give up before achieving the goals he set for himself. But he was at a complete loss and continuing to search where there were no clues to be found was getting him nowhere. It had been almost two weeks since he’d set out downstream from the place he was certain April had last been. Mitch had examined the body of the leader of the four men—the one who had been killed by a shotgun blast from some mysterious stranger. His weapons had been taken and Mitch had found the keel marks in the creek bank mud where two canoes were launched. He had been certain at the time that April and Kimberly were in one of those canoes. He had also been quite certain that whoever left with them had headed downstream. It was the logical conclusion at the time, but now he question
ed every decision he’d made that day.
First of all, in his haste to try and find a sign of April before dark, he’d left the man he’d exchanged gunfire with and circled around to the campsite. He had been sure that he’d wounded him badly, judging by the way he fell before taking cover behind a tree, but with no way of knowing whether or not he was truly incapacitated, Mitch couldn’t risk getting closer. Nor did he have time to spend hours playing a waiting game with darkness fast approaching. Once he determined April was indeed nowhere nearby and saw the canoe marks, he left immediately to follow the creek downstream. His hope was to catch up to whoever took April and Kimberly wherever they stopped for the night.
But he never found that place, if indeed there was one. Though he followed Black Creek all the way to the edge of the Pascagoula swamp lands where it joined Red Creek before emptying into the big river, he never saw the two canoes. He checked every sandbar and other probable landing sites on both sides of the creek on the way down, but found no marks left by a canoe hull. Mitch knew it was possible to paddle long distances without stopping and that someone bent on doing so could have gone that far in one marathon stretch, but he doubted they would. Burdened with a captive who had a small child, they would have almost certainly stopped somewhere along the way, and likely many places. The farther he traveled downstream, the less likely it was beginning to seem that they had come this way at all. If Mitch had found the slightest bit of evidence that they had, he would have continued on in his quest, even if it took him all the way to the coast. But as it was, he had to admit that he might have made a bad decision. He had utterly failed in his attempt to rescue the woman who believed in him enough to leave the city and come back to Black Creek to find him. Things must have gotten really bad in Hattiesburg for her and David to take that risk, traveling all that way with Kimberly. It was heartbreaking knowing they had come so close, and that he had actually seen her and yet still could do nothing to save her.
Into the River Lands (Darkness After Series Book 2) Page 15