by Jeff Carson
Wolf turned his attention to the man himself for clues. The guy had a top of the line rifle that was just as effective in combat as big game hunting, with a top of the line night vision scope, and a high capacity magazine. What did that say about the man? He could have been military, but he was dressed and equipped more like a well-to-do hunter, with Cabellas, and Carhartt labels on his clothing. There was no military issue knife, boots, or camo, either. No military-issue anything, really.
“What are we going to do?” Jack asked.
Wolf looked through the bright night vision display once again and scanned the low saddle on top of the pass to the west. Nothing.
The cirque entrance, where they’d entered on the trail was devoid of movement, too.
Nobody.
Wolf had to make a call, and the stakes had never been higher. Fear for his son raced through his veins with a stomach-quivering intensity. He wasn’t used to feeling such emotion, any emotion, in battle. And he wasn’t kidding himself for a second, he was deep in the battle of his life at the moment. Wolf let his fear morph into a calm hatred for the men threatening his son. In this spot of all spots. Wolf clenched his jaw.
He shouldered the rifle and bent down over the dead body one last time. He dug his fingers underneath his coat collar and pulled it down, looking on the pale skin of the man’s neck. Then he looked on the other side, swiping away the warm blood to see the skin underneath. No tattoos. Wolf wiped his hand on the man’s jacket and stood.
“We’re going to leave our stuff here and get down to our truck. Then we’re going to go home.”
Jack wiped his mouth and nodded absently.
Wolf grabbed his shoulders and glared at him. “Did you hear me? We are going to get to the truck and go home.”
Jack narrowed his eyes and nodded faster.
“Get your headlamp. Put on your gloves, hat, and put on your heavy coat.”
Jack breathed heavily as he did as Wolf told him.
Wolf put the Glock on his belt, and looked down at the man’s heavy .357 Revolver lying on the ground. He picked it up, tucked it in the rear of his pants, took off the Glock, and then walked to Jack.
Jack swayed and stutter stepped as Wolf tucked the paddle holster into Jack’s belt line.
“You’ve shot this before.”
Jack swallowed and nodded.
“Remember, there’s no safety.” He stepped close to Jack and hugged him tight. “Don’t worry bud. I’m not going to let you get hurt.” Wolf pushed him back and looked him in the eye. “If someone attacks us,” he glanced down at the Glock on Jack’s hip, “Use that gun. Don’t think about using it. Use it.”
Jack nodded with a look that was somewhere between horrified and excited.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. They’re coming down from up there.” Wolf nodded to the surrounding slopes.
Jack shook his head. “But the guy on the radio just said they’d be right up. I heard it.”
Wolf nodded. “I know. But before, they said they’d be right down. They were lying the second time. They knew it was someone else besides that guy. I think they were trying to trick us. They’re trying to flush us toward the mountain slopes, where we’re slow, and vulnerable. So we’re going to go back down. Fast.”
Jack looked around, then nodded and smiled a little. Like his Dad was the smartest badass that ever lived.
“Don’t get cocky. I could be completely wrong.”
Jack’s face fell, and he nodded.
Wolf looked back toward the trail, and then back up at the steep walls surrounding them. “We’re going to have to be ready if we’re running straight into an ambush. So take the pistol out.”
Now Jack looked positively horrified.
“Remember. No safety. Shoot, then think about it later.”
Jack nodded and pulled out the Glock. He stared down at it and then held it at his side.
Wolf pulled out the smooth wood-handled .357 from his waist. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 10
“Shit. Do you think he’s dead?” The first man whispered. “He’s just laying there. I think he’s dead.”
The second man ripped the night-vision binoculars from his companion’s hands and pressed them against his eyes.
The bright black and white display clearly showed the man and his son talking next to a man that was sprawled motionless. “Looks pretty dead.” Just then the man turned toward them and raised a rifle. “Keep still. He’s lookin’ toward us through the night scope.”
They sat motionless, and the second man studied the two milling figures below. The man was sure proactive. They’d been ready to head down the slope when they’d heard the shots, which had blasted no more than a few seconds after the radio conversation.
“Okay, he turned around. These two have just become our only remaining obstacle. And I don’t like the looks of this guy. Ryan was no pushover. He’s gotta be military.”
The first man shuffled next to him, scraping rocks, which sounded like a xylophone in the still silence.
“Careful!” He hissed, “Be quiet.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The first man settled into a firing position. He flipped the night vision scope on top of the rifle and exhaled. “God damn. I can’t believe he’s dead.”
The second man felt a pang of guilt, and then let it pass, like a gas cramp. “You got this shot?”
The first man blew out a cloud of air in response.
“Seriously. You got this?”
“Yeah. They are at four-hundred twenty-one yards now, and as soon as they get out of the trees, they’ll be at least fifty yards closer, and pretty much coming right at us.”
The second man looked down at the valley below, and he believed him. They were situated in a perfect spot to intercept the two at the campfire. They were at the top of the slope, in a position that was halfway between the edge of the cirque valley below, and the camping spot they were at now. They would pass right underneath, and into a zone where even he could make the shot.
“And if they go up the other side? Up the mountain?”
“Yeah, right. They’d be crawling up, slow as turtles, and I’d pick them off. They won’t do that.”
“They’re on the move,” the first man said. “Headed straight toward us, through the trees.”
The second man eyed the campground below through the night vision display, and saw the bright pinpoint fire and a single man lying motionless.
He tracked his lenses down and to the right, and caught the movement of the two walking. They were creeping slowly through the trees, taking refuge behind trunks. The man was putting the rifle to his shoulder, and then giving signals to his kid. Then they would move to the next set of trees. But they were quickly running out of cover.
“No more trees.” The first man said in a sing-song voice.
“As soon as they—“
The second man stopped his sentence as he watched the two figures scatter below. He tracked his lenses up and down. The two had split up, and were zigzagging across the meadow in full sprint.
“Shit. Go. Shoot!”
The night lit up as the first man’s rifle exploded. Then he fired again. And again.
Chapter 11
As Wolf crept to the edge of the trees, he caught a glimpse of something so subtle, it almost didn’t register. It was the blink of a plane, at the top of the mountain. But it wasn’t moving. And then it was a solid red light, faint, and Wolf realized exactly what he was looking at.
“Run!” Wolf broke from the trees first, determined to draw fire his way.
A shot blasted and echoed for a long few seconds. There was no sign of the bullet hitting near Wolf. Jack. He almost fainted instantly at the thought.
Just then Jack thumped past Wolf at full speed, then veered left and then right, then back left, just as they’d discussed when they’d crept away from the camp.
Wolf blinked and carved a hard right turn. A bullet smacked into the ground, just wher
e he would have been if he had kept his course, and a rifle report rolled through the valley.
“Shit,” he breathed, and upped his pace. There was no sense slowing down and gawking at Jack, and getting shot in the process. He needed to stay alive to keep his son alive.
He ran as fast as he could, swerving between imaginary defenders on a football field.
And he prayed.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed. The last time had undoubtedly been for his son then, too. And now he repeated a mantra through his bouncing breath as Jack flew through the meadow ahead of Wolf. “Please God, protect my son. Please God, protect my son. Please…”
A flurry of shots reigned down as they ran. Then Wolf heard two shots fire almost simultaneously. It was a subtle difference, but he was sure of it, there were two rifles now.
A clump of grass behind Jack’s heel erupted into brown dust as the reports filled the air, drowning out the sound of Wolf’s footsteps below him.
Jack kept on, still zigzagging, still at full speed.
Please God. Wolf repeated the chant and reminded himself to stop watching Jack, and get his own ass to the edge of the meadow and down the trail.
Wolf’s vision blurred and bounced as he pushed himself as hard as he could. His breath, and the sound of his rustling clothing filled his ears, and then there was another thump nearby in the ground, then another bang.
Jack was twenty yards ahead of Wolf now, almost to the where the trail dove over the edge. As he neared the end, he veered right, then juked left, and dove over the hill and out of sight.
As Jack was in the air, Wolf thought he saw him twist in a strange move, before going out of sight.
An instant later, the air shook with a final burst from a rifle high above, and
Wolf dove over the edge after his son.
Chapter 12
“You idiot!” The second man grunted and put his smoking thirty aught six on his shoulder, then stepped close to the first man. He thrust his hand in front of the night vision scope.
The first man looked at the second man’s hand. It was bathed in blood red light.
“Get out of my face.” He slapped the second man’s hand away and switched off the Infrared Illumination on his night vision scope.
“They saw that. I saw the guy, he saw your IRI and bolted.”
They faced one another and stared for a few seconds. It was a defiant gesture they’d done to one another many times over the years.
In unison, they broke their staring war and looked down the slope in front of them.
“Shit.” The second man said.
Their situation had just become dire, and they both knew it.
“They saw Jeffries,” the first man said.
“And now Ryan,” the second man finished the thought.
“That’s enough to figure everything out. And this guy obviously has a brain. They have to die.”
“Yeah. They do.”
They both turned on their headlamps.
“All right,” the second man said, “You go after them. You’re a better shot anyway.” He bent down and fumbled for a shell casing wedged in between two rocks. “I’ll catch up!” he yelled to his already gone companion.
The second man searched every slot and crack between the rocks, pocketing the brass shells in his jacket zip pocket. He kicked over the little rock tripod the first man had made, and scanned the area one more time for any sign of them being there. It was clean.
He looked over the edge and saw the other man bouncing down far below in a cloud of moonlit dust. He clenched his teeth and cursed their luck, and launched himself down the hill after him.
Chapter 13
Wolf’s lungs stung when he dove over the edge of the hill, but the pain of struggling for oxygen was quickly forgotten as he landed hard on his left shoulder. A pain he hadn’t felt in a long time radiated all down his arm, and up to the side of his neck, and at that moment he knew he’d been shot.
As he righted himself and slid ten feet down a dirt embankment, he blocked out the pain and focused on finding Jack.
Jack was lying face down twenty feet from Wolf. His back was heaving, sucking for breath.
“Jack!”
Jack lifted his head and turned to Wolf.
Wolf was flooded with relief. “Are you all right?”
Jack nodded with wide eyes. “Yeah. I almost got hit when I dove over the edge. I heard it go right past my head.”
Wolf took a deep breath. “Thank God you didn’t.” He felt a rivulet of blood reach his middle finger, dripping off at a fast tempo. He couldn’t for the life of him remember getting hit.
He raised his hand and looked, feeling the warm stream now travel up his arm.
“Jack, I need you to tie my tee shirt around my wound.”
Jack slipped and slid across the steep hill to Wolf.
Wolf pulled his arm out of his coat sleeve, and held up the fabric of his t-shirt. A two-inch long wound on his bicep poured a steady stream of blood down his arm. The left side of his shirt was already blotched with warm blood and stuck against his abdomen.
Wolf winced as he pulled the sleeve down over his wound. “Ah. Shoot.” Every move, every flex of his arm, sent a wrecking ball of pain.
Jack shook his head. “Forget it. Stop.” He ripped off his own coat and pulled his shirt off in a quick move, then put his coat back on over his bare torso.
Wolf nodded and leaned forward, hanging his arm out to the side. His lower arm throbbed, and it felt like it was being pulled by a tractor. “Okay, wrap it directly over the gash and tie it tight.”
Jack threaded the shirt beneath his arm and wrapped it over the wound.
Wolf winced, and Jack hesitated.
“Just do it. Don’t worry. It’s fine.”
Jack nodded. He made a knot and made sure the shirt covered the wound, and then he tightened the knot.
Wolf turned away and blew out of his clenched teeth, sending saliva across his chin. The pain was enough to bring stars into the edges of his vision, but he knew Jack was being too delicate.
“Jack, you have to pull it as hard as you can, then double-knot it.”
Jack didn’t hesitate. He pulled much harder than Wolf thought he might be able to, bringing much more pain than Wolf was ready for. He clamped his eyes and jaw.
“Okay, all done.” Jack’s voice was shaking uncontrollably, along with his lower jaw. Mild shock was beginning to set in on him.
Wolf pushed his arm back through the coat sleeve, ignoring the deep pain in his arm, and zipped it up. He looked at Jack with steeled eyes. It was time to get down, and to do so without freaking his son out anymore than he already was.
“All right. We run as fast as we can all the way down. Ready?” Wolf looked down the valley. It was lit brightly by the half moon directly overhead, but not brightly enough to be safe at a full sprint down the mountain.
He reached up and felt his headlamp. “Headlamps on. We’re gonna have to go fast. They’ll be coming after us.”
Jack rolled his eyes and took a deep breath.
Wolf had seen that look before, it was the look of someone giving up in the face of extreme adversity. It was a look he’d seen on a few soldiers before. And most of those soldiers were now dead. “Hey. Listen to me. We are going to get through this.” Wolf gave him a firm slap on the cheek. “You hear me?”
Jack sniffed and wiped his eyes. And then he nodded. “Yeah.”
Wolf looked up the hill. There was a strange rhythmic sound coming from over their heads. It reminded him of a steam engine train chuffing slowly along the tracks.
He flipped his headlamp off and peaked over the edge. He waved a hand at Jack, who was scraping up behind him. “Stop.”
Wolf saw a headlamp bouncing down the slope on the left side of the cirque, at a speed that suggested a man with great athleticism, and realized the noise he was hearing was footfalls crashing down the scree-covered mountainside.
Wolf raised th
e rifle with his right arm only and looked through the night vision scope. The image wobbled and swayed, loosely following the man as he descended.
Wolf lowered the rifle and brought it to his left hand. Then he gripped it with all his might and raised the rifle with both his arms, aiming better this time at the man running down the slope. His left arm felt like it was getting punched by a heavyweight boxer, over and over again at the rate of his heartbeat.
The man avalanched down the hill in Wolf’s scope, and Wolf led him, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.
The recoil of the rifle jolted his upper body, sending a fresh explosion of pain through his arm. Wolf steadied the rifle, caught the man back in his scope, and fired again.
The man became a tumbling mass of flailing body parts. Wolf watched as he rolled, further and further down the hill, head over heals in somersaults. Just when Wolf was sure the man had been hit, he sprang to his feet and ran faster still down the mountain.
Wolf took another shot, and this time kept the rifle steadier, he saw a puff of dust in the white phosphor display mushroom up behind the man.
The man disappeared behind the tops of the trees, and a moment later, the sound of the man’s footsteps stopped.
Wolf slid down the hill toward Jack. Just then a gunshot rang out, echoing for seconds through the long valley in front of them.
“Let’s go!”
Jack and Wolf stepped across the steep hill until they reached the trail, then they ran as fast as they could.
Chapter 14
They’d just passed the point where they’d had the run-in with the crazy man, and Wolf estimated they were now thirty minutes away from the truck. He could feel his body growing weaker as the warm slick persisted on his arm. His wound still hadn’t clotted, and surely the tunicate had loosened, but there was no way they were going to stop to tighten it.
Wolf hoped the speed they were going would be fast enough. Then he hoped he stayed conscious. If all that went well, he hoped a perfectly functioning truck was waiting for them in the parking lot below.