by James Beltz
Carbon swore out loud as he watched Cash take a bullet to the left arm and roll over to hide behind the tree. Cash grimaced in pain, sucking in deeply and shouting at Argo for support.
The older black man, who moved far quicker than his age suggested, spun about to focus on their rear. He fired off a few shots then barked at Carbon. “I think I got them. Double-check with your toy.”
Carbon looked at his tablet. “It’s not a toy. It’s a highly sophisticated, state of the art, piece of engineering. Yeah, I don’t see anyone else. I think you got them all.”
Cash was quick to correct. “Then he only got one. I got the other three.”
Argo shot Cash a look. “Oh, so it’s a competition, now, is it?”
Uncharacteristically, Cash smiled. “It always has been. I’m still winning, by the way.”
Carbon swung the drone around and shifted over to the southern wall of the canyon. The helicopters, he could now tell there were two of them, were close. He needed to make sure the drone was clear. In doing so, he spotted something that made his heart sink. He could see DJ standing with his back to the cliff. He wasn’t alone. Someone else was holding a gun on him, standing nearly twenty feet away. Carbon swore again. “DJ’s in trouble.”
Argo refocused on the field while Cash had begun to bandage his arm. On hearing this, Cash stopped what he was doing and crawled over to look at the screen. “Who is that? Which one is DJ?”
Carbon pointed at the screen. “That’s DJ. I have no idea who that is.”
Cash seemed less certain. “How do you know who’s who?”
Carbon replied angrily to the man. “Because DJ hiked up there only carrying his rifle bag. That person is wearing a backpack.”
Cash smacked the ground with an open hand. His standard stoicism was gone. “Sam Kenny! It has to be Sam!”
Carbon looked closer at the screen. The man with the backpack was Sam. Carbon dropped his tablet and dove for his pack laying nearby, tearing into the contents, tossing things out in his haste to find what he was looking for. “Somebody shine a light!”
Argo was looking at him then, confused. Over the roar of the two big helicopters that suddenly passed low overhead, he shouted at Carbon. “What are you doing?”
Carbon screamed at them; his thoughts focused on what he had to do but too hurried for a detailed explanation. “Give me a friggin’ flashlight!”
__________
Seymour Sinclair swore at the sudden turn of events. What was intended to be a straightforward ambush had turned into the biggest screwup he had ever been a part of. The problem was it was all his idea and planning. Not only was he losing men left and right, but this fiasco was also a gut punch to his ego.
Over the blaring horns of the SUVs next to him, he shouted at two of his men. “Get in that building and shut off those floodlights! We’re getting picked apart!” He pointed at two more. “You two, pop the hoods on these things and yank the battery cables!” There were two hidden vans stashed further down the road near the entrance. With them was a small force of backup shooters just in case. He hoped and prayed they were on the way. He would have loved to call them, but their coms had gone dead. Maybe some sort of jamming device? The answer to the suddenly broken coms and their vehicles going crazy had to be related to that hacker Carbon. If they managed to get out of this, Seymour would make it his life’s goal to personally choke the man to death.
The two men he had ordered into the cabin died as soon as they swung the back door open. Seymour swore and tasked another to enter. That one hung his rifle around the corner and blasted the inside with automatic gunfire. A second later, he was dead too. A bullet smashed through the wall and clipped the man in the back of the head.
Where was Sam? he wondered. Why wasn’t that man using his battle-proven sniper skills to level the playing field? Had they gotten him too? Seymour could only imagine the answer to those questions. He needed to do something to end this chaos. He needed to get those floodlights shut off.
Seymour looked up at the building in desperation. There was an upstairs window above him. If he could enter from the second floor, he might be able to surprise whoever was on the first. He rotated the selector switch on his rifle to full-auto and aimed, blasting out the window with a long burst. He switched mags and moved forward. Pointing at a member of his team, he fired off an order. “You! Give me a boost!”
The man responded and darted to stand next to the wall, interlocking his fingers in front of him and crouching. Seymour put one foot into the man’s hand, and the man shoved Seymour up just high enough for him to grasp hold of the windowsill. After a second of struggling, he was able to pull himself up and over, thankful for his gloves keeping him from getting sliced up by the shards of glass poking out from the framing.
The room was a bedroom and spanned the length of the back, with windows that faced the rear of the house and the lit-up field and creek to the south. Choosing his pistol instead, Seymour moved forward to the door, padding as lightly as he could. Not that anyone would hear. The chorus of blaring horns behind the house would drown out any sound of his movement. The hallway was clear, so he moved cautiously to the top of the stairs. Spotting no one, he edged down. Surprisingly, the living room was clear as well. This only left the kitchen and backroom for hiding spots. Seymour wondered which Slaughter team member he was going to get to kill. He was silently hoping for John Argo. The man’s sarcasm and condescending face were annoying. It was too much to hope for Slaughter himself. Seymour was sure the man was the sniper responsible for the carnage outside. Slaughter must have somehow spotted Sam on the cliff and had taken the man out with the first shot fired, then focused his attention to the valley below.
Seymour paused. The blaring horns suddenly quit, leaving only the sound of sporadic gunfire. And something else. Seymour’s heart sank. A chopper was approaching, low and fast. The unmistakable sound of Blackhawk rotor blades was rapidly filling the air. No, he realized, two of them.
Seymour came to the undeniable conclusion that this fight was over. More troops were coming in. It was either tactical teams from the FBI Field Office in Denver, or worse, it was an assault team from the Fort Carson Army Base. That would mean door-mounted, belt-fed, rotating barrel, M134 machine guns capable of leveling this entire canyon. They were dead. This was over.
Seymour swore silently to himself. No, not yet. He could at least take out one of Slaughter’s team, giving the man even more reason to grieve. It was to be a last parting gift to a man who had become a colossal pain in his… Seymour cut off in mid-thought. The man standing on the other side of the kitchen, watching the back door, was none other than Agent Ali. The very same man Seymour had asked to join in on this endeavor. The very same man who had turned him down. The very one who had somehow freed himself and killed more of Seymour’s men in the process. He was the agent who had rescued Abbi and the baby, derailing Seymour’s plans and allowing the unmitigated disaster in this canyon to take place. Agent Ali, the self-righteous do-gooder, had become just as much of an annoying problem as Slaughter himself.
Agent Ali seemed to sense trouble and darted into the backroom, crossing over to the southern wall. Seymour fired two rounds in haste. One passed through the doorway and out the back. The other went into the door jam, nearly taking Ali’s head off. “You’ve got nowhere to hide, Agent Ali. Might as well come on out and take a bullet like a man.”
Ali was quick to reply. “You come in here and get me, Seymour. I’ve got something I want to show you.” Ali hung his pistol around the corner and began to rapid-fire without even bothering to look. Seymour dove left across the living room, seeking cover on the other side of the wide opening leading into the kitchen. Thankfully, every round missed, but it made Seymour smile. The man had wasted an entire mag of ammo in the process.
Seymour sucked up against the wall, took a breath, and stepped around the corner, firing steadily into the wall Ali was hiding behind, walking methodically forward and through the kitchen, watc
hing each of his rounds punch neatly through the sheetrock and into the room beyond. Just before his own mag ran dry, he hot-swapped another while still aiming and continuing to move forward. “You should have taken me up on my offer, Ali!”
__________
Ali pressed against a bookcase in DJ’s workshop at the back of the house, watching Seymour’s rounds punch through the wall, spraying the air with sheetrock dust in front of his face. He was pinned. He needed to do something desperate. He needed to think outside of the box. If he charged forward and around the corner into the kitchen, he would likely just walk into a bullet. Still, there had to be something he could do to even the odds.
The bookcase. Cash had said something sarcastic to DJ about the bookcase and DJ being a Rambo-like gun collector as DJ explained the layout of the house and the light switches Ali needed to locate. Ali hadn’t been paying attention because Carbon had been talking in the background, insisting he stay back so he could run his surveillance drones without fear of being shot. Ali had tried to tune both of them out so he could pay attention to what Slaughter had been saying. Pinned against the bookcase as he was, he suddenly felt like he had missed something important, something vital to his survival.
Ali spun quickly and looked at the shelves of books lined up behind him, ever mindful of the bullets passing by a mere twelve inches away. The books were mostly technical manuals about reloading, or biographies written by former military snipers the world over. Nothing unique. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except for the large volume sitting to one side. It had War and Peace stenciled down the spine. An ambitious read, Ali thought. It also didn’t seem to match the theme of the bookcase.
Like a spotlight being switched on in a cave of black, the memory of what Cash had said popped into his brain. Ali hastily grabbed the book. He hoped this worked. He was out of time. Seymour was going to step around that corner and punch holes through him at any moment. What was happening to the wall separating him from his former coworker was about to be happening to Ali.
__________
Seymour stepped around the corner and stopped firing. Ali was gone. The rear door was still open, and thanks to the spotlights, he could see the remainder of his men focusing on the field as the helicopters touched down in the tall grass. A few were tossing their weapons aside and preparing for capture. Most were uncertain of what to do. Seymour wanted to shoot them for their cowardice and stupidity.
He looked around the room, wondering where Ali had vanished to. He couldn’t have run out the back. Surely, Ali would have been cut down by the armed men outside. Still, there was no place to hide. On the wall where he had suspected Ali to be was only a bookcase. A few of the books showed where bullets had ripped into them. On the opposite side was a large gun safe and a workbench. Still, no Ali.
Wait, he thought. Had Ali somehow darted across the doorway without being seen and hidden in the safe? Surely not. Still, it was the only answer he could think of. Pointing his weapon, he advanced across the room, eyes locked onto the safe. “Come out, Ali. I know you’re in there. Those steel walls won’t help you. I have a brick of C4. Doesn’t sound like a fun way to go. You should kick that door open and come out blasting. Die fighting for your life, Ali. Not like a coward hiding in a box.”
There was a noise, then, accompanied by a vibration on the floor under his feet. Seymour made to spin about, suspecting he had been set up, somehow. He froze halfway through his turn, his head finishing the spin before his body did. A section of the bookcase had swung open to reveal a small hidden room. It was lined with various firearms hanging from the walls. Slaughter had a hidden gun room, and Ali was standing in the middle of it holding a large rifle. No, not a rifle. The barrel was too big around. It was some sort of tactical shotgun with a boxed magazine like an AR15. Ali was pointing it right at him.
Seymour sighed and dropped his weapon, slowly turning to face Ali fully. “Fine,” he said. “You win. I surrender. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’ll testify.”
Ali smiled. “Just like a coward. Ready to spill your guts and hope to plead a deal, escape some of that jail time?”
Seymour nodded. “Something like that.”
Ali pulled the trigger three times fast. Seymour was pushed backward into the gun safe, pain ripping through him as buckshot tore through his body, the sound of thunder filling the room and deafening him. Seymour didn’t feel himself fall, yet there he was, slumped against the safe, watching his life pour out of him in throbbing gushes of crimson onto the wooden floor. Seymour struggled to speak, to plead for help. Instead, blood erupted from his mouth in one ragged cough, blocking his words. He reached out a hand, a symbolic gesture of mercy. Ali did nothing to assist. He only watched as Seymour’s universe slowly faded away.
__________
DJ was having fun, gaining great pleasure from finally taking it to the enemy who had plagued his life, who had stolen his friends from him, who had betrayed him. He cycled the bolt one more time, already seeing his next target as the sound of approaching helicopters filled the canyon below. Then a voice spoke behind him. It was one he recognized. In an instant, his joy was replaced by seething anger and rage.
Sam Kenny called out loudly behind him, his voice calm and confident. “Stop shooting and roll over slowly.” DJ hesitated, contemplating his next move, thinking of rolling hard to his left and drawing his pistol with his right. It was a foolish move, he knew. There was little doubt Sam had a gun pointed at him. Sam was a seasoned killer. Sam was fast. DJ didn’t stand a chance. The traitor seemed to read DJ’s thoughts. “Go for it, DJ. Give me a reason to kill you. Please.”
DJ did as instructed, keeping his hands clear from the heavily modified Sig X-5 series pistol he lovingly referred to as “MP.” He rolled over and looked toward his feet to find Sam standing nearly fifteen feet away. Moonlight filled the cliff, and even though DJ had removed his night vision goggles to use the scope on the rifle, he could see the man bathed in pale light. Sam had his own gun raised, standing with his feet shoulder-width apart, wearing a backpack and looking through the sights. His own goggles were pulled down around his neck. No doubt the man had stood there for a moment watching DJ while his eyes had grown accustomed to the light before speaking. Sam was planning something here. It was clear.
With anyone else, DJ would have thrown caution to the wind and gone for it. The man was fifteen feet away. There was a good chance any adversary at this distance would miss on the first shot in such low light. But Sam wasn’t any ordinary gun thug. DJ had stood behind him on the firing line for nearly thirty days straight and watched the guy shoot. If DJ so much as flinched, he would surely die as a result. “What now,” he asked. “You want me to be looking at you when you kill me?”
Sam chuckled. “Close, but not quite. Keep your right hand up. Use your left to get to your feet and face me. Slowly, please.”
DJ chuckled. “You said, please. How nice of you. Manners from a murderer.”
Sam didn’t move, focusing on DJ’s head through the sights. “What can I say, Momma raised me right.” DJ stood and faced his enemy, raising his left hand to match his right. Sam nodded his head. “Now turn around and face the cliff. Keep your hands up.”
DJ turned carefully, wondering what the man was thinking. Surely Sam had something in mind or DJ would be dead already. Did Traitor Sam think to capture him and bring him to his boss like a trussed-up prize? Surely the man had to realize this fight was over. The helicopters should have informed the man that the powers that be were on to Deputy Director Hartley. When Abbi had called, the Justice Department was on the way over to pick her up. What was the idiot thinking? No matter what it was, as long as DJ was breathing, he had a chance. When he got that chance, he was going to kill Sam Kenny.
DJ faced the valley, flipping through options in his mind. He could dive left or right and draw, firing on the way down. The right would be the best choice as it would allow him to bring the gun into line with Traitor Sam’s face the quickest. He pr
epared to do exactly that when Sam spoke, surprising DJ with a new set of instructions, trashing those plans, and presenting DJ with new options. “Lower your hands by your side. When I tell you to, you’re going to turn back to face me. I’ll give you the option to draw facing away from me or in the middle of your turn. You won’t stand much of a chance if you do, but you’re the one making the decision. If you manage to get turned all the way back around, we get to see who the fastest really is. I’ve never actually had a chance to see you at your best, but I’m still pretty sure I can take you.”
DJ lowered his hands, slowly, at a snail's pace. If Traitor Sam was going to let this be a test of skill, then so be it. He didn’t want to lower his hands too quickly and let the man get the jump on him. “You sure you want to do this, kid?” DJ asked. “If I were you, I would just shoot me while I had the advantage. Because when I turn around, we’re going to be on a level playing field.”
Sam laughed, his tone suggesting he wasn’t concerned in the least. “You’re getting old, DJ. Being a professional duelist is a young man’s game. I’m ten years younger and ten years faster than you are. Plus, you’re overly cautious. All that thinking about not coming home to your wife and baby. But we’ll see. I’m ready whenever you are.”
DJ blinked, looking out over the canyon, watching the Blackhawk helicopters pass low and then bank around, preparing to land. “Nice job, trying to get in my head bringing up my child. But I promise you, Sam. Nothing you say is going to stop me from killing you.”
DJ took a deep breath and cleared his mind, knowing what happened next would take all his focus, skill, and determination. He turned carefully, taking his time, not giving Sam any reason to shoot him before the fun could begin. Traitor Sam was still standing in the same position but had dropped the backpack to the ground behind him. The man was standing relaxed with both hands down by his side, his gun holstered.