by Bob Mayer
“We’re three minutes out,” Neeley said. “Golden is talking to Finley. He said that Forten isn’t with him. Nor is the girl.”
“They’re dispersed for an ambush,” Gant said.
“Duh.”
Gant smiled grimly. “See you on the ground.”
“I hope so.”
* * *
Emily had her feet against the wood and her hands tight around the shirt as she pulled herself up another couple of inches. Her arms felt like they would rip right out of their sockets, her muscles were vibrating in protest, but she slid one hand up a few inches, then the other, then her feet one at a time.
She was breathing hard but didn’t care. Not much further. The top of the wood was close, damn close, but still out of reach. Emily was so tired, in so much pain, that not any one specific part of her body took precedence. It all hurt.
Two more inches. Emily held still panting, as she desperately glared at the lip of the tank. It looked close enough, but if she reached and missed.
She couldn’t think about failure.
Then she heard a sound. Cloth tearing.
No time.
She bent her knees slightly, then pushed up as hard as she could as she let go of the shirt with her right hand and clawed for the top of the wood. Her fingers hooked over and she held on, even as the shirt in her left hand tore away. Ignoring the pain, she slammed her left hand onto the wood, scrabbling for the edge. Her fingers clawed over it and she was hanging by both hands.
“Fuck,” she hissed. No way she could pull herself up to get a leg over. No way.
Then she heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter.
* * *
“Number one,” Bailey called out.
The CIA’s Director of Operations glared at him as the chopper’s wheels touched down with a light bounce on the main street of the ghost town. Neeley shifted her attention back to the scope on the rifle. There was just enough light now to be able to see. She had the tactical frequency now in her left ear and Golden’s freq with Finley in her right.
Bailey grabbed the Director and tossed him out of the chopper onto the broken tar of the street and the helicopter immediately lifted.
Golden’s voice was matter of fact. “The Director of Operations is on the ground.”
“What the fuck is that?” Finley snarled. “Chinese takeout?”
“First course,” Golden said and her voice was so cold Neeley glanced at the woman sitting there with her laptop still open.
* * *
Gant was at five thousand feet and now could see the layout of the town. Rail-line to the south. Large factory building to the east. He also could see the chopper pulling back after making its deposit.
* * *
Neeley saw the Director of Operations start running, dashing toward the buildings on the left side of the street when his body was slammed hard to the tarmac. She shifted the rifle, knowing the bullet had to have come from the other side of the street and further away.
* * *
Emily heard the shot. She pulled upward with all her strength and swung her right leg in an arc toward the top. Her chin reached the top, her heel hooked over it and she continued with the momentum.
Her calf slid over the top, her thigh. Her hands bled as she pulled with all her strength and then she was on top, straddling the top of the wood planks. Emily leaned forward, placing her head down on the thin wood and breathe deeply, not daring yet to see what her next challenge was.
She looked down and saw that at the same distance down on the outside was a foot wide ring of wood, then a fifteen-foot drop to the ground.
* * *
Gant saw the body go down but had not seen the origin of the shot. He had the toggles pulled in tight, slowing his descent as much as possible. The slanting rays of the rising sun cast very long shadows, making observation difficult.
* * *
“At least give me a gun,” the Chief of Direct Actions pleaded as the Blackhawk banked back toward the town.
Neeley glanced over her shoulder. Bailey looked like he hadn’t even heard the man. Golden clicked the transmit button on the radio. “You got one. We want proof of life. Where is Emily Cranston?”
“We’re not even at fifty percent yet,” Finley replied.
“We’re not asking you to give up Emily yet,” Golden reasoned. “Just proof of life.”
Neeley spoke into the tactical frequency. “Pilot, hold us in position.”
The Blackhawk flared to a steady hover.
“We’re not coming in,” Golden said, “until we hear from Emily. We’ve got the Chief of Direct Action to be let off next.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Finley replied. “Give me the DCA.”
* * *
Gant had lost a thousand feet of altitude while Golden fought for proof of life. He’d been tempted to cut in and tell her to cut the bullshit — the girl was either alive or she wasn’t. But then he could tell she’d already realized that as the Blackhawk came in for another landing, this time to the west side of town.
* * *
“I’m not going,” the DCA flatly announced.
Bailey popped his gum and shot the DCA in his right thigh, reached forward as the man screamed and writhed in pain, and threw him out the right side of the helicopter even before it touched down. The man landed in the dust and the chopper was gaining altitude again.
Neeley wasn’t watching the DCA. Her focus was on the town.
* * *
Gant, on the other hand, was watching the DCA. He saw the man roll, try to stand, leg buckle, try to stand again, sink to his knees.
Then get shot. Low, in his gut, making him shudder and double-over as if punched.
“Ground level, close,” Gant called to Neeley over the radio.
“Fuck,” Neeley replied. “Different shooter. I didn’t see the muzzle flash and the angle is too divergent.”
“He’s still alive.” Gant saw the DCA was now crawling, trying to get to a drainage ditch that lined the dirt road. A dark red trail of blood followed his body.
Gant angled his parachute, to the south side of the town away from where the chopper was, toward the crawling man.
“I’ve got him,” he hissed as he saw a figure in the western shadows of an abandoned gas station creeping closer to shoot again, out of sight of the chopper.
Gant turned his chute in that direction, let go of the toggles and brought his rifle up to bear.
* * *
Emily had checked the shirt and saw that the noise she had heard was the shoulder seam nearest the shoe anchor had begun to split. So she tied the shoe to the other sleeve. Then she hooked it in the notch, the opposite of the way she had done it before.
She took several deep breaths and then began to crawl off the top of the wooden planks to climb down to the outer ring. She had both hands on the shirt and one leg pressed against the side of the tank. The other leg was still hooked over the top of the tank.
She unhooked that leg, gripping tight on the shirt.
Her strength wasn’t enough as her grip failed and shirt slid through her fingers and she plummeted down, slamming onto the wood ring. She almost slid off but managed to back against the tank, trying to regain her wind and not fall off.
As she took a deep breath, a stabbing pain brutally informed her that she had broken at least one if not two ribs during the fall. As she lay there gasping she saw the strangest sight: a parachutist, floating by, heading toward the town, holding a rifle in his hands and trying to aim it.
* * *
Neeley saw the DCA’s body get slammed by several more bullets, knocking it backward to sprawl face-up in the street.
“Gant?” she called out over the radio as the Blackhawk hovered.
* * *
Hanging under a canopy at the discretion of the wind and gravity was not the most stable platform Gant had ever used to try to shoot someone. In fact, he was realizing it was an impossible platform as he was rapidly losing altitude an
d the un-guided chute kept turning with the wind.
“Fuck it,” he muttered, letting the rifle drop down to hang on its sling while he grabbed the toggles, dumped air, and flew straight toward the man standing in the shadow who had just fired three more rounds into the DCA.
Gant was about eighty feet off the ground when he felt the snap of a supersonic round whip close by, coming from his right. He twisted his head in that direction even as he dumped more air and the only thing he saw at his level was the church steeple, which made perfect sense.
“We got a sniper in the steeple,” Gant got out as another bullet whipped by and the man on the ground turned and looked up, surprise filling his face as he spotted Gant screaming down toward him underneath his canopy. The man began to bring up his sub-machinegun.
No time for niceties at thirty feet altitude. Gant’s hands raced from the toggles to the quick releases on his shoulders. His thumbs looped through the metal loops as the man brought his gun to bear.
Gant popped the releases at fifteen feet altitude just as the man fired. The burst of rounds flew over Gant’s head as he disconnected from the canopy and free-fell to the ground. Gant hit hard, tumbled forward and jumped to his feet less than a yard from the man. Gant grabbed the barrel of the sub-machinegun and pushed it away from his body as the man fired another burst.
The hot barrel seared into Gant’s flesh but he didn’t let go as smashed his other fist into the man’s face, staggering him backward. The man dropped the weapon and grabbed Gant by the throat and right away Gant knew he was facing Caleigh Roberts’ killer as the mechanical hand began to compress his throat.
* * *
Neeley slid the sniper rifle toward Bailey who was still covering the two remaining prisoners. She got to her feet and moved to the small crew chief window behind the pilot where the M-2 .50 caliber machinegun was mounted. As she did so, she heard the pilot curse as there was a splintering of the cockpit glass just in front of him.
“We got ground fire,” the pilot screamed. “From the steeple.”
“Hold position,” Neeley ordered as she grabbed the handles of the machinegun. “I’m taking care of it.” She held the handles at chest level and aimed the large barrel of the machinegun toward the steeple. Her thumbs pressed down on the butterfly trigger and the gun roared into life, spitting huge .50 caliber rounds out, every fourth one being a tracer.
The strings of red tracers arced from the gun and hit the steeple at the base. Neeley ‘walked’ the rounds up the building, just the way Gant — Tony Gant — had taught her to do on numerous firing ranges. The large bullets tore away chunks of the light wood framework of the steeple.
She saw a muzzle flash in the belfry and adjusted. The rounds ripped into the lightly constructed building like miniature sledgehammers. She kept her thumb pressed down as the large barrel began to smoke from the hundreds of rounds going through it as she systematically destroyed the steeple and the sniper inside it.
* * *
Gant could faintly hear the firing of a heavy machinegun in the distance, but of more immediate concern to him was a lack of oxygen. He was seeing stars as his brain began to shut down and the hand around his throat increased pressure despite his attempts to pull it off with his right hand.
Gant lifted his left leg, grabbed the slim knife out of the ankle sheath with his left hand. He slammed the point into Payne’s throat and was rewarded with a spray of blood that completely blinded him. Payne went to his knees, the prosthetic hand pulling Gant down also. As Payne fell over backward dead, the hand still maintained the same pressure, the mechanical sensors receiving no change in nerve messages from the dead arm it was attached.
Gant floundered about like a dying fish, jammed the knife into the mechanical hand, trying to cut something.
Then it all went dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Back us off,” Neeley ordered the pilots. The barrel of the .50 caliber machinegun was red hot. The steeple was now nothing more than an abbreviated stump on the top of the church itself.
“Gant?” she called out on the tactical frequency. “Gant? Do you hear me, damn it?”
There was no reply. She looked at Golden. “Contact Finley.”
“Hammer this is Falcon.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill this bitch right now?” Finley snarled in reply.
“Because you still want Paul Roberts and Cranston,” Golden said.
“Fuck Cranston. That was Forten’s thing. And you just appear to have made mince meat of him.”
“What about Payne?” Golden asked.
“What about him?”
“Doesn’t he want Cranston?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Cranston and Roberts. Right on main street. Then you back that fucking chopper away or your girl ends up like Forten.”
Neeley nodded when Golden looked at her. “All right,” Golden said. “We’re coming in.”
“Gant?” Neeley called out on the tactical frequency. “Where the hell are you?”
* * *
Someone was tearing at his throat. That was the first conscious thought Gant had. He tried to reach up and defend himself, but whoever it was, batted his hands away and kept jerking his throat from side to side.
Then suddenly he felt nothing on his throat and blessed oxygen pouring in as he gasped for breath.
Gant blinked, blinded by the light, only seeing a silhouette over him. A person. Long hair. He shook his head, ears ringing as his brain tried to come back up to speed.
A half-naked girl. Dirty, grimy, haggard. And in her hands was the prosthesis that had been choking Gant. It all came rushing back to him as he took deep, steady breaths. He sat up and stared at the girl, who stared back at him with a half-wild look in her eyes.
Gant unbuckled his combat harness and pulled off his fatigue shirt and offered it to her. She eyed it warily for a second, then took it and slipped it over her shoulders.
And then she began to cry. Huge wracking sobs.
Gant reached forward and pulled her into his chest. “It’ll be all right, Emily,” he whispered, even though he knew it was a lie.
* * *
“Gant?” Neeley glanced at Golden and Bailey who were as mystified by Gant’s last transmission as she was. “You ok?”
“Emily’s with me,” Gant said in a hoarse voice.
“Pull up,” Neeley yelled to the pilot as they were about to touch down on main street.
The chopper shuddered as the pilot gave it power. They swooped over the destroyed steeple and Neeley could see spatters of blood and what appeared to a severed arm among the ruins.
“What the hell are you doing?” Finley’s voice came over the FM freq.
Golden raised her eyebrows at Neeley, indicating she wasn’t sure how to reply. Neeley switched her transmit frequency to the same one Golden was on. “The game has changed, asshole.”
“Who the fuck is this?” Finley demanded.
“There’s a fifty-fifty chance I’m the person who is going to kill you,” Neeley said.
“I’ve got the girl. Back off. Give me Roberts and Cranston.”
“You got nothing,” Neeley said.
“Give them to me or she dies now,” Finley warned.
“Let me check with my partner.” Then she turned off the transmitter.
* * *
Gant had his breath back although it hurt to talk. Emily Cranston was still crying, wrapped in his shirt, her arms tight across her chest. He was scanning the immediate area, knowing they still had Finley out there somewhere. He’d heard Neeley’s exchange with the man over the tactical frequency and considered the situation.
“Where did they have you?” Gant asked Emily.
She sniffled and raised her head up slightly. “The water tower by the rail tracks. Inside.”
Gant remembered seeing it on his way down. He had no doubt that Finley was somewhere relatively close to the tower.
“How did you get out?” he ask
ed.
“I used my bra wire to undo the shackle, then my shoe and shirt to climb over the top, then I climbed the ladder down. I saw you pass by with your parachute and followed.”
Gant stared at the girl, amazed at what she had accomplished. He keyed the radio to talk to Neeley. “I’ve got Emily and she’s ok. She was being held in the old water tank near the railroad tracks. Do you see it?”
“Roger that.”
“I bet Finley is somewhere close to there,” Gant said. “I got a suggestion.”
“Go ahead.”
* * *
The only expression Bailey showed when Neeley relayed Gant’s suggestion was a slight rise in his eyebrows, then he nodded. “All right.”
Bailey turned to Cranston and Roberts. “Finley is out there. He was holding your daughter in the old water tower. We’ve taken out Forten and Payne.” He leaned over and opened a plastic case and removed two pistols. “You get these. Then you take out Finley.”
Neeley reached over and cut the men’s flex cuffs after ordering the chopper to set down on the near side of town at the end of the main street. “Finley,” she said into the boom mike.
“I’m waiting.”
“We’re dropping Roberts and Cranston off at the end of main street. Let the girl go.”
“When I see them,” Finley said. “And I want you and that chopper and fucking machinegun to back way off.”
“No problem,” Neeley said.
The Blackhawk’s wheels touched down and Bailey gestured for the two to get off. As soon as they were out, he tossed the guns out and the chopper took off once more.
* * *
“Stay here,” Gant told Emily. They were in the back store room of what used to be a diner. They’d heard the chopper come in relatively close and Gant had considered taking her to it, but decided against it as it appeared Finley still thought she was in the water tower and that was a big advantage.
Emily nodded and sat down in an old rickety chair. Gant went through the open door to the front part of the store, staying in the shadows. He then crawled over to one of the booths and slid in, peering out the window. He could see Roberts and Cranston standing in the main street arguing, pistols in their hands.