Trackers Omnibus [Books 1-4]

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  Nathan wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he forced a smile. He liked Sandra, but the last thing on his mind was dating.

  “You break my sister’s heart and I’ll break your other arm,” Raven said.

  Nathan laughed this time. “I’m not interested in anything besides finding my nephew and getting back to my sister, don’t worry.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, looking at the dash. “I better fill up the tank after this hill.”

  Raven pulled off to the side of the road along a slope that descended to a lake. Thousands of fingers of smoke rose from the cooling timber all around them. The one good thing about everything being black was it was easy to spot any potential hostiles.

  Nathan stepped out and raised his AR-15 to scope the road. Three burned-out cars covered in ash remained where they had died six days earlier. He zoomed in on a single body that was nothing but charred flesh and bones.

  He stretched his aching muscles after finishing the scan. There wasn’t anyone out here. Not anyone alive, anyway. He returned to the Jeep, where Raven was preparing to funnel gas from a can into the fuel tank.

  “Need some help?” Nathan asked.

  “Nah, just watch our backs.”

  Nathan limped back to the other side of the Jeep to check the area Raven had already cleared. A patch of terrain to the north had survived the fires, leaving an island of green in an ocean of black. He pushed the scope to his eye and magnified on a red tent under a massive ponderosa pine.

  “You see that tent?” Nathan asked.

  “Yeah, but no people. I’m guessing whoever pitched that is dead inside.”

  He set the gas canister in the back of the truck, grabbed his rifle, and walked over to the edge of the road. Wind gusted across the two men, rustling their filthy clothing.

  “Think we should have a look anyway?” Nathan said. “If someone’s alive up there, maybe they saw something and can tell us—”

  The rattle of an engine cut him off. The sound rose over the wind, faded, and came again. Nathan and Raven darted for cover behind the Jeep.

  “Where’s that sound coming from?” Nathan asked.

  “South, I think.”

  Raven and Nathan shouldered their rifles and crept around the Jeep. The cough of the engine grew louder, and a Humvee crested the road to the south, zooming over a hill and speeding down the open stretch.

  “We have to hide,” Raven said. “Everything else on the road is covered in ash.”

  Nathan followed Raven into the ditch. They scrambled down the rocky side and got down on their stomachs. From this vantage, Nathan couldn’t see the road, but he could hear the diesel engine approaching. It didn’t sound like it was slowing.

  “Set a trap,” Nathan whispered. “Let’s see if my plan works.”

  “We don’t know if these are the guys.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Raven held up a finger to his lips as the vehicle slowed on the road. The Humvee slowed to a halt just above them. Doors opened, and multiple pairs of boots hit the pavement.

  “Keep your eyes open,” said a man’s voice.

  “I’ll check the back of the Jeep,” answered another.

  Nathan slowly pushed his muzzle up, but all he could see was the top of the Jeep and the hazy sky. All he needed was a single thread of evidence that these were the assholes who had taken Ty. Then he was going to move in.

  The top of a shaved head and two bushy eyebrows emerged overhead. Another shaved head appeared. This one had a Swastika tattoo on the left side.

  Skinhead bastards.

  “I don’t see anyone out here,” one of the men in the truck said. He moved out of sight. The other man remained, the top of his head in Nathan’s sights.

  “There’s a tent over here!” someone shouted from the other side of the road. “We should check that shit out.”

  “Hold up, Jimmy,” came a new voice. “You got to check out the supplies in this Jeep. We hit the jackpot! The General is going to be really happy.”

  The man moved away from Nathan’s red dot sight, vanishing from view. He looked over at Raven. Despite their injuries, Nathan was confident they could take these Aryan assholes down right here.

  But that wouldn’t help find his nephew.

  Unless he left one of them alive.

  Nathan heard another new voice on the road, bringing the total contacts to five.

  “Check out this crossbow,” the man said. “That is freakin’ sweet.”

  Raven’s eyes widened.

  Five men was a lot to take down, even with surprise on his side, but Nathan couldn’t let them take their gear and the Jeep. Being stranded out here was as good as a death sentence.

  “Engine is still hot, boss,” someone said above.

  Nathan flashed a hand signal to Raven, directing him to take the two guys on the right. That left Nathan with the three on the left. They had to move fast, and they had move now!

  Nathan felt the pre-battle jitters as he mentally prepared to take their lives. It was different than flying his jet into combat. He would be able to see the men he killed, look them in the eyes, something a pilot didn’t have to deal with when dropping bombs or launching missiles.

  His heart had been beating calmly, but as soon as he jumped up with his rifle, it slammed against his ribcage. Two men in black fatigues were removing gear from the back of the Jeep. They looked in his direction, and the one on the right shouted the alarm.

  Nathan fired two shots into the first man’s side, sending him staggering away. He trained the barrel on the second man, who was fumbling for a holstered pistol, and dropped him with a shot to the temple.

  Gunfire came from Nathan’s right. Raven’s shots punched through a soldier’s neck, a geyser of blood spraying the windshield of the Jeep. He dropped to his knees and clutched the mortal wound.

  A bearded soldier on the right scrambled for cover on the other side of the road and dove into the ditch. Nathan focused his gun on a thick man with an athletic build to his left who had taken off running. He aimed for a pair of wide, linebacker shoulders and fired a shot that tore through the back of his ribcage.

  The muscular man crashed to the pavement with a thud, limp and dead. Nathan felt a tinge of satisfaction and roved his rifle to find the final target and finish the job. This time he was going to aim to maim and not kill.

  “Eyes up!” Raven shouted.

  In the turret of the Humvee, a sixth man emerged. He grabbed the M240 and aimed it at Nathan.

  Raven dropped to a knee and fired two shots that pinged off the armor shield surrounding the big gun. It barked to life, sending 7.62 mm rounds in Raven’s direction. He rolled out of the way and then jumped into the ditch they had been hiding in.

  The gunner raked the machine gun back and forth, spraying rounds into the pavement. Then he moved the barrel toward Nathan, but Nathan already had his sights on the gunner’s head.

  “Eat this, you Nazi loving prick,” Nathan muttered. His voice didn’t sound like it belonged to him as he squeezed off a shot that hit the man in the center of his black baseball cap, sending his shaved skull jolting backward with such force it broke his neck.

  Bullets peppered the Jeep to Nathan’s left. He ducked down for cover as more rounds slammed the metal. Where the hell was the shooter?

  “No!” Raven shouted. At first Nathan thought he was screaming about his precious Jeep, but then a flash of steel whizzed past Nathan and crunched into someone standing behind him.

  He whirled to see a seventh man collapse to the ground, screaming in pain and holding onto the handle of the hatchet Raven had buried into his breast. Nathan snapped into action, on high alert as he moved to the other side of the Jeep to search for the final soldier, the one that had lunged into the opposite ditch. The man was on the run, already halfway to the island of trees with the tent.

  Raven aimed his rifle, but Nathan held up a hand. “We need him alive. Shoot him in the leg.”

  A crack sounded, and the
thin, short man hit the dirt about one hundred yards from the road. Nathan turned back to the guy who had snuck up on him. He squirmed in pain on his back, feet slapping the concrete.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” Nathan muttered. He slung his rifle over his back and kicked the man’s gun away. Then he leaned down next to him, getting right to the point. “Where the fuck are the kids?”

  “Don’t kill me,” the guy pleaded. He looked up, his bearded face contorted in agony. “I didn’t hurt nobody. I swear it.”

  Nathan grabbed the handle of the hatchet. “I asked you a question.”

  Lips trembling, the man still didn’t answer. He closed his eyes and said something under his breath that Nathan couldn’t make out. Might have been a curse or a prayer. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but hunting down the bastards who had kidnapped his nephew and ambushed Lieutenant Dupree and his men.

  “Suit yourself,” Nathan said.

  He twisted the blade a quarter of an inch. The man shrieked in agony. Nathan released his grip on the blade and waited for the skinhead to come back to reality, but his eyelids slowly drooped over his eyes as he slipped toward unconsciousness. A slap to his face pulled him back. He glared at Nathan, eyes burning with rage.

  “Tell me where you took the kids,” Nathan said.

  “Fuck you,” the man replied. He spat in Nathan’s face and let out a hoarse laugh. Maybe he knew he was going to die, or maybe he was just that big of an asshole. Either way, Nathan could tell he wasn’t getting any information from this one. He stood and considered leaving him there to die slowly in pain, but he didn’t want the liability when he turned his back.

  “Join your friends in hell,” Nathan said. He plucked the hatchet from the man’s chest. Blood gushed out of the cavity. He let out a scream as Nathan brought the blade down square in the middle of his forehead. The sickening crack echoed like a gunshot.

  Nathan thought he would feel something like satisfaction, but all he felt was more pain. He wiggled the hatchet free and stood.

  Raven waved from across the road. He was kneeling next to the injured man. Nathan stopped to check the bullet holes in the Jeep. There were two in the hood and several in the windshield. Almost every window had been shattered.

  “Shit,” he said. Nathan walked around the side of the Jeep when he saw his rucksack on the ground next to one of the corpses. The analog radio was right next to the pack. He bent down to examine the radio, cursing again at the sight of the shattered casing and protruding wires.

  Nathan closed his eyes and snapped them back open again. Their one form of communication with the outside world was completely trashed. He stood and ran over to Raven.

  “Radio and the Jeep are fucked,” Nathan said when he got there. He handed the bloody hatchet to Raven, who gave him a cockeyed look, flared his nostrils, and then looked back down at the injured man wriggling on the ground.

  “You fuckers shot my baby,” he said in an incredulous high-pitched voice.

  “I’m sorry,” the man cried. “I was just—”

  “We’ll take their Humvee,” Nathan said. He studied the man lying at his feet. He was covered in tattoos of hate symbols.

  “Nathan, this racist piece of shit is named Joe,” Raven said, patting the man’s shoulder. Joe grimaced in pain. “Joe here has agreed to take us to meet his racist piece of shit friends at a place called the Castle. In exchange, I’ve promised not to cut his nuts off.”

  ***

  General Thor returned with another man Charlize didn’t recognize. They set up laptops on a table in front of her bed.

  “Madame Secretary, this is Colonel Mark Raymond. He will be leading the briefing about your son. I may have to duck out early to deal with the situation off the coast of Palm Beach. We’re still running rescue missions to see if we can pull anyone from the water.”

  Charlize nodded. She understood Thor had other things to worry about with a war going on. A hostage situation was probably low on his priority list.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” Raymond said. He was a tall man with a bulbous nose and thick brown hair. “I’ve been unable to reach your brother on the channel you provided. We’re still not sure if he reached out to Lieutenant Marco, either. The comms are a mess.”

  Charlize nodded again. She felt like a robot, but she didn’t want to interrupt.

  Raymond placed his laptop computer on a table in front of her bed. “Normally this briefing would be conducted by the FBI or perhaps the DOJ, but since the country is under martial law, the military is handling the case.”

  He typed a passcode into the computer and then angled it so she could see better. On screen, her sweet baby boy looked up with droopy eyes, his hair a mess. Her heart ached at the sight, but at least she had proof he was still alive. Raymond hit a button, and Ty’s high voice came from the speakers.

  “Mom, it’s me. I miss you. Where are you? Why haven’t you come for me? I’m not hurt, but these men are holding me captive in a place called the Castle and—”

  The camera panned to a bearded man wearing fatigues. Blue eyes, cold as ice, stared back at her.

  “My name is General Dan Fenix, and I’m the leader of the Sons of Liberty. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to restore order in these parts. Our mission is to take back our country from those that would have us enslaved.”

  Charlize ground her teeth as she watched the man fold his hands and smile at the camera.

  “We have your son, Secretary Montgomery, and for the right price, you can have him back. I’ll need ten million in gold bars and a list of weapons to be delivered at a place of my choosing. This is not a negotiation. If you don’t deliver the gold and weapons within twenty-four hours, you’ll be getting your son back significantly more damaged than he is now. And if you fail to comply with my requests…well, let’s just say you won’t be getting him back at all.”

  The feed shut off.

  Charlize fought to keep her voice level as she asked, “Who the hell is General Dan Fenix?”

  Raymond closed the laptop. “That’s a good question. At first we weren’t sure. I searched our databases to look up anyone by that rank and name but came up empty.”

  “The reason for that is simple,” Thor said. “General Fenix was never a general. He was an Army captain who served two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. In 2005, he was dishonorably discharged after evidence surfaced he had ordered several civilians killed.”

  Raymond took over. “There were conflicting reports about those deaths. Some of his men seemed to have covered up what really happened in Iraq, and the others were too afraid to speak up. Fenix returned to Colorado and vanished off the map for several years. He resurfaced in Denver. The Feds were watching him—apparently he started a group affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood called the Sons of Liberty. Although they seem to be a different sect with their own beliefs.”

  “The Sons of Liberty are basically white supremacists that hate the government and everyone who isn’t white,” Thor said. “Unlike the traditional skinhead, these guys are way more political. It’s disgusting their name plays homage to the Founding Fathers.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Raymond said. He massaged his jaw nervously. “We believe Fenix has been building his own personal army since he returned home from the war.”

  “The truth is that we don’t know how many men he’s been able to recruit or what kind of weaponry he’s managed to amass,” Thor said gravely.

  “And now they have my son,” Charlize said. “We have to find him.”

  “That’s going to be difficult,” Thor said. “We have no idea where he is, and we’re strained for resources as it is.”

  Charlize breathed deeply through her nose, reminding herself that Thor had never been a father. He didn’t understand how callous his remarks sounded.

  “What about the area where Lieutenant Dupree was ambushed?” she asked.

  “We don’t know if it was Fenix and his men who killed Dupree,” R
aymond said.

  “Of course. I’m sure it was a different highly skilled and well-armed paramilitary group in the middle of Colorado that took out those Marines,” Charlize said. Frustration was bringing out her sarcastic streak—a tendency that Clint had always reminded her to curb. But her right-hand man was dead now, and she would be damned if she sat around talking to these men a moment longer while her son was in danger. Charlize swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  Thor and Raymond stood simultaneously, while Albert offered Charlize his hand.

  “The doctor said you need your rest, Madame Secretary,” Thor said.

  “I rested. Now I’m getting up to speed on this Fenix son of a bitch.” She smoothed out her loose-fitting sweat suit and swept her roughly chopped hair back from her forehead, trying to pretend that she still cut as commanding a figure as she once did on the Senate floor.

  “We can’t give him what he wants, ma’am, and you know that,” Thor said. “Fenix is a terrorist, and the United States—”

  “Does not negotiate with terrorists,” Charlize said, finishing his sentence. “I know, and I agree.”

  Raymond looked at her quizzically. “Then what do you plan to do?”

  She met his gaze steadily. “I’m going to hunt him down and kill him.”

  ***

  Sandra held her breath and pulled back the bandage covering Teddy’s elbow. The flesh was mildly red, and there was no sign of a worsening infection, but that didn’t mean he was out of the woods. The news of the Stanley and the loss of the medical supplies and food had everyone in the hospital on edge. They needed the antibiotics to keep Teddy alive, and aside from what they had on hand at the medical center, they were all out.

  She slowly rewrapped his arm.

  There was a knock on the door to the small isolation room they had moved Teddy into. Doctor Duffy opened the door and gestured for Allie to come inside. She fiddled with the white mask covering her face. Creek trotted up to the doorway wearing a plastic suit Sandra had found for him.

  “Sit,” Sandra instructed.