Pulling his black Stetson a little lower on his brow, keeping the bright sunlight out of his eyes, Gabe nodded, liking the lilt in her husky voice.
For the last month, Anna had fretted and he understood why. During that time, Ace had shown his protective side, always being near her. At night, he went to sleep beside her bed and Gabe let him have that choice. Dog and woman were one now, no question, and he was happy about that. Anna was a woman who got things done and did not like being imprisoned by an ankle brace.
“You’re walking just fine,” he agreed. The morning was cool, in the forties, but the sky was a light blue, the sun strong and warming, the scent of lush green grass beginning to grow in earnest now that winter had finally left them alone.
They entered the barn. Earlier, Gabe had hooked up the horse trailer. Now, with the horses saddled and bridled, it was time to lead them into it.
Today, their mission had changed markedly. Another twenty bales of drugs had been dropped last night in the same valley by a satellite flyover. Salt Lake HQ had alerted them. Earlier, Anna had called Roberta Elson to see how she was. She found out the brothers were somewhere in California, delivering goods with their pickup truck, but Roberta wasn’t sure when they would return home. Translated, that probably meant drugs being driven over to the state, to specific street dealers.
So they weren’t here to go up to that meadow to retrieve the goods. Somewhere along the line, Gabe surmised there had been a miscommunication. With the brothers out of town? It was a good time to go to the parking lot, ride the horses up and down into the meadow, and do some reconnoitering. The Predator was coming over tonight, to loiter at ten thousand feet in a wide oval between the Elson spread and that meadow. Right now, they had no eyes in the sky, and Salt Lake HQ wanted eyes on those bales. Today, Gabe and Anna would do it via horseback.
He’d placed their rifles and other weapons wrapped in a tarp in the front of the trailer. They’d gear up once they arrived, not sure what they would find. Roberta had said the boys would return tomorrow. They had a one-day window to find out what HQ wanted and return home, before nightfall, just to be safe. He glanced at his watch. It was seven A.M.
They’d gotten up early, fed and watered the horses, and then eaten a large breakfast themselves. Anna was fit and ready to go. Wisely, she wore an ACE bandage around the ankle to give it extra support. There was no telling what could happen today. Nothing, Gabe hoped. But his years undercover told him to never relax and never assume anything because things could go haywire in the blink of an eye.
As they loaded the horses and got them prepared for the drive, Gabe felt his heart twinging with fear. It was fear of losing Anna. This past month had been hectic and chaotic. Since that eighteen-wheeler had hauled out a load of drugs, they lived in constant fear that the Elsons might attack and try to kill them.
Anna had wisely kept in touch with Roberta. On three different occasions she had taken her to the grocery store in Wind River, and once to the doctor. Roberta was slowly going blind with cataracts growing in her eyes. She was afraid of the surgery. And because of that connection with Anna, they’d been able to more or less keep tabs on when the brothers were on the road selling drugs to buyers in other states, and when they would return from those jaunts. On those days when they were gone, Anna and Gabe slept better. But never completely.
He brought Ace over to the barn, ordering him to guard. Then, he locked the barn, dog inside. Ace would be their first line of defense should the Elsons or anyone else wander over to the barn, thinking to open it and peek inside. With Ace’s deep, growling bark, anyone would be detoured. He’d put in plenty of water and kibble for Ace in case they weren’t back by a certain time. Calling his parents, he told them where Ace was, that he and Anna were out on a mission, and that if they didn’t hear from them within twenty-four hours, to come down and get Ace and take him home with them. Gabe didn’t want to worry them, but he wasn’t going to leave Ace locked up without adequate food or water, either. He told Maud where the key for the padlock was kept so that she could find it and unlock the barn door.
As he settled into the seat, shutting the door to the truck, he waited until Anna had strapped on her seat belt. Beneath their long-sleeved cotton shirts, they wore a level two Kevlar vest. Unsure of what they would find or get into, that vest had to be in place to stop a bullet if a firefight happened. Gabe slowly pulled out, not wanting to jerk the horses in the trailer around. Soon, they were on the highway, heading up the gentle slope that led them into the Salt Mountains.
“I’m really getting frustrated with Salt Lake HQ,” Anna muttered, taking off her black baseball cap and setting it on the seat. “When are they going to spring the trap shut on this drug drop and the Elsons? They’ve allowed the drugs to flow to sellers and yes, I know that DEA is picking up a lot of network drug info on those dealers and such.”
“It’s a trade-off,” Gabe said, sympathetic. “The more connections they make with local and regional drug dealers, the wider the net can be cast when it’s time to pull an operation to get all of them in one big drug bust.”
“Oh, I know . . . I know . . .”
“We’re alive, that counts.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t trust the Elsons. I sleep light just like I did in the jungle.”
“Sleep deprivation, for sure.”
They were heading into the forest now, the morning light touching the tips of thousands of evergreens above them. Soon, they were bracketed by nothing but trees. “I’m thinking we should go find that road the druggies made into the valley.”
“Yeah, it was a jolt to talk with the Forest Service, and find out they hadn’t made an official road into it.”
In no time, they had pulled into the empty parking lot. Unloading the horses, they placed the M4s into a rifle sheath that hung off the saddle. They placed the holster with the Glock around their waists and then covered it up with a lightweight, warm nylon vest that would hide it. Gabe wanted them to look like a couple of wranglers to anyone spotting them. And they, in the meantime, had to have sharper eyes and be more alert than any possible druggies that might be down in that meadow. How he wished for the Pred’s eyes on it right now.
Mounting, Gabe took the lead, more familiar with the area than Anna. She would look around and keep their rear safe. He had the front end of their team and was constantly swiveling his head from time to time, looking for anything out of place or an unusual movement. One thing for sure, their horses would hear or sight a human around them long before either of them did, and so both paid attention to their animal’s reactions and the way their ears moved. It was damp and cold in the forest. It had rained three days before, the brown pine-needled floor carpeted throughout squishing each time a horse’s hoof came down upon it.
According to the map that Gabe had memorized, it would be about thirty minutes before they crested the top of the ridge and from there, they could access the road and the meadow. A blue jay nearby squawked a warning, flying low and in front of them, hiding in another pine tree, continuing its outcry. Other than that? It was that soft silence that Gabe had grown up with here in the valley and it was soothing despite the possible danger that lay in front of them.
His mind wandered for a moment, settling as it always did, on Anna. He wasn’t sure who was more frustrated. He or she. It was probably equal, judging from the way he would sometimes catch her looking at him. The yearning between them was stretching to a breaking point. Both of them were smart enough to know trying to start a relationship in the middle of a mission was sheer stupidity. It was also a distraction and it could get them killed if they didn’t rein in their runaway desire for each other. He, too, wished this mission was over. He wanted a chance with Anna. A real one. A forever one if he allowed his quelling heart to run free with what-ifs. Never in his life had he wanted to quit this job more than right now. Every morning he woke up, he dreamed of what it would be like to have Anna snuggled alongside him, their shared intimacy, a real life,
a rich one full of promise ahead of them.
Gabe knew it wasn’t smart to dream. Dreams never came true, except when he’d been young, and Maud and Steve adopted him. He was one of the lucky ones. And he knew luck didn’t strike twice in a lifetime. People were lucky to get good fortune once. How could he hope for a second dream come true?
As they reached the ridge, Gabe and Anna dismounted, tying their horses nearby and crouching and lying on their bellies once they could look over and down into that huge meadow. Anna took photos with a long-range lens. Gabe lay six inches from her prone position, slowly moving the binoculars to see if he could spot human activity.
“Hey,” she said in low tone, her lens on the bundles, “each one has a taped piece of cardboard on one end of it. I can make out an H, an F, and a C.”
“Probably for the drug contained in them. My drug lord did the same thing to identify the contents. That would be heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine.”
Pulling out her cell phone, which wouldn’t work up in this area because there were no cell towers, she punched the info into an email and sent it to the draft box. Once they got down out of here and back into cell range, it would automatically be sent to Salt Lake HQ.
“I don’t see anything,” Gabe muttered. “I’d like to go down and snoop around. Maybe there’s another road that can’t be seen by the air? Drug dealers almost always have two exit/entrance points in case one was unusable, they had another chance to escape.”
“Good idea.” She sat up and tucked the cell into her vest pocket. “Ready?”
“Yeah,” he answered, unwinding and standing. “Just because we don’t see activity doesn’t mean someone isn’t down there.”
She tucked the camera into a padded saddlebag and buckled it closed. “I know. Best thing is to use the cover of the tree line and stay inside it. I never exposed myself in a meadow or a valley.”
“Be like the animals,” he said, mounting. “How’s your ankle feeling?”
She grinned, mounting. “My ankle is fine. My legs feel like wishbones and my butt is sore.”
“Tenderfoot,” he teased.
“Guilty as charged, Cowboy.” Anna reached out, gripping his gloved hand, squeezing it and releasing it, falling back behind his horse.
His fingers tingled. Just her touch was enough to set him off. He gently pushed his personal need for Anna aside, and they began a winding, steep descent into the meadow two thousand feet below them. When they were within a hundred feet of the end of the tree line, Gabe pulled his horse to a stop, allowing him to rest for a bit. Anna pulled up beside him, their boots brushing against each other.
“I don’t see anything,” she said, her voice low. “I sure wish we had Ace with us.”
“I know,” Gabe said, “but he’s of more value to us guarding that barn and the electronics inside it.” He looked around. “I don’t hear birds singing.”
“Hmmm, good catch. That means a predator is around, then.”
“Yeah,” he said. “If it’s a cougar, I don’t mind.”
“But if it’s a two-legged predator, we will,” she said, standing in the stirrups, looking around from where they had come. Settling back into the saddle, she said, “Let’s recon?”
“Yeah. I’ll go ahead.”
“Hero,” she taunted, giving him a playful smile.
Gabe absorbed her lips, that smile of hers. “No. Not a hero. I’m just as on guard as you are and scared.”
“Another thing to like about you,” Anna said. “You’re honest.”
“I don’t like the other possibility. Do you?”
His boot brushed hers as he walked his horse past hers. “No. Let’s stay alert . . .”
Guiding his sorrel gelding, Red, Gabe made sure a hoof didn’t strike a downed tree limb, thereby breaking it, the cracking sound alerting anyone nearby. The bay gelding Anna rode, Top, wove slowly around half of the large, oval meadow. Anna would stop every now and then, photograph close-ups of each bale. Gabe waited patiently, knowing that the scrawled letters or numbers would mean something to the Elsons or whoever picked them up. It was a code. And just getting those codes would tell DEA which drug lord was involved, and where the bale and its contents were headed—if the code could be broken. He had many codes he brought with him to DEA after leaving his undercover assignment. That helped break not only the ring in Tijuana, but also capture the drug lord himself. He was proud to have been part of the team that took the Mexican drug lord down and put him out of business.
Red anchored to a stop, ears forward, nostrils flared. Gabe lurched forward in the saddle and gripped the gelding’s barrel with his long legs to stop from being thrown over his head. He searched the shadowy grayness in front of them. Even though the sun was climbing, the evergreens were thick and one couldn’t see too far among them. His horse was rigid and stood without moving. He heard Top, who was right behind him, suddenly stop and do the same thing. Cursing mentally, Gabe could see nothing. Had the horses picked up on a scent? It could be a cougar. Or a human. He didn’t know which. Lifting his hand, he pushed the vest aside and pulled out his Glock, a bullet in the chamber. He knew Anna would do the same.
Suddenly, a bullet sang next to the tree where Gabe was. Bark splintered, cracked, and flew in all directions.
Red snorted and jumped sideways.
Nearly unseated, Gabe grabbed the horn to stop from being tossed off.
More gunshots shattered the silence around them.
The returning blast of Anna’s Glock filled the air. The scent of gunfire stung his nostrils as he spotted two men on foot, dressed in military garb, running hard from behind them. They were drug soldiers!
Red grunted as Gabe reined him sharply to the left, toward a thicker stand of pine ahead of them. Anna fired slowly and methodically at the soldier running toward them. Snipers never fast fired, ever. Gabe heard a scream. One of the drug soldiers was knocked backward, Anna’s aim deadly. She twisted around, digging her heels into Top, the dirt and pine needles exploding behind the horse as he leaped forward.
They raced up a small rise toward a huge black basalt group of boulders around seven feet high and twenty feet wide. More wood splintered and exploded from the trees surrounding them. The wind whipped by Gabe’s drawn face as he leaned low on his gelding, urging Red to scramble at top speed toward that fortlike grouping of rocks. It was their only chance of safety.
There were more shouts behind them. Gabe jerked a look over his shoulder. More men! Red charged into the U-shaped arrangement of rocks that looked like a dark fort in the woods. He pulled the gelding to a stop. Dismounting, he wrapped the reins around his fist. Jerking a look to his left, he saw Anna clamber down out of the saddle, awkward, but landing on her feet. He held up his hand to silently tell her to wrap Top’s reins around her hand. The horses were terrified, leaping around, jerking them as they held on to the animals.
Hunkering down, Gabe heard the gunshots stop.
Breathing hard, Anna moved to his side, watching through holes and cracks in the rocks. “Drug soldiers!”
“How many?”
“Maybe four. I wounded one. The other was still standing and firing at us.”
He wiped his sweaty upper lip, peering intently through a crack in the wall of basalt rocks. “I swore I heard a shout to their right. Two more voices, maybe.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Anna wiped her eyes. “Damned bullets hit those trunks. Wood was exploding all around me.”
“Do you have a splinter in your eye?” he demanded tightly, jerking a look toward her.
“No . . . I’m okay.” She was on one knee and twisted toward him. “Where do we go, Gabe? There’s no way out of here for us. Druggies usually travel in pairs and normally no fewer than six to eight men in a group.”
He looked around behind them. “That way is the road. We didn’t see anything on it. I think we can use this group of boulders as a shield, mount up, and ride hard down the slope toward it. We can then get on it, and hightail it out of
here and get back to the parking lot.”
“Wasn’t there a lake nearby? I saw it on the map.”
She had a sniper’s memory. “Yeah, a small lake on the other side of this meadow. It flows into the Snake River at the other end of it.”
She blew out a hard breath. “Damn, I didn’t see them coming. At all.”
“They’re dressed in camouflage for this kind of area,” Gabe said, “don’t be hard on yourself. Our horses spotted them first, though.”
“Yes,” she said, and she scowled. “Our radios won’t work down here, either. Too many mountains between us and Salt Lake City. Worse? Our satellite phone is in for repair and it’s not on us. We’re on our own.”
“Yes,” he admitted heavily. “That sat phone could be a huge help to us right now.”
“What if this group is in the parking lot, Gabe? They would see our truck and trailer.”
Grimly, he considered that. “I don’t think so, Anna. My gut tells me there’s a second road into this place. They might have driven up last night, taken that second, unknown route, and they were coming in here this morning to claim the bundles when they saw us.”
“Uh-oh, six men twelve o’clock. Heavily armed,” she said, and she pointed in that direction.
Instantly, Gabe peered through the cracks. Hardened drug soldiers, armed with AK-47s, wearing Kevlar vests holding six or seven clips in each one. They meant business. “Mount up, we’re heading down to that road as fast as we can go. We’re no match for them.”
“Roger that,” she rasped, throwing the reins over the horse’s head. She didn’t mount well, but she was able to scramble into the saddle.
Gabe swung up into the saddle in one smooth, unbroken motion. Whirling Red around, he aimed him down the steep slope that went for nearly a mile and dug his heels into Red’s flanks.
With a grunt, the gelding leaped forward, past Anna, churning up the pine needles and moist dirt with its rear hooves and creating small clouds of debris behind him.
Wind River Undercover Page 17