“Our own?” quizzed Scott, not entirely understanding what the civilian meant.
“Operatives working for us.”
Scott stopped there. The civilians weren’t the most friendly and pressing the ‘us’ was bordering on showing too much interest. Something that had been frowned upon previously.
“Okay, am I cleared to engage weapons to protect?”
“Not authorized at present. We’re monitoring the situation. Should it change, you will be advised. Otherwise, no, weapons are not authorized,” he added for clarity.
“Well, just make sure you decide within the next couple of hours or so,” advised Scott, pointing to the computation on his screen.
The civilian scurried away. They obviously hadn’t done the same check and had probably assumed the groups would stay evenly apart, as they were all riding horses.
“Amateurs,” mumbled Scott into his mic.
Chapter 59
Alex kept watch as much behind as in front. They were going as fast as their horses would allow them to, but the group they always knew would be coming from behind had finally come into view.
“How many do you think there are?” shouted Nick above the sound of their horses.
He didn’t know, but one thing was certain. “Too many!” he replied.
“How can they be gaining on us?” asked Nick to Neil.
Neil looked back. His life was just as threatened as the two men he was with. Two men who had still told him nothing.
“Chances are, they’re using multiple horses. They’ll probably stop and change every so often. It may cost them a few minutes, but they can ride much faster overall.”
“So they’ll catch up with us?!”
Neil felt the ties on his hand, it was his one chance of explaining his desertion. He had been kidnapped. “Yes, so I hope you’ve got a plan to get us out of here beyond riding as fast as we can, because that isn’t going to work.”
Alex rode next to Neil, took out his knife and shakily reached over, severing the cord binding Neil’s hands. “Can we go a bit faster now?”
Neil watched the only excuse that would have saved his life drop away to the dirt beneath. “Yes,” he said with a new vigor in his resolve to get away.
“Not too fast that we have to shoot…” Alex was interrupted by a buzzing in his backpack.
***
Kate couldn’t stop looking back, the group behind were getting closer. Not by much, but they were definitely gaining, and with a long way to go, it wasn’t boding well. Their horses were tiring, more than likely needed water and at least a few minutes’ rest. Much like herself. Running the horses into the ground wasn’t the answer and certainly wasn’t going to save them. As she neared the top of a small summit, her view back was as good as she would get and looking ahead, the land dipped. She was about to lose sight of their pursuers.
“Let’s take a quick break and water the horses,” she called, slowing her horse and receiving an audible sigh of relief.
“Sophie, Zach, can you look after the horses? Danny, you look after Ava,” ordered Kate, removing the Remington from its holster.
She knelt and rested her elbow on her knee, steadying the rifle for her to get a clear view down the plain to their pursuers. She tried to gauge the distance, it was more than a mile she was sure of that, but less than two. Three men. She tried to hold as steady as she could to recognize any features but as steady as she was, the men weren’t. They bounced up and down with each stride of their horses. The rider at the front seemed awkward, his hands behind his back. Another rider rode next to him and pulled out something, slashing behind the man’s back. He had just freed his hands. He was, or at least had been, their captor.
The man who had cut the man’s ties suddenly started fighting with his own pack. It was an almost comical sight, until it wasn’t. Kate almost dropped her rifle, her breath caught as the man retrieved what he had been fighting to achieve. He held it to the side of his face, just like you used to hold a phone.
She watched in astonishment. The ramifications of what she was seeing, not fully formulating as she watched. He looked up before ending the call. She wished she could hear, as what appeared to be a heated argument ensued, before finally they turned a sharp ninety degrees and headed back towards the interstate and away from them.
Kate lowered her rifle and looked up at the sky. Was someone up there looking down?
“Mom? You okay?” asked Ava, her voice growing weaker.
“Yes, fine,” she snapped a little too quickly. Her mind was racing, trying to think through everything she had just witnessed.
“Mom!” snapped Sophie, chastising her mother.
“Sorry, but…” began Kate, stopping, not sure what to say or whether she was just seeing things.
“What’s up?” asked Zach, joining the discussion.
Sophie put her fingers to her lip to stop him talking and indicated that they were waiting on Kate to talk.
“I don’t really know what to say. They’ve turned away. They’re not chasing us anymore,” said Kate, watching them race away.
“Does that mean we made it?” asked Danny excitedly.
“Well, we’ve still got to get to the Base,” said Kate, looking at Ava. the tiniest of smiles forming on her face, something Kate hadn’t seen for days.
“Any idea why they’ve stopped chasing us?”
Kate looked up at the sky. “I think they were ordered to,” she replied wistfully.
“By who?”
“Whoever called them.” She watched their faces as she spoke. Their mouths dropped just as much as hers had, Sophie’s just a fraction later than Zach and Ava’s.
“Who called them?” asked Danny innocently.
***
Nick fumed as they rode. He glanced back constantly, willing the family to start riding again. They were obviously unaware there was an even greater threat to them than they had thought there was.
“Surely we could at least warn them!” shouted Nick in frustration.
“Our orders are to get as far from that family as possible!”
“They’ll die!”
“And according to the powers that be, so will we if we stay with them. According to the intelligence, they’re the target, not us.”
“We can’t…”
“We can’t compromise the mission…what we know….C’mon, you know we can’t take any unnecessary risks. If we were the target, fair enough. But we’re being told we’re not.”
“Who the hell are you guys?” burst Neil. He had held his tongue as long as he could, left speechless when Alex had answered a working phone.
Both Alex and Nick ignored him.
“We must be able to do something?” vented Nick.
Alex looked skywards. “They’re watching our every move. Don’t forget, they’ll do anything to avoid the mission being compromised. Anything!”
Nick followed Alex’s eyes, he understood. The missiles on the drones above were just as deadly when fired against friendly targets, and extremely effective at ensuring secrets weren’t discovered.
Nick looked back, relieved to see the family were on the move again. He looked the other way, the larger cloud moved relentlessly onwards, gaining ground by the minute. At ground level, the visible horizon was around three miles away. He reckoned they were just over two miles back. It wouldn’t be long before the family realized there was a far larger group bearing down on them.
“How far to the Air Force Base?”
“This isn’t the way to the Air Force Base,” replied Nick.
“I know that!”
“Another fifteen miles I’d guess, give or take.”
Nick’s heart sank, they’d be overrun within the hour. There was no possible way they could make it, and they couldn’t lift a finger to help.
Chapter 60
“Duke!”
“What?”
“It looks like they’re turning towards the interstate,” advised Trey. “Should we cut across to
intercept?”
“Any sign of the first group?”
“Not yet.”
“You can’t see them ahead of the other group?”
“Nope, looks clear ahead of them.”
“Why turn sharp left? They know we’re behind them, we can see them. If we cut across the angle, we’ll catch them quicker. It makes no sense.”
“Maybe they’re just following the other group that can’t see us?”
Bob shook his head. “No, they’d have cut across, just like we would. They should be able to see the first group.”
“So what do we do?”
“Let me think!”
Everyone remained silent as Bob considered their options. The first group ahead, he knew, contained three horses. The group further ahead had, according to their lookout, at least four horses. Three horses ruled out the woman, she had three kids, so four horses minimum. There was at least one shooter and Neil in the mix. Maybe there were two shooters and Neil was mixed up with them. Or perhaps, Neil had nothing to do with any of it. He had ruled out the three horses ahead being militia, they’d have slowed when they had seen the larger force. Whoever they were, they were running. And nobody ran from him and lived to tell the tale.
“Trey, you take six men and keep heading towards the Air Force Base, We have to assume that’s where the woman’s headed.” Although he hadn’t confirmed who it was, every ounce of intuition was screaming at him, telling him it was that damned woman.
“I’ll take the rest of the men and head towards the other group. There’s a chance the other group are ahead but even if not, I think those three are our shooters from last night and if they are, they’ll put up more of a fight than a woman and her kids. Once we’ve dealt with them, we’ll head back to support you.”
Trey couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. He’d have her to himself. With Bob out the way, he could enjoy himself at least for a few hours before Bob rode in and took control.
“Sounds like a good plan,” he grinned, signaling for six men to follow him as he kicked his horse onwards, accelerating away with his men from Bob, who directed his group to cut across the plain and chase down the three men.
Chapter 61
Scott raised his hand to attract the civilian’s attention.
A flick of the head was the nearest he got to the man asking him, ‘What?’
“I think we may have a problem. The large group just split. The larger of the split is chasing down your men. The smaller group is continuing on their original course after Group One.”
If Scott expected a response, he was disappointed, the man just walked away, pushing a phone to his ear.
Scott shook his head. They had forgotten the one major factor missing in Boise. There was no information available to people in Boise, other than what was put in front of them. There was every chance the groups had no idea who was chasing them or who they were chasing.
***
“You’re telling me something I can see!” screamed Alex in frustration. All their little diversion had done was lose them ground.
Nick waited to hear whatever had been relayed.
“It didn’t work! A bigger group is following us than is following the family! And don’t look so happy – you realize there are two groups out here that will happily kill us if needed.” He looked skyward.
“What do you keep looking up there for?” asked Neil, looking up and seeing nothing. “And who else will kill you?”
“You don’t need to know!”
“So what then?” asked Nick.
“Strength in numbers, I suppose,” he said, turning back towards the direction of the family.
“What about them?” asked Nick, motioning back to their pursuers.
“At some point, we’re going to have to slow them down, but they’re still too far back. We just need to beat them to the Air Base.”
***
Kate watched as the three horsemen appeared once again behind them. She looked off into the distance. She knew the Base was less than an hour away. She just had to keep the men at bay until they reached the Base.
***
Scott zoomed out and highlighted the separate groups again. The computations were done in an instant. The Air Base was too far away. They’d never make it. The chasing group was going to overrun the smaller groups long before they reached the safety of the Base.
He wondered if there was anything he could do to help, alert Base security. Anything. He changed the angle of the camera and scanned ahead, zooming into the Base. It was amazing how detailed the image was, 25,00 feet up and over ten miles away, yet he could still have identified the color of a person’s eyes. Of course, for that to be the case, he’d have had to find a person to see their eyeballs. Nobody, not one living soul was anywhere to be seen. He flicked to thermal, it may have been they were all indoors. Nothing, not even a hint of warmth from a decomposing body.
The Base was empty and by all accounts of what he could see, it had been emptied in a hurry. People, equipment, everything that wasn’t screwed down, was gone.
If the people that were racing to the Base thought they were going to find safety, they were sorely mistaken.
Chapter 62
“We’re not making up any ground on them anymore,” said Nick. They had just caught sight of the Air Traffic Control tower rising out of the horizon, but no sign of the buildings.
“That stop they made, watering their horses, it made all the difference,” advised Neil.
“Now you’re telling us?!”
Alex was focusing on behind. The militia had dramatically closed the gap between them in the last half hour.
“It’s time!” announced Alex.
Nick pulled his horse to a stop abruptly. Neil slowed, not sure what was happening.
“Neil, water the horses, or whatever you do. Make a move and we kill you, understand?”
Neil nodded, Nick couldn’t have been more clear. Although he wasn’t entirely sure where he was materializing the water from, but thought better of asking as the two men slipped two very serious rifles from their bags.
“You know a horse can run a mile in about ninety seconds,” advised Neil as he watched the militia get nearer and nearer. “That’s a lot of men with a lot of guns!”
Alex and Nick were in the zone. Neither was interested in Neil. They were focusing on the targets moving on horseback, most definitely not the easiest of targets to aim at.
***
Bob had noticed the top of the tower. They were nearing the Base. He’d have to keep an eye out. It may well be his first showdown with federal forces. Forces which he no longer recognized as having any authority within his State.
“It looks like they’ve stopped!” came a shout from ahead.
“When?”
“Not sure, but they’re definitely not moving.”
“Get your heads down, hug your horses, and attack!” screamed Bob.
The man who had warned of them stopping, took the first bullet. The rest were already moving when the second whizzed past, narrowly missing another militia man.
***
“Get the hell out of here!” shouted Alex. They weren’t slowing the militia down, they had just sped them up. With their heads down and over ninety horses to choose from, it was almost impossible to hit anyone.
The three jumped on their horses, they barely had a mile advantage. They were never going to make it.
***
Scott watched intently, he was more than aware of the atrocities the militia had committed over the previous two weeks and like many of the operators, he was sure they were desperate to wreak some payback.
He raised his hand.
The soundless nod told him he had been seen.
“Am I free to release weapons?”
“No, we cannot expose our capabilities.”
Scott looked at his screen in frustration. He had a myriad of weapons at his fingertips and he was about to witness the death of their own men, or worse, rape, to
rture, and murder of a young family when he could so easily stop it.
He raised his hand again. He was running out of time. He answered once again to the nod.
“What if we don’t expose our capabilities?”
“Be quick.” He had piqued the civilian’s interest.
He explained.
***
Bob and Trey were, like the rest of their men, hanging on for dear life as their horses reacted to their repeated kicking to make them run as fast as they could. With so many different horses, strung in teams of four and varying capabilities of rider, what had been a tight formation spread dramatically as the horses accelerated to their maximum speeds. Bob and Trey, although far more experienced than they had been, were still some of the poorer amongst the riders.
Whatever the case, they were catching them. They had covered half a mile before the men had managed to get their horses moving and were still gaining ground even after the men were mounted, which allowed Bob and his men to once again ride properly, free from risk of being shot.
They had covered the mile by the time the men had moved less than half a mile. They weren’t even eight hundred yards away. Bob ushered his horse on. He hated not being at the front.
***
Kate checked behind her as the gunshot echoed off the hills that framed the valley they were riding through. The large militia group that had appeared in the distance in the last hour was charging the smaller group behind. She looked ahead, the Base was still at least two miles away. The speed of the larger militia group was too fast. Her groups’ horses had nothing left in the tank. They’d be lucky if they even made it the final two miles never mind outrun their pursuers. She couldn’t believe it, after riding most of the day, covering nearly fifty miles, they were going to fail in the last mile. Ava was wrapped in her arms. She had barely gained consciousness in the last two hours. If she was lucky, she would stay as she was and not witness the hell that was certain to befall them.
TRIAL: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Thriller Page 24