Avenger (The Bugging Out Series Book 6)

by Noah Mann

  “Running is resisting?” she challenged me.

  “Here, yes,” I said.

  I’d run before. From Missoula to my refuge north of Whitefish when the blight struck. To Eagle One when my refuge became an untenable position to maintain. I’d never returned to either place I’d occupied, but here, there was that chance for Rebecca Vance, and for all who’d decided to make Remote their home.

  “This is the smart move, Rebecca,” Enderson said.

  She drew a breath and looked to the misty daylight beyond the outpost’s front windows. Some thought seemed to seize her. Or some dark memory.

  “My husband and I turned tail and ran,” she said, still focused on the lessening weather outside. “We ran from our home when gangs were raiding neighborhoods around us for food. There were no police, no soldiers. There was only us.”

  She stopped there, the recollection taking hold of her fully now.

  “The gangs shot him when he tried to drive through a barricade they set up,” she explained, eyes welling. “He was dead and I was flooring it and steering from the passenger seat to get away as they kept shooting.”

  Mike DeSantis reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. She reached up and rested her hand atop his, accepting the gesture of comfort.

  “Running from thugs is not something that’s easy for me to accept,” she said.

  “We’ll be back,” Nick told her, trying to soothe her with words of promise.

  She nodded, then looked to Enderson and me and nodded again.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Enderson wasted no time, because no one knew how long we had before a move by those who may have taken over Camas Valley.

  “Let’s have everyone meet on the highway in fifteen minutes,” the corporal directed. “Personal weapons, medications, and that’s it. We’re going to be tight on room. Have your drivers bring their vehicles. Clear?”

  It was.

  Something, though, was still unclear to me as the meeting broke up—Olin’s part in this. Was he advising Ansel and Moira, or was he providing more direct assistance? Whichever it was, it was certain that he had some move in mind that he was going to make. And, considering the proximity to my family of what he’d unleashed less than an hour ago, I had no confidence that he was sticking to any plan he’d been executing to this point. The game had changed, and he knew that. Gina’s presence in Remote was obviously something to which he had reacted violently.

  We were running, I knew, but he wouldn’t.

  Thirty Nine

  The vehicles were loaded and ready to roll twenty minutes after the meeting had finished, the convoy rumbling on the highway, pointed west.

  “What’s Schiavo going to do?” Elaine asked, sitting in the passenger seat of our pickup, Hope in one arm, MP5 in her free hand.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose it depends on how bad things turn in Camas Valley.”

  The truth be told, I wasn’t even thinking on such a macro level at the moment. My thoughts were consumed by Tyler Olin and trying to imagine, guess, anticipate what the man was going to do next. How close were his ties with Ansel and Moira? Much of what he might attempt depended upon that. If he held more sway than just bartering for food with them, he might have a willing fighting force in any post-coup makeup of Camas Valley.

  No...

  His motives were not that grand. He wanted what I knew he wanted—BA-412. His focus was that. Whatever he had arranged with Ansel and Moira had to service that need. A need that still existed.

  “Enderson’s coming,” Elaine said.

  My driver’s window was already down. The corporal, in full gear, jogged up, his M4 at the ready.

  “I’m three vehicles up in the Humvee,” Enderson said. “Will you bring up the rear? I’m putting Nick in your truck bed to cover our tail.”

  Nick Withers hurried past the sedan just ahead of us and gave a wave as he climbed into the empty cargo area of our pickup and took a knee, his AK already pointed at the empty highway behind us.

  “Sure thing,” I said.

  “Okay,” Enderson said. “Let’s roll out.”

  The corporal moved quickly past the vehicles ahead. Engines revved. Diesel smoke belched into the air from the supply truck as the convoy began to move.

  All but our pickup.

  “Eric...”

  I looked to Elaine and took my AR from where it lay on the seat between us, opening the driver’s door and stepping out.

  “Slide over and take the wheel,” I told my wife.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, confused and concerned.

  “Fletch, what’s going on?”

  “Nick, just cover the rear. Elaine is driving.”

  “I’m what? I have Hope.”

  I reached in and took my wife by the arm, pulling her across the bench seat until she was positioned to drive, the MP5 now on the seat where she’d been sitting.

  “You’re going twenty miles an hour,” I said. “You can do this. You have to.”

  “What are you doing?” she pressed me.

  I gave her and our daughter quick kisses, then closed the door.

  “If I go to Bandon, he’s going to follow,” I said. “This has to end.”

  “Eric...”

  “The convoy is getting ahead of us,” Nick said, his own worry showing.

  “Go,” I told Elaine. “Think of Hope. Get her home.”

  There was no trump card I could have played before we had a child, but there was now. Elaine’s face tightened with anger and frustration that she couldn’t stop whatever it was I was going to do. Or try to do.

  “You’re going to bait him,” she said to me. “With yourself.”

  “I’m going to end this.”

  I looked to Nick, fixing a serious look upon him.

  “You protect this convoy,” I said. “And my family.”

  “I will, Fletch,” he said, uncertain but dedicated to the mission he’d been charged with.

  “Go,” I said, looking back to my wife. “I have to do this.”

  There was no joy about her. No way there could be. She simply dropped the pickup into gear and accelerated gently away, holding our daughter as they caught up with the convoy. Nick Withers gave me a small wave, and then they were gone around a bend in the highway.

  I was on my own.

  But I was not alone. This I knew without a doubt. The rain had stopped and visibility had improved to the point that I could be seen by anyone within a few hundred yards who would bother to look. Olin was out there, watching.

  That didn’t mean I had to make it easy for him.

  Without hesitating I bolted from the highway, running into the woods on the north side of the road. I kept moving, putting distance between myself and where I’d started. If Olin wanted to keep me under observation, with the naked eye or through the scope of his rifle, he would have to work for it. Ten minutes into my move I stopped, taking cover and scanning the path I’d just taken through the trees. A full twenty minutes I waited, listening and watching.

  Olin did not follow. No one did.

  Confident now that I was not being directly observed, I shifted west, traveling about a half mile before turning south toward the road again. I crossed the highway quickly and moved into the forest, progressing a hundred yards before, again, making sure I was not being trailed. My final push through the stands of grey pines brought me to a place along the banks of the Coquille River. A cautious walk east brought me to a place of concealment where I could see the abandoned outpost, the flag Rebecca had lashed to a post out front still waving lazily in the breeze.

  Once more I waited, observing what I could see, and what I could hear.

  ...snap...

  The sound was small, emanating from a spot beyond the outpost. Maybe a hundred feet from where I lay prone next to a fallen tree. In the old world I would have written off what I’d heard as an animal stepping on a twig, or a person popping the top of a soda can. Those sounds should not exist i
n Remote. Not at the moment after it had emptied out.

  ...snap...

  Once more the sound came, though this time it was accompanied by a sight as well. Movement. Beyond the outpost. Someone making their way up the slight slope that led to the shoulder of the highway. A man.

  A man in a cowboy hat.

  Olin...

  I held still as he reached the soft edge of the highway and stopped, looking in all directions. My position gave me almost perfect cover. His scan of the area passed right over me, and, after a moment, he continued on across the road to the north.

  It was time to make my move. I skirted the bank of the Coquille until I reached where Sandy Creek spilled into the larger tributary. Looking north, I could see where the creek passed beneath the highway, the bridge above shielding any movement from view. I stayed low on the east bank and followed the stream, pausing just before losing the cover of the bridge.

  Obscured in the shadow of the overpass, I stayed low and eyed the way ahead. Fifty feet from where I’d stopped the covered bridge still stood, despite having a portion of its upper structure scavenged to repair houses in Remote. There was no movement on the bridge. The same could not be said for the area just to the east of it.

  Olin walked into view, his rifle slung as he moved past the old covered bridge and continued along the creek. For a moment as he walked on, the once historic span hid me from view. This was the best chance I might ever have to gain an advantage over the man, and I wasn’t going to pass it up.

  I left my cover and moved, steady and slow, closing the distance to where Olin had to be beyond the wooden bridge. Staying low and taking each step with care, I passed beneath the structure, my AR up and ready, the safety off, selector set to burst, my eyes looking past the suppressor at the target I’d waited a very long time to have in my sights.

  “Olin!”

  The man froze where he’d been walking, high on the east bank of Sandy Creek, his back to me.

  “Let your rifle fall,” I instructed him.

  He hesitated, angling his head just a bit toward me.

  “I have every reason to shoot you on sight,” I reminded him. “Now drop the rifle.”

  He waited no more, letting the sling slip over his shoulder, the lever action .30-30 dropping into the damp earth at his feet.

  “Take four steps forward.”

  That was precisely what he did. When he was still again I stepped from beneath the covered bridge and made my way up the bank until we were standing at the same level, water rushing just to my left.

  “Hands up and turn around.”

  The man complied, facing me, his expression slack, some part of a surprised, cocky grin curling his lips.

  “Slowly, take that jacket off.”

  Once more he followed the order, revealing what he wore beneath, including a Sig Sauer holstered on his hip.

  “Use your thumb and one finger to drop that Sig,” I told him.

  He did just that, the pistol tumbling into the sloppy muck at his feet.

  “Hello, Fletch.”

  I shook my head at him, the business end of my AR zeroed in on his chest, finger on the trigger.

  “You don’t get to call me that,” I said.

  “Right, sorry. Only good friends who you know so well get to use that nick. Friends like Neil.”

  He had no way out of his situation, and, still, he was taking verbal shots at me. Maybe it was some technique he’d been trained in. Some way to throw an adversary off just enough that a break for freedom could be executed at just the right time.

  Or, he was beyond caring and knew what fate lay ahead of him.

  “Tell me, Fletch, where’s Four Twelve?”

  It was my turn to smile. I had to give it to the man, he stayed on mission. His eyes were on the prize they’d been on since that first moment he’d walked into Bandon.

  “Where is it?”

  “Not gonna happen, Olin.”

  “That’s too-”

  We both were jolted by the sharp tremor, earth beneath us seeming as though it was heaving upward, then falling again. Then, without warning, the world turned upside down.

  Forty

  The east bank of Sandy creek crumbled beneath my feet, sending me tumbling backward into the shallow, icy water. I rolled toward the shore, groping for the weapon that the earthquake and the fall had ripped from my grip.

  “You can stop now.”

  The voice wasn’t Olin’s. But it was familiar.

  “Get up,” Ansel told me as he crept from the shadows beneath the covered bridge, AK pointed at me. “Keep your hands in the open.”

  Above him, standing at the railing of the span, Moira held an identical weapon, stock tucked close to her cheek as she sighted down its receiver and barrel at me.

  “Up,” Ansel repeated. “I’m not telling you again.”

  I slowly rose, still standing in the bubbling stream. I brought my hands away from my body and raised them slightly. Olin came down the bank and stepped into the shallow water, retrieving my AR from where I’d dropped it. He released the magazine and kept it in hand as he ejected the chambered round, holding the bolt open to blow into the action several times, clearing any excessive water. That done, he reinserted the magazine and chambered a fresh round, leveling my own weapon at me.

  “What did Stalin say?” Olin asked. “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

  The earthquake had been opportune, but not a game changer. I knew that now. Olin had led me to this spot, into his trap, Dalton’s two underlings providing the backup he needed. Ansel stepped close and took my Springfield from its holster, tucking it in his waistband before backing away and taking a position higher on the creek’s bank to cover me as Moira remained perched on the bridge.

  “In other words, my three beats your one,” Olin said.

  I took in the sight of the three of them, the dynamic that existed, and had obviously existed, between them more than clear.

  “Puppets and puppet master,” I said, focusing on Dalton’s people. “Ask him what he did to the last man who trusted him.”

  “We know what he’s doing for us,” Moira said.

  “As soon as we’re done with you, it’s Dalton’s turn,” Ansel said.

  I turned back to Olin. He tipped my AR to one side and verified that the selector switch was set to burst.

  “Is that it, Olin? You told them you’d take out their leader so the colony would be theirs? That’s what they get out of this?”

  The man didn’t answer. He simply grinned at the question I’d posed.

  “Ask yourselves this,” I said, addressing Ansel and Moira without taking my eyes off the man who’d murdered my lifelong friend. “Who needs who more?”

  I sensed a slight shift in Ansel’s posture to my right. Maybe he was fidgeting where he stood on the angled bank. Or was he exchanging a look with Moira as they processed the question I’d posed? In the end, whatever reaction they might have had did not matter, as Olin fired a quick burst into Ansel’s chest, a second one expertly striking Moira before either could react.

  There was no point in moving or making a run for it. By the time Ansel’s body had crumpled forward into the creek, and Moira’s had flopped backward, a chunk of her forehead blasted onto the covered bridge’s rotting rafters, the suppressed muzzle of my AR was directed at me again, the shrouded barrel steaming.

  “That was it,” I said, only slightly incredulous. “You used them to search for Four-Twelve? You sent them into Bandon to look for it? To push my buttons? To trip me up?”

  He smiled and tipped his head toward me.

  “That wife of yours knows some field craft, it seems,” Olin said. “As for them...they weren’t happy with their situation. But they were too afraid to pull the trigger and change it.”

  Pulling the trigger on Dalton would take some fortitude, I knew. He was a presence, if not a force. And if Ansel and Moira had gone that route on their own, would the rest of the colony coalesce behind them as t
he new leaders?

  “You, the outsider, kill Dalton, and they step in,” I said. “But that was never going to happen.”

  “They seemed to believe it would.”

  The man smiled, at himself, I thought. At his cleverness. His ability to manipulate others to do his bidding.

  “And now?” I asked.

  He gave a slight shrug and cocked his head, regarding me as if I was displaying some precious naiveté on purpose. From behind him, mist began to roll in, spilling down the bank of the creek and flowing atop the water, obscuring the world beneath our waists.

  “Where is it, Fletch?”

  “You think I’m going to tell you?”

  “I think you should,” Olin said, his smile draining away. “Because if you don’t, after I kill you, I’m going to have to pay a visit to that beautiful family of yours.”

  “You’re going to kill me even if I tell you.”

  To that statement I’d made, he gave a slight nod.

  “Where is Four-Twelve?”

  I stood in silence. If I were to play my hand and tell him that there was no BA-412, at least not in my possession, it was entirely likely that he would not believe me. Or, if he did, there would be no reason for him to leave me alive.

  “Fletch...”

  He nudged me verbally to reply, adding some motivation as he brought my AR up and took very deliberate aim at the bridge of my nose. We stared at each other that way for a moment, he down the barrel of my weapon, and I past the suppressor which could, at any second, erupt in a quick flash which my brain would only have a millisecond to process before a bullet would turn out the lights. My lights. Permanently.

  “Last chance,” Olin said.

  I had to make a decision. Bluff. Tell the truth. Or rush him. None were appealing choices. But I chose the latter, readying myself mentally for a quixotic charge which had little chance of success. Not against a man like Olin.

  One...

  I let myself think of Elaine. My wife. My love.

  Two...

  And Hope. My daughter. My everything.

  Three...

  My leg muscles tensed and my hands clenched to fists as my internal countdown ended. It was time to make my move.