The Sons of Liberty were escaping out the back door. Across the meadow, several trucks raced out of the forest. Raven scrambled for a better sniping position. He had to stop them before they got away.
He pulled out extra magazines from his vest and lined them up in the dirt. Then he set up the rifle and secured the bipod.
The first of the pickup trucks tore out of the clearing, kicking up a curtain of dust. The driver jerked east onto a road Raven hadn’t seen from his vantage earlier. A Humvee followed the lead vehicle. Three more pickups and a second Humvee sped out of the woods.
Dirt bikes and several motorcycles raced alongside, tearing up the grassy shoulder of the road. There was no way he could stop them all, especially when they were moving in the opposite direction, but he could slow their escape and provide the military time to catch up to them.
Raven aimed for the lead biker. He pulled the trigger with the sights lined up on the wheel. The round hit the tire, sending the bike to the ground and the driver cartwheeling into a tree at the side of the road. The other bikes fanned out, but the trucks halted, bottlenecked on the road behind the crashed bike. Two men got out to move the bike.
A squeeze of the trigger dropped the first man, but the second dove for cover.
Answering gunfire cracked in the next valley, followed by an explosion that echoed through the night.
The battle had started.
Raven focused his fire on the first Humvee before the gunner in the turret could find him. The first two shots pinged off the armor, but the third hit the man in the cheek. He slumped back into the vehicle without firing a single shot from the M240.
All at once the doors opened and men jumped out into the road, opening up with automatic rifles on his position. He ducked down, rounds whistling over his head. Then he rolled to the side behind the largest boulder and waited.
He couldn’t wait forever. He could hear the rest of the convoy moving again.
The fleeing Sons of Liberty continued the assault, pinning Raven down with rounds that licked the dirt to either side, cracked off the rocks protecting his back, and slammed into the trees towering overhead.
When this was over, Raven promised himself to get a job where nobody would ever shoot at him again. Maybe Gail Andrews would hire him to work in her art gallery.
He exhaled and then dared to look through a gap between the boulders. The lead truck was moving again. In the back of the pickup behind the Humvee, he spotted a knot of small figures. The children were all piled into the bed, holding onto each other.
He had to stop that truck.
Raven ran for the woods. Rounds splintered the bark around him, sprinkling him with shrapnel. A jagged piece stuck him in the neck, stinging like a massive wasp. He ducked behind a tree and pulled the splinter from his flesh.
“Goddamn,” he grumbled.
The shots peppered the trees to his left and he darted to the right where he took a knee behind a gangly juniper tree. The entire convoy was moving again and the sky was still void of choppers.
He had to get closer.
This is not a good idea...
Raven slid down the slope and took off in a sprint across the meadow, keeping as low as he could in the high grass. He tried to keep to the shadows, but the moon was bright tonight. Even with the camouflage paint on his exposed skin and his military fatigues, it was only a matter of time before he was spotted.
He checked the convoy. There was a thousand feet between him and the nearest vehicle, but they were moving at a fast clip. He was never going to make it across in time.
Raven opened his mouth to gulp the air as he ran, his lungs greedily accepting the oxygen as he pushed himself to the limits. He ran like a madman, focused on the bobbing heads of the children in the bed of the pickup. He spotted another prisoner, much taller than the others, slumped with his back against the cab.
Nathan was still alive!
Gunfire zipped by Raven. He had finally been spotted. Instead of diving for cover, he took a knee and aimed at the tires of the pickup carrying the hostages. A round whizzed by his face as he fired a burst at the truck. One of his shots punched into the bumper, but the second and third shredded the rear tire. The truck swerved off the road, nearly tipping over into the meadow.
The bark of the M240 pushed Raven to the dirt. He rolled on his side to escape the high caliber rounds that pummeled the ground where he had been a moment earlier. There wasn’t a much more viscerally terrifying sound than the big gun. Raven greatly preferred being the guy firing the gun instead of the guy crawling away on his belly and praying not to get shot.
Not quite five hundred yards away, men were piling out of the second Humvee, which had reversed to help the disabled pickup. Three of the men ran to the truck, while the other three strode in his direction, weapons shouldered but holding their fire. These were trained soldiers, unlike the grunts Raven had taken down in the forest. He hoped Fenix was one of them so he could send the evil son of a bitch back to his Maker.
Your time is up, Shunka Sapa.
Rounds whizzed all around Raven as he dug his elbows into the ground. A bullet stung his trap muscle, taking off a layer of skin and forcing him lower. It was just a flesh wound, but that didn’t mean it was painless.
He had trained for this exact thing, moving his body like a snake under barbwire while rounds cut the air above his helmet. Only this time he didn’t have a helmet. And he was alone, facing an army of zealots who’d just as soon spit on his brown-skinned corpse.
Raven pushed his face against the dirt, tasting the cold earth. He was in battle mode, his senses on full alert, aware of every noise and movement. The gunfire moved to his left, giving him a window to fire off suppressed shots.
He reached forward and snapped the bipod into place. Then he pushed the butt of the rifle in the pocket of his shoulder. A bullet hit the dirt in front of him as he searched for someone to kill.
He centered the sights where he’d seen the flash from a muzzle. In the fading glow, Raven spotted the gunman and squeezed a round into his gut. Then he roved the muzzle to the left, where he shot another soldier making a run for the Humvee. The others all crouched for cover.
Two dirt bikes buzzed down the road, returning to provide covering fire, but Raven kept his attention on the turret of the Humvee, where the gunner was roaming back and forth for a target. He held a breath in his chest and fired a shot that took off the man’s baseball cap. The surprised gunner had just reached up to touch his shaved head when Raven planted a bullet between his eyes.
The soldiers who had run to the pickup were unloading the children now. One of them had a child flung over his shoulders. Raven put a bullet in the man’s kneecap, blowing bone and gristle onto the road. The soldier dropped the kid on the ground as he screamed in agony, clutching his mangled leg.
Both dirt bikes jolted onto the field in his direction. Raven took the first driver out with a shot to the arm, knocking him off the bike. The second biker lowered his helmet and raced for Raven as if he were going to plow him over.
Big mistake, bucko.
Raven fired two shots that both missed, but the driver had to put the bike down to avoid the third. Raven shot the man as he skidded through the grass.
Two minutes had passed since Raven had blown the tire on the pickup. It was amazing how much damage and chaos he had already inflicted. Screams, gunfire, and confused voices rang out from the road where the two vehicles remained. In the chaos, Raven spotted two men dragging Nathan toward the Humvee.
As much as he wanted to take them down, Raven couldn’t get a clear shot and searched for another target. The final two men who had fired on him earlier were moving back to the truck. One of them turned and unloaded a burst in his direction.
Rolling to his right, Raven crawled to find a new position. He had to keep moving or he was going to lose Nathan, Ty, and the other kids.
Over the gunfire came the chop of helicopters—a sound that made his heart fire like one of
the automatic rifles trying to kill him.
He popped back up to look for the birds but instead saw a man standing in front of him, tattooed right arm covered in blood where Raven had shot him. The biker bared his teeth and raised a knife the size of a machete.
One of the children screamed for help, and Raven’s blood boiled over.
I don’t have time for this shit.
Raven smacked the biker in the face with the butt of his MK11. He landed on his back, and Raven finished him off with a blow that caved his nose into his skull.
A big black bird suddenly emerged over the mountain and then swooped down over the forest. The door gunner in the troop hold fired on the escaping convoy with green tracer rounds.
“Hell yes!” Raven shouted. He kept low and advanced across the final section of the meadow. The Black Hawk drew the fire of the soldiers on the road, giving Raven an opening.
He fired a shot into the back of a soldier who was aiming at the helicopter. The next shot never came, the twenty-round box magazine empty. Raven pulled his side arm and sprinted through the grass. Warm blood ran down his chest from the flesh wound. He ignored it and focused on the road.
The second half of the convoy had escaped, but one of the pickups had returned to help load up the hostages. Raven counted four more of the men still trying to move the kids into the Humvee. Some of the children were fighting back, kicking, screaming, and biting. Nathan lay in the dirt, reaching out for one of the children who was dragging limp legs across the dirt.
For a split-second, Raven thought the kid had been shot. Then he realized who it must be.
“Hold on, Nathan. I’m coming!” Raven shouted. He raised his handgun and bolted toward the little boy whose life he had promised to save.
Nathan extended his broken arm. He could only see Ty out of his right eye, but what he could see made him damn proud. Ty was determinedly dragging his paralyzed legs toward Nathan, keeping his head low during the gun battle as the world erupted into chaos around them.
He had Sardetti blood in him—that was for certain.
“Stay where you are!” Nathan shouted. “I’m coming for you.”
All around them, gunfire cracked and bullets flew, some of them at the sky, others at the meadow. The Black Hawk circled overhead, the door gunner picking targets carefully. It wasn’t the 7.62 mm rounds that had Nathan worried, though. Most of the SOL soldiers—if you could call them that—were lousy shots.
He caught a glimpse of return fire from the meadow and finally saw the figure that had ambushed the convoy. A slender man wearing camouflage paint ran across the field at a breakneck pace, a ponytail bouncing up and down.
“Raven, you crazy son of a bitch,” Nathan mumbled. He felt a smile form across his broken jaw. Grinning hurt like hell, but he couldn’t hold it back.
“Uncle Nathan!” Ty shouted.
“It’s okay, buddy, just stay down!”
Shouts rang out from all directions. Digging his elbows into the ground, Nathan moved toward Ty. The Sons of Liberty were falling apart, shouting and firing wildly.
Fenix’s voice rose above the din. “Take down that fucking chopper!”
Boots squelched into the mud near Nathan’s head. “Going somewhere, Major?”
Rolling to his side, Nathan looked up at the General. His features were stone, and his eyes were cold and calculating. Nathan had no doubt Fenix was going to kill him now.
“I love you, Ty,” Nathan said, his voice coming out in a croak. “Don’t look, buddy. Okay? Just look away.”
A flash of motion came from his peripheral vision. Raven was firing madly with his pistol. He took down a soldier to Nathan’s right. The body hit the dirt between Nathan and Ty. It was the smallest possible mercy, blocking the boy’s view of whatever happened next.
Fenix was raising his M4 at Raven. Using every ounce of strength he had left, Nathan kicked Fenix in the back of the knee, throwing off his aim. The rounds whistled through the air less than a foot from Raven’s side.
The General let out a grunt and stumbled. He collapsed to one knee in the dirt but quickly pushed himself up and grabbed his rifle. Raven used the stolen moment to grab Ty and pull him behind a truck. Two skinheads grabbed Fenix, trying to haul him back to the Humvee.
“We have to go!” one of them shouted.
The Black Hawk whined overhead, smoke hissing from the engine where a shot had penetrated the armor. Fenix laughed and yanked out of their grips.
“Get off me, you cowards.” He fired his rifle at the disabled chopper. The rounds lanced into the bird and the pilots pulled away.
“I guess if I can’t sell you Montgomerys, I got to kill ya instead,” Fenix said. He redirected his rifle at Nathan’s head.
“You can try and escape, but my sister will hunt you down and finish this. She will kill you,” Nathan sputtered with confidence. He looked up at the smoking muzzle, trying his best to be strong in the last seconds of his life.
“No!” shouted a voice.
Nathan flinched at a crack. There was only a second of pain as the round splintered through his head and buried into his brain. Somehow, he was still aware—aware that the crack wasn’t the gunshot, but rather his shattering skull—aware that this wasn’t something he could survive. The fear rose to an apex when he thought of his sister and nephew, but then vanished with the sweet release of darkness that flooded over his mind. Charlize was safe. Raven would rescue Ty. There was nothing left for Nathan to do now but let go.
Charlize had chewed one of her fingernails bloody. Surrounded by President Diego, General Thor, Colonel Raymond, and Albert, she had watched the choppy feed of a mounted cam on one of the Black Hawks from Buckley AFB. The men stared in silence, all of them with arms folded across their chests. All except Albert, who was praying under his breath as he paced back and forth.
The hastily planned mission had gone smoothly at first. The four fire-teams of Army Rangers easily eliminated the defenses in the camp the Sons of Liberty used as their forward operating base. From there, the teams infiltrated the actual Castle through mineshafts, killing dozens of the escaping SOL soldiers. Unfortunately, Fenix had taken a different route with the main force of his personal army. He blew those shafts in his retreat, killing four Army Rangers in the blast.
The Black Hawk that had gone to search for the escaping soldiers had found half a convoy instead. The chopper had taken fire, and the video feed was cutting in and out. She watched in horror as the majority of the vehicles sped down a dirt road that led through a dense forest. The remaining vehicles were scattering. A Humvee tore through the meadow, and a pickup truck followed close behind.
“The pilots are putting down, Madame Secretary,” said Colonel Raymond. “But they assure me that the enemy left the hostages behind on the road. Apparently a sniper ambushed the convoy before they could all escape.”
Charlize looked around sharply. “One of ours?”
“No, ma’am. Frankly, we have no idea who he is or where he came from.”
President Diego flung an uneasy glance at Charlize, but she focused on the screen. There was a sickening lurch in the video as the Black Hawk landed in the field, disgorging Army Rangers into the grass. The feed transferred to the helmet-mounted display from the leader of the fire-team. He motioned his men toward the pickup and dirt bikes still on the road. A figure near the truck was waving at them, both hands raised.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! You got a friendly here,” he shouted.
“That must be the sniper,” Raymond said.
Charlize stepped closer to the screen, studying the pixels for any sign of Ty and Nathan. If they weren’t there, or if the worst had happened and they were both dead, she wasn’t sure she would be able to keep it together in front of these men.
At this point she really didn’t care. If she lost her family, nothing else would matter.
“The other choppers are back in the air and pursuing the convoy, ma’am,” Raymond ann
ounced. “We’ll get those bastards, don’t worry.”
As the Rangers closed in on the road, a large hand closed over hers.
“It’s going to be okay, Charlize,” Albert said.
It was the first time she could remember him calling her by her name for a while. She realized then that Albert was her family, too. Maybe the only family either of them had left now. A sob tried to climb out of her throat, but she shoved it back down and straightened her back.
Onscreen, the Rangers strode out on the road, weapons flitting over the terrain. Bodies were sprawled in all directions. The sniper had killed at least a dozen of the enemy combatants. It was hard to believe one man had done that much damage.
A shot cracked as one of the Rangers finished off the SOL soldier trying to escape into the forest. The team-lead then trained his rifle on the man standing in front of the pickup truck.
“Hands on your head!” he shouted.
It was obvious this man wasn’t one of the Aryan soldiers. For one thing, he had shoulder-length black hair. He put his hands on his head and got to his knees, still shouting that he was a friendly. Several kids sat in the dirt behind him, crying and holding onto each other.
Charlize searched their faces, but she didn’t see Ty.
The lead Ranger lowered his gun and walked over to the kids while two of the other Rangers spoke to the long-haired man. Charlize couldn’t hear what any of them were saying. She gripped Albert’s hand until her bones creaked and her burned skin threatened to split open over the knuckles.
“They have your son,” Raymond announced. He cupped his earpiece again, and his smile slowly vanished.
“What is it?” she asked, barely recognizing the shrill voice as her own. “What’s wrong?”
Raymond met her gaze. “They’ve also located your brother, ma’am,” he said.
Charlize wanted to scream. If Albert hadn’t been holding her steady, she might have run at the colonel and snatched the earpiece to listen for herself. “Is he alive? What’s happening?”
Trackers 2: The Hunted (A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller) Page 26