Hard Road: Deadly Horizon (Dark Plague Book 2)

by Bradley West

  Travis and the others jumped into action.

  * * * * *

  Kyle piled all of the weapons and ammo he could carry twenty feet beyond Sal, and everything else went into the truck bed. He realized it was more important to deny Muller materiel than to salvage too much. There was a full five-gallon gas tank in the back seat that would come in handy later. He worked at a frantic pace, worried equally that Muller might jump up and shoot him or Sal might stop breathing.

  Kyle slung the M-4, jammed a 9mm pistol into his belt, stacked two ammo boxes of 5.56 cartridges and ran up the uneven, wood-littered hill. His lungs were aching as he made it to the summit.

  Carla was there when he dropped the ammo boxes, hands on knees and chest heaving. “Is Sal alive?” she asked.

  “Yes, but barely.” Kyle’s words came out in a rush between breaths.

  “You’ll have to carry him up here yourself. Jaime won’t let me leave because Muller’s loose and we’re missing the grenade launcher. I let Katerina escape and she took it. Jaime expects her to shell us any minute.”

  “Holy shit! I have to get down the hill and set that truck on fire. If they get hold of the ammo in the back, we’re all dead.”

  “Take these,” she said, pressing a disposable lighter and a projectile into his hand. “It’s the last grenade. It doesn’t have a pin you can pull. Jaime said it only arms when fired out of the missing launcher. Maybe you can rig it to blow up the truck.”

  “Will do,” he said and turned to head back down the hill.

  * * * * *

  With Johnny draped over his numb shoulder, Derek swore non-stop at the pain shooting down his back, legs, arms, neck . . . his entire being. And with every yard farther away from the woods’ edge and closer to the XLT, his brain sent another ounce of energy to fuel his muscles for the next step. One hundred yards . . . fifty yards . . . thirty yards . . . who was that coming down the hill? Oh, shit, oh shit, oh . . . wait . . . it’s a friendly! “Kyle! Over here!”

  The younger man rushed to Derek’s aid and the two of them laid the unconscious man down. Under Johnny’s cappuccino-colored facade, he was pale and his breathing shallow. Derek’s face was beet red. The two men picked him up under each armpit and dragged him the rest of the way past the off-kilter pickup. They put him down next to Sal.

  “Is he dead?” Derek asked. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, and it was hard to see in the shadows.

  “Check his pulse. I have to burn everything.” Kyle picked up the red canister and poured almost five gallons of gasoline onto the truck’s seats, dumping most of the rest onto the ammo cartons and other items in the bed.

  The sweet, pungent smell of gasoline triggered a buried memory and Sal regained consciousness thinking he was a teenager refilling the family lawnmower back in Ohio. The ache in Sal’s right side and back exceeded anything he’d felt during his heart attack, but at least he could breathe. Even when he didn’t move, the excruciating pain made it nearly impossible to think. He heard a friendly voice, opened his eyes and focused on the inert form lying next to him.

  “Sal, can you hear me? It’s Derek. I’m with Kyle. You’re hurt bad, but you’ll make it. We’ll carry you up the hill, put you in the RV, and you’ll be fine. We won. We did it.”

  “Who’s that?” Sal whispered, looking at the body next to him.

  “That’s Johnny,” Derek said. “Muller clubbed him on the head. I hauled him out. We’ll bring him up after you’re safe.”

  Yards away, Kyle opened the 1974 vintage truck’s fuel cap, dropped the 40mm grenade down the spout and drenched his baseball cap with the last of the gas. He rolled the brim into a cylinder and stuffed it into the throat. One flick of Carla’s Bic and the fireworks would begin.

  “Take Johnny first,” Sal gasped.

  Kyle joined the conversation. “Johnny could wake up any minute and walk out under his own power.”

  “Too late for me. Take Johnny.” Sal closed his eyes and his head fell to the side as he lost consciousness.

  “This debate’s over,” Derek said. “Take Johnny first and come back for Sal. Up top, we’ll have to rig a stretcher.”

  “Let’s do this,” Kyle said and the men bent to their burden.

  * * * * *

  Katerina was tough, but not Rolf Muller–tough. Her battered face and swollen eyes reduced her vision to slits and her head felt like a horse had kicked it where Yonten’s bullet had gouged her scalp. She needed painkillers and ice but settled for the next-best medicine—hatred.

  She struggled to keep pace with the thrice-shot, once-stabbed marvel of martial cruelty. The dappled evening light illuminated the mixture of blood trails, scar tissue and rippling musculature coursing across Muller’s back. If they got out of this mess, she’d find it within herself to gift him a Grade-A fuck. Muller stopped abruptly, looked at the ground and then stared at her with a pulsing red welt highlighting his hate-filled face. He leveled his weapon and flicked off the safety.

  “I hit that spook hard enough to put him down for hours. He was right here a half-hour ago, and now he’s gone. There’s a fresh set of tracks leading out too.”

  “Crap. What do we do?”

  “The edge of the woods is another hundred meters. We’ll go slow, but once we’re there, we’ll carpet bomb the hilltop if we haven’t caught up to them. I’ll dial in the range and hand the launcher over. That’ll leave me free to shoot anyone making a run for it. After we drop them, you go up top and play doctor with Norris’ blade.”

  * * * * *

  Jaime helplessly stood aside as Kyle and Derek dragged Johnny to the Telluride and deposited him in the back seat. Instead, he surveyed the landscape. Two hundred meters down the road, the blue ’Bago obscured the red minivan. It hadn’t moved in the five minutes since Carla had gotten out. The array of wounded 3Mers down there plus Erinn, Stephanie and Carla didn’t have the muscle power to move the minivan out of the way. Derek and Kyle jogged back and joined him.

  “I’ll stay here and use the nogs after dark,” Jaime said. “Derek, you drive the Telluride down and either push or tip over the minivan, but get it off of the road. We’re sitting ducks. Kyle, drag Sal another fifty feet up the hill. Run back to the pickup and light the fuse if you hear any firing. Once the blue ’Bago is away with our wounded, I’ll come down and we’ll carry Sal to the Telluride.”

  “I have a better idea,” Derek said. “You can’t help with Sal with only one arm. Why don’t you and I go down there together and help move the minivan? Then Kyle and I will collect Sal while you stand guard. Once we lug the boss far enough away, Kyle lights the pickup.”

  “That’s a better idea. Kyle, stand sentry until we get back and keep your eyes peeled on the tree line. Jump in the foxhole if grenades start going off. We’ll be back soon as the RV’s gone. Sure as shit’s brown, Muller’s not done.”

  Three minutes later, Kyle was nervous as a salesman trapped in the barn with the farmer’s horny daughter. He knew nothing about firing a machinegun or whatever an M-4 was. He hated the idea of standing out in the open, and he appreciated that the real danger lay in the arsenal and supplies piled up in that pickup. Fuck it. I’ll run down the hill, check on Sal, torch the pickup and come back up top before they even know I’m gone. Kyle Folgeron jogged down that frigging stump-strewn slope for the umpteenth time that day.

  CHAPTER thirty-nine

  A Last Turn of the Wheel

  Tuesday, July 21, 2020: near Ruby Ridge, Idaho, night

  Muller made it to the edge of the forest, but at low ebb—he needed food, water and a doctor. The abandoned XLT was one hundred and fifty meters away. Far in the distance, maybe another two hundred meters, what he saw made his heart race—the wrecked minivan, the blue Winnebago and the brown SUV. He lowered the M-4 and flipped up the rear and front sights of the M320. With those three ducks in a row, not much could go wrong as long as the vehicles were within the weapon’s maximum accurate range of three hundred and fifty meters. With the old mode
l M320’s iron sights, the best way to see if he was close enough was to pop off a grenade.

  Katerina interrupted his thoughts. “Someone’s coming down the hill.”

  He pulled his face off the sights, only seconds from firing if he could force his arms and hands to obey. “What? Where?”

  “Coming down from the top, headed for the pickup.”

  “Fuck! Has he seen us?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s running.”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. Take a deep breath. Muller flicked on the safety and knelt to drop the grenade launcher and hoist the M-4. “Change of plan. It will take them a while to move the van anyway. I’ll take him out, then pop grenades from behind the pickup. It’s a lot closer, plus I could use water and dressings. Carry the launcher and wait for my sign before you run across.”

  Muller steadied himself for a major effort. If the man spotted him, he’d drop him and open up on the vehicles with the M-4. He waited until Kyle almost reached the pickup, only to stop and bend over. What was he doing?

  Kyle dragged Sal’s corpse until it lifted an arm in protest. Startled, Kyle halted. “Sal?”

  “Stop. Too painful.”

  “Oh, my God! I thought you . . . you know. I’d leave you, but you’re only thirty feet from the pickup. I drenched the truck with gas and put a grenade in the tank. Once I light it, it’ll blow sky high and you might get hit.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll wait.” Sal fell back.

  In the minute that the exchange had taken, Muller had hobbled across the open ground and knelt behind the pickup, shielded from Kyle’s view. The kid was still giving Sal a pep talk. Muller caught his breath, shed his M-4 and drew his Walther.

  As he walked to the XLT, Kyle worried about what might happen to Sal when he lit the fuse. The smart move was to set fire only to the bed to destroy the ammo and spare weapons without exploding the truck’s fuel tank.

  Muller edged around the front of the cab, saw the target’s back turn and ran the remaining distance. He clamped his left hand over Kyle’s mouth, jammed the Walther against the base of his spine and pulled the trigger. The .40 caliber hollow point blew vertebrae apart and lead fragments shredded his liver and kidneys. The gunshot made scarcely any noise with the muzzle tight to flesh. Soundlessly, Kyle slumped to the ground.

  Muller walked around to the XLT’s front, gave Katerina a painful wave with his right hand and rummaged through the back of the pickup. Despite the gasoline drenching, he found sealed water bottles and a large packet of sterile bandages.

  Sal had seen Kyle’s shooting. He dragged himself six inches at a time toward his fallen colleague.

  On the other side of the pickup, Katerina ran up carrying the launcher.

  “Hurry!” Muller shouted. “They just tipped the van over. I need to let one go before the RV drives off.” She handed over the M320.

  Down the road, Jaime made a snap decision. “You stay here and help load the wounded,” he said to Derek. “I’ll go back up and relieve Kyle. Once they’re all on board, send them back to camp and go overland to the pickup. Keep your eyes open. It’ll be dark soon and Muller might have night-vision.”

  Jaime turned the SUV around and eased up the hill toward the command post.

  Sal fought off hallucinations that involved a large grizzly bear mauling his right side. He regained his senses and realized he had another ten feet to crawl. In the distance, he heard an explosion and hoots of laughter from close by.

  The problem was Muller’s right arm didn’t work properly with a bullet hole in his trap, and a frozen left shoulder socket from the through-and-through that had broken his shoulder blade. Aiming the launcher was a bitch. Muller’s first grenade landed ten meters long, over the wrecked minivan and the blue ’Bago. It exploded with a mighty bang and screams followed.

  Almost to the command post, Jaime heard the explosion and turned on his lights to present another target. Why in the hell wasn’t Kyle firing from the hilltop?

  “Ten bucks says the next one lands on the blue roof,” Muller laughed, confident his iron willpower could force his limbs to obey better next time.

  “Ten bucks and the best fuck of your life.”

  * * * * *

  The sound of the Telluride’s acceleration and the high beams coming up the hill had their intended effect. Muller did the math—after one or two more launches he’d be pinned down or worse. Time to adjust. He didn’t bother to work the sights; he could pop this one off from the hip.

  Jaime guessed Muller’s timing, cut the lights and drove the Telluride off the backside of the road down the clear-cut slope, dodging obstacles before high-centering on a big stump. The grenade landed where the SUV would have been and the shrapnel missed high. Jaime climbed out with the nogs on his helmet, two spare mags down his shirt front and the M-4 in his good hand as he stumbled over the stumps and up the hill to where Kyle stood sentry duty.

  Sal had the lighter in his teeth. His right arm worked fairly well despite the bullet furrow in his delt. With his right hand, he pulled himself to his knees using the pickup’s undercarriage for purchase. He hauled himself to his feet, and that invisible grizzly took another bite out of his liver.

  “Nice shooting, cowboy!” Katerina exclaimed. “You blew him right off the road.”

  “I’m not so certain,” Muller said. “I think he juked left before it landed. His rig’s fucked, that’s for sure. I’ll deal with him later.”

  Down at the Winnebago, chaos reigned. The grenade had slightly wounded Carla and Erinn, and Derek had absorbed more than his daily quota of iron. The last wounded person waiting to load, Dr. Mona Almeida, wasn’t as fortunate. A high-velocity corkscrew of metal tore into her back even as Carla and Erinn helped her to the RV’s steps. Mona was dead by the time they’d picked themselves up. Derek bled from a scalp wound on his bald spot and had taken a handful of fragments in the right butt cheek. He still had the mental presence to help Erinn and Carla board, and told them to drive the ’Bago to the main road and wait. He grabbed one of Shorty’s twin Winchesters and limped in the XLT’s direction.

  In the gloom, Katerina spotted someone on the other side of the pickup. “Rolf, I thought you killed the scout?” she asked.

  Muller aimed his third grenade and didn’t want to be distracted since he’d worked so hard to seat the launcher’s butt into his fucked-up right shoulder. The ’Bago’s engine was on and the RV would be out of range in seconds. “I did. That boy’s deader than shit. You’re seeing things.” He added fifty meters to his elevation and waited for the ’Bago to surge away as his signal to fire. With his consummate skills, he’d earn ten bucks and a fuck even with a moving target.

  Katerina knew what she saw. She opened Norris’ clasp knife and ran around the front of the pickup.

  Sal’s weak thumb tried to light a flame, but only coaxed sparks from the cheap lighter. His entire being focused on one last turn of the wheel. A two-inch dancing flame was his reward as Katerina sunk the knife deep into his back. Oh, hell. Sal knew that if his thumb left the button, the butane would stop flowing, the light would go out and he’d have failed. He willed his thumb to stay firm and the flame continued its fickle dance as he stretched his arm as far as he could down into the pickup’s bed. The flame burned his thumb, but he persisted. The damp truck bed burst to life and flames leaped up as Katerina’s second thrust struck home at the base of his neck. Sal dropped the lighter and collapsed. Muller, startled by the burst of flames, aborted his shot and pivoted toward the light.

  The Horizon powered down the road, headlights off and not stopping for hell or high water.

  A winded Jaime made it onto the plateau and shouted for Kyle. He ran toward the north end overlooking the pickup. The truck was ablaze, and he ripped off his nogs to avoid being blinded. With his naked eyes, he could see someone silhouetted against the flames. Friend or foe?

  Katerina backed away from the heat and stared through puffy eyes at Sal’s inert form. Over the growing flames, she heard Muller
yelling at her to move away. Instead, she savored her triumph. I killed Sal Maggio! That thought was too delicious to hold inside, and she let loose. “YES!” she shouted in triumph with shaking her fists on outstretched arms. She couldn’t remember when she’d last felt so good despite being battered to shit and in need of oxy.

  One hundred meters away and up the hill, Jaime heard the female war cry and saw the arms pump. That was the confirmation he needed. Using only his right arm, he raised the M-4, steadied his aim and fired once. The recoil sent the M-4 spinning out of his grasp but the shot knocked Katerina off her feet and into the darkness. He didn’t see any movement and figured he didn’t need a second shot. He turned, retrieved his weapon and hustled thirty meters to the foxhole and awaited Muller’s response.

  When the pickup erupted, Muller had moved away to take himself out of the light. He was a good twenty meters away when he heard a single shot and saw Katerina collapse. “Katerina!” he yelled. “Come around the back and stay out of the light.” After a count of five with no response and no action, he knew she was badly wounded or dead. He looked up and saw that the Winnebago had disappeared.

  As shot up as Muller was, there was no way he’d be able to low crawl. The flames went even higher, finding more flammable substances in the cab. Before long, the ammo would cook off and he needed to be far away. He had six grenades left and a sniper to deal with. A few seconds later, Muller had dropped three high explosive 40mm rounds on the command post. The explosions assured him that up top anything bigger than a chipmunk was dead. He took a big arc to keep his silhouette out of the sniper’s gunsights and saw two bodies lying next to the fiercely burning truck and Kyle’s corpse ten meters off. Goddamn Sal Maggio had risen from the dead, set the fire and gotten his woman killed.

  * * * * *

  Up ahead, a pair of headlights showed. The ’Bago’s slow-but-steady progress away from the battleground slammed to a halt. “Car coming!” Carla shouted. “I need a gun! Everyone down!” Erinn rushed up and handed across Arkar’s M-4. She moved the selector to fully automatic and opened the door.