by Vicki Tharp
I slid down the ridge from my position, determined to get the guy closest to me. “On my way.”
“Negative. Keep your position.”
He was right. “Fuck.”
Boomer’s soft laugh reverberated through my brain.
I climbed back up as more shots rang out. Pshew. Pshew. Pshew, pshew, pshew.
Horses screamed and two of them went down and thrashed on the ground. The herd galloped toward the entrance of the canyon, then slammed on their brakes at the last second as they galloped up to the fence. As tight as a school of baitfish, they turned and galloped back up the canyon.
“They’re aiming at the horses, Boom.”
“Almost there.”
More rifle fire.
More horses down.
They were going to slaughter the whole herd.
One of Hank’s men returned fire. Without night vision or infrared scopes, it was literally a shot in the dark. A waste of ammo. Chances of hitting one of the shooters were extremely low. Chances of hitting Boomer or me were extremely low as well, kinda like the chances of being struck by lightning. The odds were not high, but people got hit all the time. There was a shout and the firing below stopped.
“On my mark, cover me,” Boomer said, his words muffled by the whoosha, whoosha, whoosha of blood as it spurted past my eardrum.
I got into position, sighted the edge of the rim approximately where I’d seen the muzzle flash closest to Boomer. I couldn’t see any people, but the rain was falling faster now, spotting the lens on my scope. I would have tried to dry it, but there was little on me that wasn’t wet. My heart drummed against my sternum and pounded into the ground. A sharp rock speared my thigh, and a mini river of water flowed beneath my belly.
“Now, Mac.”
I emptied the five-round clip into the side of the canyon, close enough to make the guy keep his head down, but not so close I feared I’d accidentally hit Boomer. Then I pulled a fresh magazine from the pocket of my coat, ejected the old and pushed home the new.
Boomer grunted in my ear several times. The other guy on the rim rapid fired into the herd. I considered my position blown, but none of the shots were aimed my direction. The horses whinnied and screamed, reared and kicked, pushed and shoved. Panicked. Dangerous.
Deadly.
I fired toward the shooter, again aiming low. I didn’t know where Boomer was, but I also couldn’t allow the herd to be slaughtered.
“One down,” Boomer said.
“Who was it?”
“Don’t know. He didn’t sign my dance card.”
I cracked a smile. Boomer couldn’t see it, but it was genuine. I glanced down at the camp. Hank and the guys had spread out. I could now see four that I counted as ours, and two that were creeping close to the mouth of the canyon. If they got much closer, I’d lose my angle and my line of sight to them. I fired another shot toward the rim. Two bullets wasted. Three left in the magazine.
Water dripped off the hood of my coat and the wind blew it back into my face, dropping my visibility from plain shitty to completely screwed.
The guy on the ridge got off two more rounds. The herd started galloping in circles again, desperate for an escape. I fired another round into the rocky cliff.
I glanced back at the two incoming men as they disappeared from view. I couldn’t remain silent any longer. I picked up the radio and alerted Hank and the rest of the men. “Get clear! They’re going for the fences.”
Instead of running away from the mouth of the canyon, two of our guys ran straight at it. If the fences came down, the horses would stampede.
“They’re gonna try to stop them,” I told Boomer, the wind stealing the shrillness from my voice.
“Get down there, Mac.”
“What about—”
“Let me worry about this asshole.”
“Roger.”
I did a quick scan of the area behind me to make sure I was clear, then I folded down the bipod, slung the rifle over my shoulder, and scrambled toward the valley floor. Rocks skittered beneath my feet. I crashed on my ass, bruised my tailbone, and scraped the glove and the skin off my right hand. My blood boiled with adrenaline and my lungs burned with the thin air. Water cascaded down my face and I spit it clear of my mouth.
Two more shots sang through the air behind me; a curse grunted in my ear and wood cracked somewhere below me. Thunder rolled, loud and rumbling. It shook the earth beneath my feet. Deafened my ears.
No, not thunder.
The horses were stampeding.
I roared into the handheld radio, “Get out of there. Get out of there!”
I stumbled and fell again, racking my knee on a flat rock, and I almost lost the rifle. I waited for the pain to register but the adrenaline had temporarily short-circuited my pain receptors because I never felt it. Boomer grunted again.
Did he get the other shooter?
A thunderous roll of hooves receded into the distance. I raised the scope, heard a holler, and watched as two people hopped on horses and galloped after the herd. I assumed it was our men, but there was no way to know. As I hit the valley floor, the rain eased up.
Staying low, I crept toward the mouth of the canyon. Then there came a break in the clouds and a half moon shown through. Not a ton of light, but compared to the visibility a few minutes before, it was like a spotlight illuminating the two prostrate men stomped into the mud.
I didn’t need my scope to see they weren’t moving.
Yes, no, and no. “Fuck me,” I muttered.
Inside my brain Boomer said, “Lizzie may not approve, but if you insist.”
I sighed, relieved. “You good?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“Boom,” I scolded, not sure if my tone would translate well over the throat mic. Could the man ever be serious?
“On my way down.”
I didn’t bother to ask him if he’d found the other man; he wouldn’t be coming down if he hadn’t. He was a long way off with one and a half good legs. If I needed him anytime soon, I was screwed.
I needed to check on the men who were down, but I couldn’t run out into the open and expose myself—the distance was too far. I mapped out a course that led me from boulder to boulder that would allow me to get within five yards of one of the men. I glanced back at the men. Still no movement from them or anyone else. Where had those other two men gone? After the screaming horses, gunfire, and galloping hooves, it was eerily quiet.
Like the silence in the horror movie, right before shit goes south.
As I ran for the first big boulder, Dread plucked at my motor nerves like a harp, making my legs slow and clumsy. Puddles squished beneath my feet, and the vroot, vroot, vroot my wet pant legs made when I ran echoed in the silence.
I stopped with my back to the boulder, searched the area around me, and listened for movement. Nothing.
Squish, squish, vroot, vroot. Back against a boulder. Look around. Searching. Searching.
Squish, squish, vroot, vroot. Back against another boulder.
In close quarters, the pistol was a better defensive weapon. I hung the rifle across my chest and palmed the Beretta. I crouched low, peeked around the end of the rock. Five yards to the nearest man. A boot moved. The man groaned.
Hank.
Yes, no, and no. I shook my head and rattled loose Jenna’s last question from my memory. “Do you love Mac?”
Chapter 16
I shoved that last question into a dusty corner of my mind and slapped the label titled Things-To-Think-About-When-People-Aren’t-Shooting-At-Me onto it. Way off in the distance horses called to one another. The rain had all but stopped now and the mud beneath my feet held a wild, dark, and earthy scent.
Hank groaned again. A stick broke—the sound coming from near the entrance to the canyon. I peeked around the
boulder again, but I couldn’t see anyone. Which meant I’d be hard to spot as well.
Crouching, I scrambled over to Hank. Fear constricted my lungs and I fought the lightheadedness.
“It’s me, Hank,” I whispered. “Where do you hurt?”
“Everywhere,” he said, his voice coarse enough to abrade diamonds.
Holstering my gun, I grabbed his upper arm to try to help him up. He hollered out in agony. A bullet whizzed by my head. One of those fuckers was shooting directly at us. I grabbed him under his arms and around his chest and dragged him back behind the boulder, his legs scrambling and slipping in the mud as he attempted to help. His breathing was labored, equal parts groan, grunt, and determination.
Hacking coughs racked his body as he landed partially prone, his back to the rock. He scooted himself up with his right arm, the one that wasn’t hurt, and spit out a mouthful of crud.
“Broken?” I asked about his other arm.
He flexed and extended his left hand, maneuvered his elbow and manipulated his shoulder. “Just a helluva stomping, I think.”
I squatted beside him, the moon highlighting his cheekbones and glinting in his eyes. Then his eyes rounded, his jaw dropped.
I reacted. All power and instinct and raw fear. My heart squeezed, my lungs seized, my quads drove my legs upwards, twisting, turning, attacking.
With the point of my shoulder, I speared the man behind me in the solar plexus and my momentum lifted him off his feet and slammed us to the ground. There was a loud splat as his rifle hit the mud. His breath blew out, hot, heavy in my ear. Then I reared back and punched him in the face.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Water and mud and blood flew.
How dare this man try to take from me what I’ve fought so hard to earn. He went limp beneath me but I didn’t let up. How dare he threaten these men, our lives, our livelihood. My fist slammed into him.
Again.
And again.
The skin on my knuckles split. Someone wrapped their arms around my torso and dragged me off him. “Easy, easy now,” the voice soothed. Not Hank, Dale.
Thank God, he was all right.
“Okay, okay.” I jerked out of Dale’s arms, staggered a step, and leaned forward, bracing my hands on my knees, fighting for every molecule of oxygen I could get. Then I reached into one of the pockets of my coat and handed Dale a couple zip ties to restrain the man I’d beaten.
As the man slowly regained consciousness, Dale zipped the man’s wrists together behind his back, then propped him up. “A Talbot,” Dale spat out.
“Probably his brothers shooting from the ridge. Boomer’s taking care of them, but that means there’s at least one more out there,” I warned.
Dale tapped the bottom of the Talbot’s boot with his foot. “Where’s your other brother?”
“Fuck you,” the Talbot said. It sounded like “’uck ou,” because his face was swelling as fast as roadkill in the Iraqi desert.
Hank chuckled, but it came out harsh and tattered. “I’d say you’re the one that’s fucked, man.” Then Hank leaned toward the man conspiratorially. “Tell me something, does it hurt more to get your ass kicked by a woman?”
The Talbot spat, but Hank laughed.
I stepped over to where the Talbot had dropped his rifle and I handed it to Dale. He must have lost his own rifle somewhere in the stampede. Dale had a trickle of drying blood from a small laceration on his right temple, and mud caked down the front of him, but not much worse considering the horses had trampled him and Hank like a doormat in front of a whorehouse.
“What’s your name?” I tapped his leg with my boot.
He spat again. I assumed it was blood. The defiant glint in is eye told me I could beat on him all day and he wasn’t going to give me his name.
“Trent?” The first name came to mind. The man’s hard gaze never wavered. “Travis?” Still nothing. “Tanner.”
He dropped his hard stare but caught my eye again right away when he realized he’d given himself away. Tanner it is. The same brother who’d come after me in the parking lot. I had almost starting to think I should feel bad for the beating I’d given him, but not anymore. I rolled my sore shoulder to ease the tension.
“I saw two guys go after the horses,” I said to Dale and Hank. “Were they ours? Do you know where everyone is?”
“Santos and Quinn went after the horses.” Hank coughed again, thick in his throat like clotting blood. “There’s a thirty-foot drop off about a hundred yards wide about a half mile down the trail. They were gonna to try to turn ’em.”
“What about Link?”
Dale and Hank glanced at each other, then back at me. Dale said, “I haven’t seen him since he went on watch.”
“Either one of you still have a radio?”
Dale and Hank patted various parts of their bodies and came up dry. Hank pushed himself to his feet. His bottom lip was battered, a poster boy for failed lip augmentation. I handed him my handheld.
“You still coming, Boom?”
“Almost there. Got two up top wishing they’d stayed home watching Dancing with the Stars.”
“One down here. One still in the wind.”
“Copy that.”
“You two wait here for Boomer,” I told Dale and Hank, “and keep an eye Tanner and see if you can contact Link, Quinn, or Santos. I’m going to hunt down his other brother.”
The sky was clear overhead. The moon shone bright and smug, kicking back lazily on a bed of stars. The wind whipped, and an angry line of clouds marched toward us like a battalion of soldiers ready for war.
I used my scope to scan the area, but either the last brother had hightailed it out of there or he was well hidden. There were so many places he could be hiding that the chances of finding him in the dark if he didn’t want to be found were slim.
If be dismissed out of hand—he’d be working his way around until he got into position behind us. We were not in a very defensible position if he did that. Maybe it would be better if I made him come to us.
“Wait, I’m going to draw him out,” I told the men.
“Wait for me to get down there, Mac.”
“Can’t wait any longer. He could be flanking us right now. If he does that, we’re screwed.”
* * * *
I covered Hank and Dale until they could relocate Tanner to a different location and then I distanced myself from them. No sense in us packing together in one spot like a carton of eggs waiting to be scrambled. Not that one location was any better than the other, but staying in one spot could be deadly.
I loaded my last full magazine into the rifle and rechecked the Beretta to make sure it was good to go as well. My heart thumped a time or two, but it was more of a get-this-shit-over-with kind of anticipation than shit’s-gonna-hit-the-fan kind of fear. Though there was always a tiny bit of room for that.
Now it was time to chum the waters and see what surfaced.
“It’s over Talbot. We’ve got your brothers. They’re not doing so hot. They’re shocky. Cold. We don’t get them out of here, the hypothermia could kill them.”
Tanner yelled out, “Get outta here.” Then I heard a thud, then an oomph, and then he really didn’t say much else.
“Even if we don’t get you now,” I hollered, “the sheriff will get you later.”
A shot rang. The bullet ricocheted and sparked off the rock about a foot from my head. I ducked and ran for better cover. “You see where that came from, Boom?”
I didn’t hear a reply in my earpiece and I tapped at it to see if it was still working or if the rain had shorted it out. “Boom. You copy?”
“He’s behind that medium boulder about twenty-five yards south of your last position,” Boomer said.
I scoped the area in question, but f
rom my vantage point, I still couldn’t see him. Besides, rocks and boulders of all sizes riddled the area. It was like trying to point out a single cloud across the whole horizon.
“Hank and Dale still covered?”
“Yeah, they moved after that last shot. You keep talking to him and I’ll go around and get him from behind. Don’t stay in one spot too long.”
“Copy that.” Then I yelled out, “Tic-toc Talbot. Trent’s gut-shot. He’s gonna bleed out if we don’t get him help.”
It was a lie, and it could be a bad one because I picked one of the names at random, trying to make it more personal. I had a 66 percent chance the guy I was talking to wasn’t Trent. Odds anyone would take in Vegas.
“Bullshit,” the man yelled back, but there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“Maybe,” I equivocated, “maybe not. He dies, you gonna tell your momma you were too stupid to save him?”
He fired, but the shot was way wide. How much ammo could he have left anyway?
“Is that your answer? You gonna kill us?”
“I ain’t goin’ to no jail.”
“If you kill one of us, you’ll go to jail and you may never get out.”
What was taking Boomer so long to get around him? “Boom?” I whispered.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
“You do know Wyoming still has the death penalty, right?” I egged the brother.
“Not if there ain’t no witnesses. Not if I kill—”
“Put the weapon down,” Boomer said. I heard it in my earpiece as well as without it. “Now.” The severity of his voice almost had me dropping my own. The guy would be stupid to refuse.
Long moments passed. I knew Boomer was perfectly capable of handling the situation on his own, but that didn’t stop me from wishing I was in a better position to back him up. Then I heard a muted clatter. The gun hitting the ground I assumed.
“All clear,” Boomer called out for everyone to hear.