After It Happened (Book 7): Andorra [The Leah Chronicles]

by Ford, Devon C.

  With her at my heel I crept forwards, both of us dressed in black and blending into the shadowed woodland, until I could see the metal barrier up ahead and above me to prevent any cars from crashing off the road.

  Tense seconds ticked by as the engine noise grew in intensity until I was rewarded with a flash of a truck passing by from right to left; the brief sight held in my mind until I had assessed it.

  Pickup. Two in the front and one in the bed. Armed.

  I had no chance to see this and recognise it as the truck passed, but the mental image stayed long enough for me to pick out the details. The only weapon I saw was a long shotgun, a tactical one like those the guards in Andorra had wielded with evident uncertainty, and I doubted I could win a toe-to-toe fight with these men if they were all similarly armed. A pang of angry loss at my M4 and 417 being in the hands of these bastards was pushed back down as unhelpful and irrelevant as I told myself to work with what I had available.

  I had found the road, which was good, but they were hunting me along it and that was bad. I would be forced to stay in the shadows and that meant travelling twice as slow as walking on the tarmac. I waited for five minutes, then ten, but the truck didn’t reappear on a return journey.

  “Come on,” I said softly as I turned to walk parallel to the road and make some progress at least. My mind ran at breakneck speed as I considered all the options and choices.

  If it was me, and someone had escaped my ambush on foot, especially given that there was only one god-damned road out of the area, I would send a cut-off force down the mountain and blockade the road to wait for them as the rest of my force drove the quarry forwards to them.

  That left me with two choices initially; move forwards with only sidearms and no supplies or transport, or go back up the mountain and get back into Andorra to relative safety and the hope of calling for help. Option one was fraught with potential dangers, the worst being a likely unavoidable conflict with superior numbers with bigger guns but going back became more dangerous for others. Dan would be following our route after four days, which meant that if I couldn’t get back in and send a message to Sanctuary then he would be walking into an ambush without warning. I couldn’t let that happen.

  I pushed forwards, stopping when the pain in my head became too bad and I was forced to rest. Even though we were under heavy tree cover and shielded from the sun which was already high in the sky and beating down, the heat under the leaves was almost unbearable. I pushed further back into the forest, climbing higher until I found a shaded patch to rest. I closed my eyes, meaning to rest for just a while.

  ~

  I woke to a growl from Nemesis. Suddenly awake with a gasp and a moment of confusion, I held my breath and listened. I couldn’t detect anything that she could, so I rubbed my face and grimaced at the renewed pain in my skull as I climbed back to my feet.

  I ran the image of the map through my head, luckily still there in parts from the hours I had spent planning the route. The road home went east for a long while before it met a junction, from what I could recall. That road split off north while the road I needed to take went further east then turned south to drop out of the mountains. If I was in their shoes, that would be where I would place the ambush. Determined to get away and prize open the jaws of the trap I was in, I moved off with violence in mind.

  It took me over an hour moving carefully through the forest until the low growl rippled from Nemesis. I quieted her with a hand, knowing that the growl was for my benefit and not her losing any kind of control. I inched forward, getting closer to the road with every gentle movement until I could make out a break in the foliage to signify where humans had carved a slice out of the mountain for a road. There was no barrier here, and I was eventually rewarded with a view of a straight, white line.

  “Down. Stay,” I whispered, hearing her settle down to wait in silence and knowing that her eyes would be glued to my back. Another few feet forward and the white line morphed into the front wing of the truck I had seen pass earlier in the day. I couldn’t see anyone there, so I waited.

  Movement shifted, and the vehicle shifted under the weight of a person readjusting their position. Cigarette smoke drifted towards me, snatched away by the breeze as soon as I had detected it. Faint noises that bore the pattern of speech reached my ears, the words undecipherable but the sound obvious to me. It was neither English or French, the flow was wrong, but they were definitely speaking out loud to one another.

  Fools, I thought before correcting my attitude. Three amateurs with guns could kill me just as easily as experts, even if they had set up a straight checkpoint and not an ambush.

  I would have blocked the road and made it look like the truck had crashed or broken down, I thought, then put the men in the woods either side of it. Right about where I am now, actually…

  That thought made my heart stop for a moment, the sudden fear that I had been the one to underestimate an enemy could mean that a gun was pointed at my head even now. I relaxed. If they knew I was here, they would have made some kind of move by now.

  The sun was still high, no doubt making the interior of the truck an uncomfortably hot place to be. I knew one of them at least was there, but the other two were still unaccounted for and I wouldn’t be able to make any kind of move myself until I had a clear line of sight on all of them. Inching backwards I retrieved my dog in silence and spent a further painfully slow half an hour creeping further down until I was parallel with the truck.

  Only when I was sure I had the upper hand did I show them what they had done wrong in trying to trap us.

  Breaking Open the Trap

  Having set my mind to the more personally dangerous course of action, I made sure to keep my head and do the job properly. I waited and waited, eventually being rewarded by movement off to my left as one of them stood up from the shade of a tree to stretch and unzip to piss noisily against a tree. I was close enough to smell it but was careful just to screw up my nose and track the movement with my eyes. He finished, calling something out in a language I didn’t speak to the others which prompted a responding chuckle of laughter. It didn’t come from the truck, so in doing that he had given away the position of the third one.

  I tensed, squeezing the ergonomic grip of the suppressed Walther in my hand and forcing myself not to act yet. I ran through how it would go down.

  Stand up, weapon up, move forward and put two in the driver. He wouldn’t see it coming. Turn left and put two in the joker, switch a one-eighty and drop laughing boy.

  Too risky, I told myself, not knowing who held the shotgun I saw. If it was Joker then I had a chance, but if it was Laughing Boy I could go down blown to pieces by the heavy lead ripping into me. If I chose to take them down in the opposite order I face the same problem.

  So I waited some more.

  It wasn’t long before I was rewarded, when a burst of static came from the open window of the truck. The one in the cab picked up a speaker mic, answering, “Si,” as the others contracted to hear the transmission. Now was my chance, and I took it.

  Rising out of the foliage and turning my body sideways, I gripped the gun with both hands and took three fast paces forwards. I stopped, focused, and squeezed.

  Pft pft, pft pft, pft… pft.

  The weapon cracked off in my hand as I fired a double-tap into the shaved head of Joker before switching the barrel to aim at the stunned profile of Laughing Boy. I put two into him just as fast, both entering his skull just above his left ear as I concentrated on the shocked look on the face of the driver. He had the mic raised to his face and held it a hand’s breadth away from his mouth. I saw the decision, the pre-tensing of the movement as though I could see the impulse travelling slowly from his brain to his hand and click the talk button.

  My first shot was a snap reflex, taking him in the left side of his neck as the bullet scored across his skin and shattered the glass of the partly-open window on the far side of the car. Registering that he could still activate the rad
io and scream a warning I moved the barrel a centimetre up and left and fired again.

  That last bullet shattered the front of his skull and left his forehead a gory ruin. I breathed two hard breaths, repaying the debt I owed my body for holding my breath as I fired, and relaxed. I stepped forwards, gun still up as I glanced down to check my footing to climb up onto the road, and only then did I realise I had fucked up.

  I had dropped three of them in under two seconds, an impressive feat really, but my brain registered that I couldn’t see the shotgun. Neither Joker nor Laughing Boy held it, and it wasn’t in the cab. Just as I was looking for it, I heard it.

  It was one of the most unmistakable sounds I have ever heard, and in the echoing confines of an overgrown mountain road it sounded as though he had racked a cartridge into the chamber as we shared the same elevator. He roared a challenge, half fear and half adrenaline, as he rose up from where he had been sitting on the far side of the truck, no doubt slumbering in the shade of the wheel from the hot sun. My eyes stretched wide in fear, a weird sensation to feel when you’re certain of your own imminent death, and as he rose into sight I sent the message down to my legs to give out. I dropped like a stone, hitting the ground hard with my left shoulder as I brought the weapon to bear. An explosive boom rang out over me, peppering the inside of the truck bed with the pellets as the barrel was depressed to try and track my movement.

  As I hit the deck my hand pushed out in front of me as I kept my elbows tucked into my sides. It was the close-quarters method I had learned, keeping the gun in both hands high against my chest and knowing that my target would be directly in front of wherever by body pointed. I saw feet, or boots to be specific. They were the kind of slip-on tan building boots that people wore, and something sparked in my mind screamed about the steel toe caps. I quick-fired the last four shots in the magazine until the slide locked back. I didn’t freeze, instead I dropped it where I lay, and half rolled to my right to give my arm space to draw the Glock from my chest before rolling back, searching for the target.

  Which was gone.

  Fuck, my brain screamed, fuuuck.

  A crunch of boot on broken glass sounded from ahead of me, and in that instant, I knew he’d chosen to run instead of fight.

  Amateur, I thought again. If I was in his shoes I’d be moving and pumping another three-inch cartridge into the chamber to dismember whoever had attacked me. But then again, a lot of people weren’t me.

  I rolled, scrambling to my feet and slipping on the blood of Joker as I rose to point the Glock through the open passenger side window.

  “Don’t,” I snapped as fiercely as I could with my voice quavering from the adrenaline. He froze, half in the vehicle. I could feel the cogs ticking over in his brain, hear him figuring out if he could escape, could move the body of the driver and start the car and drive off, could bring the shotgun to bear. And then I saw the realisation on his face when he knew he could do none of those things. I had the sights of the gun lined up right on his mouth as he faced directly towards me. He was six feet away, and a squeeze of my finger would destroy all brain function before he even registered the muzzle flash.

  “Don’t,” I said again, lower and more menacingly. “Heel!” I shouted, bringing Nemesis stalking from the trees as his confused look registered the dog. The look on his face told me that he hadn’t been expecting that, that he had been told to look out for a woman, not a silent killer with a big, black dog at her side.

  “Gun down, now,” I said.

  “Nnn… No parlo…” he stammered.

  “Put. The Fucking. Gun. Down!” I snarled, making each word nice and loud so that he understood me, lifting my gun slightly to make it clear. The shotgun clattered to the ground and his hands came up in surrender. I twitched the barrel to the right, telling him I wanted him to walk around the front of the truck. No translation was needed as he started to edge around never taking his eyes off me.

  “Watch him,” I muttered, trying to hide my cruel smile as Nemesis paced forwards with her head down and her teeth bared. Her snarl also needed no translation, neither did the small yelp of fear that came from the man.

  “Down,” I told him, “on your knees.” The movement of the gun again made my intentions clear. He babbled in rapid Spanish, or at least what sounded like Spanish to me, and I made sure he was facing Nemesis as I walked behind him. The babbling sounded like a repeated prayer and didn’t seem to be directed at me.

  Good, I thought, appeal for divine intervention.

  I holstered the Glock as I whipped one of the four thick cable ties in a loose loop. I pushed his hands down to his waist, muttering a word to Nem to make sure she had his full attention, and pulled them tight to zip his wrists together.

  “Up,” I said, dragging his clothing to make him stand as I drew the gun again and rotated the barrel to the left before jabbing it into the sweat-soaked material of his shirt between his shoulder blades, then twisted it back to the right to snag the material around the barrel. He wasn’t going anywhere with the gun pressed into his spine and the fingers of my left hand digging into the collar bone in search of the pressure point buried there. I walked him to the back of the truck, taking my left hand away to flip down the tailgate, then leant him over the back. I drew in a breath, pulled the gun away and held it up high to smash the butt of the weapon into his head once, twice, then a third until he went limp. I didn’t think I’d knocked him out, not properly, but he was half insensible to make it easier to tip his legs up and roll him inside. He winced and whimpered as he rolled over his bound hands. I climbed up and flipped him over again, cable-tying his ankles together after slipping off the thick boots and then connecting the two restraints together with a third strong binding. Having hog-tied him in the back and hearing him moan and mumble to himself I climbed down and shut the tailgate.

  “Don’t want you rolling out, do I?” I said conversationally to him. I retrieved the Walther and reloaded it, then picked up the shotgun he had carried. It was dirty, clearly not maintained lovingly and probably passed from person to person. I couldn’t find any spare ammunition for it which further annoyed me at the irresponsible way some people treated their guns. I guessed this one had been looted from some police supply somewhere, probably from a place like the border post, and I was reminded just how much easier it was to get your hands on any kind of military or police-spec weapon pretty much anywhere on earth apart from back home in the UK. I dragged the dead driver out and searched his pockets, finding nothing of worth, then checked Joker and Laughing Boy. The passenger seat of the truck held water and food, all looted with long dates or else already past the recommended use-by, and nothing homemade or grown. These men were pirates.

  There was water, two big bottles of it, and I drank some before pouring more into my hand for Nem to lap up. She left a greasy film on my hand by licking me, so I leaned into the truck bed and wiped it clean on the man’s shirt.

  “Hup,” I said, holding open the passenger door for Nem to jump in then went around to sweep the shards of shattered safety glass off the driver’s seat. The truck had a column-shifter which I wasn’t familiar with, but I got it started and drove forward with the wheel hard over to begin an awkward thirty-three-point turn in the narrow road and weave my way back through the bodies to head down the winding mountain roads. A glance at the fuel gauge told me I had a quarter of a tank, and although I couldn’t know how much that would give me I knew it wouldn’t get me home.

  “We’ll be walking some of the way, girl,” I told Nemesis. She gave a grumble in return and licked my right elbow.

  “Hola?” the radio crackled after a few minutes. I ignored it, letting them repeat the word a few times with gathering annoyance before it went silent.

  Let them go and find the bodies, I thought, that’s five of them down and one missing. Hopefully that will give them an idea of what is coming for them.

  ~

  I drove carefully, keeping the speed comfortable and the revs low to try
and conserve as much fuel as possible. If I’d had a manual I would have coasted out of gear and controlled my descent with the brakes, but I had to make do with what I had. I kept glancing in the rear-view, waiting for my prisoner to regain his senses but he didn’t pop up. After an hour I grew a little concerned that I’d hit him once too many times and my conscience forced me to pull over and check him; it was one thing to kill someone who was going to kill or capture you, but another for a restrained prisoner to suffocate or bleed out.

  I didn’t have to worry. He was alive and awake, with wide eyes staring at me when I peered over the truck bed. He spoke to me again, pleadingly from the tone of his voice, but I ignored him and went to get back in. I paused, asking myself why I really had brought him with me and deciding that I needed him alive to answer questions. I reached back into the cab for a water bottle and dragged him half upright to pour some of the warm fluid into his mouth before pulling it away and dropping him back down.

  “Gràcies,” he said weakly, repeating the word twice more. I ignored him, climbing back behind the wheel and driving off again. I drove until the sun began to set and decided that I didn’t want to be trying to navigate in the dark in an unfamiliar vehicle without a map and running out of fuel. I’d tried switching off the engine on the longer, straighter sections of downhill road but with the engine went the power steering and I almost crashed as I fought the heavy wheel against its annoying tendency to pull to the right. I guessed it must run the power steering off the engine and not the electronics, which annoyed me.

  I made it out of the mountains and the foothills before the fuel warning light came on, and I rolled into the nearest village to park the truck nose-in between two other vehicles before getting out and scanning over the barrel of the Walther. I parked like that intentionally, as Dan always said that vehicles looking ready to go were always a dead giveaway that people inhabited an abandoned place.