Recon

by David McCaleb

  Mandarin slipped the device into a belt caddy like a gunslinger returning a pistol to its holster. He started toward the side door, hands in pockets, lips pursed, eyes squinted to slits.

  Red had enough of waiting and inaction. No way was he going to let this guy tail Lori. He wouldn’t hurt him, but the man was about to know he’d been made. Mandarin neared a buxom woman bouncing a baby on one hip. Red slipped one foot onto the wheel of her empty stroller and shoved it in front of him as he passed.

  Chapter 5

  Mandarin

  Red flattened against the puzzle display as Mandarin crashed into the carriage, yanking hands from pockets to break his fall. With all the tourist chatter in the shop, it seemed no one noticed the collision. A tiny Glock 43 with a slender silencer screwed onto the muzzle clattered to the ground between them. Shit. The man scrambled for it, glancing at Red with narrowed eyes. Red lunged to beat him to the weapon, but just then a jigsaw puzzle box exploded above his scalp, raining wooden shards upon his neck. A cream mug boasting I Hiked Pikes Peak in blue letters shattered with a crack next to his head.

  Someone else was shooting at him—with a silenced weapon.

  Red kicked Mandarin’s pistol away and rolled behind the coffee bar. He yanked up his tight crewman’s sweater and drew his own sidearm, a modified Sig Sauer 9mm. He thumbed off the safety. The ceramic-lined barrel was almost as fat as a .45 caliber but strong enough to take the higher pressures of Det ammo. Ducking behind a row of black coffee carafes, he peered carefully around the corner of the counter.

  The loud rumble of a barista steaming two carafes of milk filled the room. Everyone was still turning displays of stuffed animals or pushing hot dogs into their mouths, oblivious to the silenced shots being fired nearby.

  A young lady with kelly-green eyelids set a tray with a funnel cake next to Red’s shoulder. Filling her coffee mug, she glanced down and did a double take at Red’s pistol.

  “Federal marshal,” he whispered. “Get down.”

  Green flashed as her eyebrows rose. She gasped, then screamed shrilly.

  He whipped a leg against her ankle, and she fell to the terra-cotta tiles. A carafe wobbled as a stream of hot brew spouted from a fresh bullet hole, the same one a second ago the lady had been filling up from. Damn it. Where was the other shooter?

  A flash of blue as Mandarin sprinted out behind a long chest of turquoise jewelry, hunched low. Red squeezed the trigger just short of the break point and trailed the man with his sights. For a split second, the room went silent as his bead caught up with the runner, then led him a mere half inch. Det ammo would penetrate two or even three bodies, so he had to wait for a clear shot. In his mind, quick as the beat of a wasp’s wing, he reviewed firing a double tap through the chest. His grip tightened. Then, instinct collided with reality when the front sight passed over a blond girl with pigtails, stuffing a powdered doughnut into her mouth.

  Penny!

  A blink later Mandarin was out the door. Another carafe cracked open, spewing hot coffee on his wrist. Enough of this shit. Red pointed the pistol at the roof and squeezed twice. The loud crack of Det ammo whipped through the building.

  He opened his wallet and held up a silver star. “Federal marshal! Everyone down!” The usual two-second pause as a hundred pairs of lungs gasped. Then came the screaming, the ducking, and scrambling to the floor.

  There they were. The whole room stooped except for Ravens Fan in the bathroom line and his high-cheekboned yoga wife, who stood behind a sunglasses display. The weapon was at her waist, partially concealed by one palm, no doubt catching ejected brass to keep it from tinkling on the tiles.

  “Daddy!” called Penny.

  Red caught Yoga’s gaze. The bitch smiled and puckered her lips into a kiss, glancing toward his daughter. Shit. They’d made Penny. He couldn’t just run away and draw their fire; they’d grab her.

  Now Ravens Fan drew a pistol from the small of his back. Ducking low again, Red lifted a round table and ran toward the jewelry counter. The slap of rounds hitting the top side cracked in his ear. Yoga and Ravens Fan were firing subsonic loads for silence, which meant slow movers. But if either slapped in a mag of regular ammo, the table wasn’t going to do him much good. He squeezed off a few shots in Yoga’s direction, aiming high since she was ducking now behind a cotton-topped couple, each gripping a cane and bent at the waist.

  Kneeling next to Penny, he whispered, “Piggyback.” She crawled on and latched arms and legs around him like a spider securing prey. He slipped toward the side door, table shielding their front. Ravens Fan reloaded. Loud muzzle barks followed; then wood splinters blew like thick dust into Red’s chin. Pivot, squeeze, and two crimson petals bloomed from the man’s chest. He dropped upon a table’s edge, launching a hail of polished stones across the room. Red backed through the door into cold air.

  Outside, Mandarin was running toward the far end of a packed-earth parking lot, head erect, swiveling, searching between cars. Too far for a good shot, and Red couldn’t risk drawing fire with Penny on his back. A flash of motion in his periphery, and he swung his weapon toward it. Lori, crouching behind a car in the front row. He started for her, but she waved him away, mouthed Penny, and pointed down the mountain.

  She was right. He had to get their daughter to safety first.

  “Mommy!” screamed Penny next to his ear.

  At the shout, Mandarin slid to a halt and turned back toward the visitor center. Red yanked a white-and-red road bike with low, curved handles from an outside rack. Yoga slammed the side door behind him, but he drove her back in with a quick burst. He mounted the bike and started down the road.

  “You can’t leave Mommy!” Penny wailed.

  Red’s fingers tensed on the handle brakes, but he didn’t squeeze. Running from a fight felt completely wrong, though. He glanced back to see Lori jumping off a rock away from the parking lot, disappearing somewhere down the side of the mountain. Mandarin ran after her. She had a good hundred-meter head start. He’d have to be fast to catch up.

  His legs pumped quickly, and soon they were screaming down the narrow road. Zigzagging across a steep ridge, they flitted continuously through shadow and blazing light as high rocks broke the sun’s view, a beacon flashing warning. Breeze rushing up the mountain broke over a boulder ridge and condensed into thin fog, wisps of vapor like contrails from an airplane.

  The bike’s handlebars were thin and narrow. He’d only ridden mountain bikes before. The front tire of this one looked sharp as a knife blade. He squeezed the brakes around a cutback, but the front wheel locked when he crossed a path of windblown dust upon the blacktop. The wheels slipped out, and they toppled. He slammed his hip onto the road and skidded to a spinning halt, but Penny’s grip stayed tight. Hopping up, he lifted the bike from a sharp granite boulder, then started down again. The steering was canted, but the tires seemed intact. In seconds, they were speeding down another straightaway. Next cutback, he leaned into the curve and stuck out a boot like a motocross racer. Cold drops hit the back of his neck.

  “You hurt?” he yelled over the rush of frigid wind.

  “Is she going to d-die?” Her breath warm on his ear.

  “Mom? Shoot, no. She’ll be OK.”

  “But, why’d you leave her?”

  “She told us to go the other way. To get you safe.”

  Another cutback, then a long straightaway. Glancing up, he saw a white sedan stopped in the road, hood up, vapor rising. A small black pickup had squeezed next to it, as if trying to pass, instead completely blocking the narrow trail. No one was in sight. Red tightened his grip on the brakes. The rear tire locked, but he kept balanced. Leaning to one side, he started down what looked to be a centuries-old wagon trail. The wheels clattered over sharp rocks. He steered momentarily off the trail onto a thin carpet of pale green tundra. The bike slowed, narrow wheel slicing through the mossy surface like a pizza c
utter.

  A puff of dust. A rock skipped off the trail a few feet ahead. A few seconds later there came another puff, this one next to him. He glanced back. Yoga stood high at the top of the cutbacks, drawing a bead with her pistol. Any hit from this distance would be pure luck. But if the broken-down sedan was a trap, those guys could soon be taking shots as well. Red pulled off the trail behind an oblong rock, the sharp outcrop jutting from the tundra’s surface like a giant’s thumb.

  “Hop off a sec,” he panted. He drew his pistol and leaned against the rock’s vertical surface. Flat green lichen crumbled onto one cheek as he peered around the edge. Yoga was no longer atop her lookout and—damn—the black pickup was backing up. Red watched it steer down the same wagon trail they’d just turned. Fight or flight? The bastards knew exactly where he was. If there were two, they could simply flank him. All the odds were not in his favor.

  He jumped down and hugged Penny to his belly. Her arms were trembling. “Don’t worry. Keep hanging on to me just like this.” With her in front, his back would shield any lucky shot. He mounted the bike again and pedaled down a steep slope, toward a rock ridge that looked a half mile away. If he could get past that, they might be able to disappear altogether. The truck following looked to be only two-wheel drive, so it certainly wouldn’t be able to make it over the crest. A few more thousand feet down and they’d be beneath the tree line. Once inside such cover, chances would start to lean his way again.

  Halfway to the ridge the bike dropped several feet into a shallow washout thick with loose shale. The front wheel bent sideways; the forks buried deep in the rubble and stuck there. Red glanced behind them. The truck trailed only five hundred meters. He vaulted over handlebars and broke into a sprint. Soon, each breath came hard. At this altitude the air lacked substance.

  The distant ridge ahead lay semisubmerged in a light mist, milling in the cold breeze. The rocks seemed to float on its surface, like stones marking the graves of specters fleeting about. As he pumped his legs harder, the entire ridge began to move. He skidded to a halt, sliding on slick green moss. Some of the brown boulders rose from the ground. Or…was he hallucinating? He blinked hard, then again. “What the hell?” he whispered.

  “They’re moose,” Penny offered. “Like the stuffed animal Grandma gave me.”

  At last he recognized a herd of a hundred elk, not moose, as they stood from a rest and ambled slowly away, over orange-and-gray mounds. Antlers rose from behind a near boulder as a bull stirred to knees, then stood erect. The massive brown beast had a white patch on his rump and thick, black hair drooping like a shawl from his neck. The rack looked eight feet across. Easily an eight-hundred-pound monster. The animal curved his neck toward the herd and opened his mouth. His belly lifted in short bursts, barking a warning like a dog. The herd started to trot, hundreds of hooves trampling flora and rock.

  A loud crack came from behind, and Red stooped low. The truck had bounced over a boulder, smashing one door, breaking a window. It continued its downhill course, though now with a front wheel wobbling, threatening to come loose. But in less than a minute they’d be in shooting range of him, even by pistol. And if these pursuers had a high-powered rifle, they were already too close.

  Red stepped toward the beast. They had to get over the ridge. The bull lowered its head and stomped the earth with one sharp hoof, grunting from deep within that massive chest. Red had heard an elk’s high-pitched bugle before, though never this basso growl. But the threat was quite clear. Red pointed his weapon skyward and pulled the trigger twice. The animal merely raised his head, as if in disdain. Red laid the skull atop his front sight.

  “Don’t shoot, Daddy!”

  “We’ve got no time. It’s not letting us pass.”

  “Tell it to shoo,” she huffed.

  “I don’t mix well with alpha males. A gun is the only thing that works sometimes, honey.”

  Penny waved a hand. “Shoo, moose! Go away,” she shouted.

  Another crunch from behind. Red glanced back. The truck was high centered on the drop-off into the shallow ravine. Doors burst open, and two figures leaped to the ground, one in white pants, another in woodland camo. He turned his weapon once more toward the animal.

  “I said shoo!” shrieked Penny, one hand still waving. “Bad moose! Go home.”

  It was an elk, of course, but Red wasn’t about to correct his daughter. The animal jerked its head, vapor streaming from its nostrils. The bull turned and began to trot after his herd.

  When Red sprinted after it, the animal seemed to spook, quickening its pace and trotting ahead. Red ran between two rocks that suddenly stirred from the ground and rose after he’d passed. Two more elk, latently heeding their leader’s warning. Behind him, several other stragglers made chase to catch the rest of the herd. One of the animals caught up and passed close enough that it smelled of wet wool, snapping at Red as it went.

  The herd’s hoofbeats sounded like a great avalanche, thundering in his chest. Now, several more pairs passed as the stragglers gained speed. Great, Red thought. He’d made it off the top of the mountain with Penny just to get them killed by a stampeding herd of wild animals.

  Gunshots cracked from behind. A stray bullet stung the bull’s white rump, and he bucked. Thick blood oozed slowly from the wound. Red hugged Penny with one arm, pumping hard with the other. He changed direction like a running back every couple paces, zigzagging so as to not give the shooter a predictable target. The pair was still far enough away that it would have to be a lucky shot, but anything to increase the odds.

  “One of the men is stopping, Daddy.”

  Not wanting to slow to risk a glance, he gasped, “Tell me what you see.”

  “He’s leaning on a rock.”

  Not good. Pausing to aim, no doubt. Red couldn’t zigzag any more radically or he’d risk losing ground. The other couldn’t be too far behind. His lungs ached and head pounded. Ahead, a puff of dust on the trail. A ricochet whined as the projectile tumbled into the distance. Only a few hundred meters more till the ridge. He ducked behind a tall granite column and ran twenty meters in its shadow, shielded temporarily from the shooter’s line of sight. Before breaking cover again he zagged and—sure enough—another ricochet. Right where he would’ve stepped if he hadn’t changed course.

  His legs were slowing despite his determination, as if mired in wet sand. Approaching the ridge, he chanced another glance back. The closest pursuer was the one in white pants.

  Over the crest, another open field came into view, stretching for what must’ve been a solid klick before short evergreens began to dot the landscape. Many elk were already halfway down the expanse, loping rhythmically in slow motion, bodies hovering over the terrain. The bull held his head erect, herding them on, the bullet in its rump of seemingly no consequence.

  No way Red could outrun the shooters any longer. His breath was coming in deep gasps, but those couldn’t satisfy the oxygen craving. The guys from the truck had only sprinted a short distance, whereas he’d first biked and then run a long way, carrying Penny. There was only one hand left to play.

  “Get down here,” he said, shoving his daughter behind a boulder. A skilled hunter pursuing wouldn’t follow their exact same trail. There were two natural breaks in the ridge where a person could easily pass. Red knelt behind the rock with Penny, hunching low until only his weapon and the top of his head broke the plane. He drew a bead on one of the openings, but his eyes flashed between the two, trying to cover both. Would White Pants wait for his buddy to catch up? The sight of his pistol wavered. His gut spasmed, but he clamped down the nausea between clenched teeth. He spit pink froth onto green moss, then slipped back and steadied his wrist against the boulder. But now he couldn’t see the other break in the ridge.

  It was a calculated chance. The break he was covering was downhill of the one through which he’d come; inexperienced hunters would gravitate toward the
easier path without even realizing it. Skilled ones might choose it because Red was armed and they wanted to avoid following the same blind opening through which their prey had escaped. But White Pants hadn’t seemed experienced. He was eager. A fast runner, sure—but there was more to it than that. Just too damned eager.

  Chapter 6

  Strength of a Child

  Penny hunched till her shoulders hit her knees. She backed under a pink mountain of rock that towered overhead, looking like it would topple upon her any second. But Daddy had pointed to its base and said to hide. She pulled her ankles in and scooched lower. The chill of the boulder sank through her thin North Face jacket. Its color, Algiers blue, was just a fancy name for aqua, Mom had said. It was almost the same shade as the crumbly stuff rubbing off and falling down the back of her neck.

  She braced her palms on the ground. Something slimy greased her fingers. She rubbed them on the cold stone, leaving brown streaks. “Eeew!” she whispered. It smelled like poo. Must have been one of those yucky brown marmots. They’d seen plenty on the train ride up, like ugly beavers without a tail. “Those varmints are gross,” she’d said, scrunching her nose, after spying one chewing a leaf.

  “Marmot, not varmint,” Dad had corrected. “And I love marmots.” The corner of his lip tightened, and one eyebrow rose, that smile whenever he had something else to say.

  “What is it?” she’d asked, pulling on his arm.

  He’d pinched her nose. “You’d love marmots too. They taste just like chicken.”

  “Oh, yuck!” Penny had giggled till her belly ached. It was the same joke he always used for squirrels and cats. The fat lady who’d sat behind them had scowled, though.

  She wiped her hands on her jeans till the filthy marmot poo was gone.

  “Sweetheart, get up. I need you to watch something for me.” Her father’s fingers wrapped all the way around her arm as he reached down and drew her out of her burrow with one smooth jerk. His smile looked too thin and wide, like Aunty Catherine’s when she came at Thanksgiving. It wasn’t…real. Daddy had never liked Aunty Catherine. Now, his face was as white as the vampires on Blood Lust, and he was panting like Heinz, Grandpa’s dog, after chasing a rabbit. But Daddy was never scared, even when Mom wrecked their silver car. So, they must really be in trouble now.