by Jeff Carson
The cirque entrance, where they’d entered on the trail, was devoid of movement, too.
Nobody.
Wolf had to make a call, and the stakes had never been higher. Fear for his son raced through his veins with a stomach-quivering intensity. He wasn’t used to feeling such emotion, any emotion, in battle. And he wasn’t kidding himself for a second—he was deep in the battle of his life at the moment. Clenching his jaw, Wolf let his fear morph into a calm hatred for the men threatening his son. In this spot of all spots.
He shouldered the rifle and bent down over the dead body one last time. He dug his fingers underneath the man’s coat collar and pulled it down, looking on the pale skin of his neck. Then he looked on the other side, swiping away the warm blood to see the skin underneath. No tattoos like the man they’d encountered on the trail earlier. Wolf wiped his hand on the man’s jacket and stood.
“We’re going to leave our stuff here and get down to our truck. Then we’re going to go home.”
Jack wiped his mouth and nodded absently.
Wolf grabbed his shoulders and glared at him. “Did you hear me? We are going to get to the truck and go home.”
Jack narrowed his eyes and nodded faster.
“Get your headlamp. Put on your gloves, hat, and your heavy coat.”
Jack breathed heavily as he did as Wolf told him.
Wolf put the Glock on his belt, and looked down at the man’s .357 revolver lying on the ground. He picked it up, tucked it in the rear of his pants, took off the Glock, and then walked to Jack.
Jack swayed and stutter-stepped as Wolf tucked the paddle holster into Jack’s belt line.
“You’ve shot this before.”
Jack swallowed and nodded.
“Remember, there’s no safety.” He stepped close to Jack and hugged him tight. “Don’t worry, bud. I’m not going to let you get hurt.” Wolf pushed him back and looked him in the eye. “If someone attacks us”—he glanced down at the Glock on Jack’s hip—“use that gun. Don’t think about using it. Use it.”
Jack nodded with a look that was somewhere between horrified and excited.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. They’re coming down from up there.” Wolf nodded to the surrounding slopes.
Jack shook his head. “But the guy on the radio just said they’d be right up. I heard it.”
Wolf nodded. “I know. But before, they said they’d be right down. They were lying the second time. They knew it was someone else besides that guy. I think they were trying to trick us. They’re trying to flush us toward the mountain slopes, where we’re slow and vulnerable. So we’re going to go back down. Fast.”
Jack looked around, then nodded.
Wolf looked back toward the trail, and then up at the steep walls surrounding them. “But I could be wrong. We’re going to have to be ready if we’re running straight into an ambush. So take the pistol out of the holster.”
Now Jack looked positively horrified.
“Remember. No safety. Shoot, then think about it later.”
Jack nodded and pulled out the Glock. He stared down at it and then held it at his side.
Wolf pulled out the smooth wood-handled .357 from his waist. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 9
“Shit. Do you think he’s dead?” the first man whispered. “He’s just lying there. I think he’s dead.”
The second man ripped the night-vision binoculars from his companion’s hands and pressed them against his eyes.
The bright display clearly showed the man and his son talking next to a sprawled, motionless body. “Looks pretty dead.” Just then the man below turned toward them and raised a rifle. “Keep still. He’s lookin’ toward us through the night scope.”
They sat motionless, the second man studied the two milling figures below. The guy sure was proactive. They’d been ready to head down the slope when they’d heard the shots, which had blasted no more than a few seconds after the radio conversation.
“Okay, he turned around. These two have just become our only remaining obstacle. And I don’t like the looks of this guy. A sheriff? And he’s gotta be ex-military. Ryan was no pushover.”
The first man shuffled next to him, scraping rocks, which sounded like a xylophone in the still silence.
“Careful!” he hissed. “Be quiet.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The first man settled into a firing position. He flipped the night-vision scope on top of the rifle and exhaled. “Goddamn. I can’t believe he’s dead.”
The second man felt a pang of guilt, but the sensation passed like a mild gas cramp. “You got this shot?”
The first man blew out a cloud of air in response.
“Seriously. You got this?”
“Yeah. They’re at four-hundred and twenty-one yards now, and as soon as they get out of the trees, they’ll be at least fifty yards closer, and pretty much coming right at us.”
The second man looked down at the valley and concurred. He and his colleague were at the top of the slope, halfway between the edge of the cirque valley below and the campsite—a perfect spot from which to intercept the two figures, who would pass right underneath and into a zone where they’d make for easy pickings.
“And if they go up the other side? Up the mountain?”
“Yeah, right. They’d be crawling up, slow as turtles, and I’d pick them off. They won’t do that.”
“They’re on the move,” the first man said. “Headed straight toward us, through the trees.”
The second man eyed the campground below through the night-vision display, seeing the bright pinpoint of the campfire and their other man lying motionless on the ground.
He tracked his lenses down and to the right, and caught the movement of the two walking. They were creeping slowly through the trees, taking refuge behind trunks. The man was putting the rifle to his shoulder, and then giving signals to his kid. Then they would move to the next set of trees. But they were quickly running out of cover.
“No more trees,” the first man said in a sing-song voice.
“As soon as they—”
The second man stopped his sentence as he watched the two figures scatter below. He tracked his lenses up and down. The two had split up, and were zigzagging across the meadow in a full sprint.
“Shit. Go. Shoot!”
The night lit up as the first man’s rifle exploded. Then he fired again. And again.
Chapter 10
As Wolf crept to the edge of the trees, he caught a glimpse of something so subtle it almost didn’t register. It was the blink of a plane at the top of the mountain. But it wasn’t moving. And then it was a solid red light, faint, and Wolf realized exactly what he was looking at.
“Run!” Wolf broke from the trees first, determined to draw fire his way.
A shot blasted and echoed for a long few seconds. There was no sign of the bullet hitting near Wolf. Jack. He almost fainted instantly at the thought.
Just then, Jack thumped past Wolf at full speed, then veered left and then right, then back left, making himself a hard target, just as they had discussed when they’d crept away from the camp.
Wolf blinked and carved a hard right turn. A bullet smacked into the ground, just where he would have been if he’d kept his course, and a rifle report rolled through the valley.
“Shit,” he breathed, and upped his pace. There was no sense in slowing down, gawking at Jack, and getting shot in the process. He needed to stay alive to keep his son alive.
He ran as fast as he could, swerving between imaginary defenders on a football field.
And he prayed.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed. The last time had undoubtedly been for his son then, too. And now he repeated a mantra through his bouncing breath as Jack flew through the meadow ahead of Wolf. “Please, God, protect my son. Please, God, protect my son. Please …”
A flurry of shots rained down as they ran. Then Wolf heard two shots fire almost simultan
eously. It was a subtle difference, but he was sure of it—there were two rifles now.
A clump of grass behind Jack’s heel erupted into brown dust as the reports filled the air, drowning out the sound of Wolf’s footsteps below him.
Jack kept on, still zigzagging, still at full speed.
Please, God. Wolf repeated the chant and reminded himself to stop watching Jack, and get his own ass to the edge of the meadow and down the trail.
Wolf’s vision blurred and bounced as he pushed himself as hard as he could. The sound of his breath and rustling clothing filled his ears, and then there was another thump nearby in the ground, then another bang.
Jack was twenty yards ahead of Wolf now, almost to where the trail dove over the edge. As he neared the end, he veered right, then juked left, and dove over the hill and out of sight.
As Jack was in the air, Wolf thought he saw him twist in a strange move.
An instant later, the air shook with a final burst from a rifle high above, and Wolf dove over the edge after his son.
Chapter 11
“You idiot!” The second man grunted and put his smoking thirty aught six on his shoulder, then stepped close to the first man. He thrust his hand in front of the night-vision scope.
The first man looked at the second man’s hand, now with a dancing faint red dot on it.
“Get out of my face.” He slapped the hand away and switched off the infrared illuminator on his scope.
“That guy saw it and bolted.”
They faced one another and stared for a few seconds. It was a defiant gesture, one they’d made to one another many times over the years.
In unison, they broke their staring war and looked down the slope in front of them.
“Shit,” the second man said.
Their situation had just become dire, and they both knew it.
“They saw Jeffries,” the first man said.
“And now Ryan,” the second man said, finishing the thought.
“That’s enough to figure everything out. And this guy’s a sheriff. Obviously has a brain. They have to die.”
“Yeah, they do.”
They both turned on their headlamps.
“All right,” the second man said. “You go after them. You’re a better shot, anyway.” He bent down and fumbled for a shell casing wedged in between two rocks. “I’ll catch up!” he yelled to his already-gone companion.
The second man searched every slot and crack between the rocks, pocketing the brass shells in his jacket zip pocket. He kicked over the little rock tripod the first man had made and scanned the area one more time for any sign of them having been there.
Satisfied the area was clean, he looked over the edge and saw his companion bouncing down far below in a cloud of moonlit dust. He clenched his teeth, cursed their luck, and launched himself down the hill after him.
Chapter 12
Wolf’s lungs stung when he dove over the edge of the hill, but the pain of struggling for oxygen was quickly forgotten as he landed hard on his left shoulder. A pain he hadn’t felt in a long time radiated down his arm and up to the side of his neck, and at that moment he knew he’d been shot.
As he righted himself and slid ten feet down a dirt embankment, he blocked out the pain and focused on finding Jack.
Jack was lying face down, twenty feet from Wolf. His back was heaving as he sucked for breath.
“Jack!”
Jack lifted his head and turned to Wolf.
Wolf was flooded with relief. “Are you all right?”
Jack nodded with wide eyes. “Yeah. I almost got hit when I dove over the edge. I heard it go right past my head.”
“Thank God you didn’t.” He felt a rivulet of blood reach his middle finger, dripping off at a fast tempo. He couldn’t for the life of him remember getting hit.
He raised his hand and looked, feeling the warm stream now travel up his arm.
“Jack, I need you to tie my T-shirt around my wound.”
Jack slipped and slid across the steep hill to Wolf.
Wolf pulled his arm out of his coat sleeve, and held up the fabric of his T-shirt. A steady stream of blood poured down his arm from a two-inch-long wound in his bicep. The left side of his shirt was already blotched with warm blood and stuck against his abdomen.
Wolf winced as he pulled the sleeve down over his wound. “Ah, shoot.” Every move, every flex, sent a wrecking ball of pain through his arm.
Jack shook his head. “Forget it. Stop.” He ripped off his own coat and shirt in a quick move, then put his coat back on over his bare torso.
Wolf nodded and leaned forward, hanging his arm out to the side. His lower arm throbbed, like it was being pulled by a tractor. “Okay, wrap it directly over the gash and tie it tight.”
Jack threaded the shirt beneath his arm and wrapped it over the wound.
Wolf winced, and Jack hesitated.
“Just do it. Don’t worry. It’s fine.”
Jack nodded. He made a knot, tightening it after he’d ensured the shirt covered the wound.
Wolf turned away and blew out of his clenched teeth, spraying saliva across his chin. The pain was enough to bring stars to the edges of his vision, but he knew Jack was being too delicate.
“Jack, you have to pull it as hard as you can, then double-knot it.”
Jack didn’t hesitate. He pulled much harder than Wolf had thought him capable of, bringing much more pain than Wolf was ready for. He clamped his eyes and jaw.
“Okay, all done.” Jack’s voice and jaw were shaking. Mild shock was setting in.
Wolf ignored the deep pain as he pushed his arm back through the coat sleeve and pulled up the zipper. He looked at Jack with steel eyes. It was time to get down, and to do so without freaking his son out any further.
“All right. We run as fast as we can all the way down. Ready?” Wolf looked down the valley. It was lit brightly by the half-moon directly overhead, but not brightly enough to be safe at a full sprint down the mountain.
He reached up and felt his headlamp. “Headlamps on. We’re gonna have to go fast. They’ll be coming after us.”
Jack rolled his eyes and took a deep breath.
Wolf had seen that look before; it was the look of someone giving up in the face of extreme adversity. It was a look he’d seen on a few soldiers. And most of those soldiers were now dead. “Hey. Listen to me. We’re going to get through this.” Wolf gave him a firm slap on the cheek. “You hear me?”
Jack sniffed and wiped his eyes. And then he nodded. “Yeah.”
Wolf looked up the hill. There was a rhythmic sound coming from over their heads, like a steam engine.
He flipped his headlamp off and peeked over the edge. He waved a hand at Jack, who was scraping up behind him. “Stop.”
Wolf realized the sound he was hearing was footfalls crashing down the scree covered mountain side. He watched a headlamp bouncing down the slope on the left side of the cirque, and at a speed that suggested a man with great athleticism.
Wolf raised the rifle with his right arm only and looked through the night-vision scope. The image wobbled and swayed, loosely following the man as he descended.
Wolf lowered the rifle and brought it to his left hand. Then he gripped it with all his might and raised it with both arms, aiming better this time. His left arm felt like it was getting punched by a heavyweight boxer at the rate of his heartbeat.
The man avalanched down the hill in Wolf’s scope. Wolf led him with his aim, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.
The recoil of the rifle jolted his upper body, sending a fresh explosion of pain through his arm. Wolf steadied the rifle, caught the man back in his scope, and fired again.
The man tumbled. Wolf watched as he somersaulted further and further down the hill. Just when Wolf was sure the man had been hit, he sprang to his feet and ran faster still down the mountain.
Wolf took another shot, and this time kept the rifle steadier; he saw a puff of dust in the white phospho
r display mushroom up behind the man.
Their pursuer disappeared behind the tops of the trees, and a moment later the sound of his footsteps stopped.
Wolf slid down the hill toward Jack. Just then a gunshot rang out, echoing for seconds through the long valley in front of them.
“Let’s go!”
Jack and Wolf stepped across the steep hill until they reached the trail; then they ran as fast as they could.
Chapter 13
They’d just passed the point where they’d had the run-in with the crazy man, and Wolf estimated they were now thirty minutes away from the truck. He could feel his body growing weaker as the warm slick continued to ooze down his arm. His wound still hadn’t clotted, and surely the tourniquet had loosened, but there was no way they were going to stop to tighten it.
Wolf hoped the speed they were going would be fast enough. Then he hoped he’d stay conscious. If all that went well, he hoped a perfectly functioning truck would be waiting for them in the parking lot below.
Their pursuers hadn’t made their presence known yet, and it had been over thirty minutes of running downhill. At the beginning, when Wolf and Jack had reached the valley floor, he’d seen one of the men come over the lip of the cirque high above. Wolf had opted not to stop and shoot at the distant light; the other man might have been lying in wait, aiming, waiting for a still target.
Since then, there’d been no radio activity, so Wolf was reasonably certain that there wasn’t some other person waiting for them below.
“We’re almost … there,” Wolf said in two breaths. He jogged behind Jack, holding the .357 in his right hand, the rifle strapped on his shoulder. His arm was numb now, and he felt weak, like he was suffering from a blood-sugar crash. The blood loss was taking its toll, getting worse with all the exertion and pumping of his heart.
“Any reception?” Wolf asked.
Jack looked down at his glowing cell phone. “No.”