Kane- Tooth & Nail

by Mark Allen

  With Duck leading the way, followed by Yippy, Big Belly, and Sirius—Breezy brought up the rear—the SORT team stepped off the path and snaked their way along the far side of the boulder. The trees grew tightly together here, branches interlocked into a tangled, snarled mess that they simply had to bull their way through. Vines and creepers and thick underbrush added to the misery.

  Feet practically invisible in the ground vegetation, Duck never saw the tripwire.

  Nor did he see the M18A1 claymore mine strapped to a nearby tree, hidden by a cluster of dead leaves mocked up to resemble a squirrel’s nest.

  When the mine detonated, seven hundred steel balls shot out at a velocity of nearly 4,000 feet per second, propelled by the layer of C-4 explosive inside. The lethal storm was designed to spread until it was over six feet high and fifty yards wide, scything a devastating swath through any enemy forces unlucky enough to be caught in the kill zone.

  Being in closer proximity, this blast didn’t have a chance to maximize its terminal spread. But it didn’t matter, because the SORT team was a close, tight formation as they forced their way through the brambles and thorns.

  Bunched together like lambs to the slaughter.

  Bringing up their six, only Breezy survived the carnage.

  The explosion shook the woods. He watched his men evaporate right in front of his eyes, shredded into red mist in a single heartbeat. One second they were all hunched and moving slowly; the next, they dissolved into a crimson slurry. Blood, flesh, and bone splattered the boulder like some caveman’s gruesome abstract painting.

  Breezy recoiled in horror, jaw hanging open so wide that a swarm of flies could have dive-bombed down his throat. With very little remaining intact above their waists, the dead men’s lower torsos tumbled to the ground, legs kicking spastically like horror props in a zombie flick.

  “Sirius,” Breezy breathed as if saying their names would somehow bring them back. “Big Belly… Yippy… Duck… Oh, God, no!”

  Wasted breath. They were all beyond prayers now. Probably already partying it up in Hell and telling Ol’ Scratch to get the fuck off their throne.

  Only thing left to do for him now was get some payback.

  As the last man standing, he owed them that much.

  Breezy threw back his head and howled at the morning sky, a primal scream full of grief and rage and vengeance. Then the scream evolved into a name as he bellowed a challenge into the mountain air.

  “Reeeeeaaaaappppppeeeeeerrrrrr!”

  Even from inside Mike’s cabin, Kane heard the call. Just as he had heard the gunshot—“Misfire or mercy bullet,” Mike had surmised—and a short time later, the thunderous blast of the mine detonating.

  Kane said, “Sounds like somebody is royally pissed off.”

  “I’d rather he was dead,” Mike replied. “Looks like at least one of them got lucky and dodged the claymore.”

  At Mike’s suggestion, Kane had doubled back on his trail. Using the Spyderco, he had opened a cut on his forearm deep enough to make the blood drip steadily. Mike showed him the location of the punji pit—one of several antipersonnel devices the hermit had rigged—and they had carefully laid the “mock” blood trail right across the screen.

  They had used the same trick to lead Kane’s pursuers to the giant boulders, then head-faked them with the deadfall trap to divert them into the range of the claymore.

  Kane had asked him where the hell he’d gotten a claymore.

  “eBay,” Mike had deadpanned. “Amazon was out of stock.”

  “You really don’t like people much, do you?”

  “Nothing says fuck off like an M18,” Mike had replied.

  Now, as the challenging cry of his enemy echoed through the woods, Kane walked over and picked up the Remington 870 off the table. He’d given the shotgun a good cleaning while they waited for the SORT team to stumble into their traps, and he expected it to function properly. Being a semi-auto fan, Mike didn’t have any shotgun shells lying around, so Kane would have to make do with the ones he had pilfered from Goatsack and the others down by the bog. They hadn’t been submerged that long, plus the plastic casings and tight primers meant the shells were generally able to withstand water. No guarantees, but it was all he had, so no point in fretting about it.

  He also cleaned the Sig P228 and the pistol’s spare magazines, clearing them of any grime and gunk the bog might have deposited during his foul-water swim to freedom.

  He double-checked to make sure there was a shell in the Remington’s chamber and that all the mags had been topped off, then headed for the door.

  “Where you going?” Mike asked.

  “Hunting,” Kane replied. “I can handle whoever’s left.”

  “Maybe so, but why bother sneaking around in the woods when you know the son of a bitch is coming here?”

  “Like I said before, no reason to bring trouble to your doorstep.”

  “And like I said before, you can spare me that hero crap.”

  “I’m no hero.”

  Mike ignored the byplay. “Listen, we pretty much know that whoever is left out there will hit this cabin. Stay here until they show up, and once you’ve got their position locked down, if you want to go out there and play Rambo, have at it. But there’s just no damn good reason to go hunting blind.”

  “Just trying to keep you from getting shot at.”

  “I’m not some little girl who needs saving,” Mike said. “Stay here, and let them bring the fight to you. To us. Because I guarantee that if I get that fool in my sights, I’m popping holes through his boiler room.”

  Kane stopped arguing and gave the hermit an affirming nod. Mike might be strange—hell, he might even be a cannibal—but he was still a badass. Any man who willingly took up another man’s fight deserved respect.

  They watched and waited. Time ticked by, with the inexorable carving away of seconds that turned into minutes. Beta sensed the adrenalin in the air, the tension, the elevated alertness, and paced around the cabin, ears pricked.

  Twenty minutes later, the front window exploded as automatic fire blew shattered glass into the cabin.

  “Looks like they found us.” Mike grinned. “Let’s get this party started!” He moved to the window, spun into the opening, and rattled off a full-auto six-round burst from his AR-15—clearly not a civilian model—into the trees. Then he moved back behind the wall and looked at Kane. “Just letting him know we’re here.”

  “Having fun?” Kane asked wryly.

  “Gotta admit, it’s more exciting than my usual day.”

  Kane peered around the edge of the busted window, studying the terrain through a triangular shard of glass that still clung to the frame like a broken tooth. It took him a minute, but he spotted the shooter positioned behind a large white birch tree approximately one hundred meters away. Despite all the other trees surrounding the cabin, the gunman possessed a clear line of sight to the front of the cabin. It was a narrow lane, but a skilled operator didn’t need the tactical version of a four-lane highway to score kill shots.

  “Got him,” Kane said. “But he’s out of shotgun range.”

  Mike hefted the AR-15. “Can you nail him with this?”

  “Is it combat-zeroed?”

  Mike shrugged. “If you mean, does it generally hit what I aim at, then yeah, sure, it’s combat-zeroed.”

  Another burst from the shooter thudded into the logs around the window.

  “Reaper!”

  Kane recognized the voice. It was the SORT member they called Breezy.

  “Reaper! Get your ass out here!”

  Mike looked puzzled. “Who the hell is Reaper, anyway?”

  “Let’s just call it my prison name,” Kane said.

  “You were only inside for two days, and you caught yourself a nickname?”

  “Guess I made an impression.”

  Another burst knocked the rest of the glass out of the window. Shards skittered across the cabin floor. Beta danced out of the way, careful
where he put his paws.

  Kane figured Breezy’s rifle—most likely an M-4—sported a scope, which accounted for his long-range accuracy. Kane could borrow Mike’s AR-15 and rat-a-tat-tat away, but he would just waste ammo. That far out, with open sights and his target concealed behind a large tree, it would take a stroke of luck to bury a bullet in bad-guy flesh.

  He needed to shorten the distance, close the gap, maneuver himself into shotgun range. Then he could blow the bastard away with a couple blasts of buckshot.

  “Reaper!” Breezy yelled again. “Come out here and take your medicine, or I’ll burn the place down around you!”

  “Ha!” Mike shouted back. “Like to see you get close enough to pull that off!”

  A moment later, Kane heard a whump noise that he recognized. “Shit, he’s got a grenade launcher.”

  A moment later, a 40mm grenade sailed through the window, bounced on the floor, and slid under the table. It immediately started hissing white smoke.

  Mike asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

  Kane nodded. “He’s trying to gas us out.” Already, the fumes were starting to sting his eyes and burn his throat. While he was trained to fight through the effects of CS gas, Mike would be incapacitated if they stayed in the cabin.

  “Reaper!” Breezy yelled. “The next one’s HE!”

  He didn’t have to explain what that meant and the repercussions. An M406 High Explosive round launched inside the cabin would take them all out, courtesy of its five-meter kill-zone and 137-meter casualty radius. Even if they somehow managed to survive the blast, they were guaranteed to suffer serious damage.

  With the CS gas fogging up the interior and Mike hacking like he was trying to cough up a lung while tears streamed down his face from the gas’s debilitating effects, Kane knew it was time to abandon the cabin and take the fight outside.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said to Mike. “Can you lay down some cover fire?”

  Coughing fiercely, half-blinded with tears, Mike nodded and stumbled over to the window. He immediately started cranking off rounds in Breezy’s direction.

  Kane barreled out the door. He half-expected to catch a bullet as soon as he exited, but Mike’s cover fire kept Breezy pinned down.

  Kane dashed twenty meters to a pine tree and crouched behind the trunk. He was still outside effective shotgun range.

  Mike’s magazine ran dry.

  As soon as the hermit stopped firing, Breezy leaned out from behind his cover and triggered a three-round burst that tore into the pine tree. Splinters exploded everywhere, but Kane knew the 5.56mm slugs couldn’t punch all the way through. As long as he stayed right here, he was safe.

  Problem was, he couldn’t stay right here.

  He had a man to kill.

  Putting thought to action, he tucked the Remington tight to his shoulder and whipped out from behind the tree, firing as he did so. He kept pumping and firing as he moved aggressively forward. Shredded pine needles, leaves, bark, and wood filled the air with organic debris as load after load of buckshot ripped the hell out of everything in its path.

  None of it reached Breezy, but it damn sure kept him pinned down behind his birch tree.

  Fast-actioning the shotgun, Kane bought himself enough time to move forward another forty meters. Only fifty meters separated them now, putting him at the outer edge of the shotgun’s range. From here, a buckshot blast had a fifty-fifty chance of a terminal takedown. Not great, but better than nothing.

  When the Remington ran dry, Kane slid behind another pine tree, this one even wider than the first. Even his broad shoulders fit behind it. He racked the slide, ejecting the last spent shell. He immediately began thumbing fresh shells into the breech as fast as he could, expecting Breezy to attack while his weapon was empty.

  Autofire from Mike’s AR-15 rang out as he tried to provide more cover fire, but the bullets zipped all over the place. Clearly, the rifle was not steady in the hermit’s hands. Kane knew Mike had to be just about completely overcome by the CS gas. The fact that he was still firing at all proved the man’s grit, but the wild, erratic salvo failed to keep Breezy at bay.

  As he slotted another shell up the tube, Kane heard Breezy’s M-4 chugging rounds. He felt the vibrations as the bullets pounded into the tree, but he held fast. The pine was plenty big enough to absorb some punishment.

  Kane clicked the last shell home and racked the pump-action to lift the first round into firing position, but before he could launch another attack, he heard the whump again.

  Shit!

  The tree might be able to stop bullets, but it wasn’t going to stop a high-explosive grenade.

  Fueled by desperation, knowing his chance of survival had just been shaved down to a sliver, Kane bolted from the cover of the pine. He just managed to clear six meters when the mini-bomb slammed into the tree and detonated.

  He dived to the ground as shrapnel and debris buzz-sawed the air above him. The force of the explosion smashed into him like an invisible fist and tossed him even farther, rolling him like a rag doll across the forest floor. Somewhere during the tumble, he lost the shotgun.

  He slammed to a stop against an old stump, taking a painful blow to his already bruised ribs. His vision swirled in a crimson kaleidoscope, and it took him a second to realize blood from a scalp wound dripped into his eyes. As he wiped it away, his ears rang like a son of a bitch, muffling sounds like he was underwater.

  He struggled to his feet. He felt like he’d been hit by a runaway bulldozer, but at least he was alive. For now, anyway. That would change when Breezy showed up to ventilate him with a couple dozen bullets.

  Kane’s hand clawed for the Sig Sauer P228 holstered at his side, secured in place with a thumb-break retention strap. Smoke from the explosion drifted through the trees, mixing with the floating dust and debris to turn everything into an artificial fog. He got the gun out, but it was damn hard to hold. Shrapnel had lacerated his right forearm and blood had run down onto his hand, making his fingers slippery.

  He dropped to one knee and switched the pistol to his left hand. Blinking away the blood, he scanned the woods, narrowed eyes trying to pierce the smoke, looking for his enemy.

  A sound caught his attention. Mike, followed by Beta, stumbled out the cabin door, coughing and gagging and clearly half-blinded. Thick streamers of snot spewed from his nostrils as the gas wreaked havoc on his sinuses.

  Breezy’s carbine barked a double-tap, and Mike spun to the ground.

  “Damn it!” Kane snarled. “Mike!”

  The hermit didn’t move, just laid there in a lifeless heap.

  But the act of shooting Mike had betrayed Breezy’s position. Glimpsing the man’s movements through the dissipating smoke, Kane raised his pistol and rapid-fired five rounds. Just to keep the bastard occupied. Just to let him know he wasn’t dead yet.

  Come and get me, you son of a bitch.

  The fog had started to clear from his skull, just like the smoke was clearing from the woods. While he was hardly in prime fighting condition—two days of beat-downs and prison brawls had seen to that—he still felt more in control of himself than he had a minute ago.

  He rose from his knee and moved to his left, not wanting to stay in one position any longer.

  Bullets stitched a line at his feet, tearing divots in the dirt.

  Breezy stepped through the last dregs of smoke like a weaponized wraith emerging from the throat of hell, his M-4 locked on target.

  Kane gauged the distance at about sixty-five meters. Normally not impossible with a handgun, but it would take serious luck to score a kill shot with an unfamiliar pistol while shooting left-handed.

  “Put it down, Reaper,” Breezy called. “I can drill you from here, and you know it.”

  Kane hesitated while his eyes scanned the woods. Then he dropped the pistol. Partly because he knew Breezy was right. Partly because he knew something Breezy did not.

  Kane’s hand crept toward his pocket, thinking about th
e Spyderco. If Breezy came close enough, the knife might be his last chance to walk away from this deathmatch, or to at least go down fighting.

  But the SORT soldier caught the movement and snapped, “Keep your hands where I can see them, Reaper.”

  Kane complied, holding his hands out to the side to show he was unarmed. His gaze flicked past Breezy for a moment, then refocused on the gunman. Breezy stalked forward, the M-4 tucked tight against his shoulder, the muzzle aimed at Kane’s center mass. That was how most law enforcement operators were trained to shoot—just go for the middle, no fancy headshots.

  By the cabin, standing watch over his fallen master, Beta let out a series of growl-barks, letting Kane know he was in imminent danger.

  Tell me about it, boy.

  As he closed the gap, brittle leaves crunched so loudly under Breezy’s boots that the noise temporarily eclipsed all other sounds in the woods. Tucked behind the scope, the gunman zeroed in on Kane with laser-like focus.

  He pulled up twenty meters away, too close to miss when he cut loose with the carbine, too far away for Kane to make some kind of desperation play.

  “I could have just nailed you from back there,” Breezy said. “But after what you did to my brothers, I owe them more than a long-distance kill. They died hard, and I want to look you right square in the eye when I get payback and blow you to hell.” A cold, cruel smile twisted his lips. “Got any last words you want to get off your chest before I drill some holes in it?”

  “Yeah,” Kane said. “Your situational awareness sucks.”

  Breezy scowled. “The hell are you talking about?”

  “Behind you.”

  “Nice try, motherfu—” He choked off the words as a huge shadow fell over him.

  Kane watched as Gasper the grizzly rose up on his hind legs behind the SORT gunner. As Breezy had been stalking Kane, the bear had been stalking Breezy. Drool slobbering from his muzzle, Gasper opened his jaws and bellowed a roar that shook the woods. Raised by and acclimated to humans, the grizzly had not avoided the gunfire like a regular bear. Hell, to Gasper, gunfire probably just meant man was in the area. And man meant a fresh meal.