by Mark Allen
“Oh, shit!” Breezy turned to face the beast, trying to swing the M-4 into play.
The grizzly’s massive right paw lashed out. Dark claws tore deep, digging ruts across Breezy’s chest and ripping apart his bicep. The M-4 tumbled to the ground.
A second later, a vicious swipe from the bear’s left paw slashed open the man’s belly, spilling his guts onto the ground. Breezy staggered back, his innards unspooling as he tried to retreat from the savage attack.
The grizzly didn’t let him suffer. Even as Kane debated picking up the pistol and delivering a mercy round to his enemy, Gasper swatted him in the side of the skull, tearing it off his shoulders like a rotten pumpkin. Blood fountained from the ragged stump as the decapitated head tumbled across the dead leaves.
With his prey dead, the bear dropped back down on all fours and stared at Kane. No huffed threats or snarls of dominance this time; the grizzly just stood there and stared with those dark, primal eyes. It was so quiet that Kane swore he could hear the heavy thumping of the beast’s wild heart.
Kane wasn’t near the bear’s kill, but he still backed away, making it clear that he offered no challenge and made no claim on the corpse. All he wanted to do right now was check on Mike and then head into town to terminate the rest of the bastards who had it coming.
Gasper lowered his head and shuffled forward, seemingly unconcerned about Kane’s presence. Maybe he remembered their encounter up on the knoll. Maybe he remembered that Kane posed no threat. Or maybe he just figured there wasn’t a whole lot Kane could do to stop him.
The grizzly batted Breezy’s corpse a couple of times, then sank his teeth into the thick shoulder muscle next to the spine. He picked up the body as if it weighed nothing, then turned and walked away. Maybe he would come back for the head, maybe he wouldn’t. Kane didn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out.
He remained motionless as the bear disappeared into the woods with his fresh kill. With the beast gone, he could now hear his own heart pounding. He dragged in several deep breaths, cooling the adrenalin pumping hot through his veins.
It had been a rough few days, with several near-death scrapes, but he was still standing. Call it luck, call it a warrior’s stubborn refusal to go down, call it whatever you liked—Kane was just damn glad to be alive. He hustled back to the cabin as fast as his battered, bruised, and bloodied body would let him.
Beta whined nervously as Kane knelt beside Mike, who was sprawled face-down in the dirt. He could see blood on the hermit’s buckskin jacket, but when Kane rolled him over, Mike’s eyes popped open and he grinned. “Is it over?”
Kane grinned back. “Yeah, it’s over. Faking it?”
“Playing possum,” Mike confirmed. He probed at the bloody hole high on his upper right arm. “Bastard winged me, nothing more than a flesh wound. I figured, no reason he needed to know that. Let him think he nailed me.”
“Good play.” Kane helped the hermit to his feet and pointed at the injury. “Want me to stitch that up?”
“This little scratch?” Mike waved his hand dismissively. “Not worth bothering with. Besides, don’t you have some more asses you need to kick?”
“Yeah, I’m not done stacking bodies yet.”
“Then you’d best get going.”
Kane nodded. “Mike, I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t start any mushy-man crap with me, Reaper. That’s not how we do it up here in the mountains.” He held out his hand. “Just shake my hand, pet the dog, and be on your way.”
Kane clasped his hand firmly. “Fair enough, Mike.” Then he reached down and scratched the wolf behind his ears. “See ya, boy.”
He retrieved the shotgun, then gathered up Breezy’s M-4. There was only one magazine, half-depleted, with a 40mm buckshot grenade slotted into the launcher. Not enough to take on the whole town, but it would get him started. When he ran out of bullets, he would keep fighting with his bare hands until he ripped Nazareno’s cartel cancer right out of Vesper Lake.
As he walked away, Mike called, “Hey, Reaper?”
“Yeah?”
“Give ‘em hell, buddy.”
“That’s the plan, friend,” Kane replied. “That’s the fucking plan.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dribble Creek Camp
Kane approached the cabin, or rather, what was left of it, from the east, circling wide when he was still a half-klick out and climbing the steep backside of the hillock. With the ground rising eighty feet at a thirty-five-degree angle and nothing but a natural barrier of sharp rocks and twisted deadfalls at the bottom, it was the last direction from which the sentries would be expecting him to appear.
He knew Nazareno had positioned men up there. He could hear them, swapping sexual-escapade stories in Spanish and laughing coarsely. Their loud conversation covered any sounds he made as he crept up the slope.
It was hard going and he lost the shotgun along the way, biting back a curse as it slipped from his hands and skidded down the slope. He held his breath as it banged against the rocks at the bottom, not sure if the sentries would be alerted or not. But they just kept on cackling and one-upping each other with dirty jokes, oblivious to the danger creeping up on them.
Descending back down the steep incline to retrieve the Remington was too risky, so he left it where it fell. He continued to climb, clawing his way to the top using roots and rocks for handholds. Sweat and dirt covered his clothes by the time he peered over the edge and saw the burnt wreckage of the cabin, the charred timbers looking like collapsed heaps of blackened bones. He thought about Luna’s immolated remains buried beneath the cold ashes and let the grim thought stoke the fires of his fury.
Peering across the flat crest of the hillock, he spotted his Jeep, squatting low on four flattened tires. The hood gaped open, torn wires and tubing dangling in mechanical disembowelment. Behind the Jeep was the kill squad’s ride, a bright orange Hummer H2 pickup truck sporting blacked-out windows, a lift kit, knobby off-road tires, and a heavy-duty brush guard that looked sturdy enough to go head-to-head with a rabid rhino.
Nazareno’s quartet of killers sat at the picnic table playing cards and drinking beer. Their rifles leaned against the benches, within arm’s reach but not exactly at the ready. They clearly thought this was a stupid assignment, that there was no way in hell Kane would come back here.
Time to prove them wrong.
Dead wrong.
One of the cartel soldiers got up from the table with a crude comment about having to “drain the serpiente” and headed for the outhouse.
There was nothing slick or tactical about Kane’s strike. It was all direct, hard-hitting, blunt-force trauma. He simply powered up over the edge with a primal war cry and began killing them.
He triggered the M203, and the 40mm buckshot grenade slammed into the lower spine of the sentry going to take a piss. The explosion sent twenty metal balls through the target, blowing apart everything between his pelvis and sternum and ripping him in two. His upper torso went spinning in one direction while his bottom half toppled the other way.
His three companeros barely had time to react to their comrade’s sudden death before Kane blew them all to hell. The M4 carbine cycled on full-auto as he swept the muzzle back and forth. The 5.56mm rounds cut them down where they sat, punching lethal tunnels through their twitching bodies. Blood spewed into the air like a hot red blizzard.
The last spent cartridge spat from the ejection port. Kane could feel the heat coming off the fast-fired gunmetal. Yeah, things were getting hot around here, and they were only going to get hotter before he was done.
He gathered the sentries’ weapons—FX-05 Xiuhcoatl assault rifles, which proved that Nazareno favored his soldiers enough to provide them with Mexican military hardware—and stowed them in the back of the H2. The keys dangled from the ignition, and since they had ruined his ride, it seemed only fitting that he would steal theirs.
Even better, a closer inspection of the truck revealed b
ullet-resistant windows, Kevlar-lined door panels, and run-flat tires. Not a true armored vehicle, but the tactical upgrades would come in handy when he rolled into town on his kill-‘em-all mission.
Before he left, Kane walked over and stood at the edge of the burnt wood and rubble. He allowed himself a few quiet moments of reflection before he resumed his hell-bent-for-leather rush toward revenge.
Luna’s spirit lingered here as if she had known he would come back to say goodbye. He could feel her ghost, a warm, vibrant presence that seeped past his skin and bones to find his soul. He would never know what he had meant to her, but he knew what she had meant to him. He had come here burdened by a cross of death, and she had been the angel who let him lay that burden down—and in doing so, had died.
His salvation had cost Luna her life.
Kane knew that even the strongest men must sometimes weep, and he felt no shame at the tears coursing down his cheeks. He might die today, or he might live another fifty years, but no matter what, he would never forget her.
“Rest in peace, Luna.”
Then he turned away, the warmth of her spirit replaced by the steely coldness of his fury.
No more tears.
Now it was time for blood.
Black Bog / Ernie Foxx’s house
Foxx was sitting on his front porch with an old double-barreled sawed-off shotgun braced across his knees when Kane rolled up in the Hummer. Foxx had not been a young man for quite some time, and he looked like he had aged at least ten years since Kane had last seen him two days ago when Sheriff Dunkirk had murdered his wife and killed his cat.
As the H2 halted, Foxx glared daggers at it, more hate on the old man’s face than Kane had seen in a long time. It took him a moment to remember that the windows were blacked out, so Foxx couldn’t see inside the truck. The old man naturally assumed some cartel cockroach sat behind the wheel.
When Kane lowered the window, Foxx’s face didn’t exactly light up, but he definitely looked less miserable. “Well, I’ll be damned,” the old man exclaimed. “John Kane, as I live an’ breathe. Figured you’d be buzzard food by now.”
“I’m a hard man to kill.”
“Nice ride you got there. To the victor goes the spoils?”
“More like dead men don’t need a Hummer.” Kane exited the truck and walked over to Foxx. “How you doing, Ernie?”
“Buried wife number two yesterday.” He waved a hand at the field next to his house. “I just put her out back, along with Doofus. Figured she’d rather be here than in some cemetery surrounded by people she barely knew.” A tear snuck out and slid down his cheek. He quickly thumbed it away and peered up at Kane. “That make sense to you?”
“Sure, I get that.”
“Anyway,” Foxx continued, “I just finished a bottle of Jim Beam, went downstairs to get my daddy’s shotgun,” he hefted the cut-down blaster, “and was thinking about joining her.”
“Killing yourself won’t bring her back.”
“Not trying to bring her back,” Foxx replied. “Just don’t want to live without her.” He smiled fondly through the pain. “Even if she did have a fat ass from all those doughnuts.”
“So you eat some buckshot, and Dunkirk gets away with what he did? That’s your plan?”
“You got a better one?”
“Yeah,” Kane said. “Help me kill the bastards.”
“How you figure on doing that?”
“I’m going to ride into town and shoot every cartel asshole I see. When that’s done, I’m going to find the sheriff and make him wish he’d never fucked with me.”
“Easy as that, huh?”
“Didn’t say it would easy,” Kane replied. “Just said that’s the plan.”
Foxx pondered it for about five seconds. “Well, my plan was to die right here on my porch with the back of my head splattered all over the front door, so I guess I can tag along with you and die in a blaze of glory instead.”
“I don’t plan on dying.”
“We’ll see,” Foxx said, then asked, “Whattaya got for guns?”
“One M4, one Sig, and four FX-05s.”
“Impressive,” Foxx grunted. “Especially for a man who just broke out of prison this morning. But I can do better.” He stood up and turned toward his front door. “Follow me.”
Kane trailed him through a cluttered kitchen and down a set of stairs that led to the basement. Foxx flicked a switch and fluorescent lighting buzzed to life, illuminating enough firepower to kick-start World War III and enough ammunition to survive the apocalyptic aftermath.
Kane picked up an FN SCAR rifle and whistled appreciatively. “Quite the arsenal you’ve got here.”
“Just don’t ask me where I got it all.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Kane spotted a shelf with three claymores on it, along with a clutch of fragmentation grenades.
Foxx saw him looking and said, “Used to have four of those claymores, but some bastard broke in and stole one this past summer. Helped themselves to an AR-15, too.”
A little smile tugged at the corners of Kane’s mouth as it became clear where Mad Mike had acquired the mine they’d used to decimate the SORT team.
Foxx gestured around the room. “Anyway, welcome to my armory and help yourself.”
Kane pointed at a futuristic rifle resting in a bench cradle. “I see you’ve got a Barrett M95.”
“Best sniping system in the world, if you ask me,” Foxx replied. “Want to borrow it for this shindig?”
Kane shook his head. “Wrong tool for this job.”
They spent the next twenty minutes selecting their weapons and loading magazines. Then, each burdened by a duffel bag full of deadly hardware, they went back outside and climbed into the H2. Kane took the wheel, and Foxx rode shotgun.
Or more accurately, “Rode Uzi.” The matte-black Israeli submachine gun rested in the old man’s lap, a full magazine in the well and a round in the chamber.
As the H2 rumbled down Wolf Pond Road, Foxx warned, “There’s a roadblock up ahead. They’ve got the road going into Black Bog and Vesper Lake blocked off.”
“How many?”
“Four, last time I checked.”
“They’ll never know what hit ‘em,” Kane said, then explained to Foxx what he wanted him to do.
As they rounded the bend, Kane saw the roadblock. Two orange H2 pickups, identical to his own, were positioned nose-to-nose across Route 86. They even boasted official sawhorses, painted yellow with black stripes and emblazoned with VLPD in reflective stenciled letters.
A quartet of cartel soldiers leaned against the Hummers. They showed no signs of alarm as Kane rolled toward them. Why should they? The windows were blacked out and the bright sunshine reflected off the windshield, bouncing the rays back into their eyes so they couldn’t see inside the truck’s cab. They just assumed it was the team from the cabin coming back down.
Sometimes assumption doesn’t just make you an ass. Sometimes it makes you dead meat.
As Kane stopped at the junction of Route 86 and Wolf Pond Road, Foxx exited the Hummer, stepped around the open door, and came up firing across the hood with his Uzi screaming full-auto rock ‘n’ roll.
The four cartel hitters performed spastic death-dances to the lethal tune, thrashing and twitching as Foxx hosed them down with 9mm hollow-points. Blood burst from the ragged holes ripped through their heads, necks, and chests, and they all hit the ground in lifeless heaps. They wouldn’t be getting up again.
Foxx swapped the spent magazine for a fresh one, then hopped back in the Hummer. He smiled, and Kane would have bet good money that it was his first smile since his wife and cat had died.
“Now that’s what I call grief therapy,” Foxx said. “God, that felt good.”
“Ready for a repeat?”
“You know it.”
Kane turned onto Route 86 and slammed the pedal to the floor, heading for a showdown with the rest of Nazareno’s gunners and Sheriff “Double
D” Dunkirk.
If Kane had his way, the “D” would soon stand for “Dead.”
The Hummer peeled rubber in smoking black strips as the truck surged forward, engine roaring like a hungry beast as they rocketed down the highway to hell.
Chapter Eighteen
Vesper Lake
As the H2 rumbled over the railroad tracks that marked the edge of town and thundered toward the main drag, Kane spotted cartel gunmen roaming the street and parking lots like an occupying army, FX-05 rifles in hand. There was no sign of civilians; no doubt, the townsfolk had been ordered to stay locked down in their homes upon penalty of death.
That made this assault much easier since it reduced the chance of collateral damage. No innocents to get caught in the crossfire.
The cartel soldiers paid little attention as he rolled into town. Like the roadblock Kane and Foxx had decimated minutes before, they all thought the orange Hummer was one of their own.
Three gunners stood on the curb by the gas station. Kane slowed down as they drove by. Foxx rolled down the window and yelled, “Catch, boys!” as he tossed them an M67 fragmentation grenade.
The middle guy actually caught the green metal sphere as Kane stomped on the gas pedal, accelerating away. In the rearview mirror, Kane saw the blast tear him to pieces while the lethal shrapnel scythed through the men on each side of him. The force of the detonation flung them through the air like rag dolls. By the time they hit the ground, they were nothing but bloody sacks of human garbage.
Four men grouped outside of Baldy’s grocery store turned toward the explosion, and three men across the street in the bank parking lot mimicked them. They all saw the H2 revving down the road toward them, but all seemed unaware that the truck contained the threat. Their heads swiveled like startled chickens, searching for the source of the blast.
As they raced by, Kane thrust a Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun out the window and emptied a thirty-round magazine into the cartel bastards at the bank. Next to him, Foxx did the same thing with his Uzi to the boys at Baldy’s. Their bodies doing awkward, blood-spewing pirouettes, the men crumpled to the ground, dead or dying.