by Rawlin Cash
“We’re ten minutes behind you,” Hunter said.
“I can come back around and spray them for you,” the pilot said.
“Damage them. Don’t destroy them.”
“Roger that.”
“And do it right before we get there. I want to follow them down.”
Hunter looked at Fawn. “If he misses, they’ll get a shot at you,” Hunter said.
“I know,” she said.
Hunter got Hale on the line.
“You hear that, boss?”
“I heard it. We got coordinates from the Raptor. They’re north of the town, hovering in position right along your route.”
“Didn’t they see the jets?”
They’re very low. They probably don’t know they’ve been detected.”
“How low?”
“Twenty, thirty feet.”
“They knew the route,” Hunter said.
“We definitely have a leaky ship.”
“What’s our best guess on the location of the sniper?”
“I’m narrowing that down now. The drones are within a five mile radius of each other. I’ll bet our shooter is inside that triangle.”
“How long until you get the road blocks up?”
“It’ll be close. I doubt they’ll have it sealed by the time you get there. We’re relying on local resources.”
“What’s the ground like?”
“Farms, forest. Same as the rest of the route. Your main road is 26. Oakville Road. North South. Five miles between Oakville and Appomattox.”
“Rivers?”
“Fuck,” Hale said. “The map’s reloading. We’re really not set up here.”
“Never mind,” Hunter said. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Just follow the drones,” Hale said. “They’ll have to report back to someone.”
Hunter scanned the distance. He couldn’t see anything.
“Get that wig off,” he said to Fawn. “The glasses, the scarf, all of it.”
She did as she was told and he found himself breathing easier now that she didn’t look so much like Jennifer.
“On your right,” another voice said on the channel and a second later, two Raptors flew right by them at full speed. They were lower, so low the trees beneath them swayed and dust flew up from the ground as they blasted by. The raw power of the hardware was a thrill.
“God speed, you demons,” Hunter said under his breath.
“One mile,” the pilot said, and in the same instant, the fighter jets lit up the sky below with tracers and bullets.
“Go down to them,” Hunter said. “Get right on top of them.”
He could see the drones now, higher than the thirty feet they’d been at but still not at the altitude of the choppers. The twelve choppers swarmed and descended.
It looked like smoke was coming from two of the drones but they were still flying.
“Get low,” he said to Fawn. “They can still target for the sniper.” To the gunmen he said, “light up those fuckers.”
The gunners on all twelve choppers opened fire on the drones which scrambled and descended. Hunter knew their attack was over. They were running now. The question was, would they lead him to the gunman?
He doubted they’d get that lucky.
But they’d have been programmed to run somewhere. They were highly advanced, as fast and agile as anything Hunter had ever seen in the field, and if they could be captured, they’d provide a lot of clues on the identity of whoever they belonged to. There was only a very short list of countries capable of that sort of tech.
“Follow those fuckers,” Hunter said to the pilot.
The drones were fast but the Black Hawk kept pace, low over the ground, due east.
“You’re headed for a state forest,” Hale said. “Thirty square miles. Oak, hickory, pine.”
Hunter ripped the earpiece from his ear and tapped the pilot on the shoulder.
“Follow those drones,” he said. “You’re dropping me off where they enter the trees.”
At that moment, the three drones stopped and did an about-face.
“They’ve been given evasion orders,” the pilot said. “They’re dispersing.”
Hunter watched as the three drones sped in three different directions.
“Leave them,” Hunter said. “Keep your heading. I want to see where they were going.”
They were speeding over the treetops and Hunter told the pilot to slow down. Another two or three miles and they were deep over the forest. On a dirt road through the trees Hunter spotted something.Two black SUVs, driving about as fast as anyone would dare on a road like that.
“There,” he said.
Thirty-Four
When the bullet struck, Hunter instinctively grabbed Fawn and pulled her toward him. He cried out her name as he did it.
The helicopter jerked to the right and another bullet struck.
“What the fuck?” the pilot yelled through the comms.
The pilot was scanning the ground frantically, looking for a shooter, but Hunter knew he wouldn’t find one.
Another bullet hit the chopper.
“Fuck me,” the pilot yelled.
Hunter looked down at Fawn. He’d pulled her against his chest and had covered most of her body with his own. She felt so small.
“Fawn, are you all right?”
She looked up at him and it took her a moment to realize what he was asking.
“Fawn,” he cried. “Are you all right?”
“I’m not hit.”
He could barely hear her over the roar of the engine and she shouted it again.
“I’m not hit, Hunter.”
He held her out in front of him and looked at her. She was okay.
“Keep on those vehicles,” he said to the pilot. “Get low.”
Hunter checked his pistol and shoved it firmly into the holster beneath his jacket. The chopper was getting lower over the vehicles.
“You’re not going to jump,” Fawn said.
It was a statement, not a question, but she was wrong. The vehicles were still over a thousand yards away, too far for the shots to have come from them.
“You want us to take them out?” one of the gunners said.
Each gunner had a belt-fed, pintle-mounted M240 machine gun armed with 7.62 mm NATO rounds.
“Light them up,” Hunter said.
A single spray from each gunner had the vehicles swerving wildly on the narrow track.
They got in closer and the gunners gave them another shower of bullets.
One of the vehicles swerved, its windshield was broken and bullets had penetrated the roof. It veered off the side of the track and hit a solid, fifty-foot pine tree that stopped it dead.
They flew right over it, keeping on the tail of the lead vehicle.
“Try not to kill them,” Hunter said to the gunners. “We need to talk to them.”
The pilot took them in lower over it and they were close enough to see the tinted windows open and arms reach out and fire blindly up at them.
The chopper rose up and passed the vehicle, then descended in front of it. It was coming straight at them. They hovered over the track with one of the M240s pointed right at the SUV.
“It’s stopping,” the pilot said.
“Let me out,” Hunter said.
The vehicle stopped about two hundred yards in front of them and four men got out. They fired a few pistol shots in the chopper’s direction but were out of range.
The chopper lowered to about sixty feet, which was as low as it could get over the high trees. Hunter threw a rope over the side.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Fawn said.
“I’m going to talk to them.”
She shook her head as he climbed over the edge and lowered himself down the rope. He slid down the first fifty feet and when someone opened fire on him from the trees he dropped the last ten and rolled for cover.
He drew his Beretta and scrambled through the brush
away from the track.
The gunners on the chopper gave him a few bursts of covering fire before ascending and getting out of pistol range.
Hunter made an arc around the position he’d been fired at from and then closed in. The man was gone but Hunter could tell from the footprints he’d left that he’d have no problem tracking him. Hunter had made his living hunting wolves in Alaska. He’d been trained in the army’s most advanced man-hunting methods. This man looked like he’d never been in the woods in his life.
He could see him scrambling up a ridge, heading deeper into the forest where he’d lose track of the trail he’d been on. Hunter kept low and followed him. He couldn’t assume all the men would be as inept as this one.
Hunter spoke into his comms, under his breath, keeping his voice low.
“Do you read?”
“We read, Hunter? All choppers are still in the area.”
He could hear them hovering above. The sound would panic the men he was pursuing. Catching them would be child’s play. Doing it fast enough to get useful information from them was the only challenge.
He held back and let the man he was following blunder on. There was another man a few hundred yards to the east. The first man didn’t know it yet but they’d find each other soon enough if they stayed on their present course. They’d be bolder then. Maybe they’d give something away.
He kept on their tail. The man he was following was in his early forties. He wasn’t particularly fit. He wasn’t well trained. He was smashing through the forest like an elephant. Hunter guessed he’d been hired locally to pick up the drones. He was wearing a black ball cap.
When they got close to the other man, he crouched down.
“Who’s there?” he said.
“It’s Lucas.”
The man in the ball cap stood. “Shit man. You fucking scared me.”
“They dropped a guy.”
“I think we hit him.”
“I hope so.”
“We’re fucked now though,” the man called Lucas said. “Helicopters everywhere.”
“We can’t stick to the plan.”
“Fuck no. We need to disappear.”
“And how do we do that?”
“We lay low. Find Joe and Clay if we can. Steal a car or something.”
“What’s to stop us just hiding out in these woods for a day or two?”
“Right,” Lucas said.
The man in the ball cap was leaning on a tree. Hunter crept up behind him and pushed his head hard against the tree trunk. The man slumped down and Hunter used the tree to push himself through the air at the other man. He disarmed him with a blow to the wrist and then hit him twice in the face.
The man staggered backwards.
Hunter drew the Beretta and put a finger over his lips.
“You can live if you don’t scream,” Hunter said.
“What the fuck?” the man said.
“Come on, buddy. You know how this goes. Make it easy on yourself.”
The man eyed the gun and then slowly rose his hands in the air.
“Turn around,” Hunter said.
He turned.
“Get on your hands and knees.”
The man knelt. He was vulnerable now, disarmed, his back to Hunter, staring out at a dark forest.
“You know who I am?” Hunter said.
“Government,” the man said.
“That’s right. And you know who was supposed to be on that chopper?”
“Not really,” the man said.
“Take a guess.”
The man sighed. “The president,” he said.
“Right again,” Hunter said. “So there wouldn’t be much blowback on me if you were to end up with a bullet in your skull.”
“I didn’t know this had anything to do with the president until it was too late,” the man said.
“Well, lucky for you,” Hunter said, “I need information too badly to stick around playing games.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I’m sure you know more than you think you do.”
The man made to turn his head.
“Uh uh,” Hunter said. “Don’t look. Just talk.”
The man was quiet for a second. He was scared.
“I can kill you right now and talk to your friend,” Hunter said, indicating the unconscious man by the tree. “Or I can talk to you, let the feds come pick you up. You’ll be in a jail cell eating apple pie and drinking coffee before nightfall.”
“I’m not afraid of what you’ll do to me,” the man said.
“You’re afraid of the men who hired you?”
“Right,” the man said.
“Well how about this?” Hunter said. “You tell me everything you know. I cut you loose and bring your friend in. Whoever hired you will think its your friend who talked.”
“And how do I trust you?”
“I’m not your problem, buddy. The people who hired you are. If I cut you loose you have a chance to disappear.”
“You won’t cut me loose.”
“Sure I will.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“I don’t care about you,” Hunter said. “I don’t care about your other friends who are scattered around this forest. You can roll the dice with the rest of them for all I care. I won’t guarantee you get out of this forest, but I won’t be the one who stops you.”
“Fuck,” the man said.
“Look, buddy. Take your chances in this forest, or take a bullet in the skull. I can show your corpse to your friend when he wakes up and he’ll talk.”
The man sighed but Hunter knew he’d talk.
“Fine. This is what I’ve got. We were in Fincastle.”
“Near here?”
“Yeah. Real close. My boss, Huey Clay, he was in the car with me. He sells dope around these parts. He called me in for this job. It was literally three hours ago, man. I was watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch with my stepdaughter when he called.”
“What did he say?”
“He said we had a job. I’d get a grand if I showed.”
“What was the job?”
“Pick up some drones.”
“From where?”
“Fuck if I know. Somewhere near where you started shooting at us. Huey had a thing on his phone to find them when they came down.”
“Who hired Huey?”
“Someone online.”
“What were you going to do with the drones when you got them?”
The man shrugged.
“If that’s all you’ve got, then I’m going to need to speak to Huey.”
The man shrugged again.
Hunter went and took the gun and cell from the man in the ball cap who was still unconscious.
“Turn around,” he said to the man.
He turned slowly.
“Call Huey.”
He made the call.
“Tell him there’s someone here who wants to talk to him.”
The man waited. Hunter could hear the dial tone. Then someone answered.
“I got a guy from the government who’s going to talk to you,” the man said.
He threw the phone to Hunter.
“Huey Clay,” Hunter said.
“What the fuck?” Clay said.
“Listen to me very carefully, Huey Clay.”
“I’m going to kill that fucker,” Clay said.
“I’m a trained ranger. I could track you and kill you. You know it’s ten miles to the edge of this forest.”
“Fuck you,” Clay said.
“Well, what I was going to suggest is instead of me coming after you and your idiot friend, I let you keep running.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know someone paid you to pick up those drones.”
“Fuck you, and fuck that bigmouthed fuck.”
Hunter lifted the Beretta into the air and fired a shot at the sky.
“You hear that?” he said to Clay.
Clay said no
thing.
“That’s how far away I am. I could track you down and spit you like a pig. But I don’t want to do that. I want to catch the fuckers who hired you. Comprende?”
“You’re saying if I talk, you’re not coming after me?”
“If you give me a bigger fish, I’ll go after the bigger fish.”
“I don’t know who they are.”
“How did they contact you?”
“Dark web. I’ve got the Tor browser. You know.”
“Where’s the computer now?”
“Laptop. In my living room.”
“And what were you supposed to do with the drones?”
“I was supposed to put them in a car at a parking lot off the 295.”
“Where?”
“Fort Lee.”
“What’s the address where that laptop is?”
Clay gave him an address in Lynchburg.
“If you’re lying, I’ll hunt you down and I’ll kill you, Huey Clay.”
“I’m not lying.”
“We’ll see,” Hunter said.
Thirty-Five
Hunter made his way to a clearing and got picked up by one of the choppers. It brought him to a public park on the east side of Lynchburg near the address Huey Clay had given.
When he got to the ratty apartment building, Fawn was already there with a tech crew from Langley.
“They’re getting everything they can from the laptop,” Fawn said.
“And what about the gunman?”
“We haven’t found anything yet,” she said. “The forest is still on lockdown. If he’s in there, he’s not going anywhere.”
“He’s not in the forest,” Hunter said.
“We’ll get him,” Fawn said. “We were close.”
Hunter was looking over the tech guy’s shoulder. They were cloning the hard drives and sending all the data to the NSA data center in Utah. If there was something there, it wouldn’t take long to find it.
“So what’s our plan now?” Fawn said, looking at Hunter.
“That’s for Hale to say.”
“Hale’s with the president.”
“We could go back to the Greenbrier.”
“They’ve already moved.”
“Really?”
“Yes, by motorcade.”
“After we left?”
“Yes. As soon as we boarded the chopper.”
“Where to?”