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Mac figured they’d hiked out for an hour to the first target. It took them two hours to get back to camp. He and Craig had changed places when they reached the main trail. The weight pulled on the front man’s shoulders harder. And Craig wasn’t a young man. A fit one, thank God, Mac thought. But he was probably 45 if he’d been in Desert Storm. Mac hoped he was as fit in another 15 years.
And they were lucky. The height difference wasn’t too great. Craig was a few inches taller, something Mac wasn’t used to.
The camp was silent.
Mac called a halt raising up one hand. And he turned to quiet them, but they’d already fallen silent. Or they were just too tired to talk, he thought.
“Wait,” he mouthed silently to Craig, who nodded. He bent over Scott to check his leg. And Mac slid into camp.
Someone had been through there, he saw. Slashed the tires of all the rigs, including his own, the fuckers. He could smell gas, so they’d probably cut the lines as well. He walked through camp. He was pretty sure Rand had stayed behind, but he didn’t see a body. The camp was silent, deserted.
“Rand,” he said softly, just loud enough to carry. “It’s Mac.”
The man stepped out from behind the porta-potty. He looked haggard, and he carried a pistol hanging at his side.
“You made it back. I figured you would,” Rand said, emphasizing the word you. “The rest of your team?”
“Two injured. But we’re all here,” Mac said. “What happened?”
Rand had been cleaning up after breakfast when he heard a couple of SUVs pull into camp. Puzzled, he started toward the sounds, then he heard a gunshot, and decided that hiding would be better. So, he’d gone into the woods. “They were deputy reserves,” he said. “I didn’t see Norton, but I recognized a couple of them. And they had their badges on for God’s sake! Personal SUVs, though. They tore up the camp, flattened the tires. I can smell gas, so they may have cut the lines. Or they may have done something to the generators. I’ve been lurking around since they left, trying to assess damage and stay out of sight.”
Craig had joined them for most of the conversation. He was frowning, worried, Mac thought. Hell of a situation to be responsible for a bunch of gun-toting wannabes.
“We’ve still got two groups out there,” Rand said. “I’m not all that worried about Ken’s group. Ken will take care of them and get them back here if it’s at all possible. But the other group? It’s led by two younger crew members. And they don’t have the experience for this kind of thing. I mean what the hell? We’re under attack by sheriff deputy reserves?”
“Craig?” Mac asked, his voice dangerously soft. “What do you know about all this?”
“I’m not in on it, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said sourly. “But just a guess? Sensei decided to try his hand at war games.”
“That was my guess too,” Rand agreed. “It’s bugged me that Norton didn’t come along on this trip. I don’t think he’s missed before. And with Mac here? But war games? That I can see.”
“With live ammo?” Mac asked. “That goes beyond war games. And we don’t dare shoot back.”
“Why the hell not?” Craig demanded. Rand didn’t say anything, but Mac could see understanding grow in his expression.
“Because then we’ve fired on a law officer, and they would have the right to respond,” Mac said. “Justifiable homicide, no questions asked. Well maybe some questions. But we’d be dead. And they would walk.”
Rand was nodding. Craig looked at the two of them. “Well, shit,” he said.
“Someone needs to go after the one group,” Rand said. “I don’t think it should be me. Ken’s going to come rolling in here pissed as hell and demanding answers. Best there be someone he knows to give answers.”
Mac nodded. He looked at Craig. “Craig, you need to be here too,” he said slowly. “I don’t trust your customers worth a shit. And they won’t listen to me without your backup. So, I need to go. Problem is I can navigate using a compass, no problem, but this is not the country I know well to navigate through.”
“So, I need to go with you,” Angie said. Mac hadn’t even heard her come up. “I know the terrain. I know how to navigate with the compass. And to be honest? I would feel safer being with you.”
Mac considered her for a moment. His first instinct was hell no. He wanted her safe. And what he was going to do wasn’t safe. But her last sentence made him reconsider. He could keep her safe — at least safer than she’d be back here without him.
He sighed. “OK,” he said. “The two of us go. Give me that backpack, Craig. I may need the med kit, and all those nice emergency supplies you’re carrying. And you might have Rand here take a look at Scott and Ben. Rand, do you have the coordinates list those two guys went out with?”
Rand nodded. “I have copies of all the lists,” he said. “And I’ll fix you two some sandwiches.”
Mac sat down at a table, and closed his eyes. He was tired. It had been a hard day already. It was approaching 4 p.m. and neither of the other teams had made it back. That wasn’t good. He thought Rand’s analysis was good. Ken could handle things. The younger leaders might need some help.
“Here,” Angie said, and handed him a sandwich. He took it, smiled his thanks, and ate methodically. It didn’t matter what it was, he would need the fuel. When he was done with it, he drank a bottle of water. He rolled his shoulders. They hurt from carrying that stretcher out. Scott wasn’t a large man, but even 180 pounds started feeling pretty heavy after two hours.
And let’s face it, it had been eight years — maybe 10 — since he’d had to do something like this. Not even last fall’s assault on Jehovah’s Valley had been as grueling as this. He could do it, he thought. He had no choice. But damn.
He looked at Angie. She was showing the strain too, he thought. Her eyes had dark circles under them. There were strain lines around her mouth. “How are you doing?” he asked. “Really. How are you?”
She considered that. “Tired,” she admitted. “The hike this morning, and I walked it almost twice getting photos. Then the shooting. I didn’t do much, but I’m not used to holding an eight-pound rifle and my shoulder hurts. More photography. And then the last three hours of hiking. So yeah, I’m tired. But I’m going with you, Mac. I can help. And the idea of being left behind makes me sick to my stomach.”
Mac nodded. “Rand would protect you,” he said quietly. “And Craig too, I think. Ken as well. But yeah, I’ll feel better if you’re with me. And you’re right. You’re more comfortable with the terrain than I am.”
“So, I navigate. You scout and protect,” she summarized.
Craig handed Mac his backpack. “I feel like I should go,” he muttered. “But I can’t argue with your logic.”
Mac grinned at him. “If Ken isn’t back by the time I get back, someone has to go out,” he said. “You can be the hero for that one. And in the dark, too.”
“Gee thanks,” Craig said with a laugh. He sobered. “Truly, Mac, I had nothing to do with this.”
Mac nodded. He believed him, he thought. “Do you know who Sensei is?”
Craig shook his head. “I only know the online version.”
“What about MLK4whites?”
Craig rolled his eyes. “I’m pretty sure that’s Norton,” he admitted. “But to be honest? It could be Malloy. If so, he’s in closer contact with Norton than he admits.”
“One last question,” Mac said slowly, watching the man carefully. “Rangers found a dead hiker two weeks ago — after your last weekend trip. It looked to me like he’d been hunted. Head ranger said he wasn’t the first. Have you been re-enacting the Most Dangerous Game out here? One of the men who went berserk told his wife he was ‘blooded now’ and he was ready for the call when SHTF. You know anything about that?”
Craig hesitated. “Not me, not my gig,” he said finally. “But, I usually take the first group out on Sundays, those who need to get back. Malloy stays back with a few who want a bit more target practice. Ken packs up the camp and brings his crew out, and Malloy follows.”
“And you’re wondering what kind of target Malloy might be using?” Mac asked.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t seem likely, Mac. Not really. Malloy’s in this for money, and he makes that down at his range. Not up here shooting hikers.”
“Some of the dead looked like they were homeless men,” Mac said.
Craig shook his head. “That takes more planning than Malloy would have time for,” he objected. “And how would he get a homeless man out here? He drives one of the vans up, usually. There’s another player.”
“Norton?” Angie asked.
Craig considered that. “It seems farfetched until you realize he’s out here with a bunch of trigger-happy reserves hunting us,” he said wearily. “So yeah, I can see him and a couple of reserves — maybe even meeting up with Malloy and his last few clients — to hunt a human being. Fuck.”
Mac studied him, thought he was probably telling the truth. Probably.
He chugged a can of Mountain Dew. Added another to Craig’s backpack, and shouldered it. He picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder.
“Fuck man,” he muttered. “What do you have in this sucker?”
“Getting old there, Marine?” Craig said. “Can’t handle a 40-pound backpack?”
Mac grunted. He could. Didn’t mean he wanted to. “Let’s go,” Mac said to Angie. She studied the map Rand had given her, along with the coordinates, and the compass. And she led the way out of the camp.
Mac focused on following her. He would have to trust she knew where she was going, he thought. Hard to do. He was used to being squad leader, not packhorse.
“This group had tougher terrain to cross,” Angie said. “We had a pretty flat walk to the first target. They didn’t. If they turned too soon, they ended up having to go down a ravine and up again. If they went a bit farther they could avoid that, but they probably wouldn’t know that. Since our goal is to find them, not necessarily the target, we’re going to have to figure out which route they took.”
Mac grunted. Bunch of newbies with inexperienced leaders? Oh, they’d end up in the ravine, he thought sourly. And then they’d be in the low position, with high positions all around. Joy.
“Ten to one, they got themselves trapped in the ravine,” Mac said.
“I’m watching for evidence of when they left the trail to go cross-country,” Angie said. “But, if they’re trapped in the ravine, do we go in after them? Or do we circle around the rim to take out whoever has them trapped?”
“Good question,” he agreed. “Really good question. Listen for shots. Then we decide.”
It took them 40 minutes to reach the place the other group left the trail. They hadn’t tried to hide it, why would they? Mac set the pack and rifle down, stretched his shoulders. He peered at the map over Angie’s shoulder.
“We’re here,” she said, tracing the route with her finger. “They’re not at the bottom of the ravine, but they’re not at the top either. I haven’t heard any shots either. Have you?”
“No,” he said. He didn’t know what that meant. He considered firing a shot off and seeing if he got a response. And then he thought about how many deputy reserves Norton could have out here. Probably not all of them, he thought. Surely not all of them could be trigger-happy fanatics willing to play war games at the Sensei’s command? Or were they playing under Norton’s command? What was it Janet had said? At some point Norton would challenge Sensei for top dog. Something to consider, but not right now.
So enemy assessment? Twenty? Even 10 would outnumber them. Especially because he was afraid to shoot back.
“Let’s follow them,” Mac said with a sigh. “Our goal is to rescue them, not engage with the reserves. Not if we can help it.”
Angie nodded, and waited until he picked up his pack and rifle. He pulled his Glock from his pocket and held it in his hand. He didn’t like the feel of this at all. He followed her as she headed into the thicket.
She was quiet on a trail, he thought. No wonder Bryson wanted to hire her. He hadn’t been kidding. The biggest problem was he was nearly a foot taller than she was. Things that she went through or under hit him in the face. And carrying a gun in his hand made it hard to dodge.
Angie stopped. Mac halted behind her. She looked around, finally went to her left. And gasped.
Mac stepped around her and looked at a dead man who had been pulled off the track. “Ah fuck,” he said. It was one of the trek guides, too; he mourned his death. He didn’t deserve to pay this high a price for a bunch of fucked-up men who thought they were going to be kings when the end times came.
It also just turned this into a different battle. Sending injured men back to Seattle was one thing. Covering up the murder of a local young guide was completely different. And the only way to do that really was to kill them all. They weren’t looking at war games any more. They were looking at a massacre scenario. Clean up.
Angie was biting her lip as she looked at him. “Cleve Dawson,” she said. “Nice kid.”
Mac smiled. She was only a few years older. He sighed. “Where are the rest of them?”
Angie looked around, found a small trail. “Do we just leave him?” she said in a low voice.
“For now,” he said gently. “Bryson will have to bring in a jeep to take him home. But he will.”
She nodded and followed the trail.
Another 20 minutes, she stopped again, looked around. Her eyes narrowed. “Mark?” she called softly.
“Here,” a voice called back. She moved in that direction. Mac put his finger on the trigger. The hairs on the back of his neck were telling him this would be a great trap. No different than that target had been. He looked around carefully. He didn’t see anything. Sometimes it really was paranoia, he thought.
Mark and his team of four were huddled behind some downfallen logs. Two of them were injured. One in the leg. Mac grimaced. “Get down,” Mark warned. “We’ve been trapped here. They’ve got a shooter up on the ridge.”
Angie dropped to a crouch, and Mac did too, dropping the pack and pulling it after him. Someone fired a shot, and it whipped past him. Not close, but he didn’t want the next one coming closer either.
“Sit rep?” Mac asked, and from the blank look on Mark’s face, he deduced that this was one of the few employees of Bryson’s who wasn’t a veteran. “Can you give me a report on the situation?” he expanded.
Mark sighed. “We took fire,” he said simply. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on. This was not planned. And those are real bullets. Cleve said he’d go for help. I take it he made it since you’re here?”
Mac shook his head. “No, we were attacked, too,” Mac said. “We made it back to camp, and Rand sent us out. We found Cleve. He didn’t make it.”
Mark swallowed hard. He looked as if he wanted to cry, but he choked it back and nodded. “So, we have four customers with us. Two have bullet wounds. We turned off the trail too early, got into this ravine. No biggie, it just meant a harder hike to the target, right? And then they started shooting at us. We retreated back this far, but we’re trapped. Any real movement, and they fire off a shot. Like they did at you.”
Angie opened up the pack, handed out water and sandwiches. She made Mac take a sandwich. Handed him more Mountain Dew. He drank about a third of a can, offered her a sip. “Sugar and caffeine,” he said. “Good for what ails you.”
“Extreme fatigue?” she said with an attempt at a smile. “It might at that.”
Mark looked in the pack, found the med kit, and pulled it out. He seemed to know what he was doing with it, and Mac turned to consider their location. He looked at the tree that had taken the shot, and backtracked to where the shooter had to be.
We’re fish in a barrel. So, this fishy has to evolve and seek higher ground. Getting a bit punch drunk when you make bad jokes to yourself, he thought with amusement.
The problem was the shooter was across the ravine. That was a long shot. Well, he didn’t really want to hit the target anyway.
“One shooter? Or more?” he asked.
“There were more,” one of the men said. Mark was tying a bandage around his arm. “First was this mass of shots coming from multiple directions. We didn’t know which way to go. But since then there’s been just the one, I think. He’s perched up there. If we look like we’re moving out, he fires. Occasionally he fires just because he’s bored.”
“So, either he’s got a bunch of ammo with him, or he doesn’t care if he runs out,” Mac said. He thought about that. “How long ‘til dark?”
Mark glanced at his watch. “Dusk in about an hour. Dark not long after that.”
“OK, so here’s the deal,” Mac said. “That’s one of Norton’s deputy reserves out there. We can’t shoot back. If we kill law enforcement, they’ve every right to return fire and wipe us out. To be honest, now that they’ve killed someone, they’re going to have to kill us all anyway. They may not have figured that out yet.”
The men nodded. They were too tired to argue, he thought. The adrenaline was long gone. “So, Mark? Norton has got to have a camp, somewhere. A base of operations. Where?”
Mark rocked back on his haunches and considered that. He’d put a tourniquet on the man with the leg wound. “Probably where we usually camp. You know we were told to move our base farther back? Ken said he was told to do it because there were hikers complaining to the rangers about all the gunfire. Made sense, Ken doesn’t like all the weapons fire either. But the trips pay well. Anyway, so we set up a new site. But Norton isn’t skilled enough to set up a camp out of nothing. He’d use the site he knows. And there’s porta-potty and a generator still there, I think.”
He thought about it and nodded to himself. Mac showed him the map. “Where?”
Mark looked at it. “This is our camp,” Mark said. “These are the three routes we planned out. We’re the middle one, you all were on the southern one. Ken took the northern one. The other campsite is just south of the southern route.” He pointed at a spot on the map.
Mac studied it. “So, if we’d stayed on the main trail this morning we would have hit the old camp.”
Mark nodded.
“How far from here?” Mac asked.
“Depends. If you backtrack this trail and turn south here,” he said, pointing at a spot on the map, “you’ll hit the trail you took this morning, and you can follow it right into the camp. Probably take you an hour-and-a-half, maybe two hours. But it requires some overland hiking, breaking trail. If you go all the way back to camp and then set back out again? You’re looking at maybe three hours, but you won’t get lost either.”
Mac looked at the map. “And if I go through here?” he said, drawing pretty much a straight line from where they were to the old campsite.
“Probably an hour,” Mark said, but he shook his head. “You’d have to break trail the whole way and navigate solely by compass.”
“I was recon,” Mac said briefly. “The compass isn’t the problem; it’s the terrain. And I’m a whole lot more familiar with the terrain now than I was 24 hours ago.”
Angie grinned at him. He couldn’t help smiling back.
“So, tell me if I went straight through, how steep? Are there ravines I’d need to go around? What’s it like?”
“Not bad, really,” Mark said slowly, tracing the route with his finger, as if that helped him visualize the countryside. “No real inclines. This is the only ravine to speak of. But it’s dense undergrowth, man, and you can’t get any perspective, you know what I mean?”
Mac did. It would be like navigating through a green sandstorm. He wouldn’t be able to see farther than a few feet in front of him. Well, he’d made it through real sandstorms, this wouldn’t be worse.
The only way to solve this thing was to reach Norton. Get him to call his men back. Or they would be under attack all night. Helpless to fight back. That was the part he hated. He didn’t like being a sitting duck in someone’s shooting range.
He looked at the spot the shooter was coming from. Looked at the tree the man had shot. Well, the least he could do was scare the bastard out of there, he thought. He slung his rifle across his back, leaped up and dove behind the tree. Another shot rang out.
Got you bastard, he thought. He jumped as high as he could, grabbed a branch and pulled himself up and onto the branch. He scrambled up the tree a bit farther, as far as the branches looked sturdy enough to hold his weight.
The shooter fired again. Mac ignored him. He was either a bad shot, or he didn’t really want to hit him. Probably a bad shot, but Mac wasn’t going to take chances. He propped his Remington along a branch. He sunk into the moment. All the time in the world, he thought.
He hadn’t been the sniper on his team. But he was a decent shooter. Just not as good as Danny had been. He winced. Danny was dead. And he had died here in the States for a man’s ambition and lust for power. He let it go. Let everything go. And then he saw a flash off the shooter’s gun as he shifted slightly. He smiled grimly, eased the tension on the trigger and fired.
He fired again. Don’t hit the bastard, he chanted to himself. Just panic him and get him out of there. He took a third shot. Damn, that was a bit close, he thought. Oops.
And then there was the sound of a man crashing through the undergrowth. Mac took another shot in the direction of the noise for good measure.
And then he slid down the tree. “OK,” he said. He found the bullets in the pack, reloaded. “Hope to God there’s just the one. Let’s get you guys out of here.”
“Why didn’t we try that?” one of the men demanded.
Mark snorted. “Because I’m not good enough of a shot to come close,” he said. “And you couldn’t climb the tree to start with. Just because he made it look easy? It wasn’t.”
The man mumbled something, but the other three men ignored him.
Mark had made a makeshift crutch for the guy with the leg wound. With some assistance they’d get back, he thought. Mark seemed to be sensible enough.
He looked at Angie. She smiled. “You’re going to leave me behind, aren’t you,” she said wistfully.
He considered it. No doubt he could make better time without her, although she’d been a real trooper. But his heart about stopped when he thought of all the things that could happen to her if he wasn’t around.
“Your call, babe,” he said finally.
Her eyes widened and she grinned. “Really? Then I’m going,” she said. “I want to be there when you take that bastard Norton down.”
“Yeah, still haven’t gotten that part figured out,” he admitted. “Kinda winging it here. What do you think? The straight-as-the-crow-flies route or the backtrack-to-the-trail route?”
She looked up at the sun, and glanced at her watch. “We’ve got about two hours of daylight,” she said. “And then it’s going to get dark, really dark and really fast. Remember last night? So, it’s not about distance, it’s about speed.”
Mac nodded. “Mark, take the pack with you,” he ordered. “Tell Rand and Ken where we went. OK? Rand and Ken.” These guys would also know, but nothing he could do about that.
Mark nodded, with a quick glance at his team. He didn’t trust anyone either. Good.
“You’re going to find Cleve,” Mac continued. “Make a mental note of where he is, because someone will have to come after him later. No way to pack him out now.”
Mark nodded again. “Which way are you going?” he asked.
“Speed,” Mac said. “We’re going straight there.” And he hoped to God he could trust Mark’s intel. And that Mark wouldn’t set them up or call Norton and sell them out. Or any of the myriad of ways things could go wrong when he couldn’t trust his allies and he couldn’t shoot his enemies.