The shot, when it came a fraction of a second later, shattered a sizeable portion out of the rim of rock just above Barber’s face. It showered the both of them in jagged shards the size of playing cards and covered them in a plume of gray rock dust so fine it was like talc.
What was this boy shooting? Barber thought coughing. A Howitzer?
He wiped dust from the screen of the miraculously unharmed phone with a licked thumb and played back the footage.
“Ah, there you are. Say cheese, jackweed,” he said as he saw the muzzle flash on the screen.
Barber watched the video again and paused it and zoomed the still. The shooter was behind some rocks up the rim of the hollow to the left of the clearing. He was well back in some good cover with only the barrel showing. It looked like he’d built a little blind or something with the rocks.
A crazy thought—Barney Rubble goes postal—came into Barber’s head as he unzoomed the still. He gauged the distance. Five hundred yards at least. Plus, you’d have to compensate for the difference in elevation a bit.
Barney had some skill, Barber thought. Just great.
Okay, got my grid. Now for the hard part.
“Okay, Kit. Do you have your service weapon?” Barber said calmly to the agent shivering slightly less now but still attached to him like a tick.
She immediately handed him something. It was a small backup gun, a Glock 27.
“How many rounds? Ten?” Barber said.
“No, eleven. There’s one in the pipe,” the agent said from where her head was pressed against his stomach.
His Glock 20 had sixteen, and he had another magazine, so they had what? Forty-three?
Forty-three, he thought biting his lip. That wasn’t a lot.
What was also not, not, not in their favor was the distance. Five hundred yards plus uphill with a handgun was laughable. Hitting this son of a bitch would be like getting a hole in one with a blindfold on.
But then again, he just needed to get a few in close to get his jackass head down. Like the agent here was finding out, shooting a gun was one thing. Getting shot at was quite another.
Besides, what else could they do?
There was literally no other cover. If he flanked them up along the bowl-like rim of the ridge he was up on, they were toast anyway.
“Okay, Kit. Take a look at this,” Barber said, showing her the video. “See where this joker is? On our left here? Here’s what we’re doing, Kit. I’m going to shoot at him while you run up the trail back to my truck and call for help. I’m going to shoot four times, spaced out a little. At the fourth shot—or even the third—you run and get to new cover, okay?
“I’ll wait twenty seconds for you to catch your breath, then shoot four times again. Every time, you have four shots to run. Then you have to put yourself between a rock and this loser on the hill, okay? It sucks, but it’s what we have to do. I’d run myself, but it looks like I’m currently down a boot, and I actually shoot a bit better than I run anyway.”
“Okay,” Agent Hagen said, forcing a brave smile on her terror-stricken face. She took a deep breath as she moved off him slowly and got up on her knees a little.
Barber even shocked himself when he reached out and touched her tear-streaked cheek.
“You got this, Kit,” he said.
She nodded.
“Remember, look for cover while you’re running. I’ve got an emergency six-pack in my truck, and in about ten minutes, we’re going to be pouring it over each other’s heads as we mount this son of a bitch to the grille, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
“On three then,” Barber said, slipping his gun out of its holster. “Ready? One...two...”