He didn’t remember how he hurt his nose, which meant it might have been when the flash-bang rendered him stupid for a good ten seconds. Hell, for all he knew he’d caught a fist or a rifle butt right to the snout the moment the men reached in for him.
And now, through the pain and the continued disorientation, he understood the kidnappers’ plan. They were going to lower a cherry picker over the metal fence between Belarus and Lithuania, toss him in it, and pull him back over.
God damn it, Branyon thought. His concern about his own situation was secondary; in fact, he wasn’t thinking about it at all at the moment. Instead, running through his mind now were the names of all the agents in his network, the CIA NOC officers under him, the Lithuanian SSD intelligence operatives he’d worked with in the nation, and dozens of other agents and assets, and codes, safe houses, and other compromising information.
He knew he couldn’t let them take him over the border. At least not while he was still alive.
As they pushed him toward the cherry picker, his shoulders still wrenched halfway out of their sockets with his arms tight behind his back, he decided he’d try to break away again, to make another run for it, this time through these dark woods. He knew he wouldn’t get fifty feet, but he thought he just might get lucky and coax one of these amped-up armed men to raise his rifle and fire at the escaping prisoner.
Dead men told no tales, and Branyon knew he had a lot of tales in his head.
Twenty feet from the border fence, one of the two men with a hand on his shoulder loosened his grip for a moment. Branyon had been submissive since they’d beat him during his escape attempt in the truck, and his compliance had led the one man into relaxing his guard now that at least half a dozen other men were standing around.
Branyon took two more steps through the mud, then ducked his head and slammed his left shoulder hard into the man who was holding his arm tight, simultaneously breaking away from the first man. He knocked the man on his left to the wet ground with the hard blow, then turned away from the fence and the armed men standing around, and he began to run down the gravel road, back in the direction the trucks had come from.
Ding had pulled the key fob for the Toyota Land Cruiser out of his pocket. He used his other hand to line his weapon up on the cluster of four men next to the border fence, some twenty-five feet away from the cherry picker, and he pressed the remote engine start on the fob.
A second later the lights of the Land Cruiser, two hundred yards back through the trees, illuminated the scene, casting distant ghostly shadows through the trees. Instantly some of the men by the fence turned and looked in the direction of the light.
Others were running after a man who himself was running in Chavez’s direction on the gravel road.
Ding realized it was Branyon, and he realized the men behind him would have him in seconds.
There wasn’t much illumination, but there was enough to help Chavez line the front blade sight of his AK-47 up on the group of men. He flipped the fire selector switch down to semiautomatic, and he opened fire.
Dom Caruso knew the light from the Land Cruiser was Chavez’s “Go,” his cue to engage. Dom had moved himself much farther to the west than he had planned to, but the noise of the heavy rain and the relatively clean forest floor made it easier for him to move than he’d expected.
As the gunfire started from Chavez’s side, Caruso was about to engage the man closest to him. But just then both trucks began moving. They lurched forward, toward the men by the cherry picker, either so they could climb in or else to provide cover for them.
Quickly, Caruso got an idea. He centered his front blade on the driver of the first vehicle, then he squeezed off a single round. At fifty-five yards he hit the man in the right temple, toppling him dead against his driver’s-side window and spilling him to the floor of his cab.
His truck continued to roll toward the other men. Caruso knew this would be an added distraction for the nine gunmen, a distraction he, Chavez, and Branyon could use right about now.
He slipped his right thumb on his weapon’s fire selector lever, and he flipped it up to the fully automatic setting. Just as intense gunfire began, all in the direction of Ding Chavez, Dom Caruso leveled the rifle on a group of men lying prone in front of the fence, and he pressed the trigger.
Chavez found himself flat on his face behind a tree. He was impressed as hell with the quality of the shooting of the men some seventy yards away. They’d seen his muzzle flashes through the trees and pinned him down in mere seconds.
Realizing he didn’t have any choice but to withdraw, he launched to his feet and began to run through the woods, zigzagging as he retreated. He heard the chatter of gunfire back behind him, and the hot zings of bullets whizzing past, but he continued his run for five full steps before diving forward and sliding between two more trees. Here he went flat, spun around, and used his FLIR taped to the side of his rifle.
He saw men prone in the distance, and he saw others on their knees, most firing off toward the west in Dom Caruso’s direction. The muzzle flashes were huge in Chavez’s optic.
He also saw one other form, lying on the east side of the gravel road, crouched down in a small gulley. The man had both hands behind his back. Chavez knew it had to be Pete Branyon.
After seeing this, Chavez rolled out on the other side of the pine he hid behind and he finished off his magazine in fully automatic fire, spraying the area by the fence with the other gunmen. When his weapon went dry, he tucked tight behind the tree and began reloading from his last magazine.
When he only had a few rounds left in his second mag, Caruso peered quickly through the night-vision monocular and saw a man climb out of the cabin of the cherry picker and raise his head above the metal fence. He pointed a pistol in the direction Branyon had run, back near the gravel road. Caruso moved his eye to his sight, lined it up on the flash of the man’s handgun, and moved his weapon a fraction of an inch to the right. He squeezed off three rounds just as fast as he could control his AK’s recoil.
Checking his scope again, Caruso didn’t see anyone peering over the fence there. He knew he couldn’t be sure if he’d hit the operator of the cherry picker, or if there was anyone else who knew how to work the machine, but he had a feeling he’d bought Branyon some time.
Dom clicked his last magazine into place as he ran through the woods, back toward Chavez, Branyon, and the Land Cruiser.
Pete Branyon lay facedown in the mud as crashing gunfire rocked all around. Right in front of him one of his kidnappers lay on his side, desperately holding a wound on his neck with his hand as blood spurted between his fingers.
Branyon had never been in a gun battle; he’d never seen a man die. He couldn’t believe the ungodly noise of everything going off around him, and he saw no way out of this for himself. He wasn’t sure who was shooting back at his attackers, but he thought briefly about standing up in the middle of the fire, hoping he might get shot in the head so he wouldn’t be dragged over the border.
But he stopped himself. Somebody in the trees was fighting like hell on his behalf; he realized the least he could do in return was not commit fucking suicide in the middle of the battle.