Sampson had gone three hundred yards north when he looked down into the canyon and saw the wreckage of their raft, deflated and wrapped around a log that had fallen in the river. Downstream, a few of their brightly colored dry bags were floating north, along with their cooler.
Far ahead of the last of their gear, more than a mile off now, he made out the other raft with the young family in it, heading toward the takeout and the trailhead.
They had to have heard all the shooting. They’ll report it, won’t they?
From a thick patch of trees not a hundred yards in front of him, the air was split by a burst of machine-gun fire followed by a second burst from another angle. Sampson took cover in time to hear two men screaming in agony in Spanish.
Two pistol shots silenced their pain.
Chapter 99
I was back on the bridle trail, moving slowly north, when I heard the shooting from the other side of the canyon, two bursts of automatic-weapon fire and then a single shot that sounded like a pistol.
My stomach turned over. Had I just listened to John’s death?
I wanted to cut back toward the river and use my binoculars to see if I could spot Sampson again, make sure he was still standing. But then a branch cracked uphill and to my left, deeper into the patch of timber I was traversing.
The crack was followed by crashing.
My mind screamed: It’s the bear!
On our long horseback ride into the Bob Marshall, Bauer had told us to never try to outrun a grizzly bear, to stand our ground. But my gut told me to get downhill.
I stepped off the path and side-slid down the steep embankment. The crashing came louder and closer. Four feet down, I hit level ground, pinned my left side to a tree trunk, got the shotgun up, and pointed at the noise, with only my upper chest and head exposed above the level of the path.
Three big mule-deer bucks exploded from the thicket and charged downhill. They vaulted over the trail in front of me and bounced down the slope and out of sight.
My clothes were soaked from rain and sweat. The wind had picked up.
I tried hard not to shiver as I lowered the shotgun and peered uphill with my binoculars, looking for the source of the loud crack that had spooked the deer, looking for the big grizzly I knew was prowling somewhere in the area.
Almost five minutes passed before I caught a flicker of movement; it was followed by the soft snapping and popping of brush that at seventy-five yards became the torso and legs of a man — a skilled and trained man, by the way he fluidly moved in an athletic stance, his head swiveling, his gun held like a commando and clipped to a SWAT-style chest harness.
I recognized him. He was the same burly Hispanic who’d been hanging out the side of the helicopter during the first attack, the one who’d shot at us.
Somehow, I knew I would not get the drop on him the way I had Durango’s man. I had no choice. I had to kill him or be killed.
Carefully, I lowered the binoculars and tried to raise the shotgun up just as slowly.
But he was a pro and must have caught movement.
Bolting and scrambling across the hill, he fired a sweeping burst, left to right, that broke branches and ripped into trees, including the one I was leaning against. I kicked my feet out and fell hard on the gun and my binoculars and the forest floor, knocking the wind from my lungs.
Stifling a groan, I tried to get to my knees. But another burst of gunfire clipped the trail above me, sending dirt and rocks down on my head.
I rolled over on my back, still fighting to breathe and holding the shotgun close to my chest, the muzzle above my head. The shooting stopped.
Given the circumstances, I was outgunned, but I did not reach for the pistol at my left hip. I didn’t want him to hear anything but the rain falling and the wind blowing as I stayed perfectly still and prayed that I’d dropped from sight so fast and so close to where he’d been aiming that he’d think I was dead already.
The ache in my diaphragm had faded by the time I heard him moving down the hill in my direction, no doubt his gun up, sweeping the area where he’d last seen my head and chest.
When I heard him get close, I looked back and up to where the embankment met the trail. Then I adjusted the butt of the shotgun’s stock against my belt and tilted the muzzle up a good thirty degrees before relaxing my head against the embankment.
I did not want to but I closed my eyes so I could listen better. A full minute passed before I heard a boot make a squishing and sucking noise as it settled into the mud up on the path, which was no more than five feet wide. I took a deep breath and let out a quarter of it before settling.
Ten seconds later, another boot squished and sucked mud, then another.
He’s coming with confidence, I thought, only to have him stop for twenty seconds, then thirty seconds. I wanted to breathe, to sniff in just a little more air, but I was scared he was close enough to see my boots and lower pants now. Any twitch and he’d shoot.
Forty seconds.
My grip on the shotgun in that odd position began to slip. I was going to have to breathe. I was going to have to—
Squish. Suck.
Fifty seconds.
Squish. Suck.
I opened my eyes to slits, saw him appear over the top of the embankment.
His gun was pinned to his cheek and aimed at me, looking for signs of life, when I squeezed the trigger on a load of double-aught buckshot.
Chapter 100
On the east side of the river, Sampson had not moved position since the two bursts of machine-gun fire and the two pistol shots had gone off in the thick patch of trees a hundred yards north of his position. He was lying prone over the top of a hummock of dirt, looking through binoculars at scattered live trees and standing burned trunks between him and the heavier timber.
He started at automatic-weapon fire from across the river, his heart racing, his stomach souring. Alex was engaged.
Sampson turned his binoculars westward and focused on the big piece of timber where he guessed the shooting had come from. A second burst of gunfire confirmed it.
Sampson tried to dissect the woods opposite him but could make out nothing. He swung the binoculars back to study the timber patch out in front of him.
He went back and forth this way for ten minutes before hearing a single blast that sounded more shotgun than rifle. When he looked over there, his grin surfaced and then broadened with every second that passed without automatic gunfire.
Sampson shifted the binoculars back to his side of the river, to where the trail met the woods a hundred yards out, and saw nothing. He panned them slowly left and locked.
Right there, not sixty yards away, stood the mammoth black guy who’d ridden shotgun during the first helicopter attack. How had he not heard him? How had he not seen him?
Sampson was six nine and weighed two hundred seventy-five pounds, but this guy was big too, six foot six easy and pushing the upper two hundreds.
Massive. Solid muscle. A Goliath.
And Goliath was dressed and equipped for modern war, right down to the black clothes, the black gun, the Kevlar vest, and the goggles he wore.
Those can’t be night-vision, Sampson thought. They’ve got to be thermals.
Goliath started to swing his head.
He’s going to peg my heat signature in this rain!
Sampson dropped the binoculars and shifted to get behind the bear gun. He moved too fast. M’s man jerked his head Sampson’s way.
Before Sampson could flip off the safety on the Ruger, Goliath leaped sideways and started sprinting downhill off the trail and in an arc through the trees, firing short bursts at John. Rounds smacked the front side of the hummock and blew mud in his face.