He turned his back to the tree to lessen his profile. He quickly swatted and loosened the straps of both snowshoes and stepped out. He had to make himself shorter by sinking into the snow-he had six inches on Mark Aker. He slipped the M4 around his back so that only its strap would show. With his feet on firm ground, he had a practiced move, a perfected move-a sudden twist-that could throw the rifle around his body and into his grip. But in snow, and with bulky clothing in the way, he wasn’t sure he could pull it off. He stuffed the gloves into his pockets, wearing only thin liners.
His hands were shaking, either from the cold or from nerves. He had to regain control; adrenaline had gotten the better of him.
“Aker, don’t be stupid,” called out the voice.
Closer.
The man had moved nearer. Twenty, thirty yards away, Brandon guessed.
Then, well beyond the man, the distant whine of a snowmobile. It took a second or two to determine it was drawing closer.
“Water,” Brandon croaked at the man. He was ready now. He had only to step out into the clear and yet every aspect of his training forbade him from doing so.
“I told you,” the voice answered. “We got water and food. Warmth. A woodstove. Hot coffee. All you got to do is show yourself. Come on.”
Knowing he might get popped, Brandon took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the tree.
65
WALT STEERED THE SNOWMOBILE TO FOLLOW THE EXISTING track, passing a pair of trees where the trip wire had been taken down and pulled to the side. An extension of the same perimeter warning system that Brandon claimed to have tripped.
Passing this point, he crossed into the enemy camp, driving one-handed. His other hand held the M4, hidden behind the snowmobile’s front panel.
He slowed. The track curved to the right and rose to meet what was likely a dirt road in the summer. This road showed much more travel than the track he’d just been on, reminding him how outnumbered he likely was. Bracing the weapon at his side, barrel out and ready, he slowed even more as he caught sight of a cabin in his headlight. Behind it, two, possibly more, outbuildings.
Smoke rose from a stovepipe in the roof. Three windows-two in front, one on the side-bled a pale yellow light. He’d so prepared himself for a conflict that he nearly fired on what turned out to be nothing more than a shadow cast by his own headlight.
He stopped and shut off the snowmobile and spun a full circle as he climbed off, fully expecting to see a muzzle flash. He shook off his nerves as he realized that the snowmobile’s return must have been expected. It was the only explanation he could come up with to explain the lack of a reception. He darted off into shadow, the only light the pale wash from the cabin. He crept closer, the night vision goggles raised onto his forehead, eyes flickering in every direction.
He single-clicked his radio com.
His earpiece sounded with three distinct clicks, silence, then four clicks. Walt tried again: a single click.
Silence, followed by three and then four clicks. Two clicks was Brandon -still not reporting. Three and four were Alpha and Beta.
Brandon was AWOL, injured, captured, or dead.
He ducked low and crept forward in a long, strong shadow cast by a wall of the cabin. He reached near enough to see a window shade was not just pulled down but sealed-with Velcro?-to the sill and jamb. It was a patch job, and a small amount of light escaped the effort, accounting for the dim yellow glow.
He forced himself to breathe. He didn’t want to attempt taking the cabin without Brandon, without some backup. But Brandon ’s silence necessitated action. With his back to the cabin-possibly only a matter of inches away from Mark Aker-Walt slipped quietly toward the front, wondering what would come next.
66
ROY COATS ATTEMPTED TO SORT OUT THE EVENTS OF THE past few minutes, his mind racing. He had little to go on beyond a single gunshot and, minutes later, the tripping of the perimeter wire.
Had he checked with Gearbox after hearing that gunshot? He couldn’t remember. His brain had just about lost its wheels, the pain too great. He squinted and tried to recall what had happened.
He remembered speaking with Newbs about the perimeter wire. And just now the snowmobile-that would be Gearbox-had returned to camp.
There was a loud, uninterrupted ticking going on in his head. The top of his mouth itched. He had to relieve himself.
Had he talked to Gearbox or not?
He picked up the walkie-talkie and called out for his man. Waited. No answer came.
Why such a long time between the return of the snowmobile and Gearbox knocking on the door?
“Gearbox?” Coats shouted loudly enough for his voice to carry through the walls. “Get your ass in here and explain-”
His command was cut off by the sputter of semiautomatic weapons fire. Two hundred yards.
Coats processed the most important part of that information: semiautomatic. Their AKs had been customized by Rupert Folkes in Jerome to be single-shot and full automatic; they weren’t rigged as semiautomatics.
At the same moment, the doorknob turned without knocking. His guys were trained to show him the respect of announcing themselves.
Coats snatched the.45 off the table and delivered three rounds into the cabin door before the damn pistol jammed. Pissed off at the self-loads, he hurled the gun across the room at the door before instantly regretting his action.
He looked around for another weapon.
The smell of cordite filled his nostrils. Blood trickled from the broken scab, as he stood painfully from the chair.
Another quick burst of semiautomatic fire.
The camp was under attack.
67
ONE OF BRANDON’S ALL-TIME FAVORITE MOVIE SCENES WAS in Indiana Jones, where Harrison Ford, faced with a sword-wielding Egyptian, simply ignores the flamboyant swordplay, pulls out his sidearm, and shoots him. Stepping out from behind the tree, hands in the air, he waited for the man shouting at him to show himself. Once he did so, Brandon gave it all of about five seconds before lunging to his left with a hip check, the momentum from which carried the M4 around his body and straight into his open hands.
He squeezed off a semiautomatic burst-three rounds-and watched the guy’s kneecaps explode. The guy went down like a folding chair, his weapon flying out of his hands and catching on a branch stump sticking out from the trunk of the tree he’d used as shelter. The gun strap caught under his chin and snapped his head back as he fell, so that he bobbed like a puppet; his obliterated knees folded, so that he looked like both legs had been crudely amputated. The gun then disengaged from the branch stump, and the man fell face-first into the snow, which swallowed him like sea-foam.
Brandon saw all this dimly, in the haze of a partial moon, knowing enough to make for cover as the rifle dropped down into the snow and on top of the man.
Brandon dove.
The fallen man fired at him.
Brandon returned two more quick bursts and got lucky: a piece of the man’s head took off like a frightened bird.
The dead guy, his skull open, sat up on the injured knees, waved his hands frantically like a drowning man searching for a rope, then fell forward again before Brandon could get off another shot.
Brandon came to standing in the lee of a wide fir, lowered the night vision goggles, and confirmed the kill.
Ugly.
His hands were trembling; he felt frightfully cold all of a sudden.
Just then he heard three pops from the direction of the compound. Forty-five Magnum. It wasn’t the sheriff’s gun.
68
WALT LAY FLAT ON HIS BACK, HIS CHEST HOT WITH SEARING pain. Two of the three shots had scored; the third had narrowly missed, so close to his left ear that he’d heard its whistle. Keeping the gun aimed at the cabin door, he wiggled off his left glove and felt for his chest, his fingers worming into a hole in the Kevlar vest where the bullet was still warm. The other was embedded in his radio. The pain when he breathed was unrelenting due to a cracked rib, and it took him a moment to fully understand-to believe-he wasn’t on his way out.