Uh-oh!
That was when I realized I should have taken the car to the village to telephone the cavalry.
The inadequacy of my hiding place also hit me hard. Stretched out behind a tree, I was invisible to these two as they stood in the yard, but if they began circling the perimeter of the clearing, they would see me easily.
I backed straight up, keeping the tree between them and me. When the ground permitted, I rose to a crouch and began waddling back the way I had come as fast as I could. They would see my tracks, of course, but I had a few minutes before they found them. I intended to see if I could get back to my car before they did.
Fifty yards into the woods I began jogging toward the guard cabin. I didn’t jog far — the tree trunks, dead limbs, fallen trees, rocks, and uneven ground made it impossible. The best I could manage was a fast walk, going over, under, and around obstacles, just as I had coming from the cabin. The heel marks and boot prints in the sodden forest carpet were nearly a path by now, plainly visible. And here I was trucking along this little highway, begging for someone to shoot me.
After about four minutes of this, I stopped and shucked my hiking boots, tied them together with the strings, and put them around my neck. The wetness went through my socks instantly, nearly freezing my feet.
Trying to disturb the leaves and dirt as little as possible, I climbed up the hill away from the path at right angles. When I had gone forty feet or so, I sat down to put my boots back on. My feet were already cold — there was no way I could walk very far without the boots.
I was tying the lace on the second one when I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. A rotten log partially concealed me on that side — the side toward the guard cabin. I ducked down, huddled against it, and waited.
Perhaps a minute went by. Then he came, following the tracks. He was wearing camo clothes and carried a silenced submachine gun in his hands, the butt braced against his right hip. I could see a slender boom mike across his face; the headset was under his camo hat. He moved slowly and steadily, scanning alternately the trail, then the woods right and left.
He must have had a lot of experience in the woods, because when he came to the place where I left the trail, he recognized the footprints going away and turned toward me, still scanning. I held the pistol sights dead center on his chest as I squeezed the trigger.
CHAPTER THREE
In the silence and gloom of the forest, the shot was the loudest noise I’d ever heard.
The man I fired at dropped instantly.
I didn’t wait to see how bad he was hit. I leaped up and ran at him, the pistol at the ready.
The guy never moved. Looked to me like the bullet went right though his heart and stopped it. Stopped it dead.
The man was a stranger. He was wearing a headset that contained an earpiece and a mike. A cord led from it to a radio in a holster on his belt. I helped myself — he didn’t need it anymore.
The submachine gun was an MP-5 with a red dot sight and a silencer. It had a doubled banana clip, each side holding forty rounds.
I slapped his pockets, found another double clip, and took it, found he had a pistol and pocketed that, too. No car keys. My hair was soaked, leaking water down my forehead into my eyes, so I wiped my face on my wet sleeve, then jammed his camo hat on my head.
The radio was on, but no one was saying anything.
The heft of the MP-5 gave me a fool’s confidence. I was cold, wet, scared, and mad. I started back toward the main complex with the submachine gun braced against my hip, my thumb on the safety. The gentle mist of rain was now a drizzle.
The dude who worried me the most was the one in the ghillie suit. When you are playing with guns in the woods, the man who sees the other fellow first has a huge advantage. The ghillie suit was the ultimate in camouflage, but only if the person wearing it stayed immobile, settled in to become one with the surrounding landscape. Movement negated the value of the suit.
Nearing the clearing, I stopped behind a tree to look and listen. Took a few steps to the dubious safety of another tree and scanned everything. I crawled the last twenty yards to a large tree that gave me a view of the house and yard.
I was thanking my stars the bushes and weeds were well leafed out, providing me some cover, when a large SUV drove up the road and stopped in front of the main house. The driver didn’t turn off the engine.
“I’m here, Joe.”
This had to be the ride they were waiting for, the one that dropped the man I killed.
Flat on my belly, I eased the muzzle of the MP-5 through the bushes and settled the red dot of the sighting reticle on the driver of the vehicle. The range was perhaps a hundred yards, maybe a few yards less.
The thought of the guy in the ghillie suit stopped me from pulling the trigger. Without moving my head, I scanned everything I could see in that gloomy wet universe.
They had undoubtedly heard the pistol shot and knew their man hadn’t reported on the radio. My only edge was that they didn’t know where I was. I hoped.
The guy in the ghillie could be anywhere in the brush surrounding the clearing waiting for me to reveal my position. I had no illusions — with an MP-5, he didn’t even have to be a good shot. Any one of that clipful of 9 mm slugs he could hose at me would be quite sufficient to terminate my miserable existence.
A man in a camo suit with a weapon in his hand came out onto the porch. He looked around, then keyed the radio on his belt. “Joe?”
The silence that followed that word was pregnant.
The seconds ticked by one by one, then another male voice spoke into my ear. “This intruder must have boogied, Frank. Maybe we’d better get the hell outta here, too.”
“I never saw so much goddamn paper.” That was the man on the porch, I thought. “Take at least an hour to burn all of it in the fireplace.”
“We don’t have an hour, man.”
“Come help. We’ll set the house on fire and get the hell out of here.”
That was when a bush off to my right began to move down the hill toward the house.
The man on the porch went back inside. The driver of the SUV turned off the ignition and climbed out. He took the steps to the porch two at a time and disappeared inside.
I waited until the walking bush was nearing the porch, then eased the red dot onto him. Bracing the gun against my shoulder, I thumbed the fire selector to full automatic, then squeezed the trigger. The noise was about as loud as a .22 rifle. The weapon walked off target and I muscled it back on, then released the trigger.
The bush collapsed on the ground; his weapon fell several feet away.
I had fired about a dozen rounds, I thought. A one-second burst or a little over. I pointed the MP-5 at the porch and waited, examining windows. Perhaps I should have moved, but I was betting they didn’t know where I was. Movement might give me away.
A flicker of light showed in one of the ground-floor windows. The bastards had indeed fired the place. The fire grew quickly in intensity.
They must have used thermal grenades!
I snuggled the weapon in against my shoulder and waited. Anyone desiring to leave by SUV was going to get perforated.
They went out the back.
I didn’t see them go, but after a minute or so several of the lower windows shattered and smoke began puffing out of the upstairs windows. I didn’t think they were going to immolate themselves, so concluded they must have gone out the back and over the hill, precisely the way they had come in.
I took a deep breath and sprinted for the cover of the SUV.
That sprint would have gotten me a roster spot in the NFL. I have never run so fast in my life.