He checked his Glock one more time. Given its condition, the gun probably wasn’t accurate beyond twenty-five or thirty feet, but he had no plans to use it. He had quieter ways of eliminating his enemy. Using the weapon would mean that something had gone terribly wrong, that his mission had failed.
That was when he heard an echoed sound so soft that it almost joined with the pulsing hum of the woodlands.
He froze.
Behind him, in the forest, a leafy branch fluttered.
Fluttered in the perfectly still night air.
He rolled noiselessly, his eyes rising over the edge of the gulch like a crocodile breaking the water’s surface. He let his eyes’ focus drift, relaxing his pupils, letting in the dim shadows.
A movement on his left, low to the ground. He raised the Glock and aimed, slowly taking in the trigger slack.
The truck inside the compound rumbled to life.
“Uh-oh,” a small voice squeaked. “Boss. Where you are, boss?
Luke relaxed his trigger finger. “Damn it.”
The truck’s headlights flashed on, its beams converging on Frankie’s yellow jacket. He lit up like a candlestick.
“Down, Frankie. Get down,” Luke said in a shouted whisper.
Luke lifted his head and glanced back at the compound. A soldier was climbing into the passenger side of the truck.
“I no can see you, boss.”
Luke threw himself against the opposite embankment, showing himself to the boy. “Down on the ground, Frankie. Now!”
“No mueva!” The shouted command came from inside the compound.
The boy went bug-eyed and stared at the lights as if they were a homing beacon.
Luke heard the chain-link gate fly open with a metallic shiver, then the sound of rapid footfalls and a gun belt rubbing against the coarse fabric of a soldier’s uniform.
A single set of sounds — one man.
Luke gripped his handgun with his right hand, the ground with his left. An old habit, feeling for vibrations, but the ground was too soft and moist.
Frankie started jabbering in Spanish.
“Silencio!” the soldier shouted.
A flashlight beam swept over Luke’s position.
“Cállate!” The sentry’s clipped voice erupted in staccato bursts. “No mueva!”
The soldier’s head, then upper body, came into Luke’s field of vision. The man was sidestepping, moving in a semicircle around the boy and edging closer to Luke’s position with each step.
Luke flattened himself against the embankment.
Suddenly, the soldier brought up his M-16 and fired three quick shots into the air.
Luke swung his gun around toward the man.
A fusillade of bullets riddled the soldier’s body before Luke completed the arc. The volley lifted the man’s body and hurled it onto the ground next to Luke.
Rifle fire. It had come from the forest. What the hell is happening?
Luke leapt from his hiding spot, grabbed the downed soldier’s M-16, and lunged at Frankie, who was standing bolt upright, frozen in terror.
He tackled the boy, clutching Frankie to his chest as they fell to the ground and rolled behind a tree.
A burst of gunfire from the compound bit into a patch of dirt near them.
Luke reached around the tree and aimed his handgun at the second guard, who was crouched in a shooting stance near the gate.
He fired two rounds at the man’s chest.
The soldier’s right shoulder exploded and he fell to the ground, screaming.
The truck’s engine roared, its gears gnashing furiously.
Luke peered around the tree trunk. The truck lurched forward and made a run for the front gate. A man in civilian dress ran out of the main building and jumped into the truck bed.
A searing pain shot through Luke’s left arm just as a rifle report reached his ears. The sound came from behind them, in the forest.
He grabbed Frankie with his right arm and rolled in a violent motion toward the gully. Another bullet chewed up the dirt behind them as they tumbled into the depression.
Frankie yelped as they hit bottom.
When he put his hand over the boy’s mouth, Luke noticed that the sensation in his fourth and fifth fingers was gone. He straightened his arm and worked his grip. The muscles obeyed grudgingly. He palpated his elbow and winced when a jolt of electrical pain shot down his forearm. The bullet had grazed the outside of his elbow, damaging his ulnar nerve.
Frankie said, “Boss, I scared. What we do?”
“Stay down and crawl that way.” Luke pointed to where the gulch emptied into the culvert. “There’s a pipe that runs under a road.” He drew a circle with his hand. “Get into it and stay there.”
“I come with you.”
“No!” Luke pointed again. “Get going. Now.”
The boy scurried away.
Luke stayed put while struggling to reason through the chaos. Someone had clipped him while he was lying prone behind a tree, in darkness. They had found their mark with one shot.
Someone out there had a nightscope.
An explosion of gunfire erupted from the forest again, but this time from the other side of the road. Luke slung the dead soldier’s rifle over his shoulder and used the clatter of gunfire to follow the gully into the forest. He reached a spot where the depression narrowed and deepened, curving in an S-pattern around two large trees. Using the trees as a shield, he lifted his head to ground level, looking back at the compound.
The truck, now outside of the compound, had veered off the road and slammed into a copse of trees. Automatic rifle fire from the other side of the road ripped through the canvas tarp. The right side of the windshield shattered and glass shards glinted in the wash of the headlights.
He followed the deadly green tracers back to their sources. The firing positions were too distant to get a fix on. He thought about the type of men who killed from long distances, men who used nightscopes and worked in teams.
The searing pain in his elbow told him there was another firing team on his side of the road. The assailants had set up a crossfire solution for the compound’s only exit — or perhaps, they had figured, his only way into the facility.
The guards had not behaved like men springing a trap. They had reacted like soldiers defending their site. They were pawns caught in the crossfire.
Had the hunters been waiting for him? That seemed impossible. He hadn’t known he’d be coming here until hours ago. More likely, they had followed him from Mayakital, and he’d made it all too easy. He had marched through the jungle without bothering to circle back or cover his tracks.
The gunfire stopped. In his mind’s eye he saw men scanning the forest — their world alight with ghostly green images — searching for their target. The shooters on his side of the road would hold their fire, not wanting to give away their position.
Did these men know something about the man they were hunting?
A lethal darkness boiled in Luke’s mind. His pulse slowed. His breathing quieted.
He let the demons take hold of him.
He rubbed his hands in the wet soil and rubbed it over his face and arms. His breaths came in a whisper as he sifted and filtered each sound, each smell, until only those made by humans would reach his senses.
The hunters probably expected him to either run or press the fight, so instead he waited, crouched in a hollow of earth between two enormous tree trunks protruding from one side of the gulch.
He didn’t have to wait long. He almost missed the sound when a monkey squealed overhead.
A boot lifting from the mud.
Seconds passed before he heard a twig strain under the weight of a footfall. It was barely a wisp — the sound ending too suddenly — a skilled tracker interrupting his step in mid-stride, revealing himself with his agility.