Dark Titan Journey: Finally Home (27 page)

The man motioned with his head to his right. Nathan looked to the right and saw a small camp. There was a two-foot-long, one-foot-tall box with a three-foot antenna sticking out the top. At the very top of the antenna were three evenly spaced prongs, each a foot long with a ball on each end. Nathan noticed there was a computer tablet connected to the box with a thick cable.

The box and tablet looked blocky, and Nathan realized they were ruggedized, but the cable didn’t look like it came off the box. Nathan looked at the tablet and could see red dots overlaid with white. Then he noticed the tablet had geometric circles radiating from the center.

Nathan walked back to the man. “What’s the code?”

“Seven, four, four, one” the man gasped.

“When will your friends be here?” Nathan asked, kneeling down on the man’s chest.

“They should be on their way when they heard the shots. You won’t be alive much longer,” the man said, smiling.

“Longer than you,” Nathan said, pulling out his knife and running it across the man’s throat. Blood shot up like a fountain, soaking Nathan and Ares. The man gasped, trying to breathe, as Nathan stood up and Ares let the man’s wrist go. Nathan stood over him till his last gasp escaped.

Turning around Nathan started running back down the hill. “Ares, come,” he snapped. Ares bounded past him as Nathan ran over the crest to see everyone gathered around two small figures on the ground. “No!” shouted, sprinting forward. When he reached the bottom he lost his balance and crashed on his face. Rolling back up, Nathan ran to the group.

Jasmine turned to see a blood-soaked Nathan and Ares running at them. “Nathan!” she screamed, and ran at him.

Nathan didn’t stop as she reached him, he just ran around her. Stopping by the kneeling group, Nathan saw Amanda laid out, groaning, with Casey beside her, crying. Athena had her head on Amanda’s legs as Nathan knelt beside them and started running his hands over them. “Nathan!” Jasmine yelled.

Looking up at her, Jasmine grabbed his face. “Their vests stopped the rounds, relax,” she said in a calm but shaking voice.

Nathan closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Ares got shot. Bandage it while I look them over.”

Amanda lifted her head up. “They shot Ares?!”

“He’s fine, it only grazed him,” Nathan said, lifting off her vest. Lifting up her t-shirt, Nathan saw a huge bruise covering the right side of her chest. “Bring my pack, Tom. John, they have friends close. Get the sniper rifle and get to the hilltop.”

As they left, Nathan moved over to Casey. Natalie had her head resting in her lap. In a moment of panic, Nathan looked around for Emma. He found her lying where he left her, beside the water trough with Chip beside her, holding her tightly as she cried. Taking a deep breath, Nathan looked Casey over. Raising her camo jacket, Nathan undid her vest and lifted it up. Not seeing anything on her chest or belly, he eased her arms out of her backpack and slowly rolled her.

Nathan could see where the rifle round passed through the pack, and at the bottom of Casey’s ribs on her right side was a massive bruise. “What?” Nathan gasped.

Natalie looked up at him with tears streaming down her face. “What is it?”

Not answering, Nathan pulled the pack out from under Casey and rolled her back gently. He opened the pack and saw the ballistic plates he had given Amanda. Nathan dropped the pack and leaned over, kissing Casey. “You girls are so smart,” Nathan said as Tom dropped his pack.

Nathan dug out his first aid kit, pulling out his stethoscope. He examined both girls quickly, then looked up as Jasmine and Ares walked up. “Ares is fine. I’m going to need to sew it up soon, though,” Jasmine said, looking at the girls. “We need to move before the others get here.”

“No, they will catch us. We will wait for them,” Nathan said. “Amanda has some broken ribs and a contusion on her lung, but thankfully she is breathing well. Casey has a lower broken rib and I’m guessing a liver laceration. I don’t know how big, but her pulse and blood pressure are fine for now. I want you and Natalie to carry them gently over to the barn till that asshole’s friends get here.”

“Nathan,” Jasmine started to say, and Nathan looked at her with tears running down his face.

“Jasmine, not now. Just do what I asked. I’m sure they’re close by now,” Nathan said, trotting back up the hill toward John. He found John lying out on the crest of the hill, looking south through the spotting scope.

“Vehicle coming,” John said as Nathan knelt beside him.

“How far out?” Nathan asked, barely making out the vehicle.

“About three thousand yards. They are driving at a really slow pace. They left that house you see across the valley,” John said.

“Let me know when they are a mile out,” Nathan said, crawling back down toward the dead man and his camp. When the crest of the hill blocked him from view, Nathan stood up and stepped over the dead man. He walked over to the weird box and saw the screen of the tablet. The dots were still on the left side of the screen, but a red dot with a white overlay was nearing the center of the screen. Then at the very bottom of the screen, Nathan noticed a bright white dot slowly moving toward the center.

Furrowing his brow, Nathan sped up to investigate. When he was three feet from the screen, the dot in the middle of the screen disappeared. “Huh,” Nathan said, reaching for the screen but stopped. He stepped back two steps and the dot at the center of the screen came back.

“What the shit?” Nathan gasped, and looked behind him to see John still looking through the spotting scope. Looking back at the screen, Nathan noticed a dot near the dot that had disappeared. Picking up the tablet, Nathan studied the screen and noticed the red and white dots moving around. The moving dots were just inside one of the circles. They moved away slowly and stopped. At first there were seven, but as Nathan watched, one of the red and white dots became two. One was still red and white but the one left behind was solid white.

The tablet wasn’t a true tablet. It was square, not rectangular, with a twenty-four by twenty-four inch screen. Nathan looked at the edges of the tablet. At the top where the cable entered from the box with the antenna was a big N. Then on each side he saw W and E, and at the bottom was S. “Holy shit,” Nathan gasped, looking at the bottom of the screen, seeing the white dot still at the edge but moving toward the center. “John, is the vehicle still coming from the south?” Nathan asked.

“Yeah, but the road is really twisting. It’s some kind of dune buggy. I can see two people inside,” John said.

Nathan studied the circles on the screen, counting thirty-four ever-expanding circles. The white dot was just crossing the nineteenth circle. “John, are they just outside of two thousand yards now?” Nathan asked.

“Yeah, how did you know?” John asked without taking his eye off the spotting scope.

Nathan watched the white dot. “They just turned a little left, heading northeast,” he said, and John looked back at Nathan, who was staring at the screen. “Now they just turned back north.”

John looked back to see the vehicle was now back heading toward them. “What the hell are you looking at?”

“Some real Star Trek shit,” Nathan mumbled, then looked at the red and white dot near the center where the other dot disappeared. “John, I want you to crawl back some and come toward me.”

Leaving the spotting scope, John grabbed the sniper rifle, crawling back, and Nathan almost shit seeing the red and white dot move toward the center. “Okay, that’s good. Get back on the scope,” Nathan said. Looking up from the screen, Nathan looked around them. He could see where tires had rolled up toward the camp.

Dropping the tablet, Nathan ran over to the dead man and pulled the body over to the box. As he did this, Nathan only saw one dot move toward the center of the screen. He sat the body up and propped it up, putting the screen in the dead man’s lap. He ran to the top of the hill, grapping the dead man’s rifle.

Running back to the propped-up body, Nathan looked the rifle over, seeing it was an M-14. He took out the magazine and set the weapon beside the body. He grabbed the dead man’s hat and sat it on his head to cover up where Ares had grabbed the back of the neck.

Spinning around, Nathan ran up the hill, then crawled up beside John. “They are going to go around the back of the hill to our right and come up the little draw to the camp here. When they get out, I want you to shoot the driver in the face. I will take care of the passenger. Don’t shoot till both are out.”

John looked over at Nathan with awe and a little trepidation. “Are you a Jedi?”

“No I’ll explain later. If they don’t get out, shoot the driver when I shoot the passenger,” Nathan said as he lined up, pointing his body down the hill, looking at the camp and the base of the hill.

John slowly moved till he was facing the same way Nathan was. Now that he couldn’t see over the hill, John was getting worried in case they followed the road to the others. Seeing Nathan move, John watched him aim at the dead man, looking through the scope on his M-4.

“They just turned off the road,” Nathan said, moving his rifle away from the dead man.

Feeling like he was lying beside a Jedi, John nodded and brought his eye to the scope of the sniper rifle. It was only a few minutes before he saw the dune buggy come out of the draw a hundred yards away. It continued toward the dead man and stopped about thirty yards from the dead man and sixty yards from John and Nathan.

When the two got out, the driver’s face filled John’s scope. Taking a deep breath, John let out half his breath, and when he saw the passenger step out, he closed his left eye. When the crosshairs sat right under the driver’s nose, John slowly squeezed the trigger. The buckle and suppressed bark surprised him as the gun fired.

The driver’s head vanished in a pink mist as John heard Nathan’s M-4 cough three times. Seeing a blur pass his scope, John looked up to see Nathan barreling down the hillside. Seeing movement and hearing screaming beside the buggy, John lowered his head down to see the passenger holding his bloody knees.

When the screaming man looked up and noticed Nathan running at him, Nathan was less than ten yards away. The screamer reached to his holster as Nathan leapt in the air and came down on the screamer’s chest. With no air in his body and the blow to the chest, screamer was stunned.

Balling his fist, Nathan dropped down, hitting the dazed man in the temple, knocking him out cold. Working fast, Nathan stripped him down as John came running up behind him. “Get the other one stripped down naked and bring me his belt,” Nathan said, sitting the unconscious man up next to the dune buggy. Spreading the man’s arms out, Nathan tied him to the frame of the buggy.

When John came back over with the other man’s belt, he saw the naked man tied to the buggy and Nathan wrapping a belt above his left knee, making a tourniquet. Then Nathan took the belt out of John’s hand, making another on the right above the knee.

John looked at the man’s knees, seeing both had been blown out with Nathan’s shots. Neither was bleeding now with the tourniquets on. “John, go check on the others,” Nathan said.

“Nathan, I need to stay on watch,” John objected.

Nathan pointed over at the dead man. “Nothing is within two miles of us.”

“What?” John said, looking at the dead man with a computer tablet in his lap.

“Just check on them. Tell Jasmine to suture up Ares, and make the girls drink lots of fluid. I want you to check their pulse and blood pressure just like I taught you. Then come back here,” Nathan said slowly.

“Okay, Nathan,” John said, running back up the hill.

Watching John run over the hill, Nathan took out a small notebook and wrote down what he had learned so far from the box and the dead man’s code. Standing up, Nathan looked inside the buggy and noticed some gear in the back. Walking around the buggy, Nathan saw a box where the engine should be.

Looking at the rear of the vehicle, Nathan saw the box went from the back to just behind the seats. A third seat was over the box at a gun position on the roof. Nathan went to the driver’s side and saw a key. He turned it but didn’t hear an engine start, but the dashboard lights came on.

Climbing in, Nathan put the buggy in drive and tapped the gas. The buggy eased forward a few inches and Nathan hit the brake. Looking at the controls, Nathan saw several switches. One said “bat/eng,” with the switch flipped to bat. Nathan flipped the switch and the dashboard lights died.

Seeing a button beside the key, Nathan pushed it and heard a very subdued engine behind him. The lights came on, along with a display reading voltage. With the buggy still in drive, Nathan tapped the pedal and the buggy eased forward, but the engine noise didn’t change. Hearing screaming from the passenger side, he drove over beside the first dead man. Nathan hit the brake and turned the key off, hearing the motor turn off.

Nathan climbed out and walked around to the man tied to the buggy. His legs were pointing to the back of the buggy where Nathan had dragged him around. “Damn, I forgot about you, boy,” Nathan said, walking over to the dead man with the tablet. Taking the tablet, Nathan kicked the corpse over and dug in his pockets. Finding what he was looking for, Nathan walked over to the moaning man.

Taking out his digital camera, Nathan hit video and record as he knelt down in front of the man tied to the buggy. Nathan held up a credential billfold with a badge and ID card. “Hi, Lonny,” Nathan said. “I have no idea what level nine is but it must mean some shit. Your friends are only level three.”

As Nathan set the camera down, aiming it at Lonny, he quit moaning and gritted his teeth. “I’m going to kill you and everyone you know.”

Seeing the look on Lonny’s face, Nathan fell back, laughing. As Nathan slowly came back to his knees, Lonny had a very frightened expression on his face. “Lonny, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re tied up and I’m not. Your buddies are dead and I have a sharp knife, lighter fluid, and time to kill.”

Lonny started panting as he stared at Nathan. “Just leave me then, I’ll call it even.”

“Oh, just a few seconds ago you wanted to kill everyone I know. No you are going to talk. It’s your choice how you do it. If I help, you won’t like it,” Nathan said.