Ever Onward (54 page)

Swan removed his pack. “All of you
wait here. I’ll check out downstream first. Down one side, up the
other. If I don’t find anything in a quarter mile, all of us will
go on up together.”

Cozens shrugged. “Fine by me. Just
don’t take too fucking long, Nose, we only got a few hours of light
left.”

As Swan moved down the stream, Cozens
called after him. “Sure you don’t want to take Lions the Great
Pussy Sniffer with you?”

Behind the burly sergeant’s
back, Lions gave him the finger.

It was an hour before sundown by the
time Jenny reached the cabin. Soaked and chilled to the bone from
following the stream, she’d been about to give up when two of the
Desperadoes found her. Kitty Pranks and Sally Chisolm had gone to
the stream to bath. While splashing in an icy pool, Jenny suddenly
appeared. Trembling and babbling something about a one-eyed killer,
they had taken her to the cabin. Shirley Bates gave her two Valium
while Kitty took her blood-stained clothes out to be washed.
Wrapped in a blanket and placed before the roaring fireplace,
Jenny’s story slowly became more coherent.

All there listened as she described
the bloodbath. When she came to the part about the one-eyed man
shooting Donald Paxton, a low rumble of hatred filled the room.
Phil Chalker and Mark Sandorf instinctively reached for their
weapons. Lt. Sam Waterton’s quiet voice broke the ancient
spell.

“Hold on. We can’t just rush off with
guns blazing.”

Mark met the ex-soldier’s gaze. “We
can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

Most of the other men who had crowded
into the room rumbled agreement.

“We can think this through”, Sam
replied. “It’ll be dark soon. They’ll either be long gone or
waiting for you. Either way Don and the others will still be dead.
It won’t help any if you join them.”

Mark sighed in frustration. “Well, I
wish to Hell that Des and Nate were back. We gotta do something,
for Christ’s sake!”

Sam placed a friendly hand on the
man’s shoulder. “We will do something, but first we have to know
what we face. Find out their strengths and weaknesses.”

“More ‘planning’!”, Mark hissed,
clearly unwilling to wait.

“It’s Sam’s planning that’s kept us
alive so far,” Shirley Bates said, her thin face flushed with
anger. Marla Stevens moved up beside Shirley and nodded
agreement.

“She’s right, Mark,” Sanjo
Delacarla said. “Sam’s ideas have helped us plenty. Besides, we
should at least wait for Des and Nate to come back. Hell, there’s
less than a dozen of us here now.”

As the debate continued, outside
Private Gerald ‘The Nose’ Swan quietly slipped back through the
trees to where Sergeant Cozens and the others waited. Behind him a
body lay slumped beside the barn.

“Well?”, Cozens grunted.

Swan gave him the thumbs up sign. “She
led us right to them. Big cabin and several outbuildings. Chickens,
goats. Christ, I even saw a pig.”

“Fuck the pigs! How many
men?”

Swan shrugged. “Ten, twelve. Hard to
tell. Lights fading and there was a guy down by the
barn.”

“’
Was’?”

Swan shrugged again. “He surprised me.
Actually we surprised each other. I had to knife him.”

“Shit!”, Cozens growled. “I was hoping
we could take them here and now!”

Lions’ high voice butted in. “Five of
us, a dozen of them. Poor odds, Sarge. I think...”

Cozens silenced him with a cold glare.
In the lengthening shadows the burly sergeant made his decision.
“Swan, get us back down to the others double quick. We’ll let
Heller and that one-eyed bastard work this out.”

Swan, Cozens and his men were halfway
back down when Des, Nate and the rest of the Desperadoes, coming up
the opposite side of the mountain, arrived at the cabin. Just
moments ago the dead guard had been found. Josh and his crew, all
crowded into the LAV, were momentarily ignored as the news of the
killings was retold.

“This one-eyed man,” Josh asked a few
minutes later. “Was he tall, black haired and scarred?”

“So Jenny says,” Des replied. “You
think he’s the same fella you’re after?”

Josh didn’t bother to reply. Instead
he stood at the window gazing out at the fading sunset. Flame moved
to his side. Jessie sat on the cabin’s front steps scratching the
hound’s ears. Nate, Cobb and Sam Waterford were talking quietly off
to one side. Cobb walked over to Josh, Nate and Sam
following.

“Doesn’t look good, Josh,” Cobb said.
“The dead guard means this place is compromised. Come first light,
they’ll be swarming all over us.”

“It’s him, Cobb. I can feel it.” There
was an intensity in Josh’s voice that Cobb hadn’t heard since he
left the Special Forces. Lot’s of boys back then had a real narrow
version of the world --- mainly ‘revenge at all costs’.

“It probably is him”, Cobb replied.
“That still doesn’t change the fact that this place is a
death-trap.”

“I agree” Josh said coldly. “But for
us or for him?”

Cobb shrugged. “That depends on how
many hit us and how good this here group is.”

“Damned good,” Nate grinned, slapping
Cobb good-naturedly on the back. “We were good before Sam came.
We’re twice as good now.”

Chapter
42
:
‘OVERKILL’

Los
Padres National Forest

Sierra
Madre Mts.

California, May
9
^th

Later that evening, Greta, monitoring
the radio in the LAV, had overheard Scar and Heller calling up the
rest of their troops. This news had been passed on to Josh and the
other leaders who had quickly decided it best to cancel the ambush
they were planning for the morning and beat a hasty withdrawal
instead. Cobb and Jessie were chosen to act as rear guards. Taking
only water and extra amo, those two headed down the stream to setup
a delaying action. Back at the cabin some of the Desperadoes were
less than pleased with the withdrawal.

“So that’s it?”, Phil Chalker
demanded. “We just turn tail and run?”

Phil’s friend, Mark Sandorf, glared at
Sam. “What about your big words about making them pay for what they
did to Don Paxton and his group?!”

Sam ran his hand through his curly
hair. “When there was just a few of them, Mark, we stood a chance.
As long as they stayed on the trail, we could contain them. But
now, with over a hundred troops and heavy weapons...”

Just then Eddy burst in, a
walkie-talkie in his hand. “Jess and Cobb both say they have to
pull back. There’s way too many moving up at once.” As though to
drive home the point, the sound of distant shots reached
them.

“Where’s Des?” Jenny Simpson demanded.
“You can’t let that one-eyed bastard kill him too!” Her eyes were
wide, her voice near panic. Faith Cummings left her father’s side
and took Jenny’s hand.

“Des will be alright, Jen. He’s out
back with the others getting the trucks loaded. We’re all going to
leave together.”

An explosion suddenly rattled the
windows in the cabin. Dirt spattered off the glass. Flame moved
towards the door and met Cobb taking the steps two at a
time.

“Some heavy shit coming down,” she
said.

“Real heavy,” Cobb replied. “Mortars.”
He turned to Josh. “They’ll be trying to outflank us.”

“Time to go, folks,” Josh
said.

Faith went to help her father rise
from his chair. The old man, his arthritic hands clutching a
double-barreled shotgun, shook his head. “You go along now, Faith.
I’ll be staying here a spell.”

Faith looked down at her father with
uncomprehending eyes. “But Dad, we have to go now! They’ll be here
any minute!”

George Cumming’s looked up at his
daughter, his lined face set in a determined grimace. “I’m tired of
the pain, Faith. I came up here for one last look at the mountains.
I’ve seen them. Now I just want it to end.”

Tears coursing down her cheeks, Faith
knelt by her father’s side, her hand seeking his. “I know about
your legs, Dad. I’ve know for a year.”

George stiffened, then squeezed her
hand. “Then you also know that I can’t last much longer. You go
now, Faith. I’ll be just fine here.”

“Nooooo!”, she cried. Jenny and Flame
pulled her to her feet.

“Let it go, girl,” Flame said. “It’s
the way he wants it.”

Suddenly standing straight,
Faith took a deep breath, bent forward and kissed her father’s
brow, then let the two women to lead her out the back door. Nate,
his flippant manner uncharacteristically absent, strode over to his
old friend. “Give ‘em hell, George.” His voice broke as a single
tear tricked down his weathered cheek. George nodded, tears of his
own now watering his pain-wracked eyes. Biting his lip, Nate
offered the chairbound man his hand. They shook in silence, then
Nate followed the others out to the waiting
trucks.

It had been a classic flanking move.
Heller’s group kept the defenders busy while Scar and his men moved
in from both sides. Across the clearing Sergeant Salzin’s boys were
even now raking the trucks.

“They’re making a break for it,
Captain!”

Scar glanced at Lieutenant MacBean,
then nodded to Goldberg. Bracing the heavy caliber machinegun on
his hip, the sergeant cut loose at the cluster of people running
for the trucks. Several went down right away. Others dove for
cover. Then Scar’s mortar team opened up. First one truck exploded,
then another. Screams filled the air. One body, engulfed in flames,
staggered about like a wind-up toy run amuck. As it shuffled
towards him, Scar raised his automatic and shot three
times.

“Fucking perfect,” Scar muttered to
himself.

Suddenly Goldberg was flung backwards,
his 50. smoking yet silent. Scar saw a small hole in Goldberg’s
forehead. The back of the head was missing. As he watched, a red
dot appeared on the back of his radioman’s neck. A second later the
man toppled over. Scar swore and flung himself to the ground. Hot
led sizzled by just inches from his ear. Behind him the second
member of his mortar team was struck in the chest.

Cobb slung his rifle and sprinted for
the LAV, cursing the luck that had caused him to miss Scar. Bobby
Stewart already had the large diesel motor revving. Enrico was
spraying tracer bullets all around the corpse-laden clearing. Two
of the six trucks owned by the Desperadoes were already racing down
the trail. The four others were in flames. Eddy grabbed Cob’s
outstretched arm and helped him scramble in the hatch. Flame and
Jessie fired through the smoke.

“Cutting it close, Sport!”, Eddy
yelled, slamming the heavy door. The hound, Og, gave Cobb a lick.
Flame planted a wet one of her own on his smoke-smeared
face.

“I saw what you did back there,” she
beamed. “Pretty damned stupid.”

Cobb shrugged and moved into the main
section. From overhead the thunder of the 50. caliber had ceased.
Jenny and Faith were crowded together in one corner. Nate sat with
the others. Josh stood hunched over Gretta at the radar
table.

“How’s it look?”, Cobb
asked.

Josh frowned. “Not good. Only two
trucks got out.”

Cobb remained silent for several
moments. When he did speak, anger seeped through. “I had him in my
sights.”

“And...?”

“The bastard moved.”

Josh’s gaze flicked to the dark haired
man, then back to the greenish screen.

“Next time,” he said, the
words more a silent prayer than a spoken
statement.

“I’ll ask you once more, old man;
where were they going?”

George Cummings, his gnarled hands
bound behind him, sat defiantly in the same chair his daughter had
last seen him in. Blood tricked off his chin and one eye was
swollen shut. The shotgun lay at his feet. He’d killed the first
two through the door. Scar had been the third.

“Go to hell!”, George spat.

On a nod from Scar, Private Lions
slammed his rifle butt into the old man’s stomach. George doubled
over and would have fallen except that Sergeant Cozens and another
soldier held him fast. Grinning like an idiot, Lions moved in for
another go. Scar stopped him with a raised hand. “Drag that table
over here.”

As the table was pulled into place,
Scar slowly drew a heavy survival knife. The long serrated blade
glittered in the fading light. “Place his hand on the table,
fingers wide.” As Cozens and Lions did as they were bid, Scar’s
face stretched into a hideous smile. “I want their names and I want
to know where they were going. And old man, sooner or later I
always get what I want.”

George snorted. “Do your worst,
Scab-Face. I’m past caring. But you’ll care. When that fella Josh
catches up with you, you’ll care one Hell of a lot!”

The glittering blade hovered over
George’s arthritic fingers. “Who is this ‘Josh’?”

George glared back defiantly. “Someone
that’s come a long way to find you. From back east; a little place
called Hawthorn. Heard of it?”