The End Game (37 page)

66

I couldn’t worry about that right now. I had enough to deal with here. And the sooner I cleared this kill zone, the sooner I could start figuring out how to deal with the new threat.

I used the stock of my carbine to smash through the window closest to me, then I chucked in another flashbang. Between four walls, its effect was much more potent this time and I charged in after it, loosing quick bursts left and right. And hitting nothing.

The space was empty. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness. I was in a large, open area, typical of an old log cabin, with a large fireplace as its central focal point and six-point buck heads staring down from the bare wood walls. I scanned around, looking for signs of life, but saw and heard nothing. I sensed the cabin was empty—it didn’t offer enough cover to make tactical sense to remain in it. The forest outside was a much better option. Still, I advanced cautiously, if quickly, swinging my weapon from side to side, my senses alert to any disturbance. I was all the way across to the opposite side of the cabin, the side of the other shooter, when I heard a rustling outside. I rushed to the side of the window and slammed against the wall just as something crashed through the glass and flew into the room.

They’d wanted to draw me into the cabin all along. That was their kill zone. And now that I was inside, one of the bastards had just fired a grenade launcher at me.

The lead SUV veered off the main road and bounced onto the trail that led up to the cabin, its big tires kicking up a spray of slush onto the windshield of the second vehicle, which was right on its tail.

It accelerated uphill, its powerful engine propelling it up the gentle slope with ease, and about twenty yards before the trail veered right around a large rock outcropping, its tires suddenly hit something and shredded to bits, causing the heavy car to crater into the ground and come to a shuddering halt.

The driver of the SUV behind it, his vision already hampered by the slush flying onto his windshield, didn’t have enough time to react and just plowed into the back of the lead vehicle, hard.

Which was about when the gunfire started.

I didn’t think. I just reacted.

Pure instinct, zero lag time. Just neurons firing an instantaneous reflexive order and muscles reacting without hesitation.

I launched myself through the glass of the window shoulder first and was airborne when the blast tore through the space behind me.

I hit the porch hard, curled into a roll, my ears and my skull reeling from the explosion, but I couldn’t let it affect me just yet—I needed my senses to function for just a second or two more; I needed to push away the heaviness and the ringing and the blurred vision and just focus every nerve ending I could muster to lock onto my target while he was within striking range and before he could get a shot off at me.

I caught him at the edge of my perception, a wraith with a white face and dark camo gear, and my arms somehow managed to bring the carbine up and line it up on him and my finger pulled back on the trigger as I aligned the red dot of the CCO sight on his chest. He staggered back as my three-round burst punched into him and dropped out of sight just as I rolled onto my back and shut my eyes to try and recalibrate my senses.

The whine in my ears was manageable—I’d had worse—and I guess the helmet had helped dampen the full brunt of the blast on the insides of my skull. I stayed like that for a few long seconds, breathing in, letting the blood rush around and reboot my shocked operating system.

I hit my comms and said, “Kurt?” but there was no answer.

I called out again, but nothing came back.

I pulled the transmitter out of its shoulder pouch and checked it. It was cracked. I switched it on and off, tried again, and got nothing. My heavy landing must have busted it.

I was on my own.

I pushed myself back on my feet and, hugging the log wall, I crept to the back of the cabin and the forest beyond.

I still had maybe one shooter out there, then there was Roos.

I scanned left, right, couldn’t see any movement. The ground rose away from the cabin in undulating hillocks and the tree cover was dense, some of it with good visibility in the case of the deciduous oaks and maples, other parts much darker under the evergreen firs, spruces and beeches. The snow cover was accordingly irregular and patchy: thicker and whiter where the leaves above were bare, and thin to nonexistent where the canopy was forbidding. More flakes were falling, though, and they were getting meatier.

Then I spotted something: tracks, in the messy scree around the base of the porch. Boot prints, one pair, leading away from the cabin, into the forest.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Roos had only brought ten men with him and not eleven.

Ten, a round number. An excessive one, if you asked me. I mean, I really didn’t think I merited that much of an effort. Eleven—that was just overkill.

I checked my carbine, slammed in a fresh clip just in case, and headed out.

I’d barely taken a step when distant machine gun bursts cut through the silence, angry, intense volleys echoing out from behind me. In that split second, I noticed a flash of movement, a shift of tones, a silhouette that was darker than its backdrop of leaves and branches, about thirty yards ahead of me, high up. I dropped to one knee and brought the M4 up just as several bullets cut through the space my upper body had been occupying and slammed into the logs behind me.

I squeezed the trigger, and the silhouette jerked before dropping thirty feet to the ground. He’d been waiting for me, up in a tree stand.

There had been eleven after all.

I was pretty sure Roos was now on his own.

And I was coming for him.

Deutsch let rip with full dedication.

She’d set up the spike strips at the end of first relatively straight stretch of trail, before it swept gently right around a large rock outcropping that served to shield her parked Crown Vic and to offer her a great vantage point from which to unleash her assault.

She knew what she was facing, but it didn’t worry her. She was committed, and she was ready. She was kitted out in helmet, ballistic vest, comms; she had the M4 carbine with its suppressor in place and its laser sight ready and she’d laid out her gear within easy reach around: five extra magazines, flashbangs, a fully loaded handgun, even the big knife.

Everything she needed to maximize the kill.

She started firing mere seconds after the long metal barbs of spike strips had shredded the SUV’s tires, just as the vehicles were immobile, before the doors even cracked open. She wasn’t off to one side but was almost in front of the cars, at a slight angle perhaps, which allowed her to cover both sides of the vehicles. Anyone trying to get out from either side would be within her reach.

She started with the two men in the front seats of the front car, moved to the two in the front of the rear vehicle, then came back to the front car and its back seat passengers before returning to the rear vehicle and the final two targets.

Thirty rounds per clip, three-round bursts, ten bursts per clip. Ten different targets, ten chances to take out an enemy. Six clips, one hundred and eighty rounds, sixty chances to take out the eight targets. If she connected with one out of seven bursts, if one out of twenty-one bullets managed to find its mark, they were all out of play.

Her mind was clear, her focus full, her aim true. With each red dot aligning on a target, with each pull of her trigger, she thought of Nick Aparo and nothing else. With each splatter of blood, she thought about what men like these had done to him. She allowed no other thought any breathing space, none whatsoever. She was just fully, totally, exclusively committed to wiping out each and every one of those sons of bitches that appeared in her sights.

The last two required a little more effort. She had to use stun grenades to rattle and tame them, had to come out from her cover and climb down to the kill zone and execute them at closer range. She didn’t mind it, though. It was what she was there to do. And after it was all done, after all eight of them had taken their last breath, a voice cut in and intruded on her serenity.

Kurt was hailing her through her earbud. “Annie?”

He needed to call for her twice before she responded. “What?”

“Annie, I can’t reach Reilly. I can’t see him either.”

Her mind folded itself back into reality and she started moving towards her car. “When did you last hear from him?”

“About ten minutes ago. Then we heard that explosion.”

“I know,” she said as she reached her car. “I heard it too.”

“He might need help,” Kurt said.

“I’m heading up there now,” Deutsch said as she slammed the car into gear and floored it.

67

It was eerie and uncomfortable.

It was also slow going. Very, very slow going.

Making my way up the mountain wasn’t easy. Loose footings, boulder fields, slippery rock outcroppings, and the snow, heavy and damp on the ground, in patches of irregular thickness and consistency. It wasn’t too easy to see either, what with the continuous snowfall layering a ghostly veil on it all.

It was desolate and quiet, the bare trees and the rough terrain giving it a grim, otherworldly feel, the dense evergreens then changing it into one that was brooding and mysterious. I knew the area was teeming with wildlife, and the multiple tree rubbings I saw confirmed it. But I didn’t see any bears, deer or elk. Not even a turkey. The only wildlife up here right now seemed to be two predators who were out hunting each other. It was as if the rest of the animal kingdom had vacated the mountain to give our confrontation plenty of room to play itself out. Maybe the blasts and the gunfire had just scared them off. Or maybe they knew better and didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire.

My senses, still jarred by the grenade’s blast, were doing their best to cut through the haze and stay focused, to try and pick out the tiniest movement, the smallest sound.

Roos was out here, somewhere.

This was his territory.

It was where he hunted, and the realization made every step I took more hesitant.

He knew these woods. I didn’t. But I wasn’t leaving here till I found him.

Roos huddled under the blind he’d built at the mouth of the rock tunnel, listening intently as he scanned ahead for any sign of Reilly.

He didn’t have to worry about his back. He knew Reilly would be coming up the mountain. All he had to do was wait. Then he’d just pick him off and make his way back to civilization.

Waiting for a kill wasn’t new to Roos. Far from it. He was a natural hunter, a talent his father had spotted and helped nurture ever since Roos was a young boy. Stalking prey, whether on land or at sea, was a feeling he was very familiar with, a hobby he enjoyed greatly, and one he’d been able to indulge to his heart’s delight ever since his father, a successful dentist who’d ridden the popularity surge of orthodontics in the mid-70s, had bought that huge piece of land for a song after Hurricane Camille had savagely devastated the area in 1969. An only child, Roos had inherited the lodge from his father after the man had died prematurely from a heart attack almost ten years to the day after buying it.

He’d put it to good use, for all kinds of hunts.

Over the years, Roos had built many blinds across his property. Nature provided a lot of the materials that made the best blinds: trees torn down during heavy storms, densely leaved branches from conifers, large boulders to tuck in against. He’d build them early in the season, give the animals time to get used to them. Then he’d go up and spend hours huddled inside them, watching, waiting—making sure no noise and no smell scared off his prey. Then they would appear, out of the trees, oblivious to the danger he posed. There was nothing more satisfying than watching a bull elk or a white-tailed doe walk by, mere feet way, so close he could reach out and touch them. Observing them at eye level, stretching out the time before the kill as long as he could, toying with their lives before he took them away.

Those same emotions were channeling through him now, only it wasn’t a bear or a buck he was waiting for.

He sensed something in the distance and slunk lower, slowly, carefully.

Movement, through the thin, white haze down the mountain.

He flattened himself completely and calmed his breathing. He knew from hunting hungry bucks how crucial it was to remain quiet and immobile. The smallest sound, the minutest movement, could spook his prey.

He looked out intently through the light snowfall, then adjusted his rifle and peered through its scope.

A lone figure was making its way closer to him, headed in his direction. Taking slow, hesitant steps. A dark silhouette against the white backdrop, disappearing in and out from behind the army of bare chestnut oaks that dotted the hillside.

As the figure got nearer, his concentration deepened. He could sense the imminent kill, intoxicated by the endorphins that were rushing through him in anticipation. God, he loved a good hunt, and this one would cap them all.

And then he got a glimpse of his quarry’s face and his pulse spiked and flushed his euphoria away.

It wasn’t Reilly.

It was a woman.

Annie Deutsch advanced cautiously as she made her way up the mountain.

She hadn’t found Reilly in the charred cabin, hadn’t seen any sign of him outside. She’d seen Tomblin’s body in his chewed-up SUV before stumbling upon a dead shooter by the side of the cabin and she figured Reilly had gone up the mountain, tracking his prey. She also figured two guns would be better than one.

She wasn’t comfortable out here. She was a city girl through and through and hadn’t spent much time out in the wilderness. She’d skied in Vermont a couple of times, years ago, at the insistence of a college boyfriend, but apart from that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in such an alien landscape.

It was a shame, she thought. It did possess undeniable beauty, and she could understand why people made the effort to get away to places like this. But right now, that appeal was completely wasted. All she could see around her was suffering and death.

She stopped for a moment, looked around. Nothing but bare trees, boulder fields, a couple of large rock outcroppings, and snow. A cold, bleak canvas of white and various shades of grey, punctuated by the occasional dash of dark green from some mountain laurel or a huckleberry shrub.

She couldn’t see any sign of life. She wished she could call out to Reilly, make sure he was still alive—make sure she wasn’t the one being stalked. But she couldn’t.

Instead, she just panned left and right, made sure she wasn’t missing anything, and continued on up, her mind picking out the large outcropping on the ridge to her right as a heading to follow.

Roos watched the woman get closer and closer.

She was fifteen yards away and closing. He had her in his crosshairs now. One gentle pull on his trigger and she’d drop to the ground without knowing what hit her.

He held his breath, adjusted his aim. At this distance, in these conditions, it was an easy shot. Almost unsportsmanlike. No challenge whatsoever. It was also almost unfair. Does and bucks had highly tuned senses. They could see, hear and smell even the slightest of clues. This woman was, by comparison, like an astronaut in full gear. Slow, lumbering, strained. Incomparable. He’d be able to call out to her, wave at her and ask for her name before he pulled the trigger, and he’d still drop her.

But then, he didn’t think killing her would be a wise move.

She’d be dead, no question. But the shot would ring out across the woods, and Reilly would know where he was. He’d need to try and make his way to another blind before Reilly spotted him. Staying in this one and using the dead woman as bait was too dangerous. Reilly would anticipate that move. And no matter what, he’d still have Reilly out there, on the loose, stalking him.

No, killing her now would be a mistake. He had a far better use for her. Much simpler, much more straightforward, but knowing how righteous Reilly was, it was bound to work.

He watched her climb up, seemingly drawn to the outcropping that shielded him. He knew he was perfectly camouflaged, knew she wouldn’t spot him until it was too late.

She kept coming. Slowly, but inevitably.

He waited until she was a few feet away, then, in one swift move, he launched himself up at her and slammed the stock of his rifle into her back.

She grunted heavily and stumbled forward, falling to her feet, her carbine tumbling out of her hands.

She turned around slowly, groaning with pain, but he was already on top of her, his rifle right in her face.

“Shh,” he said. “No noise. Not yet. Now turn around.”