seconds Ernie would come up from his hiding place, focus on the helicopter for five seconds, and then duck back down.
Nathan placed the crosshairs where Ernie’s head would appear in the next ten seconds and waited.
Nothing happened.
Ernie didn’t come back up.
Well after the fifteen-second interval had passed, there was still no Ernie. What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t leave the crag of rock without Nathan seeing him. Thirty seconds went by.
Forty seconds.
Fifty.
A full minute.
Patience, he told himself. Breathe in deeply. Let it out slowly. In deep.… Out slowly.…Stay focused. Ernie’s still there, he’ll be back up. Patience.…
After ninety seconds, Nathan had his answer. It was almost as if Ernie had sensed Nathan’s presence, for when he reappeared, the bright white gauze on his hand was gone. But it was too late.
“That’s a bingo,” Nathan whispered.
The Remington 700 bucked against his right shoulder and sent a white-hot jolt of agony through his stitched wound. For a few seconds, his vision blurred and dimmed. When it cleared, he didn’t see Ernie, but he saw what was left of him on the limestone wall behind his hiding place-the unmistakable pattern of a head shot.
“Promise kept,” he whispered. “Marine to Marine.”
Feeling the sudden flood of moisture on his arm, he knew the wound was open. How long did he have before blood loss became a concern? He couldn’t worry about that right now because the struggle had just begun. Removing Ernie was moderately helpful in the battle against Leonard Bridgestone, as much psychologically as logistically, but there was no safe transit past an entrenched sniper. Leonard was playing a waiting game, counting on Nathan’s compassion for Grangeland. Leonard would know his sole means of transport and communication was the helicopter, so his opponent would also be counting on that to draw him into the kill zone.
Nathan saw another way. To reach Grangeland, he’d need to create a diversion, and that meant getting back to Harv. Two against one, they might just pull it off.
Like oozing molasses, Nathan slid himself away from the log, hunkered down behind its cover, and slung his rifle over his shoulder for the return crawl to the east.
How much time had passed since she’d been shot? Twenty minutes? Thirty? He wasn’t sure. He thought back to the image of her prone form and didn’t recall seeing any blood. She’d been wearing her dark-blue FBI Windbreaker to conceal her piece and her ballistic vest. Her vest was probably the only reason she was still alive. How long did she have?
Harvey turned his head toward the sound of the shot. “Nathan,” he whispered. Did Leonard just kill Nathan, or did Nathan kill one of them? He considered moving back up the canyon toward the source of the report. Nathan could be down, wounded. Slowly bleeding out. If he stayed put, would he be condemning his lifelong friend to death? He wanted to use the radio, needed to use the radio, but Nathan had called for silence. He weighed the repercussions. Okay, Leonard had Grangeland’s radio, so what? He couldn’t use it to triangulate. The receiving transmission would be silent, coming out of Nathan’s tiny ear speaker.
Decision made, he pressed the transmit button. “Five-by-five?”
A few seconds later, he heard, “Five-by-five. Stay put. I’m coming to you.”
Relief washed over Harvey like warm wind. Although he doubted Leonard possessed Nathan’s shooting skills-only a handful of people in the world did-Leonard could’ve seen Nathan first and in a long-range sniper duel, the shooter who spots his opponent first, wins.
Stay put.
Nothing so simple had ever been more difficult.
Nathan didn’t blame Harv for breaking radio silence. From a tactical perspective, Harv needed to know he was okay and still in the fight. Had he been killed, Harv would have an agonizing decision to make: Stay and fight and possibly die, or bug out and possibly die. Nathan doubted Leonard would let either of them just fly out of here. Harv was a family man and had more to consider than his own life. But family or not, Harv would never abandon the fight if he knew his partner was still alive, Nathan was certain of that.
Nathan’s plan was simple. Since Leonard couldn’t be in two places at once, he and Harv would separate. He’d head toward the money cache while Harv doubled back to the helicopter. Through a series of purposeful ploys, he planned to lure Leonard to his end of the canyon, leaving Harv free to fly Grangeland to safety. He hoped Harv was ready for his first solo flight.
Setting that thought aside for now, Nathan crawled down the length of the fallen log, shouldered his rifle, and scoped the canyon’s southern wall. Although he had a pair of field glasses, he always used his rifle. If he saw his mark, he was instantly ready to send a bullet. If his opponent was on the move, he didn’t see any evidence of it. The few sandy areas he could see were virgin, lacking discernable footprints. He steeled himself for what lay ahead, that damned thirty-foot expanse of sand and brush. If he were going to get nailed, he knew it would happen out there. It looked as vast as the Sahara Desert, but there was no avoiding it and no way around it. He had to traverse it. Simple as that.
Here goes.…
Moving no faster than a foot every five seconds, he started his crawl across the sand.
He ran the math through his head to distract himself from the pain and wet sensation in his arm. Thirty feet times five seconds per foot. One hundred and fifty seconds. Two-and-a-half minutes. That’s not so long really, after all, it’s-
Halfway across the sand, he froze.
Had he heard something behind him?
A crunch of leaves?
If Leonard was back there, he was a sitting duck out here in the open. He knew his ghillie suit transformed him into a shrub, but what about the tracks he left crawling out here? Moving his head slowly, he snuck a look over his right shoulder and was surprised when he didn’t see any deep tracks. He hadn’t remembered brushing them flat with his legs at he moved, but he must have. He’d done it on autopilot, on pure instinct from his old training.
There it was again.
A crunch of dried leaves.
He was certain this time.
Staring through the thinly spaced stalks of underbrush, he watched for any sign of movement. Expecting to see a pair of combat boots, a chill raked his spine when he saw the source of the noise.
Chapter 27
A mountain lion.
And a damned big one. Two hundred pounds of solid muscle, sharp claws, and yellow ivory was a mere twenty feet away.
Taking slow, deliberate steps, the animal slinked forward with its head low, its eyes searching for the source of blood it smelled. Had the rifle shots awakened it? Nathan knew mountain lions were mostly twilight predators. The rifle shots should’ve spooked it, made it haul ass out of here, but a fresh blood scent triggered a powerful instinct, especially if it was hungry.
When it reached the edge of the fallen log Nathan had traversed a minute earlier, it sniffed the ground and froze. Then it looked him straight at him.
