“I’m coming, Keeper,” King said and disconnected.
He’d done everything he could. There should have been no way Dresden could have found him. Unless…
“Ella?”
“Here.”
“Go to the armory. There’s a small handheld scanner in the second drawer of the tool cabinet. It detects the presence of embedded tracking devices. I need you to scan yourself.”
“Oh no…”
“Do it, Ella.”
“On it.”
The SUVs made the last hill on the pass, moving at a rapid clip and getting harder to see amid the switchbacks up the mountain. The wind had died down a bit, which could be good and bad.
“A little closer,” Jude whispered.
The first SUV topped the hill and started back down as Jude blew the first device. It exploded, toppling the vehicle and sending fire shooting into the sky. The other SUV sped around the first one.
“Come on, motherfuckers, I’ve got something for you too.”
He peered through his scope and waited until they’d come close to his second device. He pushed the charge on the second device, but nothing happened. No boom. No explosion. The SUV continued to thunder up the pass. A couple of men made it out of the wreckage of the first vehicle and scattered.
Through his scope, Jude located the driver of the second SUV. He lined up his shot and took it. The driver’s head exploded, and the SUV rolled to a stop about eight hundred yards from Jude’s location. Three men in black poured out.
Jude fired relentlessly just to keep them guessing. He managed to line up another shot and once again pulled the trigger.
He dropped one man. The others dispersed, taking cover and waiting. Four men were trying to take a shot at Jude, but no sign of Dresden yet.
Wishes were for fools, but damn if he didn’t take a second to regret that he hadn’t had time to set more devices.
Bullets began to pepper his location, his own rifle fire having given him away. They were about to rain hellfire on his location. He had to move.
“Jude?” Ella called over the mic.
“Yeah?”
“There’s a tracker in my hip,” she told him. She was calm.
“Hold the scanner over the tracker, baby, and press the blue button on the top. It will disable the device.”
“Ten-four.”
One of Dresden’s men stuck his head and shoulder out from behind a tree a little too long, and Jude took his shot. A scream rent the air. Not a kill shot though. The others were quick, moving like they’d been trained, and Jude wondered who the hell had signed on to work with that bastard. Hell, they moved like trained spec ops—SEALs, Rangers, Force Recon.
Taking out a fellow soldier would be a bitch, he thought.
Then again, if they’d signed on with Dresden, they were no longer his fellow soldiers. They were the enemy.
Dresden finally made an appearance, easing quickly out of the SUV before glancing toward where he had to know Jude was. Then he smiled, and the hate in Jude’s heart for the man ramped up to unforeseen levels. Jude aimed but lost his shot because the bastard ducked back behind the door. Jude fired a shot anyway and then froze when he saw what Dresden pulled out behind him.
“Goddamn it,” Jude bit out. “Ella, he’s going to hit the cabin hard. Take cover.”
“I’m settled, Jude. Now go to work and get that bastard,” she demanded.
He smiled. “Ten-four.”
He fired until his ammo packs were empty, and then he blew the last two incendiary devices. That didn’t stop Dresden.
He lifted the enormous launcher, and as Jude watched, Horace Dresden fired the RPG, a white, foggy trail in the air highlighting its path directly into his home. The home his woman was holed up beneath.
The RPG struck, and the cabin shuddered as a hole ripped through Jude’s bedroom. Glass exploded outward, and the subsequent explosion rocked Jude. Fire raced up and out of the hole. Jude wasn’t worried about Ella. There were three feet of steel and another five feet of rock between her and any threat. She had a separate ventilation system that wound into the caves below the room. Jude had strategically placed the cabin in this area because of those caves.
It was imperative always to have an escape plan. Ella was right. Nowhere was completely safe, but Jude had been determined to keep his family as close to that state as humanly possible.
Now his home was gone.
He lowered his eye to his scope and cataloged Dresden’s face as the man watched what he’d wrought. His eyes were blank, but a smile played about his lips. Jude still didn’t have a shot, but he fired a warning that skated close to Dresden. One of his men who’d taken position beside his boss fell, and Dresden dove back into the SUV.
Then they opened fired on Jude’s location, spraying the area with automatic and semiautomatic rounds. One of the men loaded the launcher with another RPG.
From the communication unit he’d stolen from the first two dudes he’d taken out, Jude could hear Dresden calling in his strike team. They were at least an hour out. Soon Jude would be outnumbered and outgunned. He picked up his rifle and made haste down the tree line until he came to where the monitor he’d shown Ella was. He held up his fist and then fled the scene, heading toward the southern quadrant. An RPG landed and took out trees and earth, rocking Jude. Trees fell, and somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled. The silence left by an RPG explosion was eerie. Jude took off again, and it took little to no time for the ground behind him to explode. He rolled with the pitch of the earth and came up with a smile. They shouldn’t have
