Ben slowed down when they approached the main entrance, and for the first time since they’d been captured, he laid eyes on their trucks. He breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted the Jeep and Blazer parked outside the gate, alongside two other vehicles. The pickup they’d been loaded into when they were captured was one of them, along with another truck Ben didn’t recognize.
Before he had a chance to react, the unfamiliar truck launched forward. The wheels cut hard as the driver maneuvered the long-bed Ford through a nearly 180-degree pivot while spinning the back tires and flinging gravel everywhere.
“Gunner, no.” Luckily, Gunner hadn’t gotten too far, and Ben still had a clear shot. He wished he had a few rounds left in the .338, but he didn’t. With the pistol as his quickest and only real option, he opened up on the truck.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Using the taillights for reference, he did his best to take out the left rear tire, but the truck didn’t show any signs of slowing down. They couldn’t let them get away and warn the other camps.
Crack! Crack…crack! Crack! Joel joined the fight before Ben had a chance to get off any more shots. The truck violently dipped to the right as it hit a large pothole and ran off the trail and into the woods. Ben thought they were down, but to his disappointment, the truck somehow corrected and continued on down the trail. He watched as the taillights bounced along, growing dimmer by the second. He was about to give up hope when the truck stopped dead half a mile or more down the side of the mountain.
“Great,” Ben uttered out loud.
“Well, at least they didn’t get away,” Joel added.
“Yeah, that’s true.”
Ben watched the truck for a while and saw no movement. He wanted to go check on the occupants, but it was too far away from the others for his comfort, and he didn’t want to waste the time it would take. And if he was being totally honest, he wasn’t sure if he had it in him to hike back up the mountain afterward. If the people in the truck were dead, so be it. If they weren’t, well, they wouldn’t be coming back here. And now that they were on foot, they wouldn’t be able to reach help as fast. At least that was what he hoped.
Ben’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps behind them. He drew his pistol in the general direction and prepared to shoot if it was another one of the missing moonshiners. But it wasn’t. It was Martin. He burst from the shadows, running as fast as he could with a pistol in his hand. He must have found the gun on one of the bodies. The sight alarmed Ben initially, and for a split second, he thought he was going to have to put a bullet in the guy. But then he noticed that Martin wasn’t focused on them at all. Instead, he was looking past them and down the trail the truck had taken.
Ben heard him huffing hard as he jogged several feet past him and Joel. He stopped abruptly and swayed back and forth slightly as he caught his breath. Without warning, he raised the pistol and pointed it at the truck.
Boom…boom!
Martin stumbled backward and landed on his butt after the second shot. Ben recognized the sound immediately, and it was then that he realized Martin had his Desert Eagle. Ben jogged over to Martin and helped him up while at the same time taking the pistol from him.
“I wondered where that was.” Ben looked his gun over, inspecting it for any damage. The last time he saw it, the old man was tucking it into his belt, but he hadn’t found it on his body when he took him out in the recliner.
“Here.” Ben handed Martin the smaller pistol he’d taken off one of the moonshiners. “You’ve got seven shots left with that.” He waited until Martin acknowledged what he had said before sliding the magazine out of his own pistol to see how many rounds he had left. The gun only held seven of the large .50-caliber cartridges to begin with. He confirmed that four remained. Thankfully, the Blazer and Jeep were only a few yards away, and with any luck, they could resupply before heading back into the camp and clearing the rest of the houses.
Joel was way ahead of him, though, and already had the Jeep opened up.
“They took everything, all of it. It’s totally cleaned out,” Joel huffed.
“Same here.” Ben opened the Blazer, but he could already tell that the truck had been emptied of just about everything—everything but the full magazine for his Desert Eagle; he had hidden it between the driver’s seat and the center console. He slid the magazine into his back pocket and checked the truck’s ignition. Nothing there, but a quick flip of the visor dumped a set of keys onto the seat.
He stuffed those into his pocket as well and closed the door. He blew out a sharp breath as he accepted the fact that they were going to have to repack the vehicles completely. Not only that, but they were going to have to find their gear. There would be no leaving this place quickly like he wanted to. It took them the better part of a day to load the trucks at Jack’s. All that effort to pack smartly and organize what they needed was wasted now.
Joel looked equally as frustrated and was about to slam the Jeep’s door but stopped short. He turned around and reached under the seat. A slight smile appeared on his face as he pulled out the .45 Jack had given him in Maryland. His hiding spot under the driver’s seat had proven to be a good
