“Stay tight to me,” Dwayne said, and Caroline trotted next to him over the rock and grass behind Hammond and Chaz. The two Rangers on point were firing as they moved up the slope. Dwayne fired a long volley behind them at the pursuers now sprinting from the trees to close the distance between hunter and prey.
The dirt and grass seemed to come to life along one flank of the onrushing skinnies breaking from the tree line. A half dozen fell and the rest scattered. Clumps of dirt flew up in the air. Dwayne looked back in disbelief. His M4 didn’t do that. More dust erupted as tracers streaked through the grass and into the skinnies tearing them apart in a bloody spray. Legs, arms, and innards were exploding from the bodies. A long thunderous roar rolled down to them from the rocks along the mesa ledge.
Up on the lip of the mesa, a dense white cloud was drifting away on the wind. From the cloud a continuous stream of tracers swept downhill to work across the ranks of skinnies, sending them running back to the trees in a ragged mob. The tracers followed them the whole way, and Dwayne could see figures tumbled and tossed.
“The Ma Deuce!” Chaz called back. His face was split in a grin.
“Who’s working it?” Dwayne shouted. “Who gives a fuck?” Hammond said and stood, firing the Minimi at the confused ranks of the skinnies ahead of them below the mesa lip. The hunting party milled about uncertain of what to do in the face of the approaching Rangers and the spray of white tracers streaking over their heads from the rocks above.
The big fifty cal growled into action again and changed its angle of fire to chew up the ground occupied by the skinnies in the shadow of the ridgeline. The angle was bad, and most of the hunting party was sheltered by the mesa wall. But they didn’t grasp what was happening. They wanted to get as far from that terrible chundering sound as their feet would carry them. The skinnies fled from the shadow of the mesa ledge straight into the killing field where heavy slugs the length of an index finger dismembered them instantly. Fish in a barrel. The mob broke up and ran shrieking away to the north and south, clearing a path for the Rangers and their line of retreat.
Hammond unlimbered his shotgun and pumped double-aught into a few holdouts huddled in an overhang. Chaz led the way, and they moved up the slope of broad wash to the mesa top under the protective fire of the big .50 roaring over their heads.
They made it to the field area to find Rick Renzi, in green surgical scrubs and missing half his hair, crouched behind the big machine gun with his hands on the trigger pulls. He stopped when he saw them and lit a cigarette off the hot barrel shroud of the Browning .50.
“You still have my lighter, bro?” he asked.
Caroline nibbled Wheat Thins and sipped Evian while seated atop an ammo crate in the shade of a tarp the Rangers rigged up atop the mesa. She watched Chaz making Jimbo comfortable, propped up and conscious now, and holding a cold pack to his mouth.
There were heavy plastic totes on groundsheets around them. It looked like any other desert camp outing except for the guns and ammo cans and blood.
“Don’t drink too much,” Chaz said and popped an Evian for Jimbo. “You puke, and you drop your hydration level.”
“You carried me all the way up here?” Jimbo said, muffled by the icepack.
“I been carrying your ass for years, my red brother.” Chaz washed some cuts on Jimbo’s legs with an orange-colored antiseptic.
“You bring my long gun?”
“Yeah,” Chaz said. “I packed your Winchester along. Get some rest and I’ll break it out for you.”
As the sun rose high in the sky, Caroline fought to keep her eyes open. The others were busy with tasks that required a minimum of conversation. Dwayne leaned back on a flat rock, relacing his boots. He wore a fresh set of camouflaged fatigue pants and a clean t-shirt. Hammond lay in a position behind a pile of rocks and scanned the approaches below the mesa with a pair of 30x binoculars. Renzi was busy fitting a new barrel to the big black machine gun on its tripod, a Marlboro pressed in his lips.
A scattering of long brass cartridges littered the area around him. She idly picked up one of them. The base was stamped with US 04. Caroline daydreamed about a team of archeologists digging up these artifacts in a stratum they had no business being in.
“We’ll need to clean up here,” Caroline said, mostly to herself.
“Huh?” Renzi looked up.
“All of this crap. All of it,” Caroline said. “It has to go back through the Tube with us.”
“All I want to get back through there is my ass in one piece, honey,” Renzi flicked the Marlboro butt away.
She could see it was hopeless. Either that, or she was just too tired to argue. Or just too tired for anything. She closed her eyes, vowing it would only be for a few seconds, and fell instantly into a deep sleep.
Jimbo wiped sweat from his eyes and shook his head before pressing his eye to the cup of the scope again.
“You up for this, Cochise?” Hammond said beside him.
“Just tired,” Jimbo said and looked down the scope atop his Winchester, the wood stock warm and comfortable against his cheek. He was prone by Hammond, who sat up spotting for him through the binoculars.
“Downrange about three hundred plus,” Hammond said. “A few ticks right of that clump of greasewood.”
“Don’t have it yet,” Jimbo said. All he could see was rock and scrub down to the tree line, the ground dotted with the dark shapes of the skinnies brought down that
