It was time to move on. That was it for the horses. No matter what happened, Boats couldn’t protect the remuda against this kind of odds. All he could do was lead the archers deeper into the trees and away from the rest of the team.
One of the bowmen was more pissed than the others and began cuffing some of his buddies. An officer. A real prick from the sound of it. The group began to break up to fan out for a search. Whistles and calls echoed through the forest. Boats could not have that shit happening. They were here in one bunch with their commander in range. The SEAL aimed to take advantage of that.
Boats raised the Mariner and let fly with three rounds of buck. The officer took the first load full in the chest and was flung back spraying blood. The next two rounds sent a spread of 9mm lead balls that struck three more of the archers. The officer was stone dead before he hit the ground. A second archer died gurgling. Two more thrashed and howled, causing the horses to whinny in panic at the shrill animal sounds and the rank stink of blood.
The SEAL was moving as the third load left the shotgun. He jinked left to get out of the line of fire then hooked right to climb up the hill and deeper into the trees. He topped off the Mariner as he trotted, pulling more buck rounds from the loops on his belt. A cut-down M4 was slung on his back, and a bag full of nasty goodies slapped his thigh as he ran.
A pulsing sound passed behind him, followed by a clatter in the woods to his right. The little fuckers were firing arrows at him on the fly. He ran in a snake pattern, keeping the trees between him and pursuit as much as possible. More whistles, more clattering. There were voices calling off to his left. More answering behind and to his right. They were bracketing him. It was only a matter of time before they closed the arms of the pursuit and caught him between.
Boats threw himself into a shallow depression and dug in his goodie bag for his NODs. He was outnumbered and would be out-positioned in moments. His one advantage was the dark. He dropped the night-vision array before his eyes. The gloom of the woods vanished and all was in sudden stark monochromatic contrast. The SEAL could not have timed it better as a pair of archers stalked by where he lay recumbent in the shelter of the night. He let them move past him up the hill until they were closer to one another.
He rose to one knee, turning, and took them one after the other easy as shooting skeet. The buck loads slammed into their backs and lifted them off the ground to fall limp as dolls. They wore layers of leather plates that the buck cut through like slices of Wonder bread. Boats came to his feet slowly, noiselessly. Movement was not the key now. It was all about stealth. He was a fucking ghost, an all-seeing phantom among them, striking from every direction. He’d ninja their asses until they lost their mud and ran away. As he rose, an archer ran toward him up the hill with bow bent back.
Boats fired from the hip, and the running archer stopped as though he’d rushed into an unseen wall. The arrow was loosed and skipped off the armor at Boat’s shoulder. It felt like he’d been struck with a hammer even though he knew the shaft had been fired early. He felt a tingle down that arm. Another shaft whirred by just over his head, and he dropped back to cover and rolled to a new position.
When he rose again, there was an archer just before him. They were closing about him like a noose. They used the flurry of arrows to drive him where they wanted him to be. Boats raised the shotgun and rushed forward to brain the man with the butt. The SEAL stumbled to the ground with the falling man and heard voices close by. He was on his feet and running laterally along the hillside. His best hope was that he’d broken out of the ring of pursuers. He’d make distance from them and use the Mike-Four to whittle their number further from a safe firing position.
A hammer blow to his right leg drove him to the ground. He slid down the slope, struggling to regain his feet. The leg was numb as though from blunt force trauma. Boats turned on his side and levered up on his elbows. He filled the air with buck at the sound of movement above him. A wet shriek rang out, and the woods went silent.
Boats moved to stand, and a lancing pain made him gasp aloud. He looked down to see a long arrow shaft stuck through his upper leg at a wicked angle. The barbed point was through the front of his bare thigh, the shaft jutting from a ragged hole in the flesh. A good two feet of wood stuck from the back of his leg. A wide stream of blood ran down his leg from the exit wound. It looked black through the NODs lenses. The pain was growing and would get a lot worse very soon. If he was going to move, it had to be now.
No option left to him but to follow the path of least resistance. The SEAL hobbled downhill. Voices called from all around. Boats could see the little fuckers moving fast through the trees around him. They were still blind to his location. One of them would run across the blood trail he was leaving and follow it right up his ass. He had seconds, not minutes.
Below him he saw the tumble of a deadfall, rotting tree boles piled up against the base
