It was slow going. He moved from tree to tree, hiding behind clusters of shrubs as they appeared before him in the falling snow. He wished he had on goggles. Should have looked for some among the packs. But if Kevin had found some he would have snagged them, so apparently snow hadn’t been on anyone’s forecast. He kept heading uphill.
The temptation was always to turn too fast, to think you’d gone far enough up the triangle when you hadn’t. Hunting men took patience, not something he’d gone into the Marine Corps with, but something he’d learned in the mountains of Afghanistan. Now there were some patient hunters. To outwait an ISIS group was hard. Hard for an American who needed advertising to interrupt his television show so he could get munchies rather than wait for the end of the show. Hard for Americans who broke time down into minutes and seconds.
So, he pushed himself further up the hill, pretending that the shooter was a wily old Taliban militant. An ISIS insurgent bedded in for the night. And then he hit a rock escarpment and knew he was as far uphill as he was going. He headed to his left, west, he thought, but only because he like most people in the Northwest tended to associate uphill with north. And here it might be true, he thought. Although it could also be a west facing slope. Didn’t matter, as long as he plotted the turns in his head and didn’t forget how to get back to Kevin. Because getting lost out here was as much a death sentence today as a bullet.
He found a protected spot along the escarpment and stopped. Then used his scope to survey his location thankful the snow was letting up a bit improving visibility. He spotted the SUV and realized he was “west” of it as planned, good, he thought. He looked for the shooter. Looked for anything that didn’t look like trees and shrubs or snow. He was patient. He had all the time he needed. Look. Look, he thought. What do you see?
He was starting to shake with cold when he spotted him. Mac smiled grimly. The shooter had himself a perch in a tree, up out of the snow. Smart. But it meant he also had been maintaining his balance on a limb for a while now. It wasn’t going to take much to make him fall out of the tree whether dead or just wounded.
Bad news, though because it meant Mac wasn’t going to get a second shot at him if he only winged him on the first shot. He shrugged mentally. Winged and running was as good as dead. Maybe not as satisfying, but he wasn’t going to pack out a dead man. And there wasn’t room in the SUV either.
So, Mac took position, going down the mental preparation checklist for a long shot. He rested his rifle on a bare tree branch and slowed his breathing and heart rate, then slowly squeezed the trigger.
You could certainly hear his shot, Mac thought with a snort, as the sound echoed in the small canyon. He saw the shooter fall out of the tree and headed that way, too eager, too impatient, and the shooter popped up firing his rifle, and Mac felt the bullet hit his leg.
“Damn it,” he muttered as he went down hard against several boulders. He shook off the pain to his ribs and head, sighted his own rifle and shot back at the man. The man turned and ran, headed west, holding his arm. So, Mac had hit him, good, he thought. Mac fired again, keeping the man running, running away from the SUV. A short time later, he could hear Craig and the guys getting it back on the road, moving out. Mac didn’t even try to rejoin them. He wouldn’t make it to them before they left, so he might as well take his time.
He pulled out his knife, cut a branch and pulled himself up with it. He looped his rifle over his shoulder, and slowly started down the hill toward Kevin, who damn well better be waiting for him, or he was going to make it out of the mountains alive just so he could hunt him down and kill him.
Kevin had not only waited, but come after him, Mac found when he staggered and fell for the second time.
“You’re hurt?” Kevin said, as he replaced the stick with his own shoulder and levered Mac up onto his feet.
“He got me,” Mac admitted. “Took a bullet to my calf, and yes, it hurts like a motherfucker.”
“Let me look at it,” Kevin said.
Mac shook his head. “Wrap it tight,” he said. “We’ve got to keep moving. How far are we from where you guys camped?”
Kevin looked around, taking his bearings. “So that’s what you were planning,” he said. “I couldn’t figure it out. No way you wanted to hike out.”
“Not if there’s an SUV sitting not far from here,” Mac agreed. “Although if I blew it up when I set off the C-4? I’m going to cry.”
Kevin snorted. “Good news? We’re maybe 20 minutes away. Bad news? With that leg? It’s going to be a long 20 minutes.”
Mac snorted. “Wrap the son of a bitch tight then,” he said. “It’s getting colder.”
“Nightfall,” Kevin agreed. “But even if we just have to sit it out, we’re better off there than anywhere else right now.” He wrapped Mac’s leg, tying the bandage tight. And the two of them started hobbling toward where Kevin said the sheriff’s camp was located.
Mac was fading in and out of coherency by the time they reached the camp. He kept moving forward, but half the time he thought he was in a sand storm. Felt the same. Strange how the sting of wind-driven snow felt like wind-driven sand, he
