while, Kaiser would peek above the rock like a prairie dog looking for hawks, and when he did, the goon tried to line up the perfect shot before his target disappeared.
This went on for nearly three minutes.
Up, then down. Up, then down. Up, then down.
Each time, the goon was close to pulling the trigger when Kaiser lowered his head to safety. Eventually, the goon became so frustrated by his futility he vowed not to blink or breathe until Kaiser popped back up. And the instant he did, the goon was going to fire.
As Payne moved into position in the woods, Jones sprinted to the right of the cul-de-sac then veered back towards the cliff that overlooked the bunker. To reach the bird’s nest without ropes and harnesses, he had to climb the hill from the side while avoiding possible gun fire.
To Jones, it sounded like fun.
With gun in hand, he charged up the steep slope, careful not to trip on the roots that jutted from the trail like fossilized snakes. Arms pumping and knees churning, Jones slipped more than once when his footing gave way, but he never fell. Each time he quickly regained his balance and continued his journey forward until he reached the top.
Breathing deeply, Jones eyed the treacherous path in front of him. Partially hidden by the foliage, it was more than eighty feet above the sharp rocks below. Roughly halfway across the cliff, which cut horizontally across the rock face, there was an access point for the bird’s nest. To reach it, he would have to lower himself onto a narrow ridge by holding on to the trunk of a tree. If his hand slipped or his foot missed, there was a very good chance he would fall to his death, but Jones ignored the possibility. Instead, he focused on what would happen if he
With that in mind, Jones continued his journey forward.
For the fourth time in the past five minutes, Kaiser peeked his head above the boulder.
This time he was greeted by a rifle blast.
When Krueger’s goon pulled the trigger on his Remington 750, the firing pin struck the primer in the .243 Winchester cartridge. The impact produced a tiny spark that ignited the gunpowder in the sealed chamber. A split second later, the gases from the burning powder forced the projectile down the 22-inch barrel and sent it screaming towards its intended target at a velocity of over 3,000 feet per second.
Frequently used for large game like wild hogs and black bears, the bullet struck the boulder a few inches from Kaiser’s head and ricocheted wildly. Unfortunately, the force of the impact was so great it shattered the top of the rock. The resulting shards erupted in Kaiser’s face, tearing through the soft flesh of his left cheek and causing significant damage to his eye.
Dazed from the blow and howling in pain, Kaiser made a foolish blunder. Instead of dropping to the ground where he would have been protected by the boulder and the sniper, he tried to retreat to the bunker, a distance of nearly thirty feet, with his hand against his face, blood poured through the gaps between his fingers as he sprinted towards the entrance.
Stunned by Kaiser’s decision to run, the goon wasn’t prepared to hit a moving target. Barely taking the time to aim, he fired again. This time he missed by several inches.
It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again.
The sound of the second blast fuelled Kaiser’s panic. In the military, he had been a supply sergeant, not a member of the infantry, so he wasn’t used to firefights. Outside of a shooting range, he hadn’t fired a gun in nearly a decade, and the last time someone had taken a shot at him was in an urban environment, not in the middle of the woods. Back then, he had escaped in his Mercedes. Out here, he had to do it on foot.
Halfway to the bunker, Kaiser realized his mistake – and it had been a big one. With a gunman trying to kill him, he wouldn’t have time to use the ladder. Instead, he would be forced to leap through the narrow hole while running at top speed. Making matters worse, he wasn’t sure what was going to greet him at the bottom of the bunker. His men had been working on a pulley system when the first shots had been fired, so there was a very good chance he was going to land on some kind of equipment, whether that was a toolbox or part of the winch.
Then again, that sounded better than the alternative.
Because if he stopped to use the ladder, he was fucked.
31
When it came to maths, Kaiser was a genius. It was one of the reasons he was great at his job. Whereas most of his rivals used calculators to determine their prices, Kaiser was able to do complex equations in his head. In a fraction of a second, he was able to crunch several numbers – the street value of his goods, the cost of shipping, the risk involved and about twenty other variables – and work out the true worth of a deal. His speed and accuracy were so renowned, his customers rarely haggled for a better price because they knew Kaiser couldn’t be fooled.
Unfortunately, the maths skills that had made Kaiser so much money over the years weren’t very effective when he was running for his life and screaming in pain. If they had been, he would have known that the diameter of the hole was far too narrow to leap through while sprinting at top speed. And yet when Kaiser left his feet, he thought his body would slip cleanly through the gap, and he would land safely inside the bunker.
But he was wrong. And it wasn’t even close.
Making matters worse, the goon pulled his trigger about the same time Kaiser went airborne. This led to a series of traumatic events that ravaged Kaiser’s body in several different ways. In a span of about two seconds, the gunman’s bullet hit Kaiser in the centre of his back, just before he slammed stomach-first into the far side of the hole. From the force of the impact, his torso lurched forward and he smashed his already damaged face into the hard ground, knocking out some teeth in the process.
Unconscious from the blow, Kaiser slumped backwards through the hole and crashed awkwardly onto the equipment that littered the bunker’s floor. When he landed, his left leg was pinned underneath him at a severe angle, so much so that he ruptured his patellar tendon and tore every major ligament in his left knee with a sickening snap.
The sound was so loud it echoed through the chamber.
Although the goon couldn’t see the fall or hear the snap from his position in the trees, he knew Kaiser had been seriously injured during the chain of events. No one – not even a soldier half of Kaiser’s age – could have survived everything that he had gone through without suffering several devastating injuries. In fact, the goon was so confident that Kaiser was unconscious and defenceless at the bottom of the hole that he rushed forward to finish the job.
And as he did, the goon smiled in triumph.
Payne heard the rifle blasts and zeroed in on the sound. As far as he could tell, the weapon had been fired somewhere near the bunker.
Wasting no time, Payne hustled through the foliage, trying to make as little noise as possible. Despite his size, Payne was able to move with great stealth, an ability often compared to the Apache warriors of the Old West, who were able to stalk their enemies without being heard. Genetically speaking, Payne knew his relatives had come from Central Europe, not the American south-west, yet he took it as a great compliment since the Apache were considered one of the fiercest tribes in Native American history.
When he reached the edge of the clearing near the cul-de-sac, Payne spotted a man wearing green and brown camouflage. He was holding a rifle in his hand and moving slowly towards the entrance to the bunker. From his current position, Payne couldn’t see the man’s face. Then again, even if he could, he realized he didn’t know what most of Kaiser’s men looked like. Sure, he had spotted them in the woods when he had first arrived at the site, but that had been at long distance. Truth be told, he couldn’t have identified any of them in a police line- up.
Obviously, that was a major problem when looking for targets.
Not wanting to kill a friendly, Payne decided to creep closer.
The goon stopped a few feet short of the hole and carefully peeked over the edge. Until that moment, he didn’t know what he would see. Perhaps a crevasse or a natural spring. Maybe even a grave. He certainly hadn’t been expecting a bunker. The instant he saw the concrete floor, he knew he had made an important discovery, something he had to report at once.
