Amid the Shadows (22 page)

Avery zigzagged the
Dodge through the police barricade and stopped, facing the empty road
ahead.
 
The attack helicopter tilted
forward and began accelerating in their direction.

Avery revved the engine
and looked at Rand through the windshield.
 
“This car can’t take anything that thing has!” he yelled. He floored it,
and the Dodge Charger instantly leapt forward.

They both accelerated
towards each other, quickly covering the distance.
 
Inside the cockpit, the pilot’s integrated
helmet display slaved the 30mm gun to his line of sight.
 
As they grew closer, the pilot’s display
zeroed in on the car, and the giant barrel located just beneath the aircraft’s
nose, adjusted accordingly.

At the same time, Rand
peered through his high-powered, red dot scope and tried to adjust for the
shaking of the car.
 

The pilot targeted the
car and wrapped his index finger around the stick’s trigger.
 
Suddenly, three bullets hit the cockpit glass
in front of his face.
 
They didn’t
penetrate, but it startled the pilot enough to disengage and dive for
cover.
 
The aircraft dropped close to the
ground, and the pilot pulled up just as the Dodge sped under him.

The pilot’s mouth
tightened in anger as he continued further away and swung around in a wide
arc.
 
The large cracks in the window were
now too large to use the 30mm Chain Gun accurately, but the Hellfire’s could
target by themselves.
 
He just needed
enough room.

Avery slowed the car
less than a thousand feet from the soldiers running toward them.
 
Unless they were carrying something really
big, the extra thick steel and glass on the car could take whatever they
had.
 
He turned the car and stopped in a
broadside position.
 
Rand jumped down
from the hood and ran forward towards the Apache which was finishing its turn.
 
As the helicopter straightened its approach,
he replaced his magazine, inserting one with red tape.
 
Inside it was armor piercing rounds.
 

He quickly lay down on
the gravel and pressed the stock of the rifle securely into his shoulder.
 
The large distance the pilot took to circle
back meant he was preparing to fire an air-to-ground missile, and that meant a
Hellfire.
 
And if the aircraft were fully
loaded, it would be fired from the pilot’s right side rails and arm itself
within the first fifteen feet of flight.

Christine suddenly
screamed, as bullets began pelting the side of the Dodge.
 
Dents appeared on the inside, and two rounds
hit the window and froze inside the special laminated glass, cracking it.

Avery looked at the
dents and yelled out the other window to Rand.
 
“We’re okay!”

Rand’s heart
slowed.
 
He closed one eye and watched
carefully for the one sign he would have when the missile fired.
 
Then he saw it.
 
For only a split second, the fire and smoke
from behind the missile could be seen
igniting
.
 
At the same instant, Rand began shooting, and
kept shooting, pulling the trigger as quickly as he could.

The Hellfire armed
itself but traveled only thirty-six feet before it was struck head on by a hot
loaded, armor piercing bullet, then was hit again at forty-four feet.
 
It detonated immediately, and the helicopter
was too close to avoid the explosion.
 
All of the armaments were ripped from the sub-wing pylons, with one of
the rails tearing a hole through the right wing.
  
Two large chunks of metal shrapnel punched
larger holes in the aircraft’s side body armor, severing one of the main
hydraulic lines, and a third piece of shrapnel removed almost two feet of rotor
blade.

The pilot felt the loss
of control immediately, as the helicopter began a horizontal wobble of which he
was rapidly losing control.
 
Within a few
seconds, the secondary hydraulic line took over for the primary.
  
Control was restored, but the wobble from
the now unbalanced blade was increasing and had the potential to shake the
helicopter apart.
 
The pilot had to beat
it to the ground before that happened, which meant a very hard landing.

Rand was back on his
feet as several more slugs hit the far side of the Charger.
 
He reached the passenger door where Avery had
both hands on the steering wheel and the engine running.

Rand peeked around the
curve of the front windshield, looking for the soldiers who had dropped from
the Blackhawk, but quickly ducked back when a bullet ricocheted off the
hood.
 

“Get past them and then
get the car out of sight,” he said to Avery, scanning the sky above them.
 
He knew they could easily be seen from a
number of aircraft, perhaps even a drone which could fly high enough to remain
completely invisible.
 
No matter where
they went, they were undoubtedly being watched from a live video stream.

Behind them came a
terrible noise as the Apache helicopter smashed hard into the ground, breaking
itself in two.
 
Rand looked at it over
his shoulder and turned back to Avery.
 
“Find a safe place, and I’ll meet you on the other side.”

Avery nodded but said
nothing.
 
He dropped the transmission
into drive and punched the accelerator, causing the rear tires to kick up a
wall of dirt before speeding away.

Farther down the road,
one of the six soldiers shooting at the car paused and raised his eye from his
scope.
 
He watched the tiny figure of a
man run into the trees.
 
He’d never seen
anyone move that fast before.

42

“Hold on!’ Avery yelled
over the roaring engine.
 
The car bounced
off-road and over the brush as he circled away from the men shooting and then
rounded back in their direction.
 
“We’re going
to have to drive right through them!
 
And
we’re going to take a lot of fire.
 
So
stay down!”

Christine settled her
arms on both sides of Sarah, keeping most of her weight off her tiny
frame.
 
Nothing was going to get Sarah
that didn’t go through her first.

Downrange, the black
clad men watched the Dodge turn back in their direction.
 
They lifted their rifles up and waited.
 
Just moments before, they had all watched the
attack helicopter come smashing down to the ground.
 
Fortunately, the fuel was contained, and
there was no explosion, leaving it to be enveloped in a giant cloud of dirt and
debris.
 
How the hell did they bring
that down?

Avery was now heading
in their direction at full speed.
 
His
eyes scanning the area ahead, trying to judge the best angle that would receive
the minimal damage.
 
He finally decided
there was no best angle, and instead stayed on the road and kept the pedal hard
against the floor, opening the engine into a thundering scream.
 
Bullets began peppering the front windshield
and gradually moved to the right-hand side door as Avery pushed quickly past
their positions.
 
Once the car was past,
the soldiers halted their firing.
 
They
had to save their ammo.
 
There was still
someone in the trees.

The soldiers moved
together in a slight arc, rounding and coming in toward the area of trees where
they saw Rand disappear.

The third man in line
motioned with hand signals, telling the men to move in slowly.
 
They were Delta Force, some of the best in
the military, and they had hunted plenty of human targets before.
 
They were also extraordinarily good at it and
not the least bit rushed.

The man they had seen
was not a runner, he was a fighter.
 
The
natural human reaction was to find the first decent shelter and dig in, which
meant he was likely less than a hundred yards from where he entered the
forest.
 
He was also unfamiliar with the
immediate area.
 
This increased anxiety
and the sense that a person being pursued had less time than they actually did,
which meant rash decisions.
 

The head of the squad
was a man named Fish.
 
He was strong,
methodical, and savored the act of hunting another man down.
 
He halted the team and then motioned for the
two men on the outside to spread out and widen the circle.
 
They would enter about a hundred yards
further down, then form a circle and slowly tighten the noose.

It took several
minutes, but once in position and almost like clockwork, all six members began
closing in slowly and silently.
  
As the
noose continued to close, Fish could taste the slaughter.

They were more correct
than they knew; Rand had not gone far.
 
He sat waiting to see if any of them entered the thick wall of trees
behind him.
 
After a long wait, he could
finally hear one of them approaching, but what Rand didn’t know was that the other
five were already
in
as well.

One of Fish’s men, a
short, stocky ranger with his face painted in black stripes, moved in, making
almost no sound.
 
He moved his rifle in
step with his head, sweeping side to side at a 45 degree angle, occasionally stopping
to listen.
 
Hearing nothing, he continued
on.

He was now just twenty
feet from Rand.
 
They were also right
about Rand’s general vicinity, but what the Delta members were not expecting
was where he would be waiting for them.
 
Rand was not twenty feet in front of the man.
 
He was twenty feet
above
him.
 

Almost all soldiers
were trained to look up in a pursuit, but under stress very few actually
did.
 
The fact was, ascending a tree took
far more time and energy than was practical, and it was a veritable trap,
leaving the person very little room for movement.
 
No one in their right mind would paint
themselves in that kind of corner.
 
Only
a person who could climb effortlessly, or knew how a trained soldier thinks
under pressure, would do it.
 
Rand was
both.

43

Natirar Park was a
411-acre park dedicated to the preservation of the farming and agricultural
history of New York State’s Somerset County.
 
Named after the Raritan River which ran through it, the park included
trails and many farming and residential buildings from the late 18
^th
century.
 
The park was also a popular
field trip destination for many of the surrounding elementary schools, and the
early spring trips had begun the preceding week.

Two large buses and a
few dozen cars filled most of the large, shaded parking lot, and children and
parents walked back and forth to the main building where the tour was about to
begin.

Avery let the engine
idle quietly and drove around to the far end of the lot to avoid attracting
attention.
 
He found a large maple tree
to park under and shifted the car into park before turning off the engine. Both
Christine and Sarah emerged slowly from the floor behind him.
 
They looked over his shoulder at the crowd
gathering in the distance.

“Is this a school?”
asked Sarah, eyeing all the children.

Avery shook his
head.
 
“No, Sarah, it’s a park.
 
Do you like parks?”

Sarah nodded and
continued watching.

“What do we do now?”
asked Christine.

“We need another
car.”
 
Avery eyed the large canopy of
trees overhead.
 
“They can see where we
are, and no doubt where we just pulled into.”
  
He turned and eyed Christine.
 
“How’s your dexterity?”

“Huh?”

Christine watched the
crowd, and followed one of the mothers who held the hands of two little boys as
they stood in line waiting to buy tickets.
 
She had followed the woman from the parking lot, noting the large, baggy
purse she carried.
 
It looked to
Christine like the woman had simply tossed her car keys into her purse which
she hoped meant they were sitting on top of everything else in the bag.

Christine edged closer,
trying to look casual.
 
The woman was
less than two feet away and had her purse slung over her right shoulder as she
struggled to pull a small cooler chest behind her and the boys.

Not far away, Avery and
Sarah both waited under a shady tree, watching.
 
As Christine nervously tried to get even closer to the woman, Sarah
noticed a park ranger emerge from the large building.
 
He was overweight with a balding head of thin
hair, and he walked excitedly toward the children who were waiting.

The man suddenly
clapped his hands and said in a loud voice, “Hi kids!”.
 
Most of the children just looked at him.
 
“I said HI KIDS!
 
Who’s here for the big tour?”
 
This time several children answered and
raised their hands.
 

At the ticket booth,
the woman in front of Christine stepped up to the small window and bought her
tickets.
 
She pulled her keys out and put
them on the wooden counter to retrieve her wallet.

“Mom,” one of her small
boys whined, “it’s gonna start!”
 
He
pulled at his brother’s hand.

“Hold on, hold on,” she
snapped and fumbled with her tickets and wallet.

“Okay,” called out the
park ranger nearby.
 
“I need some
tickets!”
 
He knelt down as the children
surrounded him, holding out their paper tickets.
 
The man smiled broadly at the children and
patted the head of one of the boys.
 
“And
what’s your name?”

The mother at the
counter was pulled forward by both of her boys now.
 
She frantically stuffed everything into her
purse with a quick glance backward; then she trotted forward to catch up.
 

Christine walked as
fast as she could away from the group without looking back.
 
She gripped the woman’s keys tightly in her
hand.
 
The sign on the ticket booth
showed the tour to be a little over an hour long, and if those three were part
of a larger group, it could buy them a little more time before the woman
noticed her car was missing.

She reached Avery and
Sarah and motioned for them to get moving.
 
But Sarah didn’t move.

“Sarah!”
 
Christine whispered loudly.
 
“Come on!”

Sarah turned slowly to
Christine who was holding out a hand for her.
 
“That man over there,” she said, looking back at the park ranger who was
still kneeling down and was now resting his hand on another boy’s shoulder.

“What about him?”

Sarah looked back at
her and Avery.
 
“He’s a bad man.”

Christine’s heart
skipped.
 
She looked back at the
ranger.
 
He continued to play with the
children.
 
“
How
bad?”

Sarah had a look of
forlorn on her face.
 
“Very bad.
 
He’s really, really red.”

Christine watched him
closely.
 
Knowing something was wrong,
she could see it now.
 
It was very
subtle, but he was being a little too friendly with the children.
 
She noticed he kept his hand on the boy’s
shoulders just a little too long.
 
Christine felt her stomach turn.

Avery saw it too, but
they had no time.
 
“We can’t do anything
about it.
 
We have to go.”

She forced herself to
turn away, pulling Sarah gently along with her.
 
Sarah kept watching the man over her shoulder until they reached the
parking lot.

The car was a recent
model Honda sedan, not too old but not too new either, which Avery explained
would blend in well.
 
They transferred
the large bag as the girls climbed into the back seat and fastened their seat
belts.
 
They quietly pulled out of the
parking lot and headed south again, but immediately pulled off at the next
exit, following two other cars.
 
Avery
then followed an older road away from the highway where he reached a row of
large trees and parked.
 
He turned the
car off and placed his shotgun on his lap.

“Now what are we waiting
for?” asked Sarah.

Avery scanned the area
around them.
 
“Rand.”

Fish was growing
concerned.
 
His team was tightening the
circle, and they were going to be upon each other at any moment.
 
They should have engaged the target by now,
or at least found more tracks.
 
What Fish
didn’t know yet was that two of his men were missing.
 
He slowly continued forward with his finger
hovering just above the trigger.

He also didn’t know
that Rand was gone.
 
Fish was not his
priority, Sarah was.
 
Rand merely needed
an exit and made one.
 
While Fish and his
team were crawling through the thicket, Rand was running south at full steam.

Avery heard a noise and
had his gun trained on Rand by the time he emerged from a group of tall, wild
ferns.
 
He ducked down and peered in the
back seat again.

“Everyone alright?”

They both nodded.
 
Rand opened the front door and got in.
 

“We don’t have much
time with this car,” Avery said, and slowly pulled out from under the
trees.
 
He drifted back toward the
highway and joined in behind another car.

Christine leaned
forward in the back seat.
 
“We’re heading
back to New York aren’t we?”

Rand turned around to
face them.
 
“Yes.
 
With overhead surveillance, it’s too easy for
them to see us now.
 
We have another safe
place to go but we need to lose them first or they’ll track us the entire way.”

“And how do we lose
them in New York?”

Rand shrugged.
 
“We find a large crowd.”