Dead in Their Tracks (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story Book 1) (5 page)

Chapter 8

“What the fuck is going on?”
he whispered, wondering what kind of trouble she had brought down upon his
friend’s ranch and his own life which only an hour earlier had held the promise
of a respite from the chaos of his job.

Dev squatted beside him and
gasped as she looked out over the main grounds of the ranch. There were three
teams of five men moving in on the upper houses, kicking in the doors and
performing sweeps around the structures.

“Aeneid
—
this
has to be Nelson’s goons but how the hell did they track me here? I’ve only
used burner phones, moved each night, and…” She paused, biting her lip. “The
mole inside the feds must be using facial recognition software. They must have
pinged me when I was downtown the other day or in Cave Creek.”

“We don’t use facial recog on
subjects unless they are a high-value target on the top-ten list and even then
it takes weeks of red tape and approval with Homeland Security to initiate
that.”

“Who could circumvent that?”

Mitch smirked. “The bureau
chief could but he’d still need approval from HQ in Washington.” He studied the
way the men moved, interacted, and their accoutrements, noting their fluid footwork
and unison. “These boys seem like heavy hitters
—
some kind of
para-military group by the looks of it.”

He clutched his rifle close,
remembering Miguel was still asleep on the porch of the uppermost house and
realizing that the infirm man was probably unaware of all the commotion.  Mitch
peered around the side again, looking for a way to reach him when he saw two
men ascend the steps to Miguel’s house and riddle his chest with gunfire.
Mitch’s mouth hung open and his throat went dry as he watched the elderly
figure slump back into his chair. Mitch slammed his balled fist against the
wall. He started to raise his M4 up and then felt Dev’s hand on his shoulder.

“You can’t engage them. There
are too many.”

He lowered his rifle, realizing
it would be suicidal to attack such a large group. He looked at her with fury in
his eyes, wondering what maelstrom she had just rained down upon him.

“Is there another road out of
here?” she said, frantically studying her surroundings.

“Nope, one way in, which I
used to like until now.” He went to the back door and quietly unlocked it,
making sure to keep her in his sight. “Help me grab some things from inside
then we’ll have to make our way out the back along the arroyo.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll get out of here on foot,
but not before I take out as many of those bastards as possible. I’d like our
odds better if there were only half as many guys on our trail.”

Mitch went into his bedroom
and retrieved a backpack jammed with survival gear and spare magazines for his
pistol and rifle. On the front flap was a logo that indicated
Zombie Bug-Out
Bag
.

Dev scrunched her eyebrows
together. “What is it with you Americans and your infatuation with the undead?”

“Just another excuse to buy
guns and cool tactical gear, and a man can’t have too much of either.”

Mitch handed her a scoped
Remington 700 rifle and a small daypack with water, first-aid kit, and some
MREs. He went into the rear closet and removed some of his reloading equipment,
pulling out a canister of gunpowder. Then he ran into the small kitchen at the
front and glanced through the tattered white curtains on the window. The men
were on their way past the barn and would be headed towards his bunkhouse
within minutes.

“Grab a bunch of those beer
mugs from the dishrack,” he said to her as he pried the lid off the gunpowder.
He began pouring the black particles into a half-dozen glasses. When he was
done, he reached under the cabinet and pulled out a box of roofing nails and a
bottle of bleach. He tossed a handful of nails into each mug while Dev filled a
shot glass with the caustic liquid.  

Mitch grabbed the mugs and
began placing them inside the microwave along with the bleach. She grinned and
looked back at him. “I see we’ve both had the same class in improvised
munitions that my father taught.”

He looked at her with a mix of
surprise and relief, knowing that they might have a chance at getting out of
here after all if she was as skilled as she let on and was indeed Anatoly
Leitner’s progeny. Mitch glanced around the sparse but comfortable surroundings
of the old adobe structure, recalling the good times he’d had and regretting
the damage he was about to incur upon the historic structure.

She closed the microwave door
and set the timer for sixty seconds. Then they retrieved their gear bags and
retreated out the back door. Making their way down into the arroyo, Mitch heard
the footfalls of the approaching men as they walked over the parched cottonwood
leaves on the ground before the front porch. He glanced down at his watch,
counting down the seconds and hoping it would give them the time needed to slip
away through the desert.

Chapter 9

The first man through the door was larger,
more muscular than the others. When he entered, four other men flowed in behind
him. Maybe it was the mass of the larger mercenary that prevented more from
succumbing to the steel shrapnel hurtling through the air when the microwave
erupted. Instantly, in a blaze of flame and stabbing spikes, the team of
fifteen shooters was reduced by nearly a third. Two more men received a spray
of broken glass on the porch as the front windows blew outward, breaking away
some of the adobe surrounding the wooden frames.

Drake rushed forward, yelling at his men
to retreat to either side and provide support cover as he came up the middle.
Standing back ten feet from the front door, which was clinging to the stud by a
single hinge, he surveyed the twisted limbs and perforated flesh of the dead men
inside.
Fuck me. We don’t have a lot of spare guys to draw upon in Arizona.
This is going to be a setback if we lose any more assets.

He scanned the immediate terrain behind
the rear of the structure, noting the rock-strewn arroyo below with a backdrop
of steep walls on the other side. “She has to be close. That IED was on a timer
to coincide with our arrival.”

He walked around towards the back,
motioning for a few men to follow him. “Search the drainage. There aren’t too
many places she can go except down there.” He yanked another man by his vest
and growled at him to help patch up the two injured men by the porch.

When the smoke cleared from the bunkhouse,
Drake peered inside then looked back outside at the other buildings. “A bunch
of inbred cow-pie lovers,” he muttered as he looked around at the rustic
dwellings with disdain.

One of his men motioned with a whirl of
his hand to a faint trail leading down into the arroyo. Drake nodded for him to
continue while he radioed out, knowing he might lose reception once they lost
elevation.

“Echo One, do you copy?”

“Bring it,” said the man on the other end.

“Four men down, two injured from an explosion.
We’re on her trail which heads northeast along a drainage.”

“Turn on your GPS unit so I can catch up
with you.”

“Copy that,” he said, placing the radio
back in his vest, not recognizing the man’s voice and wondering who his boss
was sending. Drake walked by one of the injured men who was sitting with his
back against a tree, wincing and holding gauze over his right cheek. “You ready
to move or you gonna sit there and moan like a little bitch?”

The skinny man’s one eye widened and his
lips parted. He began to stand and Drake extended his gloved hand out to him. “Just
kidding. We don’t leave our people behind—company policy, you know.” He nodded
his head at the charred corpses inside the house. “Unless you’re dead, of
course.”

The group moved to the cusp of the arroyo.
“Alright, people, let’s roll. She couldn’t have gotten too far in all this
cactus and rock. It’s possible she’s with a few others who were here already
and they will have a good knowledge of the area so I want eyes up on the ridges
for any potential ambushes.” He instructed two of his men to return to the main
road by the ranch where they’d hidden their jeeps and ordered them to drive
north a few miles and await instructions.

Drake led the way down, using the butt of
his rifle to push through the thick foliage. He studied the ground, not
noticing anything unusual amidst the jumbled rocks. The terrain was impossible
to read and he kept mistaking the older disturbances made by horse hooves with
the subject he was pursuing, unsure if he was even going the right way. After
several hundred yards of slow movement and with his forearms scraped by thorns,
he stopped and pulled out a tobacco tin from his cargo pocket, tucking a pinch under
his naturally bulbous lower lip. He scanned the arroyo ahead, trying to discern
any navigable route through the cactus hell while maintaining an air of
confidence with the men on his heels. Occasionally, he’d stop and touch the
ground, inspecting some unknown impression and then hoping he was correct in
his assumption that it was related to the woman he desperately needed to find.

He knew backup, in the form of a local
asset, was on the way but it would be a while before the man arrived. Drake was
irritated that Ritter had brought someone else into the picture and hoped it
would just be for this brief leg of the operation.
I’m more than capable of
taking over the next stage of the mission after we get the woman. I don’t need
some federal shit-nugget telling me what to do.

Drake was a rock-solid foot soldier who
was excellent at being a blunt instrument, using his considerable brawn to plow
through any obstacles that confronted Aeneid or posed a personal threat to Ritter.
He’d go to war for the man who had lavished so much attention upon him over the
years, even referring to him once during a drunken binge as his wayward son. At
least that’s what Drake thought he heard. It was enough for him.

Chapter 10

Two hours later, in the shattered kitchen
of the adobe bunkhouse, Ryker and his FBI forensics team were staring at the
damage. The wooden window frames were still smoldering while nails and glass
shrapnel were embedded in the cabinets amidst mangled corpses spread around the
tiled floor. A forest service fire lookout spotter had reported a plume of
black smoke emanating from the area that afternoon. After the sheriff’s
department arrived, they phoned in the information which eventually made it up
the chain of command to Ryker as a potential act of domestic terrorism.

He looked over the dead gunmen, removing
their masks one by one and studying their faces. Perry had come up on his day
off at Ryker’s summoning and was trying to piece together Mitch’s involvement
and possible whereabouts given that he resided at the ranch.

“I got positive ID on two of the perps but
the others don’t show up in our database,” said Perry, who tapped his soiled
boots against a bloody corpse whose head looked like it had passed through a wood
chipper. “This guy used to head up a security detail in Bogota and the other fellow
drove armed convoys through hot zones in Africa. Both were affiliated with some
unregistered merc outfit overseas that pulled up in our database.”

Ryker put his hands on his hips and shook
his head. “What on earth were these guys doing here? Looks like someone’s
private little army was about to go on a shooting rampage—but why?”

“I spoke with the owners of the ranch.
They’re up in Prescott. I informed them one of their own had been killed. They
confirmed that Mitch was renting out this bunkhouse just as I thought.” Perry
looked around at the old adobe structure that was partially intact. “Damn, he
always said he liked living like a pioneer but I thought he meant going without
Wi-Fi.”

“Listen, Perry, I know you guys are
friends but if there’s anything you want to tell me—anything I should know
about Mitch’s involvement in this…”

Perry rolled his shoulders and smirked. “When
I last saw him this morning, he was headed back here. What happened between
then and now is beyond me. If he hasn’t reported in yet, it’s because something
went sideways or he’s without comms.”

Perry walked out the back door and
surveyed the ground. He saw a trail through the leaves leading to the arroyo
and climbed down past the rock-strewn surface until he was at the bottom. Moving
twenty yards to the west, he found a boot print that matched Mitch’s tread
pattern along with a smaller set that resembled a woman’s. To either side were
a series of a dozen or more tracks with tread patterns bearing the same design.
Mitch and the woman’s stride indicated that they were moving quickly while the
others were shortened like they were proceeding with uncertainty. Perry took
off his FBI ballcap and scratched his head, looking at the challenging
countryside then swatting a fly away from his ear. He retraced his steps back
to the bunkhouse where Ryker was still analyzing the scene.

Perry glanced at the other buildings
strung out around the pasture, amazed that there were no civilian casualties
amongst the ranchers.
Would’ve been a fucking OK Corral shootout if those
boys had been at home.

He squatted down beside Ryker. “They
didn’t ride a horse or drive out of here. They headed down the wash with a
shitload of hostiles in pursuit.”

“What do you mean ‘they’—I thought it was
just Mitch?” said Ryker with a puzzled expression.

“There’s a woman’s tracks as well. I’d say
it’s at least Mitch and one other person.”

Ryker scratched the back of his neck.
“Hmm…interesting. Not sure if there’s a connection but there was a sighting of
a high-value female fugitive in Cave Creek yesterday—the one on the Most Wanted
list that I sent around the office. What are the chances that’s a coincidence?”

Perry looked over his shoulder at the
parking area and at the homes above where a flurry of field agents were
swarming around collecting crime-scene evidence. “Let me take some men with me
and we’ll get on the trail. Once I get a fix on their location, I’ll radio
back.”

“We can get a helo to sweep the areas
around here. No need to get any of our guys tangled up in these canyons.”

“Look, I’ve got fresh sign and a verified
direction of travel. You’re not going to be able to see that kind of detail
from a thousand feet up. Plus, I know Mitch and his methods. It’ll hasten our
search efforts.”

Ryker seemed surprised at Perry’s
insistent tone but knew he was a skilled mantracker. “If it were anybody else,
I’d say no but take three, and only three men with you and then check back with
me at the first sign of Mitch.”

Perry summoned the agents, all of whom
were new recruits in their late twenties. After the men gathered their assault
packs from the vehicle, they headed down into the arroyo. He had worked
intermittently with the other agents over the past few months, all fresh out of
the academy. Perry took point as he tried to decipher the story on the ground
and what had become of his colleague. At the first juncture in the narrow
drainage, Perry paused to study the cluster of assorted boot prints in the damp
sand while the other men scanned the surroundings, fanning out around him.

Using a South African tracking method, he
drew a square with his fingertip on the ground so he had a containment field
measuring roughly three feet by three feet. Then he counted each individual
heel impression and divided by two, the number that corresponded with the
two-legged stride. “Looks like 10 guys passed through here.” The method was a
reliable predictor for numbers up to a dozen people.

A mile later, Perry looked at the route
ahead which wound through cacti and other jagged flora known to impale wayward explorers.
He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “This is gonna be some bitchin’
terrain to track a bunch of evaders through. Sure hope this isn’t a long
pursuit.”

Ryker came over the two-way radio that was
attached to his front breast pocket.

“A helo is inbound and will assist with an
aerial search but will have a limited flight window with the monsoon storm
brewing to the north of us.”

“Copy that; I would concentrate all of
their efforts to the northeast.”

“I thought you were tracking them to the
northwest.”

“That’s correct but this canyon splits up
ahead according to my GPS. I’ll cover the area that veers in the other
direction. It’ll be a better use of our resources.”

He clicked off his radio, attaching it to
his shoulder sling. “Man, what the hell is Mitch tangled up with?” he grumbled
to himself as he began following the contours of the rock-strewn arroyo.
“Whatever it is, he’s gonna take us on a wild chase through the bowels of hell
if I know him.”