Dead in Their Tracks (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story Book 1) (8 page)

Chapter 15

Perry was walking point through the canyon,
which had narrowed considerably since their last stop. The moonlight wasn’t of
much help as it was just beyond the cusp of the rim and he had been relying on
a specialized purple headlamp for discerning tracks. This color was the best in
the spectrum for detecting disturbances on the ground and he’d used it many
times on long-distance night searches in the desert, pursuing fugitives with
Mitch.

In some ways tracking at night was easier
than during the day as you controlled the angle of light. But what you couldn’t
see was the big picture of terrain features ahead and any potential ambush
points. In an agency-wide search, that wasn’t usually a problem as you had a
hundred guys pounding the ground looking for signs along with horseback and
helicopter support. Perry had eschewed the latter, telling Ryker the impending
storm would only put more people at risk. He also suspected Mitch would be
pushing forward in an all-out march to make it to the interstate and hitch a
ride out of the area. At least that’s what he kept telling himself he would do
if the tables were turned. He knew Mitch was the better tracker and he was glad
that he was in a large group that would soon have drone support and vehicles
once they could climb out of the canyon.

He passed by a currant bush and then
backed up a foot, pushing the low-lying brush aside and directing his light at
a wedge-shaped area of sand. Perry knelt down and angled the purple light
around the area, noticing a faint heel impression, the half-moon shape barely
visible. He walked around the bush, looking for more disturbance, and then
swung his headlamp up a faint incline of rocks that led to the rim.

“We head up from here.” He motioned to the
others with his upright thumb as he resumed leading. He saw Drake staring at
the ground with a curious expression.

“You sure this is the way?” said the
brutish figure.

“Just as sure as I am about your brain
being the size of a walnut. Now shut up and move.”

Perry had no desire to huddle around the
track and explain to the others what he deduced and how. His heart was racing,
knowing that Ritter expected results.

Perry thought about the dead agents a few
miles back in the canyon. He felt a tinge of remorse at the skilled men who had
met their end. He didn’t care that they had wives or kids or were good guys,
only that they were fellow warriors who had honed their fighting skills to
tremendous standards to be recognized as worthy of being in the FBI. Then he
thought about his own skills and his former career aspirations before falling
under the spell of Nelson Ritter at a weapons expo in Las Vegas two years
previously. Over the ensuing months and through many meetings at the CEO’s home,
he and Ritter had come to realize they shared the same disenfranchised outlook
on working for the federal government. Perry’s own disillusionment went beyond
being disgruntled. He was furious at the rejection letters in his personnel file,
indicating he wasn’t considered a prime candidate for the coveted bureau chief position
of the Southwest Division. He figured it was due to his lack of political
connections in Washington. He had spent the past decade climbing the regional
ladder, attending extraneous social events to further his status, and he had an
exemplary performance record. The final straw came nine months earlier when he
had been passed over for Evan Ryker, a D.C. desk jockey, who was acting as the
new interim director. Perry surmised his goals had tumbled down into an icy
crevasse from which there was no return. All he wanted now was the money Ritter
had promised then he would depart the U.S. and start over in another country.
He thought of opening his own private security firm somewhere that was untapped
by Ritter and others like him. There was nothing holding him in America. Even
his wife, who was nothing more than a domestic ornament he’d acquired to
maintain an image of stability in the eyes of the bureau, was of little use to
him now.

Perry figured he would assist with this
leg of the operation by capturing Sanchez and then figure out what to do with
Mitch when the time came. The sizable funds he was getting from Ritter would
help soothe a remorseful conscience, which he hadn’t noticed much until a few
hours ago.

As the group pushed over the edge of the
canyon, arriving on the mesa, Perry flicked off his light. The moon provided
enough to see the main terrain features and he suspected that the interstate
would be visible in a few miles. The ominous cloud formations to the north were
showing signs of lightning discharge and he hoped the storm would hold off long
enough for them to get across the open terrain of the mesa.

“Call the men in the jeeps and have them
rendezvous with us at the road juncture coming up in two miles,” he said to
Drake while sifting over the topographic map features on his GPS screen. “From
there, you can set up the drones and we can trim off some time locating these
two.”

When Drake was done relaying the
coordinates, he moved beside Perry. “So, this guy that’s with Sanchez, he’s FBI
too—how’s that?”

“I keep asking myself the same thing. They
obviously have a prior connection.”

“This woman has been a fucking headache
for Aeneid. She hacks our system, drops a few of our guys, and then disappears
only to show up in this rat hole of a state. What’s her end game, I wonder?”

Perry just smirked, growing more irritated
with each passing minute at the man’s presence. “At the end of the day, she
probably wants what we all do: peace of mind knowing she made a contribution to
humanity and left the world a better place.”

Perry’s philosophical sarcasm left Drake
puzzled, as he’d intended. The disgruntled FBI agent strode onward, hoping the
large man would step on a pit viper and give Perry a reason for ending the
surly goon whose IQ seemed on par with the boulders around them.

Chapter 16

The plump moon hung in an obsidian sky,
providing enough illumination that Mitch could make out the rock-strewn path
leading up the mesa above the caves.

“Next to dodging any encounters with the
hostiles on our trail, our biggest concern is going to be inadvertently
stepping on a rattlesnake in the rubble ahead,” he said as they crept over the
rock scree that came off the mesa at a forty-degree angle and was over a
hundred yards in length. Mitch thought back to the time he had been nabbed by a
copperhead snake during a sniper training course at Fort Bragg when he crawled
too close to a cluster of cattails. That time he was lucky to be in the
thirty-percent category of people who receive dry bites each year and he walked
away with two vampire-like puncture wounds and a cool story to tell at the bar
later.

“Snakes—are they really a problem out here
or are you just screwing with me?”

“We’re at 3000 feet. The higher elevation
means we won’t have to contend with as many nasty creepy-crawlies like the
lower desert but we still have to be hyper-alert for where we are placing our
hands and feet.”

“I would have thought scorpions would be a
bigger problem out here but thanks for jolting my nerves even more,” Dev said
as she followed behind him, being sure to step where he had just been. “I
remember being in Jordan once and having a scorpion crawl up my field jacket—that
was a long night.”

“Scorpions—oh, yeah, they’re out here too,
probably in far greater numbers than the snakes but we’re not going to be
sleeping on the ground so I’m not as worried. And the cougars on the prowl at
night are mainly after mule deer so we should be OK on that end.”

“Fantastic—anything else you want to share
with me?”

“Well, there was this one time that I
stepped on a basking Gila monster on our ranch but…” He paused and turned back
to grin, noticing her serious expression. “Just kidding.”

“You may be use to crawling around in the
brush but I’d rather take my chances in a dark alley in the city than be out
here right now. How much farther is the damn highway?”

“Well, it’s between not close and too
far.”

Halfway up, Mitch came across a mangled
section of old cattle fencing that had become dislodged from a rock slide. He
looked at the tangled heap of barbed wire and then removed the Leatherman from
his belt, snipping off a twenty-foot-long section and coiling it up. Mitch made
sure they kept their route confined to the rocks so their tracks would be
reduced. The Hollywood notion of brushing out your tracks with a handful of
twigs did nothing to cover your route but only gave pursuers another type of
pattern to search for instead of boot prints.

As they crested the ridge onto the cholla-lined
mesa, the landscape ahead flattened out. It looked like one continuous plane
that went on for a dozen miles or more with a jagged mountain range as the backstop
to the north. Echoing off the rocky walls were the sounds of a pack of coyotes
that were working the scrub below for jackrabbits.

Mitch let his eyes adjust to the new
visuals while flaring his nose up to take in the odors around them. All he
noticed was the constant fragrance of creosote bushes and the flowers of agave
whose eight-foot-long stalks jutted up from the earth like desert sentinels. He
could make out the faint undulating lights of vehicles on the interstate to the
northwest but had underestimated the distance. “Shit, this is going to be more
of a trek than I thought.”

Dev had come up alongside him and was
catching her breath. “As I recall from my military days, the average person can
cover around 2-3 miles an hour. That’s going to be quite a push.”

“That’s for the
average
person on
level terrain,” he said. “In canyon country like this, and traveling at night—
and
if we get dumped on by that storm cell in the distance, I’d say more like 1-2
miles an hour, especially since we’re gonna have to stay off the dirt roads.”

He looked over at her, noting her athletic
figure. “Fortunately for us, we’re not the average hikers, are we?”

“Is that your confident side or cocky side
shining through?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe a little
of both. Either way, we will make it. Just keep in mind that we’re not going to
stop every ten minutes to remove cactus spines. We’ll patch ourselves up
afterwards.”

“You’re not out with a tourist. I can
handle myself out here, perhaps better than you.”

“You’re forgetting I grew up in these
parts.”

“What’s the longest you’ve ever walked in
one day with a full ruck?” she said, standing with her hands on her hips and
chin up.

“That’d be during SF selection when I did
39 miles in one night.”

She grinned. “Forty-two miles in one night
in Tunisia after escaping with a hostage we freed.”

“How long have you gone without water in
the heat while on an extended op?” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

Dev looked up at the stars, mulling over the
answer. “Hmm…I’d say around sixteen hours along the Somali coast.”

“Pfff…was that moving or at rest?”

“We were in a lay-up position the entire
time but it was around 118 degrees during the day.”

“Shit, there you go. I once did eleven
hours without any water in triple-digit heat while on a mission with the Kurds.”

“Well, it looks like we both get admission
to the mutual admiration club—now can we get moving?”

As they continued walking along the rocky
terrain, their banter continued with each trying to outdo the other until their
mouths grew dry. Mitch shared some of his scant water and then finished off the
last mouthful.  

“We’ll stick with the Apache method of
clinging to the mesa rim in case we need to drop below for concealment.
Hopefully we’ll hit a cattle trough or rock-pocket of water somewhere.
Otherwise, just put a small pebble under your tongue. It won’t relieve dehydration
but it will help with cottonmouth which helps with one’s attitude.”

“My attitude will greatly improve once we
get out of this furnace.”

As they walked, Dev thought about how
Mitch was another mystery associated with her father’s old life. In the four
years she had spent learning Anatoly’s tradecraft and working for his company,
she felt like she still knew so little about him. The intermittent family
dinners of her youth when Anatoly was home in between missions along with the
stories she’d gleaned from her mother made her ache for the lost time when she
needed her father the most as an adolescent. Hearing Mitch talk about Anatoly
made her realize the impact her father had had upon his life and countless
others but it only filled her with envy over the vanished years she could never
reclaim. She wasn’t alone in her experience—most of her childhood friends with
fathers in the military had the same story but it didn’t make turning the
anguish-filled pages of that book any easier. In the ensuing years since she
began working for her father, their relationship had transmogrified into a
teacher-pupil arrangement under his stern direction. Occasionally, they both
let their guards down enough to allow the old familial sentiments to bleed
through but only as long as Anatoly allowed it. Dev was constantly torn between
wanting to please him and her desire to simply be the best operative in the
organization, given her competitive nature. At the end of the work day, all
that mattered was that she was in closer proximity to her father than she had
been all of her childhood, one more reason she had longed to end her assignment
in the crucible of Aeneid and return to Israel.

***

The first six miles were uneventful as
they traversed more boulder fields while trying to avoid wrenching an ankle or
getting jabbed by the desert flora which all seemed to be designed to poke,
pierce, stab, or impale.

With only a few hours of travel under
their belts, Mitch was feeling the effects of physical exertion in the
ninety-degree heat coupled with lack of fluid intake; his head was pounding and
it seemed like every cell in his body was screaming for water. He knew Dev had
to be feeling it as well but she never complained nor slowed her pace. She
reminded him of some of the female ranch hands he’d grown up around that worked
their tails to the bone each day in all manner of weather and got the job done
no matter how brutal the field conditions. Though he’d known her less than a
day, she had proven to be tough and resourceful. He still wasn’t sure what
would happen once they reached civilization but he admired her physical prowess
and staunch independence.

As they rounded the bend in the boulder field,
Mitch caught the slight glimmer of movement a mile ahead in the faint moonlight.
He could make out the metallic surface of a small vehicle weaving its way along
a tumbleweed-choked dirt road to the east. He motioned for Dev to stop and they
secreted themselves against a vertical slab of sandstone that resembled a whale
fin emanating from the desert floor.

They watched the vehicle for a few minutes
until it came to a stop near a windmill. They could see two men climbing out of
the open-top jeep.

“Those probably aren’t cowboys out
inspecting their cattle, eh,” she whispered.

“Driving at midnight without their lights
on? Not likely. I’m betting they’re equipped with some nightvision though.”

“Two of them—it’d be an even match.”

He looked at her with his eyebrows raised.
“You’re not one to run from a fight, are you?” He glanced back towards the men,
watching them as the two strode about the windmill searching for any signs on
the ground.

“They know we are going to be drawn to the
waterholes in the area so they’re scouring those sites for potential tracks.
That’s what I’d do too if I were a searcher.”

He chewed on his lower lip, mulling over
their options. “The thing is…if we take them out, that’s going to leave lots of
tracks and alert the other Neanderthals that two of their guys are missing when
they don’t radio in.”

“Then why not wait until they’re done and
check back in then hit them on the road on their way back out?”

He analyzed the ramifications of her plan
and studied the terrain ahead of them near the single dirt road that led up the
mesa. “Not a bad plan—pretty tactically sound and it puts the element of
surprise in our hands. Lord knows we could sure even the odds more with their
NVGs.”

“Growing up in Israel, your mindset for
attacks and ambushes in daily life is a given, not like over here. Just walking
to school when I was a kid was exhausting because you’re scanning everyone
around you as a potential terrorist. It’s something you can never turn off.”

Though Mitch had spent his adolescence on
his uncle’s working cattle ranch and had a much different childhood than Dev,
he knew the debilitating effects of PTSD. The daily hypervigilance that combat
provided was one you could never seem to shake once you returned to civilian
life. Your trust in your fellow man, outside of one’s tac-team, dwindled until
you saw everyone as a suspect in what felt like a conspiracy against your own
sanity.

He pointed to a shadowy formation two
hundred yards away. “We can use that low outcropping of rocks to spring the
ambush.”

She nodded and then followed him out from
behind the immense slab. They skulked around the waist-high stands of cactus
then darted between the lone mesquite trees until they were beside the
overgrown two-track that the jeep had driven in on. Unspooling the barbed wire
he had retrieved earlier, he handed her one end as they wound it at chest-level
between the tree trunks.

“Won’t they see this? There’s not much to
conceal it,” she said.

“Exactly—a good mantrap always operates on
two levels, with one serving as a decoy up high to draw visual attention from
the main trap on the ground or, in our case, our ambush location to their rear.
I want their NVGs to pick up the barbed wire about twenty feet away so they are
distracted from the chokepoint we just drew them into—that’s the place where
we’ll attack,” he said, pointing to a cluster of mesquite trees along a bend in
the road.”

“I’m afraid that I’ve mostly done urban
ops over the years and don’t know all this hillbilly survival stuff.”

“You mean redneck—
hillbillies
are
inbred country music-lovers back in the tick-infested mountains of Virginia and
other backwards eastern states. We westerners use the term redneck.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

Mitch kept an eye on the distant outlines
of the shadowy figures near the windmill as he left Dev to finish securing the
barbed wire diversion. He moved along the side of the road, being careful to
step on rocks to obscure his boot prints. He moved to the curve in the road
which would help to block any disturbance once the men made the turn. Instead,
they would immediately be drawn to the barbed wire strung up at chest level and
provide the critical seconds for Mitch and Dev to strike.

As he finished scrutinizing the ambush
location, he gritted his teeth for the attack that was about to come and hoped
that Dev was as fierce as she seemed. After she moved up to his location, he
heard the faint call of the men radioing in their position followed by the
sound of the jeep starting. He could see the vehicle undulating along the bumpy
two-track towards their location. Dev and Mitch crept into the shadows by the
mesquite grove ten feet from the chokepoint. Each of them readied their
firearms, their throats growing further parched, as if they’d just swallowed
hot coals.