Next of Kin (25 page)

For now he just followed the road that was winding up Rebel Ridge through trees so tall and thick they looked as if they’d been there for centuries.

A quick glance at his watch told him they’d been on the road for exactly thirty-four minutes when they came around a big curve and he had to suddenly slam on the brakes.

An enormous tree was partially blocking the road. It appeared that it had fallen recently—probably during some recent storm. There were no tire tracks on the road above the dead tree, which told him no one had been in or out since the last rainfall.

He eyed the three men with him. “Emerson, you and Bordain get out and move that off the road so we can pass.”

“I’ll help,” Mason said. “I need to take a piss anyway.”

“Tree first,” Silas said unsympathetically, then sat in the vehicle with the engine idling, watching as the men got hold of the broken limbs and the trunk, and began dragging the tree off to the edge of the road. As soon as the way was clear, he saw Mason duck into the trees on the far side.

“What the hell, Mason?” he yelled. “Just piss anywhere!”

Mason stopped and looked back. “Now I gotta take a shit, too. Just wait, damn it. That bitch ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Silas cursed beneath his breath as he watched Mason disappear into the trees. The other men got back into the truck and closed the doors while they waited for Mason to come back.

Dooley Walker was one of the cousins. He’d been lying in the underbrush, about twenty yards in, ever since he and his brothers had dragged that dead tree onto the road. After that, Mike and Pudge had taken off to their own assigned locations, leaving Dooley at the first roadblock. Pudge had laid spike strips in the road before sunup, and everyone else was on watch.

He’d heard the vehicles before he saw them, and as he watched the men climbing out of the first SUV, strapped with pistols and wearing camo clothing, he knew the bad boys were here. He counted heads and took note of as many types of weapons as he could see, and then lay low, waiting for them to leave.

When he saw one of the men separate from the others, he froze. Then the man headed into the woods in his direction and he tensed, waiting to see what the guy was going to do. The driver of the first vehicle called out his name—Mason—and then Mason yelled back. “That bitch ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said, and Dooley got pissed. Damn it to hell, that bastard was talking about Beth. Dooley stayed low, watching Mason go farther into the woods before he stopped.

When Dooley saw Mason take down his pants and squat, he smiled grimly. Old Mason was about to have a real shitty day. He rose up, notched an arrow and drew back, letting it fly straight into the side of Mason’s neck. It cut off whatever outcry he would have made and broke his neck at the same time. Mason was dead before his shit hit the ground.

Dooley got up in a crouched position. Moving swiftly, he grabbed the dead man under the arms, threw him over his shoulders and carried him deeper into the trees, then rolled his body off the side of a cliff before disappearing.

Back on the road, Silas was fuming. Time was wasting, and he had decided that Mason hadn’t really needed to take a crap but was probably getting high instead.

“Emerson, go get Mason, and be quick about it.”

“Yes, sir,” Emerson said, already jumping out of the vehicle.

He ran off into the trees and quickly found where Mason had squatted, but the man himself was nowhere to be found, only a single set of footprints leading off into the forest. Puzzled, he followed the footsteps for a short distance, until he reached a wide expanse of rock and the footprints disappeared.

He ran back double-time, knowing Silas was going to be pissed.

Silas saw him coming back alone and jumped out, cursing at the top of his voice.

“Where the fucking hell is Mason? I thought I told you to bring him back now!”

“I looked, Silas. I saw where he took a dump, but then he got up and walked off into the woods. His footprints just disappeared.”

Silas frowned. He didn’t want to think that they were already under attack. More likely the damn ice-head had gotten high and walked off the side of the mountain.

“Fine. Get in the truck. We’re leaving. If he wants a ride back, he can track us, or sit on his ass and wait for us to come back down.”

Emerson blinked, a little surprised that they were leaving one of their own behind, but he wasn’t the one in charge, and he quickly got back inside.

The two-car caravan continued upward, moving past homes that weren’t much more than shacks by the side of the road, while other houses, even if not elaborate, seemed well cared for. They passed a large metal sign on the side of the road with an arrow pointing up a track to the left, indicating the way to the Foley Brothers Mining Corporation. The trees grew taller the higher up they went, while the underbrush got thicker and the road rougher. There were potholes and old ruts that hadn’t been graded out in years. One stretch of the road appeared to have recently been filled in, but when they drove over it, the drop was so deep that the undersides of the SUVs banged against the ground.

Silas cursed. All he needed was to bust the oil pan, but when he glanced back in the side-view mirror, he didn’t see any evidence of leakage or any car parts lying on the ground.

As they topped the next hill and started down, Pudge darted out of the woods behind the SUVs and quickly pulled up the spike strips that had been concealed under a thin layer of sand, then disappeared back in the trees.

Silas kept a close eye on their surroundings the farther up they went, but it didn’t appear to him as if anyone lived up here anymore—no one but a fugitive, and they were on her trail.

Just as he started around a sharp curve, his vehicle began to pull hard toward the right. He fought the car back onto the road, his ears registering a regular ka-thump.

In the rearview mirror, he could see that Taggert was experiencing similar difficulty staying on the road. Before he could manage to stop, one of his tires blew out. The sound was startling, and he grabbed the wheel with both hands, fighting to keep the car in the road instead of careening off into the trees.

Silas signaled for a halt, but Taggert had already done that on his own a few yards back. Taggert got out, cursing, then stared at the wheels in disbelief. One tire had blown out and the other three were going flat.

“What the fuck?”

He looked up at Silas’s car a few yards ahead. All the tires on that vehicle were going flat, as well. Instinctively, he crouched, his hand on his holster as he scanned the tree line, looking for the enemy.

Silas had come to the same conclusion. He didn’t know how it had happened, but this wasn’t a coincidence. These yokels had managed to take out both their cars, leaving them afoot.

It was humiliating, and it also explained Mason’s sudden disappearance.

Silas was a soldier. He’d fought more wars on foot than any of these men combined, except maybe Taggert, but he’d underestimated the enemy.

“What happened?” Warwick asked, as he got out of the second SUV.

“See for yourself,” Taggert said, and pointed to the hatch. “Get the weapons out. We’re packing them in on foot.”

“How will we get back down?” Farmer asked, as he grabbed his baby, an American rocket launcher that had gone missing from a New Jersey armory five years earlier.

“We’ll go back down on rims if we have to,” Taggert said. “For now, we’ve got a job to do.”

Silas shouldered his pack, as well as the one Mason would have carried, and waited for Emerson and Bordain to get their own packs strapped on.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” they echoed.

“How far are we from the target?” Bordain asked.

Silas scanned the GPS. “About three miles as the crow flies.”

“Are we taking the road or the trees?”

“We’re done with the fucking road,” Silas said. “And if you find yourself a hillbilly hiding in the trees, take him out.”

Nineteen

N
athan Walker was up in one tree about a mile and a half from Grandpa Foster’s old house. His brother Moses was in another tree about fifty yards farther up. Their brother Paul was on the ground, covered up in leaves and grass so completely that Nathan was looking at the location where he’d watched Quinn put him and still couldn’t see where he was at.

They were the Walkers from the redheaded side of the family, so they were all wearing black or green sock caps to keep their hair from giving them away. It was a common understanding that John Walker’s three sons were the best sharpshooters on Rebel Ridge, except for their cousin Quinn.

Nathan shifted slightly, easing an ache in his left leg, and hoped the action started soon. He’d been up this tree so long, he was afraid if he had to come down, he would be too damn stiff to run.

The theory was that the killers’ tires should all be flat by now, forcing them to go the rest of the way on foot. And since the cousins could see the road from the treetops, that would give Quinn’s little mountain army the opportunity to pick them off one by one before they ever reached the house where Beth was hiding.

A trail of ants kept moving past Nathan’s right hand, carrying tiny bits of grass and seeds up the tree. He
would
pick a tree with an ant den inside. Damn but he hated bugs.

All of a sudden he heard movement about a hundred yards down the slope and grew still while his heart began to pound. They were coming, but not by the road. He glanced once in Moses’s direction and could tell that Moses had heard them, too.

His rifle was ready, and he knew the drill.

Shoot to kill.

The hair on Silas’s neck was standing at attention. He felt like a sitting duck, even though they had good cover among the thickly growing trees.

His men were moving in a grid pattern, twenty yards between them as they walked up the mountain. They’d come at least a mile and a half without encountering anyone or anything unusual, but he still felt uneasy. They were making good time, but going in on foot had not been part of the plan, and they were already nearly an hour behind schedule.

Suddenly something dropped to the ground a short distance ahead, and he gave the signal to stop, quickly scanning the area. Taggert signaled, then pointed up at a small squirrel that was jumping from tree to tree above their heads as fast as it could go.

Silas nodded, scanned the area one last time, then gave the signal for them to continue. It was his best guess that they were still about another mile and a half from the target. His plan was to encircle the house so no one could escape, then turn Farmer and his rocket launcher loose to blow the place and everyone in it to kingdom come.

All of a sudden there was a loud crack, like a bolt of lightning striking too close. Bordain was down with a neat round hole in his forehead, the back of his head splattering on the tree behind him as he fell.

Another shot from a different direction knocked Emerson backward so hard the others heard bones break as someone hit the trees behind them.

Silas was shouting orders as they scattered and began to fire, but it soon became apparent that they were just wasting ammunition, because no one was firing back.

Silas was flat on the ground with his rifle still in his hands. He hadn’t seen anything to shoot at but trees. He keyed up his walkie and began calling roll.

“Warwick.”

“Here!”

“Farmer!”

“Here.”

“Taggert!”

“Here.”

“Emerson!”

No answer.

“Bordain!”

No answer.

Silas was getting nervous. He was down three men and had yet to see his enemy’s face.

After about fifteen minutes without making a move or a sound, they retreated a hundred yards downhill and took another trail, moving on the diagonal toward where they needed to go.

Uncle Fagan’s boys had heard the gunfire. It made what they’d set out to do a reality. People could be dying. They hoped to God it wasn’t any of them.

Mike notched an arrow and then crouched down in a thicket just off the trail. If they came his way, he would take out the last one in line and then disappear.

If they did what Quinn had predicted, though, they would have shifted their trail again after the gun battle, and that would take them to where Pudge was waiting at his new location.

Pudge took a deep breath, remembering his cousin Beth and how the Feds had nearly gotten her killed, and proceeded to be pissed all over again. That was all it took. He was ready and waiting for whoever came up the deer trail.

Silas wanted to run straight for the target, turn Farmer loose with the rocket launcher and get the hell off this mountain, but they couldn’t take a chance on walking into another ambush. However, if they did, at least this time they would be ready with something more than bullets. Grenades weren’t particular. They took out anything within the radius of the blast. Fucking hillbillies. They wanted to play war? He would show them what war was all about.

They were less than three-quarters of a mile from their target when Silas heard a grunt, then a thud.

He pivoted in a crouch, saw Warwick on the ground with an arrow sticking out of his back, and pulled the pin on his grenade and flung it as far as it would go.

“Take that, you motherfuckers!” he screamed, as the other men let fly with grenades of their own.

Quinn had set himself up as the last line of defense between Beth and the attack, but when he heard the grenades go off, it sent him right back into a war he thought he’d left behind.

He hit the ground with his rifle in his hands and started to belly-crawl into the hole he’d dug for himself. He flopped down inside, then rose up just enough to aim the rifle over the edge, took a deep breath and blocked out everything but the enemy who was coming closer.

When the first sounds of gunfire erupted, Beth panicked. Like Quinn, the sounds had thrown her back into a mind-set where the only thing she knew how to do was run.

Ryal caught her coming down the hall and spun her up against the wall, his gaze frantic.

“Beth! Stop! All that means is they’re out there, not in here. Quinn and the men have them pinned down away from the house. That’s what we want, honey. That was the plan, remember?”

Beth was looking at Ryal’s face. She saw his lips moving, but she couldn’t focus on what he was saying for the sound of gunshots echoing in her head.

Once again Ryal was facing how deeply she’d been traumatized by what happened to her before they got her to Kentucky. Her eyes were wide, her pupils fixed and dilated, and he could feel every muscle in her body trembling. Talking hadn’t worked, so he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close against his chest.

“It’s me, Bethie. It’s me. You’re not in L.A. anymore, you’re home with your family and with me, back in Kentucky. Hear me, baby…we won’t let you get hurt.”

He looked over his shoulder and out through the living room window, scanning the clearing for signs of anyone coming close. He was worried about his cousins, and about Quinn. Part of him wished he was out there blasting the bastards to hell for the fear they’d put in Beth’s heart, but he wouldn’t leave—
couldn’t
leave, not and count on her being there when he came back.

“Come with me, love,” he urged. “I need to keep watch at the window. You can watch with me. See all that open space between the house and the trees? There’s no way they can get here without me taking them out. No one’s that fast, okay?”

Still shaking, but reluctant to be alone, she let him lead her into the living room, where they crouched at the window. At his bidding, she dropped to her knees beside him, but she didn’t look out. She kept her gaze on Ryal. He was her anchor to sanity, and she had to keep him in sight.

Silas was hunched over and running, with Taggert on his left and Farmer on his right. Farmer was carrying the rocket launcher cradled in one arm and his rifle in the other, while bullets and arrows flew past their heads and into the trees beside them.

The roof of the house was now visible to them. All Silas needed was to get Farmer close enough to take aim, and then the rocket would do the rest. Once that fireball went up, their pursuers wouldn’t be interested in taking them out. They would be too busy trying to find survivors.

From the corner of his eye he saw Taggert vault over a downed tree and then suddenly drop out of sight. A second later, Taggert let out a scream that caused Silas to stumble. The scream continued in one long, frenzied breath, until it finally dissolved into a bubbling gurgle and went silent.

Silas’s gut roiled. He was beginning to realize he might not live through this foray after all, and it didn’t make sense. How could a bunch of mountain men outwit and outfight seasoned soldiers? All of a sudden he and Farmer reached the edge of the forest and got a full view of the house, and he spun and hit the ground on his knees.

“Set up here!” he yelled, as he began shooting into the trees behind them to give Farmer some cover.

Farmer skidded to a halt, loaded the rocket and swung around to take aim.

At that moment Farmer jerked, then screamed, as his leg went out from under him. He fell with the loaded rocket launcher trapped beneath him. He rolled over and tried to stand up, only to see the lower half of his leg lying on the ground beside him. He passed out before the pain reached his brain.

Silas screamed in rage and emptied his automatic into the woods behind him in a sweeping spray of bullets.

Vance Walker was coming up on the right behind Quinn when a bullet caught his shoulder and spun him backward onto the ground.

Nathan had the shooter in his sights and pulled the trigger just as one of Silas’s bullets cut through his side. He cried out as he fell, and then belly-crawled back into cover while trying to quell the gush of blood between his fingers.

The bullet Nathan fired missed Silas by a hair, but it amped Silas’s need for retribution. His men were down and he might be next, but he wasn’t about to kick the bucket alone. He was taking that damn house and its occupants with him.

It didn’t take long for Silas to assess the damage. Farmer was unconscious, and from the looks of the blood gushing from his leg, he wasn’t going to wake up. He rolled Farmer off the rocket launcher, swung it to his shoulder and took aim. He squeezed the trigger a millisecond before Quinn’s bullet went through the back of his head. He was dead before he hit the ground, but the rocket had been launched.

“No, no, no!” Quinn roared, but it was too late.

The rocket was only seconds away from its target as Quinn went running toward the house.

“Get out! Get out!” he kept screaming, and then the house went up in a ball of flame.

Ryal saw two armed strangers pause in the trees opposite the house, which meant at least two attackers had gotten past Quinn and everyone else.

That wasn’t good.