Dead in Their Tracks (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story Book 1) (10 page)

Chapter 20

The first plum-colored fingers of dawn
were stabbing through the clouds as Dev and Mitch climbed halfway up a small
butte. It would be easier to go around it but quicker to scurry up and down the
other side if they could maintain their same pace. Stopping at a knee-high pile
of scree twenty yards from the rim, Dev removed her encrypted cellphone from
her shoulder bag and powered it on. Mitch squatted beside her and swept the
narrow dirt road below with his rifle scope. He was exhausted but they were
almost at their destination and the sound of traffic blaring along the
interstate was within earshot.

A few minutes later, there was an incoming
text. Dev sighed and hastily typed back a reply.

“Besides a cup of coffee, I could use some
good news this morning—whatcha got?” Mitch said.

“A support team of mine is inbound along
the interstate. They are tracking my phone now and it looks like they’ll be at
the bridge there in thirty minutes,” she said, pointing at a two-lane overpass about
a mile away.

“God, I’ve driven over that bridge a
thousand times. Never thought I’d be racing to reach it on foot from this side.”

Between their location and their exfil
location were hundreds of acres of thick cactus and cholla. He was about to
suggest a route when the trunk of a large mesquite tree splintered into pieces,
sending a shower of woodchips to his feet. He ducked beneath the rocks, trying
to identify where the rifle shot had come from as another round impacted the
slab in front of him.

Dev was crouching low beside Mitch, peering
through a crevice in the rockpile. “They’re down in the ravine along the road,
about a half-mile away—maybe four or more guys.”

Mitch craned his head up at the ridgeline
behind them. “We need to get up and over then make an all-out sprint for the interstate.
Go first and I’ll cover you.”

“I can cover you,” she snapped back.

“You think your sharpshooting skills are
superior to mine?” he barked.

“We’re wasting time, now go.”

He grabbed her arm as Dev was about to
position the M4 he’d given her. “My weapon can reach out farther than yours so
get your ass over that ridge,” he said, patting the stock of the scoped
Remington 700 rifle in his clutches.

“Pfff,” she mumbled while getting in place
to scurry up the butte. Mitch let loose a volley of rounds into the region
below where he’d located several muzzle blasts. After his sixth shot, Dev was
out of sight.

Another barrage of machinegun fire
ricocheted off the surrounding rocks near his head as he reloaded his weapon.
He got on his elbows and moved eight feet over to a different opening in the
rock cavity. With the gunfire below ceasing, Mitch resumed shooting off more
rounds and then spun, kicking loose the foundation of the scree to create a
small rockslide, then began his sprint up the incline. The boulders around him
were shattering from incoming shots and he felt his legs being pelted by rock
shrapnel while the twang of ricochets echoed off the slabs.

As he cleared the ridge and ran out of
sight of the shooters below, Dev was nowhere to be seen. The compressed rocks
on the ground indicated her direction of travel and he followed those for fifty
feet until he saw her squatting in the shade of a tree, her weapon fixed on the
road below. Upon his arrival, she began walking in a zig-zag pattern down the side
as he followed a few feet behind, keeping his eyes on her hands.

“I was wondering where the hell you went.
I was hoping it wasn’t to hitch a ride without me,” Mitch said, knowing that he
had bought them some time with the rockslide, which would temporarily block the
road.

“Why would I do such a thing? That’s not
how I work.”

“I barely know you, lady. You needed me to
get you across the desert and now you’re nearly home free with your buds on the
way. How do I know that they’re not gonna give me a dirt nap when we reach the vehicle?”

“You are a trusted friend of my father’s.
That’s why he sent me to you in the first place. Besides, you are a skilled
warrior and I am in need of such help.”

As she turned sideways to face him, he
studied her face for a moment but her hardened expression left no room for
interpreting if what she was saying was true. His gut feelings told him to
continue forward with her but he was reluctant to take her at her word. “Just
stay close to me.”

“You’re right, you don’t know me. You
could have shot me back at the ranch when I was on your porch or you could’ve
left me in the desert and walked out to save your own hide but you didn’t.” She
stood still and gave him a hard stare. “Why not?”

He was growing irritated with her as her
questions prodded at the veneer of allegiance he felt towards his job as a
federal agent. “When I find out, I’ll let you know, believe me. Now let’s push
on. There’s only the one dirt road around this butte and those guys will find a
way to get back on task.”

Once they reached more level ground where
the butte and valley below met, they began trotting through the gnarly terrain,
frequently glancing over their shoulders as the two-lane bridge grew closer in
their vision. The roar of vehicles on the interstate echoed off the valley and
he knew they had only minutes to make it off the exposed terrain to the ravine
beneath the bridge.

Dev glanced at her Smartphone again while
continuing to jog. “Extraction in seven minutes. This is going to be a close
one.”

This endurance run reminded Mitch of his
SERE course at Fort Bragg where he underwent a five-day survival and evasion
trek while being pursued by civilians bent on his capture. The students who
lasted the longest were the ones who possessed above-average aerobic capacity
and could simply outrun the “hostiles.” Only then there weren’t armed
mercenaries sending rounds downrange and a mysterious woman for a companion. He
detested the former and still wasn’t sure how he felt about the latter.

Chapter 21

“We just have to hold them off a little
while longer,” Dev said, looking at her cellphone again.

With the sun above the horizon, Mitch
could make out the approaching jeeps driven by the hostiles through the scope
on his sniper rifle. They were heading along the winding dirt road that skirted
below the rim about two miles distant.

“I’ll drive a few rounds through the
engine blocks as soon as they’re in range,” he said, adjusting the elevation
and windage dials on the scope then racking a .308 round into the chamber. He
scanned the nearby terrain for a landmark that was approximately 800 yards out.
Spying the upright skeleton of a dead saguaro cactus near the road, he locked it
in on his mental map and prepared for the shot. He welded his cheek to the
rifle stock and then began pacing his breathing, falling into a four-count
rhythm.

As the lead vehicle rounded the last bend
in the canyon, he zoomed in on the tan grille. Waiting until the jeep was
directly under the saguaro, he fired a single round into the front then racked
another round and fired at the second vehicle. Both came crashing to an
immediate halt, slamming into patches of knee-high cholla that littered the
dirt shoulder.

He refocused his attention on the men
scrambling out of the lead vehicle and lined up the crosshairs on the front
passenger, who had disembarked. Mitch blinked hard and gulped down a breath.
What
the fuck?
He squinted into the reticle and stared at the face of Perry, who
was barking orders at the other men running behind nearby boulders. He pulled
back for a second, shaking his head, then refocused his gaze to be sure of what
he saw.
Perry is in on this!
He swallowed hard and then yelled back to
Dev, who was covering the area towards the interstate.

“That contact you traced to Phoenix? What
was the name?”

She hesitated and then blurted it out.
“Kovac—Perry Kovac. At least, he’s the one I suspected of being Aeneid’s inside
man.”

“How the hell can this be?” he muttered,
taking his finger off the trigger and balling his fist.

“Does that name ring a bell?”

Mitch didn’t answer and only clenched his
jaw, trying to clear his mind enough to focus on the scene in his sight. He saw
the men dispersing amongst the boulders and flowing along the side of the road.
They split into two teams, with one hugging the terrain near the road while
Perry’s group darted cross-country along an old rockslide which provided ample
concealment.

Mitch swung his rifle back to the other
group opposite Perry’s location. Picking out a rail-thin goon darting from tree
to tree, he shot the man clear through the sternum, dropping him back onto a
fallen log. This caused the man in front to pause long enough for Mitch to
drive a round through his upper left pectoral, obliterating most of the
shoulder joint, which caused the arm to dangle like a rotting tree branch in
the wind.

The rest of the men took cover behind boulders
or cottonwood trees. Mitch shifted his attention back to Perry’s group,
catching his colleague in the crosshairs. Perry was close enough now that the
scope revealed his tan face and square jaw. Mitch eased off the trigger for a
second and took a deep breath.
You son of a bitch.
He fired a round onto
the boulder beside Perry, spraying rock shrapnel up into the man’s face. He saw
Perry drop back, clutching his cheek, and then he disappeared behind a dead
tree trunk.
We’re not done here. I need your ass alive.

The other mercenaries were out of sight
below the second ridgeline where Mitch was perched. He crawled backwards with
his rifle, making it to Dev’s location on the other side of the hill. Six hundred
yards away was the interstate, its ribbon of traffic relatively light for a
Monday morning.

“Perry Kovac—what did you have on him? What
was his involvement in all of this again?”

“He has to be the one manipulating security
footage and surveillance for the weapons to arrive here. All I know from the
file I scanned is that the attacks are connected with Iranian terrorists or
some proxy group.”

“That’s beyond even Perry’s clearance
level.”

“Then he’s got someone like Monroe or someone
higher up in D.C. pulling the strings. That’s the part I don’t have yet but
it’s all here on this flash drive,” she said, patting her hand against her
shirt pocket.

Mitch looked down at the interstate. “So,
we’re just gonna run up to the white line on the blacktop and leap in when your
pals come, eh? Is that the plan?” Mitch said, keeping his eyes focused in the
direction of Perry and his men.

“You said you were a cowboy, right? I
would’ve thought that that plan would suit you just fine.”

Fifty yards from the overpass, Mitch
stopped and perched beside a fallen logjam of debris that was wedged under the
steel girders of the bridge. He knew Perry and his men would be attacking them
in an all-out effort to prevent their escape. Mitch just hoped that there would
be no collateral damage above from motorists speeding along the interstate—that
they would drive by never knowing the struggle for survival that was unfolding
below them. How he envied them in this moment, with their faces pressed into a
map of the Grand Canyon.

His mind shifted back to the drainage. There
was a slight hint of a blond orb poking out from a cluster of tamarisk trees to
the right. Mitch readied his rifle, waiting for a glimmer of confirmation on
his target. A second later, the hulking brute’s head split apart, the skullcap
flying off like a swift breeze had plucked it free. He heard Dev cycle another
round into her rifle, surprised that she had beaten him to the shot but
grateful for her marksmanship.

“That was Drake—a sniveling, disgusting
son of a bitch who was Aeneid’s head of security.”

Mitch heard the screech of tires on the
overpass. “Let’s go,” he said.

They used bounding moves to cover each
other as they snaked their way up the concrete embankment to the guardrails until
they were at the confluence of desert and interstate where a white SUV had just
come to a stop. The passenger-side doors swung open, the faces of several
dark-skinned men revealing themselves. Dev leapt into the front seat while
Mitch paused for a second, unsure of what came next but knowing it had to be
better than the alternative of remaining below. He climbed in, the rail-thin
man taking Mitch’s rifle while the SUV sped off as quickly as it had arrived.

Mitch gulped in a deep breath, scanning
the canyon below for any signs of Perry and his goons until they were clear of
the region. He swung his head around to the driver, catching the cunningly
familiar eyes in the rearview mirror of Anatoly Leitner.

Chapter 22

The vehicle sped north along I-17,
hovering just over the speed limit. Mitch looked over the crew around him and
then sank back into the seat, feeling the blast of air-conditioning flowing
over him.

He peered ahead at the driver. For a man
in his mid-sixties, who had endured a lifetime of combat, Anatoly was still
remarkably fit. His massive calloused hands that resembled baseball mitts
seemed mismatched with his lanky six-foot-two frame. Mitch had once heard from
a fellow colleague of Anatoly’s that the man had over two dozen knife and
bullet wounds on his body, though the stone-faced old warrior rarely spoke of
his exploits. Despite this, the man looked like a grandfatherly figure who’d be
more at home mowing the lawn than executing rescue missions in third-world hotspots.

Mitch could see the resemblance between
father and daughter. Same rounded chin, slender nose, and those riveting brown
eyes that could flare up in intensity, letting you know that you just fucked
with the wrong person.

Dev and Anatoly began conversing in
Hebrew, exchanging information on the events of the past few days since Dev
left California. The other men were silent, scanning the terrain ahead like
hawks bent on procuring a rabbit. The stout man beside Mitch had a caterpillar-like
mustache that hung over his upper lip. The other one had a boyish, clean-cut
face that resembled a college kid, though his scarred knuckles and furrowed
hands indicated otherwise.

When father and daughter were done,
Anatoly swiveled slightly in his seat and glanced at Mitch. “Good to see you,
old friend. It’s been a long time. I am grateful for what you did to help
Devorah.”

“Not as grateful as I’ll be when you tell
me exactly what is going on and how you’re gonna make this right—I mean the fleeing-from-a-federal-manhunt
part not the part about leading a small army of thugs to my buddy’s ranch,
causing us to be hunted for two days.”

“We have much to talk about, it seems.”
There was a long pause, as if the older man was leaving an opening in the
conversation for Mitch to respond.

“So, Anatoly, maybe you can answer me
this: your daughter tells me that you never got out of the game after you left
the States,” Mitch said, still sore that the man had never kept in touch with
him despite numerous attempts on Mitch’s part.

“There’s a place in Jordan called “The
Tunnel of Souls,” said Anatoly, who never seemed to answer a question directly
and had to relay a story. It had always irritated the hell out of Mitch but he
had grown accustomed to it. The man continued, his eyes focused intently on the
road but his mind drifting to another place. “This tunnel leads to the
netherworld and requires that you pay with four years of your life here on
Earth in order to have one day in purgatory having your questions answered.”

He looked at Mitch, casting a slight grin.
“After I left here, I went into a partnership with several old Mossad
colleagues. Together we focused on rescuing others from hellish dictatorships
around the globe and building a trusted network of informants, particularly in
Turkmenistan. It took me years of diligence…of patience…of the blood of my
associates to unravel what you are now tied up in.” Anatoly glanced at the
mountains in the distance. “Surely you must remember what it was like dipping
your fingers into the covert world—where every alliance is to be questioned and
where the man watching your back for years has just accepted an offer from a
rival and wants you dead. Your government job couldn’t have driven those
memories completely out of you.”

“You seemed to always fare better in that
world than I did. Besides, I was in army special operations, not clandestine,
off-the-books missions with some unaccountable shadow agency. There’s a big
difference.”

“Both approaches are just tools for excising
the cancer that grows in other nations opposed to our respective governments’
agendas. Your unit’s actions may have been more transparent and the
after-effects observable but the end goal was the same as what I did:
stabilizing or destabilizing regions to further Western might.”

“You always did have a way of putting
things into a certain perspective. I left the military because our operational
policies were starting to get a little too gray for me. I prefer a more black-and-white
world.”

“Those days are gone, my friend. The
modern world of global warfare is a sepulcher of half-truths driven by
monetized agendas. Actually that’s not too different than warfare during any
other time but now the currency is the welfare of entire nations versus just a
cart full of gold or silk.”

“Yeah, well the way I see it, a soldier still
has a choice in whether he buys into the system.”

Anatoly chuckled. “Aren’t you with the FBI—the
very bastion of American self-righteousness?”

Mitch leaned his arms forward on his
knees, glancing at the older man. “That’s right, and doing a damn fine job at
upholding the law,” he said, trying to put force into the latter half of his
reply.

“Good for you. The bureau should be
grateful to have such a dedicated warrior in its ranks.”

Mitch looked at him, trying to determine
if the man was being sarcastic or serious. He turned away and sighed, unsure if
he’d still have any kind of job ever again after today.

The man sitting next to Mitch reached in
the back seat, removing some t-shirts from a duffle bag. He handed one to Mitch
and another to Dev. “Will help with blending in better, yes,” said the man with
a slight accent. He then introduced himself as Petra while the other fellow
muttered his name in a gravelly voice as if coughing it up: “Daniel.”

Mitch removed his soiled vest and then
peeled off the sweaty black shirt that clung to his frame. He donned the blue
t-shirt which had the expression,
I Survived the Grand Canyon
written
across it with the image of boot prints heading into the sunset. He just
smirked and bit his lip at the irony.

“So, you boys former Mossad too or just
handpicked by Anatoly himself?”

Petra looked forward at Anatoly for his directions.
After the older man nodded in approval, Petra replied, “I was Mossad for six
years but then was discharged for medical injury to my shoulder. Now I work for
Mr. Leitner, doing comms and intel.”

The other man stroked his considerable
mustache while replying as if the action of grooming conjured up his answer. “Much
time in Mossad. Now do weapons training for new recruits with Mr. Leitner’s
organization.”

Mitch glanced up front, his lips creasing
outward into a partial grin. “Anatoly…it’s alright if I call you Anatoly, isn’t
it, or should it be Mr. Leitner?”

He could see that look in Anatoly’s eyes
in the mirror, the familiar stare from years ago that he’d come to respect, the
cauldron of fury beneath it being calmly contained. “Anatoly will do for you,
my young friend, as long as I don’t have to call you Agent Kearns.”