Target America

55

Buck carried Janet upstairs and laid her on her bed. She’d been hit in the forehead by a chunk of two-by-six in the explosion and was only half conscious. Marie sat beside her in the dark, holding an icepack against the contusion.

Oso shadowed Marie everywhere she went, able to smell the adrenaline in the air and knowing something was wrong.

“What happened out there?” she said to Buck. “Could you see?”

He grunted in frustration. “The guy running at the house was a suicide bomber.”

Hal was listening from across the hall in the guest room, where he kept an eye on the stable, Gil’s Winchester .300 in hand. “Why didn’t he get closer before blowing himself up?”

Buck crawled across the hall to take up firing position beside him. “Because I think one of your brothers shot him. I’m pretty sure I heard a rifle shot.”

Then they heard the booming report of the TAC-50 in the direction of the stable, and both men ducked down.

“Anybody hit?” Buck said.

“We’re fine over here,” Marie answered.

“They’re not shooting at the house,” Hal said. “They’re shooting up at the ridge.”

“That means they’re shooting at your brothers!” Buck stole a quick peek out the window.

For the first time, Hal was beginning to think his brothers might still be alive. “If they’re still on overwatch, that’s gonna make the bastards think twice about sticking their heads out of the stable.”

Buck took the Winchester .300 and crawled down the hall into Marie’s bedroom, where the wind and rain were blowing in through the shattered windows. He used the powerful scope to seek out Kashkin’s sniper nest that Marie had shown him during the day. When the lighting flashed again, he saw clearly the fore stock and muzzle of the Mauser protruding from the rocks.

“It’s them!” he called. “I can see the Mauser.”

“Who’s behind it?” Hal called back.

“I can only see the rifle.”

Marie left her mother’s side and slipped into the guestroom. “Hal, you have to go for help before they decide to surround the house. They won’t let this rain discourage them for long.”

“Is your mom bad off?”

“I think she’ll be okay, but once the shooting starts, this house isn’t going to stop AK-47 bullets. Even I know they’ll cut clean through one side and out the other.”

Buck crawled into the room and stood the Winchester against the wall. “You’re right. But it’s you who should go for help, honey. If you’re quick, you can make it to Chatham’s place on foot in less than an hour.”

“I don’t like the idea of going to Dusty for help. I haven’t talked to him in years.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Buck said. “We all gotta set our differences aside.”

Over the next ten minutes, Marie very reluctantly prepared herself to go, dressing in hiking boots and Gore-Tex rain gear. She filled a CamelBak with water and strapped the Springfield .45 to her hip.

“Oso’s gonna carry on like a spoiled kid when I go, so keep him close.”

“Be sure and skirt well south before you turn east,” Buck said. “You don’t want those sons a bitches to see you, and you don’t want the boys up on the ridge mistaking you for the enemy. We’ll hold out here until you get back with the cavalry.”

She crossed the living room to a ground-level window on the far side of the house and knelt down to give Oso a hug. “You look after Grandma now,” she told him, rubbing his head.

She stood to open the window, and the Chesapeake Bay retriever began to whine, knowing she was about to leave without him. “Hold ’im, Buck, or he’ll jump right out after me.”

Buck took the dog by the collar. “You’re good to go, honey. Be careful!”

She slipped out into the rainy night, and Buck pulled down the sash. Oso ran directly to the front door and began to bark.

“She’ll be fine,” the big man said, going over and taking him by the collar. “Let’s go upstairs and look after Jan.”

Oso fought him the entire way, and with the big animal twisting around and around, it was like trying to drag the Tasmanian devil up the stairs.

“Sumbitch, you’re stubborn!” Buck stumbled on the last step.

Sensing Buck’s loss of balance, Oso jerked hard to break his grip and scrabbled down the stairs. He raced through the living room toward the back of the house and leapt out through one of the broken windows, disappearing into the night before Buck could even make it to the bottom of the steps.

Marie wasted no time putting distance between herself and the house. Knowing where all the obstacles and pitfalls were, she had little trouble making her way in the dark, but she was completely unaware of the humanoid figure slithering from beneath the horse trailer on the far side of the yard, drawing a knife and moving out after her.

The American-born Al Qaeda shadowed her through the dark, his footfalls every bit as muffled by the rain as hers, dogging her far out into the night and almost losing her as she broke left to the east, but catching up to her as she arrived at the barbed wire fence marking the southern property limit.

Marie was in the process of climbing over when someone grabbed the hood of her jacket and pulled her violently off the fence. She landed hard on her back, knocking enough wind from her lungs to stifle a scream. The dark figure began kicking her in the ribs, forcing her to roll onto her belly. Then he pounced on her back, straddling her and sinking his fingers deep into her now soaking hair, yanking her head back to expose her throat. She felt the cold steel of the blade press into the jugular.

The angry Muslim had spent the entire night freezing in the mud beneath the trailer, but now his miseries were about to be rewarded. He hissed into her ear, “I’m going to cut your fucking head off, and show it to your husband!”

“No, wait!” she gasped, her arms pinioned at her sides by his legs.

He redoubled his grip on her hair, jerking her head back as far as it would come and crying out in triumph, “Allahu Akbar!”

Marie screamed, and one hundred pounds of snarling, soaking-wet canis lupus familiaris slammed into the Muslim from behind, knocking him forward over her head onto his hands and knees. Oso Cazador sank his teeth into the back of the man’s neck, snarling wildly as he jerked the man about like a rag doll.

The interloper flailed helplessly beneath the dog, unable to roll onto his back or to shake off the animal. He made a desperate attempt to flip himself over but felt a sharp pinch between his C4 and C5 vertebra, and his body suddenly stopped responding to his commands.

Oso was an experienced killer, having killed many varmints — and even a coyote — in just this same manner, and he knew what it meant when a prey’s body went limp. He released his grip on the man’s neck and sat back on his haunches, wagging his tail and looking at Marie for approval. When she didn’t immediately sit up, he went to her, licking her face and beginning to whine.

Exhausted by the adrenaline dump, Marie lay with her face in the mud, almost too weak to move. “Good boy,” she mumbled, forcing herself to reach out and stroke the dog. “Good boy, Cazador.”

The dog went back to licking her face, and the warmness of his tongue ignited within her an internal heat source that spread a faint glow of warmth through her body. After a few moments, she found the strength to sit up against the fence post, pulling the hood up over her head to keep the rain from running down her back. She made a halfhearted attempt to stand and was jarred by a stabbing pain in her left side. The pain was not unfamiliar to her; she had broken ribs twice before: once by falling from a horse and once by getting kicked by one.

“It’s gonna be a long walk,” she said to the dog.

The man lying facedown in the mud began to moan, and she pulled the .45 from the holster beneath her jacket, crawling over onto his back and pressing the muzzled to his side.

“How many are you?” she demanded.

“I can’t move,” he whimpered. “I need a medic.”

“You need a helluva lot more than that,” she said, resting with her face against his back. He was much warmer than the ground, and she thought it odd that she could be comforted by the heat of a man who had almost murdered her. “How many are you?”

“Twenty. I need a hospital… please.”

“You need a coroner.” She canted the muzzle slightly downward toward the earth and squeezed the trigger. The pistol report was muffled by his body, and she felt him recoil against the jolt of the Federal hollow point ripping through his internal organs. He died almost instantly from the hydrostatic shock. She felt the air rush out of him and rolled off, sitting up against the stringers of barbed wire and reaching out to her dog.

“Come here, boy,” she said. “Help Mama get to her feet.”