“Is there somewhere we can hide?” Craig’s voice trembled. He hunched farther over the saddle as Mariah clambered up a tumble of talus rock.
Matt dismissed Craig’s question for now. Foremost in his mind was simply to survive until nightfall. They were at a distinct disadvantage. One horse, two men. Their pursuers each had a snow chopper. Not good odds. Already the rumble of the cycles throttled up as the chase began.
Matt tugged Mariah up to the ridgeline. At the top, a sudden wind gusted from the southwest, frigid with the promise of ice and sleet. Without hesitating, he headed down the slope, toward where he had set up his camp. There was no refuge to be found there, so he weighed other options. He knew of some caves, but they were too far, and there was no certain safety to be found in them. Another plan was needed.
“Can you ride on your own?” Matt asked Craig.
A weak nod answered him, but fear shone in the man’s eyes.
Matt reached and slid his rifle from behind the saddle, then shoved a box of rifle cartridges into a pocket.
“What are you planning?” Craig asked.
“There’s nothing to worry about. I’m just going to use you as bait.” He then bent down to his dog. “Bane.”
The dog’s ears perked up, his eyes on Matt.
Matt pointed his arm down the ridge. “Bane…to camp!” he ordered sharply.
The dog spun back around and started down. The other dogs followed. Matt slapped Mariah’s rump, starting her down after them. Matt trotted beside them for a few paces. “Keep after the dogs. They’ll get you to my camp. Take cover as well as you can. There’s also an ax by the woodpile. Just in case.”
Craig’s face blanched, but he nodded, earning Matt’s respect.
Matt slid to a stop, watching a moment as horse, rider, and dogs trotted down the wooded and bouldered slope. They were soon gone, vanished into the thick woods.
Turning, he climbed back up the trail until he was twenty yards from the ridgeline. He then leaped from the muddied trail of hoofprints to a granite outcropping, then leapfrogged to another stone. He wanted no evidence of his side trail. Once well off the churned track, Matt settled under the limbs of a spruce, tucking into the shadows, shielding himself behind the trunk. He had a clear view to the ridgeline. If the pursuers followed their same path, they would be momentarily silhouetted against the sky as they crossed the ridge and began their descent into the next valley.
Crouching to one knee, Matt wrapped his rifle’s sling around his wrist, positioned the walnut stock against his shoulder, and took aim down the barrel. He was confident he could take out one of the riders at such close range, but could he take out both of them?
From over the ridgeline, the grumbling of the two engines grew closer and closer, a pair of maddened animals on the trail of prey.
Kneeling now, blood pounding in his ears, Matt recalled another time, a decade ago, another life, being holed up in a mortar-blasted building in Somalia. Gunfire all around. The world reduced to green shadows and lines by his nightvision goggles. It hadn’t been the firefights that unnerved most men. It was the waiting.
Drawing a slow breath through his lips, Matt forced himself to relax, to say loose and ready. Tension could throw off one’s aim better than poor marksmanship. He let his breath out, centering himself. This was not Somalia. These were his woods. The crisp scent of the crushed spruce needles under his knee helped sharpen him, reminding him where he was. He knew these mountains better than anyone.
Across the ridge, the noise of the motorcycles ratcheted up, filling the world with their growls and sputters. Matt made out the sound of branches breaking under the studded tires. Close…He moved his finger from the trigger guard to the trigger and leaned closer to the rifle, his cheek against the wooden stock.
The wait grew to a timeless moment. Despite the cold, a bead of sweat rolled down his right temple. He had to force himself not to squint one eye. Always shoot with both eyes open. His father had drilled that into him when deer hunting back in Alabama, reinforced later by his boot camp sergeant. Matt breathed shallowly through his nose, concentrating.
Come on…
As if hearing him, a cycle shot over the ridgeline at full throttle, catching Matt by surprise. Rather than riding cautiously to the top of the rise, the rider had gunned his cycle and flew high across the ridge, his tires lifting free of the ground.
Matt shifted his hip, following its course. He squeezed the trigger, the rifle blasted, answered immediately by the ping of a slug on metal.
The airborne cycle fishtailed. He had struck the rear tire guard. Rider and cycle struck the ground askew, bounced once, then cartwheeled into a tumble. The rider leaped free, rolling down the slope and into dense bushes.
“Damn it,” Matt mumbled. He kept his gaze fixed on the ridgeline. He had no idea if the first rider was unharmed, injured, or dead, but he dared not take his attention from the ridgeline. There was still the second cycle. Matt levered the spent cartridge out the side of the rifle and snapped the next one home, wishing for his old M-16 automatic from his Green Beret days.
He covered the top of the rise.
His hearing, after the rifle blast and tumbling crash of the first cycle, was confused. The grumble of the second cycle echoed all around. Movement to the left caught his eye. He swung his rifle in time to see the second cycle shoot over the ridge a short distance down from the other.
He aimed, more desperately than with any true marksmanship, and fired. This time there was not even the ping of slug on metal. The cycle landed smoothly, the rider tucked hard between the handles of his bike, then both disappeared behind an outcropping.
Matt fell back behind the spruce’s trunk. He popped the spent cartridge and cranked another in place. These were no amateurs. They had anticipated an ambush, sending the first cycle at breakneck speed over the ridge to draw his attention while the second wheeled around from the other side.
Crack.
A limb of the spruce shattered a foot above Matt’s head, pelting him with splinters. Matt slammed lower, sliding to his back, rifle cradled over his chest. A rifle shot…it had come from the direction of the first rider. So the bastard wasn’t dead.
Biting back panic, Matt kept his position. The sniper must not have had a clean shot at him; otherwise he’d be dead. The splintering blast had been an attempt to flush him out. The sniper must have gained his approximate position when Matt had fired at the second cycle.
“Damn it…” Matt was now pinned between them: one rider down to the left in the bushes and the other still on his cycle among the stones.