His shoulder blades itched with anticipation of a bullet slamming into his back, dropping him on his face and ending it all.
They reached the trees on the far side of several acres of lawn dotted with fruit trees, and Gunner finally slowed. He moved swiftly to the right for a few yards and then plunged into the jungle, disappearing from sight.
Chas lurched forward, frantic not to lose Gunner. He suspected the guy would keep on going and not look back to realize he’d left Chas in the dust. As he reached the spot where Gunner had disappeared, he was startled to spot a narrow strip of bare dirt. A trail?
He lunged forward frantically. He’d gone perhaps a dozen yards when a hand reached out of the undergrowth from the side of the trail and grabbed his upper arm.
A yelp escaped him before he bit back any more sound. “Don’t scare me like that,” he whispered angrily as Gunner yanked him off the path.
“Hush,” Gunner murmured.
“Now what?”
“Now we wait and watch.”
In the next few minutes, Chas heard a series of clicks over the radio. He assumed that was Spencer and Drago communicating with each other in some secret SEAL code.
Then, without warning, Spencer said in a bare whisper, “Gun, call Tanaka. Tell him to bring everyone.”
Gunner swore under his breath as he pulled out a cell phone and quickly dialed a number.
Chas listened as Gunner said low, “We’re under attack from a large force. Bring everyone you’ve got. The package is on the north ridge.”
The person at the other end said something extremely brief, and then Gunner disconnected.
“What did he say?” Chas whispered.
“On their way.”
“What’s the package?”
Gunner glanced over at him wryly. “You and Poppy.”
“Oh.” He thought for a second, then asked, “How long until Tanaka’s people can get here?”
Gunner shrugged. “Hopefully soon enough. Watch the south ridge. It should start to light up with muzzle flashes any time now.”
“How many bad guys are there?”
“A lot. Spencer and Dray have counted at least a dozen. Perhaps as many as a dozen more could be out there.”
“But Spencer and Drago are out there alone!”
“They’ll be okay.”
Chas frowned. “You don’t sound too sure about that.”
“SEALs always believe they’ll win. We die believing we’re going to win the fight.”
“That’s morbid,” Chas muttered.
He shrugged. It was the truth. He started to untie the blanket harness holding Poppy. “Stay here and take her. I’m going to move off to the side and take up an overwatch position.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m going to set up long-range sniper support for Spencer and Drago. If they get pinned down out there, I may get a shot at the bad guys to give them a little extra cover.”
“Won’t the bad guys see you shooting?”
“This sniper rig has flash suppression and noise deflection. It’ll sound like I’m shooting from somewhere else.”
Gunner wasn’t entirely surprised to discover that Poppy was wide-awake inside the sling as he transferred her to Chas’s arms. The tyke had an uncanny instinct for danger that no toddler should rightfully have. But right now, he was grateful as hell for it. She was sucking furiously on her pacifier, the only outward sign of her stress.
Gunner said grimly, “At all costs, keep her quiet. Even if you have to put your hand over her mouth and plug her nose until she passes out. This is life-and-death.”
Chas nodded, his eyes wide.
“I won’t be far away. If you see men coming across the lawn and I stop shooting at them, head on up this path. At the top of it, there’s a rocky outcrop with some big boulders. There’s a little pit dug behind them. Get in that, cover up with blankets as best you can, and stay there. One of us will come for you.”
He had no more time to give Chas hints or advice on how to survive the unfolding shitshow. Spencer and Drago were horribly outgunned and having to retreat fast down the south ridge. They would hit the house any second, and they would need covering fire.
Gunner shoved into the thick underbrush, using his machete to cut his feet loose when they tangled hopelessly, brute forcing his way some fifty feet west of Chas and Poppy. He began looking for an opening to see the valley as he made his way uphill.
He found a spot and flopped down behind a fallen log, working at top speed to unfold his tripod, uncover his sight, and take up a shooting position. And not a second too soon.
The infrared designator on Drago’s chest lit up as he exited the trees on the other side of the valley not thirty seconds after Gunner began scanning through his weapon sight. Spencer wore a similar designator that would allow Gunner to differentiate them from the hostiles.
“I’ve got you in sight, Dray,” he announced calmly, watching Drago run, crouching, in a zigzag to the crawl space beneath the house. Gunner did the math fast on distance and windage and made his corrections, dialing them into his weapon carefully.
A heat signature popped out of the trees almost exactly where Drago had emerged a few seconds before, and Gunner lined the hostile up. A smooth pull through his trigger and the heat signature flew backward.
This was a long-range rig, which meant he was firing large-caliber rounds. At only a few hundred yards’ range like this, they would hit with enough velocity to tear a body in half. Chas would purely love knowing that.
He swung his sight down the tree line and picked out another heat signature. It was at the wrong angle to show him a designator, and he held his shot until he got visual on Spencer.
There, to the left of the house, was the second infrared friend-or-foe designator. Spencer was crouching just inside the tree line. Which meant that the other heat signature was a valid target. Gunner lined the guy up and took the shot. Splash two.
Apparently the hostiles had thought better of simply charging the house based on the resistance Spencer and Drago had already put up. Knowing those two, they’d been moving all over the hillside, convincing the incoming thugs that there were a dozen or more good guys defending this valley.
The next half hour or so settled into a strange stalemate. Nobody fired a weapon, and Spencer and Drago patiently held their positions, not giving themselves away.
As for him, Gunner identified the positions of at least ten men and mentally marked them for later shooting. But he, too, silently held his ground. What the bad guys didn’t know was that reinforcements were coming. The longer they waited to attack, the better for the home team.
The stalemate began to draw out long enough that Gunner began to question why the bad guys hadn’t moved. They’d clearly organized themselves up in the jungle on that ridge, and in fact, there were now three clusters of heat signatures visible from his position not far inside the tree line. Why weren’t they attacking?
Was it possible they were waiting for reinforcements of their own?
He keyed his mike and murmured, “Any chance these guys have called in their own backup, Spencer?”
Spencer answered with a single click. Yes.
Dammit. Sometimes he hated being right.
Whether the bad guys’ reinforcements arrived or not, all of a sudden the pause was over. Without warning, all three groups of hostiles charged down the hillside toward the house.