The first mercenary passed, arms loaded down with what looked to be a freezer full of meat. He was grunting and sweating, his weapon put away, and Cash looked at Preston, who wiggled between the two tents on the other side, dogs at his heels, with the plan of circling around to take the guy out when Cash got his buddy.
The girls passed next, arms loaded with baskets, and Cash noted that Brielle looked exhausted, and her eyes were red. Oh, sweetheart, help is coming.
Her companion passed too, arms trembling under her load. As the mercenary in the suit drew up alongside him, Cash jumped out from between the two tents and threw his elbow right into the guy’s temple. The man went down with a grunt, his freezer chest falling to his feet with a thump but not opening, and Cash grabbed the duct tape and got the guy’s hands bound as he was flopping sideways to the ground, then his mouth. He left him there, eyes glazed and wild as he tried to figure out what hit him, and grabbed Brielle’s companion’s arm.
“Run,” he told her, taking her things and setting them down.
“But—”
He turned her the opposite direction and growled, “Run!” as Preston rounded the corner and shouted, “Colonel, mark!”
Brielle gave a breathless gasp and Cash shouted, “Brielle, run!”
She stared at him in shock and then watched as the gunman in front squealed in surprise when Colonel ran up to him and started barking angrily.
“Run!” Cash shouted again, and as the gunman dropped his ice chest and reached for his weapon, Cash leaped on him from behind, wrapping his arm around the guy’s neck and choke-holding him to the ground.
The body in his grasp went limp, and Cash had pulled back to fumble for the duct tape when a musty-smelling canvas bag whomped over his head and the world went dark.
He struggled hard, kicking out and using his elbows. He connected with a slender body and heard an outraged shriek, as well as Brielle’s scream of “Trudy, no!”
And then the unmistakable smack of a hand on flesh and Brielle’s moan before a sharp needle jab poked him in the arm and he blacked out.
When he came to, he was in the bottom of a small watercraft, the roar of the engine in his ears and the scent of salt water all around.
Unexpected Package
CLIMBING the rock wall really was easier than killing the snake so they could use the crevice, so that’s what they did.
“I can’t believe that snake is so fucking big,” Glen huffed as he and Spencer pulled up the last bit of the cliff face. Poor Damien—Glen’s shoulder was in better shape than Damien’s leg, and that cliff had been a bear. Damien and Spencer had left pitons in to help make the climb up and down easier too, which meant Damien had done this without ropes.
“Scared the piss out of me,” Spencer admitted, securing the rope at the top. They’d brought enough to make harnesses to help lower people down, because panicky people didn’t jump off of cliffs so much as fall off of them. “Them critters don’t cuddle.”
Glen suppressed a snort. Leave it to Spencer to put it like that.
Once atop the mesa, they practically belly crawled to the edge of the drop to the valley. The foliage was sparse this close up—desert plants, manzanita, brush—but it was enough to provide cover. As Glen and Spencer ran, they unrolled a bolt of gauze camo over their heads, covering nearly a quarter mile. The roll of thin fabric had taken up most of the fishing boat they came in, and Spencer and Damien had apparently argued all the way back to shore to decide which stretch of land they’d most need it on. They’d determined the top half of the hill, where the cover was sparsest. Just as well, since the motherfucker was heavy, and who wanted to carry that through scrub?
The cloth ran out, and they kept going, unencumbered, making good time in their all-terrain boots and camo gear.
Spencer was highly armed, with a semiautomatic strapped to his back, a sidearm in a holster, a bowie knife, and various other weapons packed around his body.
Glen had one knife, one gun, and his quick mouth. Maybe Spencer carried so many weapons because talking people down wasn’t a gift of his, but Glen wasn’t going to ask him as they were hauling ass through the sand and scrub of the desert island.
Spencer slowed to a halt in time to warn Glen he should do the same, and then he dropped to his stomach and sidled to the edge of a clearing.
And there stood the most beautiful, impractical, ecologically stupid house Glen had ever seen in the middle of what should have been pristine wilderness.
“This guy should be shot,” he said in horror. “Forget brainwashing kids and bilking people for his damned fake church and rehab center—this is heinous.”
“There are four fully operational A/C units on that roof,” Spencer said, his laconic tone making that a full agreement. “And that’s a two-story building. Do you know what he could have done with some ceiling fans and some shade?”
“Cut down all the shade,” Glen said, looking at the massacred palm trees and manzanita brush lying where it had been slaughtered. He didn’t want to think about what had been done with the wildlife.
“I’m a fair sniper,” Spencer said soberly. “Me and Elsie flew for the Navy, remember? My CO put me up to be a SEAL but I didn’t want to leave Elsie behind. I could take him out. One bullet. No one would ever know.”
Glen stared at him. “Uh… we, uh, aren’t really, uh, that sort of operation, Spence. Just, you know, get the kids and go, and maybe stand up for ourselves. Just saying.”
Spencer nodded soberly, unoffended. “Let me know. I don’t charge for assholes. Sayin’.”
“Understood,” Glen said, thinking Mercenaries R Us would look very unattractive as a logo. “Okay, do we know where the kids are now?”
“Look out over there.” Spence handed a pair of field glasses to Glen, who scoped out the land on the other side of the house from their vantage point on the hillside. It was soil there—sandy but made more arable with some obviously imported dirt—and there were ten to twelve figures, swathed in white, working like ants to turn what looked to be two acres of garden into a self-sustaining enterprise. It obviously wasn’t ready yet—nothing was completely grown, and Glen wasn’t even sure things were planted for the right season or climate there. Besides if Brielle was going shopping at the farmer’s market, they obviously weren’t ready to harvest yet.
“They’ve got sheep,” Glen observed, panning to the cliffside beyond the garden. “To milk, to shave, to eat? I wonder which.”
“One sheep’ll be eaten in a week,” Spencer said, like he knew. “I’d say to shave. Never heard of sheep milk, but there might be some goats.”
Glen grunted. “Hope not. Goats are mean.”
The smell hit him almost immediately after that. It was like six tons of cat-piss mixed with rotting milk.
“Oh my God, you had to summon it!” Spencer moaned, and they both scrambled to their feet to meet a very angry billy goat—complete with bell.
“The stench,” Glen said, tempted to do the unmanly thing and run away screaming. “It’s… it’s unbelievable.”
Billy looked at them both with benign eyes, chewing rapidly. Glen started to back away, and the goat nyaaaaad loudly, with a shaking of his bell, and Spencer and Glen met eyes.