Mike Maden - River of Gods

Troy Pearce was on his own now.

Pearce’s cabin, near the Snake River

Wyoming

Skeets received the go signal from Jasmine Bath at exactly 2:13 a.m. local. He knew that meant the FBI had just launched its assault on the Dearborn facility. His mission was to take out Myers and anybody else he might find in the cabin. The two attacks had to be perfectly coordinated. Bath couldn’t afford for Myers to warn McTavish or vice versa.

“Skeets” was a nickname, of course, one of the ridiculous monikers that soldiers picked up while in service, especially in special forces units. A fourth-generation coal miner, the steely West Virginian had escaped black lung and double-wide-trailer payments by enlisting in the U.S. Army. He tested off the charts and could run for miles without winding. But what brought him to the attention of the NCOs was his preternatural sharpshooter’s eye and dull moral conscience. Killing came easy for Skeets, and without regrets. PTSD was for pussies.

The Army had been good to him. Fed him well, trained him better, even knocked some of the hillbilly out of him. He traded his thick regional accent for the clipped staccato cadence of Army patois. The war had been fun, and getting paid to hunt people even more so. But three tours of yessir s and nossir s and bullshit regs and ROEs were quite enough, thank you. He had the good sense to take online college courses in business in his downtime. Discovered he was a laissez-faire capitalist. Decided he wanted to be an entrepreneur.

So he quit Uncle Sam’s Army and joined the ranks of private security contractors at five times his annual salary as a sergeant. He quickly earned a fearsome rep in the merc community and was soon invited to join the CIOS corporation.

CIOS was generous with its cash offer, and selective in the targets he would be sent to assassinate. Jasmine Bath, the corporation president, had personally assured him that only America’s worst enemies would ever be targeted, and only those that could not be legally arrested or killed but otherwise posed an immediate security threat. Skeets told her she was lying and that he didn’t give a rat’s ass who the targets were, guilty or not. Bath hired him on the spot and his income doubled.

Skeets had kept the cabin under surveillance from a distance for the last four hours but hadn’t seen or heard anyone on the property.

He disabled the surveillance cameras mounted high in the trees with a silenced .22 semiauto firing subsonics, then burst into the cabin, 9mm pistol drawn. Found nobody. As instructed, he searched for computers, phones, and storage devices—anything that might identify more links in Pearce’s network. But the place had been cleaned out. Skeets called it in to Bath. She told him simply, “Burn it down.”

He did. The old cabin went up faster than dry kindling, the fire ignited by a timed charge. He watched the towering flames lick the early-morning sky in his rearview mirror as he sped away.

Skeets felt no remorse. Pearce was a target. So was the former president. It was a job. Nothing more.

Aéropostale Station 11

Tamanghasset, Southern Algeria

The situation was static, which was fine by Pearce, because that meant he was still alive to know the situation was static, and that the rest of the caravan wasn’t dead, at least not yet.

Ian was offline, Judy was incarcerated, and the tangos out there hadn’t opened fire since Early’s death. Ian’s stolen Reaper had pushed them way back, but the DPVs were still in control of the field with three of them remaining. The DPVs mounted automatic grenade launchers that could fire five hundred rounds a minute up to six hundred meters effective range, and the 7.62mm machine guns were almost as lethal.

If Pearce and the others tried to make a run for it on the camels they’d be run down and cut to pieces. But staying in the sweltering hangar reeking of camel piss indefinitely probably wasn’t a viable option, either. It would only be a matter of time before the DPVs lined up across the hangar and unloaded their arsenal into them. At least the big animals had calmed down and were kneeling quietly in the back again.

“The explosion. Your drone?” Mossa asked.

“Not my drone, exactly. My man stole it. But it looks like it was destroyed.”

“Too bad. It was useful.” Mossa was staring at the burning wreckage of the two DPVs blasted by the Reaper.

“That sniper out there might be on the move, too. I didn’t see the shot, but given the angle I’d say he was somewhere in that direction.” Pearce pointed toward the northeast.

“If I were him, I would move,” Mossa confirmed. “We could hunt him, but then his friends would hunt us.” He looked up into the sky. “Without your friend up there, they will attack soon.”

“You said something about the cavalry not arriving in time?”

“I radioed one of the local chieftains. He said he was on the way.”

“Any idea when he will arrive?”

Mossa shrugged. “Abdallah Ag Matta is a good man, but he is an Imohar, and our sense of time is not like yours. He will get here as soon as he can.”

“Let’s hope it’s soon enough.”

In the air over the Sahara

Southern Algeria

15 May

Phoenix-Zero, this is Juliette Niner-Niner. Come in, please.”

It was Judy’s third attempt to reach Pearce. He wasn’t responding on this channel. She was worried sick. She was an hour late for the pickup. Was Pearce lying dead in the sand somewhere because of her?

Aéropostale Station 11, Tamanghasset

Southern Algeria

The three DPVs skidded to a halt on the far side of the runway some five hundred yards opposite Pearce’s position. The loose sand south and east beyond the cracked tarmac was flat for as far as the eye could see. They had a clear line of sight if they wanted to lob grenades and hot lead into the hangar.

Pearce’s earpiece crackled again. “It appears as if you’ve lost your drone protection, Pearce. I should kill you all right now, but I have orders. I will make the offer one last time. You and bandit Mossa surrender, and I will let your other friends live.”

“You still haven’t told me who you are, asshole, or how you’re gonna pay for my broken helicopter.”

Guo laughed. “Your friend’s head exploded like a balloon.”

“You motherfu—”

“Yours will, too.”

Machine guns opened up. An RPG rocket whooshed past the DPVs, its crooked plume trailing behind it. The big bulbous HEAT round exploded in the sand thirty feet behind the vehicles.

Mossa laughed and slapped Pearce on the back. “You see! Abdallah Ag Matta has come!”

Mossa’s walkie-talkie crackled. A Tamasheq voice shouted over the tinny speaker.

Pearce shook his head. “Tell them to back off. Those DPVs will cut them to ribbons.”

“Too late.”

The DPVs gunned their engines, wheels throwing sand. They spun hard right in a synchronous turn, racing back toward the advancing Algerian Tuaregs.

“Troy!” Mann pointed at the sky. “Look!”

It was the Aviocar, about a mile distant.

“Is that our ride?” the German asked.

“I don’t know.” Then he remembered. “Shit!” He’d switched channels when his line was tapped by the shitbird with the sniper rifle. Pearce switched back to Judy’s channel.

“Judy, that you?”