James Smith - The Flock

The wealthy man groaned and sat back on the foam mat. He had forgotten. Levin had said that Kinji was dead, shot. "Two men," he had babbled. Now Vance wondered if Levin and the rest of them were still alive. Probably not, he figured. It was time for him to get moving himself. Crawling across to one of the video monitors, his hand rested upon it while he tried to decide whether or not to risk turning it on. What he needed to do was get out of there before he was located. What he needed to do was hit the north side of the old military base, move through what remained of the area of what was basically a no man's land of possibly unexploded ordnance and lost mine fields. He knew a way through it, had carefully mapped a way past the dangerous place. On the far side was the Kissimmee River. A quick swim would take him to the farms and campgrounds over in that direction. He doubted anyone would expect him to head that way, through the heart of the wilderness that Edmunds Military Site had accidentally protected for almost a hundred years.

"Throw caution to the wind," he whispered, and threw the switch. The monitor hummed to life.

The dark figure he could see on the screen was the same one who was at that moment speaking into the small radio on his right shoulder.

"Target positive," Joyner relayed to the others.

As Holcomb watched, five killers came out of the night to converge on the artificial shelter in which he thought he'd been hiding.

Both Ron and Mary paused for breath, kneeling in the tangle of a patch of young pines. Even if the men who were shooting at them had some kind of night vision scopes, they would have found them hard to hit in the tangle of limbs and brush and moss that were now affording them some cover. They crouched, gasped for breath, and listened intently for the sound of pursuit. So far, there was nothing. The sun had set completely beneath the line of trees, and stars had appeared in the clear sky. All around them the wildlife had geared up for the night shift. The whir of insect life alone was enough to drown out most other sounds.

"Think they're still on our trail?" Ron asked. He had one hand resting on his bent right knee, the left one touching down on the damp soil to support his weight.

"I don't think they intend to let us get away, if that's what you mean. But I don't think any of them are close enough to shoot as us. Otherwise the bullets would be flying right now." Mary was on all fours, her head slumping toward the earth. She was just a big dark shadow to Ron, one that shifted among the others.

"Wonder where Crane went," Ron whispered.

"Hell if I know. Without any way to see in the dark, I don't think we're going to find him. If he was smart, he hauled ass out of here and is halfway to Salutations by now." Mary's breath was coming easier. She went to a kneeling position, her head turning this way and that, straining to hear if anyone was trying to sneak up on them.

"We'd better not stay here," Ron said. "They'll be coming this way soon, I'd think."

Mary stood up. "How many do you think there are?"

"I don't know." Ron stood, too, ready to be off. "You saw, what, three of them?"

"Yes. And Levin encountered two. So let's go on the supposition that at least five men are going to be tracking us. I saw the van they came in on, and I doubt it could carry more than six without being conspicuously overcrowded. Let's say five."

"Okay. Five."

"And all of them are probably heavily armed. I think they were carrying rifles. Can't say what kind. Some kind of assault rifles, though. That last volley sounded like it, to me."

"I'll take your word for it," Ron told her. He wasn't particularly fond of guns.

"So. Here we are. Two of us. One gun. Four shots."

"Only four?"

"Yeah. I checked. Four shots. That's all."

"Damn."

"You got it."

Ron shook his head, rubbed the sweaty locks of hair out of his eyes. "So. Best we could do, optimum, is take out four of the five."

"Fat chance," Mary admitted. "I ain't that good with a pistol, tell you the truth. How 'bout you?"

"Don't even mention it. I probably couldn't even figure out how to throw the safety off unless you showed me."

"Christ. What kind of wildlife officers is the government training, any-" Mary went silent, put her hand out to warn Ron. Both froze. Mary put her head in close to Ron's ear and whispered, so lowly that Ron could barely hear her. "Think I heard something. To our right, behind a little."

Ron turned in that direction to look, but could see nothing save black lying thickly upon black.

"I'm going to move," Mary said. "Same direction we were going. Haul ass. On three. One. Two. Three," she said.

They both exploded out of the patch of saplings, moving as quickly as they dared, doing their best to avoid the larger oaks into which they had wandered. The bigger trees were revealed to them as merely slightly lighter shadows that seemed to reach for the sky. It was a clumsy way to move, but they had no alternative. They were running as fast as they could under the circumstances when something dropped down from the limbs above, blocking their way.

"Jesus," Ron yelled, panic gripping his heart in a vise.

Mary was bringing the.357 up to fire a quick shot in the direction of the shadow. But before she could discharge the weapon, the figure spoke.

"Took you dumbasses long enough to catch up," Billy Crane said.

A volley of shots slammed into the Kevlar mesh fabric that formed Holcomb's low dome. Inside it, he heard the staccato firing and felt the impacts of the slugs, not unlike drops of a particularly nasty rain. Although the material had stopped the bullets cold, he still fell to the floor, hugging it and bringing himself as close to it as he possibly could. It had been his first thought, but he was still a little ashamed of his reaction. Holcomb could smell his own fear in the close air of the room, and it bothered him. He'd come face to face with wild tigers, had stood unprotected when a bull elephant had charged him, all without losing his cool. But this was different. These were men, with guns, and he knew that standing his ground wasn't going to bluff them off as it had the wild animals he had known.

There was another tightly spaced volley. They were acting in unison, he realized as the slugs once more pattered across the Kevlar walls, the metal seeking his flesh. Carefully, he reached up and flicked the switch to the monitors and they went dead, dropping the room back into almost complete darkness. He supposed it had been the light from those monitors that they had seen, probably leaking out through the air vents. Even clever air baffles couldn't shield out all light in the night. He'd made a mistake, most likely, even if they had already seen the building. Now they knew for certain that he was inside.

Still, the men were coming in from the west-southwest. That was also where all of the shots were coming from. And that was where the tunnel entrance he had used was located. They'd find it within minutes, if they had not already located it. But he had another way out, a secondary entrance.

One more volley of shots sounded, and this time there was the unmistakable sound of fabric giving way. The stuff was tough, but not invulnerable. A few more such rounds and the bullets would start to come in. He had to act fast.

Grabbing only a small fanny pack that was attached by Velcro holds to his main pack, he crouched and edged toward a low bench in front of him, a bank of receivers positioned on it. The smaller pack contained the only weapon he had ever carried into the site, a single shot dart pistol and a half dozen darts, each loaded with enough tranquilizer to stop a large bear. He doubted it would do him any good against the assassins, but it was all he had. Ducking, he crawled beneath the bench and pushed hard, releasing the very small doorway there. It led into a tunnel similar to the one through which he had entered. Creeping on elbows and knees, he went in.