The Battle: Alone: Book 4 (17 page)

     And it probably would be effective.

     But there were a couple of problems with it.

     First of all, because Dave had to actually enter the property for the plan to take effect.

     Once he fired his first shot, and the first rider hit the dirt, he’d have given away his position. If someone had seen him, even from a distance, they could fire a shot to send up an alarm, and reinforcements would likely come from all directions.

     And riders on full gallop could cover ground a lot faster than Dave could on foot. They’d like overwhelm him before he made it back to the safety of the forest.

     The other flaw in his plan was the fact that they outnumbered him maybe as much as a dozen to one. He still wasn’t sure of the enemy’s troop strength.

     He was, however, aware that with numbers came other critical benefits.

     Like, for example, the ability to break into shifts. The bad guys could run non-stop, twenty-four hour shifts. And Dave had to sleep occasionally. Also, Dave could only be in one place at a time. Even if he was doing reconnaissance on one side of the property, activities could go on out of his view, on the other side of the property, without his knowledge.

     And it was those two factors which made him scrap the crossbow-behind-the-oak-tree plan.

     It was just too risky and necessary.

     While Dave slept, the bad guys could place their own snipers out, hidden in the tall grass of the meadows, or in the corn fields, to watch for intruders.

     Dave had no infrared capability, and the night vision goggles would be useless against a man lying in heavy ground cover.

     He might walk right into an ambush and not even know it.

     They might, in essence, do the same thing to Dave that he’d done to them.

     So he put the crossbow up for the time being. It was a very effective weapon in another situation. But not this one. For now, until the bad guys went to ground, his sniper rifle would continue to be his best option.

     He nested in moderately heavy brush, about three hundred yards from where he’d carried out his first attack a couple of days before. In the distance, he could see the shrub he’d used to hide in, and the barbed wire he’d cut, which was now repaired.

     He hadn’t seen them repair the fence. They’d done it while he was sleeping, perhaps, or watching the other side of the compound. And while they were repairing the fence, they could have been planting booby traps or hidden snipers.

     Yes. Holding off on the crossbow for now was the right move.

     His rider finally crested the hill. Like the others, his rifle was out of its sheathe and laying across the saddle in front of him. No doubt he was locked and loaded and capable of returning fire within a couple of seconds.

     But he wouldn’t have those couple of seconds. Dave planned to kill him on the first shot.

     As the horse and rider sauntered along, seemingly in no real hurry to get anywhere, the rider kept his eyes focused on the woods. That was the logical place for an attack to come from.

     But Dave wasn’t worried about being spotted. He was well hidden, and from that distance even a man with binoculars would have a hard time picking him out in the shrubs.

     Dave went through his firing ritual of counting his breaths to help regulate his breathing and relax his body. Clearing his mind of anything not related to the task at hand. Stretching his fingers and rotating his wrists to prevent them from going numb or cramping when it was time to fire.

     Then he placed his finger on the trigger and lined up the crosshairs on the man’s chest.

     It was a clean shot, obliterating his heart and exiting his back, taking with it a good amount of mass. He tumbled off the back of the horse and landed on his side. But he didn’t feel anything when he hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. He was beyond feeling.

     The horse spooked, but not badly. Even more important, he didn’t run. Dave had been afraid the man’s boots would get stuck in the stirrups. He’d go off the side and get hung up, and the horse would freak and bolt, trying to shake the man loose.

     That would have created a ruckus and ruined any chance Dave had for a second shot at the next sentry. But as it was, the horse bolted a short distance, then returned to his rider.

     He walked to the dead man and nuzzled him, not understanding why he didn’t move, yet somehow sensing something was wrong. Dave guessed they’d been paired up for quite a while. A good horse bonds with his owner, in the same manner a good dog does. The rider must have treated the horse well.

     But how he treated his horse wasn’t the issue. He was one of the bastards who’d taken Dave’s family hostage and was holding them against their will.

     And for that the man had to die.

     He wouldn’t have as much time to line up his next shot. In all likelihood, the next rider would spot the loose horse as soon as his head came over the horizon. Dave had to be ready to take his shot then, before the man had the chance to wheel around and disappear again from view.

     So he focused the crosshairs there. At the top of the hill where the first rider had appeared just a couple of minutes before.

     This would likely be a head shot. He doubted the rider would keep moving forward once he saw the riderless horse.

     A head shot from this distance was less a certainty than center mass. He focused, going through his relaxation exercises, slowly breathing and counting his breaths.

     Twenty two breaths, two full minutes, went by. Then thirty three breaths. Any time now, Dave knew.

     A brown cowboy hat poked its head over the rise, followed by a pudgy face a split second later. Dave squeezed the trigger, even as he thought he could make out a look of alarm on the rider’s face through the long range scope.

     The bullet entered the man’s right eye and his head exploded. His body collapsed and he fell forward onto the horse’s neck, then rolled off to the right side.

     This one didn’t fall as cleanly as the first. His right boot was tangled in the stirrup and his body bounced around against the ground while the horse ran in a large circle, trying to shake loose the dead weight. Finally, he fell away and the horse bolted back over the hill from where he’d come, surely alerting the next sentry.

     Dave’s operation was over. He heard several shots, and everyone in the compound now knew he’d killed more of their own.

     But wait… the shots were coming from the other side of the compound, near its entrance. Even a sentry with a high vantage point would have trouble seeing the loose horse from that angle.

     He placed the binoculars to his face and scanned the area to the north, where the shots had come from.

     “Shit.”

     It was a driver in a black Ford Explorer.
Dave’s
black Ford Explorer. He had just entered the compound and was driving around in circles, kicking up dust. Leaning halfway out the shattered driver’s side window was a man who appeared to be drunk, firing a handgun into the air, in an effort to alert everyone to come and see his trophy.

     Dave watched as two men came out of the house. He wasn’t sure who they were, but only one of them appeared to be armed. The unarmed man, Swain, would have made a sweet target, except that Dave thought he might be a hostage.

     Swain could well have owed his life at that moment to the fact that he wasn’t carrying a rifle.

     The other man was, however, and Dave started to sight him in as he walked across the yard.

     Then he had a better idea.

     His Explorer ground to a halt, the driver sticking his head out of the broken window to converse with the approaching men.

     No doubt bragging about the vehicle he’d found and hotwired, and all the booty it contained.

     But the driver wouldn’t be laughing for long. Dave would get the last laugh.

     As Swain walked up to the SUV and asked, “Where the hell did you find this, Snyder?” a small round hole suddenly appeared in the center of Snyder’s forehead.

     It was a question he’d never answer.

     Snyder never turned off the secondary ignition and never placed the vehicle into park. As his head slumped forward in death, his foot slipped off the brake. The big SUV crept forward, first knocking over a decorative garden gnome, which probably deserved to be crushed anyway, then came to a stop in the flowerbed on the east side of the house.

     The two men, meanwhile, put their heads down and scampered back toward the relative safety of the farm house.

     One of them made it. The other almost did.

     Dave had to rush his shot. He actually had a better angle on the unarmed man, but left him alone because he still didn’t know if he was friend or foe. And to be sure, the unarmed man would have been an easier shot, since he was moving more slowly and staggering just a bit.

     But Dave let him live and shot the second man instead. The one carrying a rifle, and obviously playing for the wrong team.

     Because he rushed his shot, though, the bullet missed the man’s heart, entering his lower left lung and exiting out his chest. It was probably a mortal shot, unless there was a very talented surgical team and fully functional operating room inside the house. But even a wounded man can handle a weapon, and Dave cursed himself for being sloppy.

     But he had no second chance. The wounded man staggered inside the door of the farm house, the unarmed man close behind him.

Chapter 31

     Satisfied he’d get no more targets of opportunity on this particular day, Dave rose slightly, turned around, and disappeared into the deep woods.

     Inside the farmhouse, meanwhile, a sense of chaos reigned.

     Sarah and Lindsey, when hearing the gunshots, watched from an upstairs window as Swain and McDonough went racing out to inspect the commandeered vehicle.

     They were disappointed to see that McDonough was the one shot instead of Swain. McDonough was the young man who was sweet on Lindsey and brought the two of them extra rations occasionally against Swain’s orders. He was also the one most likely to raise a rebellion against Swain, since he not-so-secretly despised the man.

     Sarah went downstairs, since she knew she’d be called upon to care for McDonough. She’d once toyed with the idea of becoming a paramedic in her younger years and had taken several courses to obtain her certification.

     But alas, she got pregnant with Lindsey and put her career plans on hold, then never got back to them. Still, she knew more about emergency triage and first aid than anyone she knew.

     Swain knew it too. He’d seen the way Sarah had treated Karen’s leg wound and the other wounded. He knew Sarah was the only one with any chance to save McDonough’s life.

     “Secure the damn doors!” Swain shouted as he reentered the farm house. Get away from the windows. Westfield!”

     A short and portly man entered the room, his pistol drawn. Obviously he was ready to shoot somebody, anybody, and just needed a target.

     “Put that thing away, you fool. They’re not storming the farm, they’re shooting from a distance. Everybody heard the shots. They’ll all be under cover now until darkness falls. As soon as you can, you get me a casualty report. I need to know if we lost anybody else.

     “When darkness falls, gather everybody and bring them into the house. We can’t just stand around and let them pick us off one of two at a time. Not anymore.”

     Two other men appeared from nowhere to help McDonough to the living room couch, where he collapsed and immediately lost consciousness.

     Swain told Sarah from across the room, “See what you can do for him.”

     Even though McDonough was on Swain’s side, and therefore the enemy, Sarah would try just as hard to save him as she would any other man. It was the same reason she could never bring herself to drive by an injured dog or shut her door on a hungry stray cat. Her heart was the biggest part of her, Dave used to tell her. “Even bigger than your boobs.”

     Sarah hadn’t known how to take it the first time Dave told her that. At first blush, it sounded almost like an insult. But she looked at his face and didn’t see his usual evil grin. What she saw was a look of sincerity. And something akin to admiration. He was dead serious.

     “Let me put it another way,” he said when he saw the confusion on her face. “As nice as your boobs are, and trust me, your boobs are pretty amazing… your heart is even more amazing.”

     But her heart wouldn’t save McDonough. It would take all of her medical skills, and even then the odds were stacked against them.