Chapter Sixteen

 

 

The only thing that warned Ryan the sniper had a bead on him was the glint of sunlight against glass. But it only amplified the feeling that something predatory was eyeing him. He went down to his right, throwing himself at a stand of grayish green rock jutting up from the broken earth.

 

The heavy bullet whizzed in, big enough to sound for an instant like incoming artillery. The round smashed a misshapen rock the size of a pumpkin into fragments where he'd been standing.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan yelled as he slammed up against the outcrop. His back took the brunt of the impact, but his right ear bumped up against the stone surface hard enough to rip flesh. When he reached up to check it, he found the ear still in one piece but bleeding profusely. He rose to a kneeling position behind the rock.

 

The second bullet clipped a fist-sized chunk from Ryan's cover and sent stone slivers stinging into his face. He narrowed his eye instinctively. Sinking back behind the rock, he looked to his rear. "J.B., do you know where he's at?"

 

"Got a perch up there about four hundred yards away. At eleven o'clock."

 

Ryan checked back along the trail. "Anybody hit?"

 

They all answered back in short order, letting him know they were intact.

 

Slithering around the rock, Ryan went lower, staying on his belly against the hot stone. Peering around the corner of his cover, he studied the horizon.

 

Another glint sparked like white fire nestled on the dark of the stone perch J.B. had to have seen. Ryan moved his head back an instant before another heavy bullet cracked against the rock with enough force to cause a vibration.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan said. "Bastard must be up there with a damn cannon." He readied the Steyr, adjusting for the distance.

 

"Unless I miss my guess," the Armorer called up, "that's a Sharps .50-cal buffalo rifle."

 

Ryan was familiar with the weapon. In the hands of an expert, the Sharps was capable of making clean kills out to a thousand yards.

 

On the other side of his cover, the one-eyed man dropped the Steyr against his shoulder and squeezed off two quick rounds. Both of them hit the sniper's position, but he doubted either one hit the man. Still, it gave the shooter something to think about.

 

Ryan rolled behind cover again and looked back along the mountainside. Below and to his left nearly seventy yards, treetops scrubbed against the side of the defile. The drop might not kill them, but there was every chance someone could break a leg or an arm. Neither prospect would leave them in good shape to escape the brushwooders.

 

The mountain ridge to the right promised only more heights with not much in the way of protective cover. Every minute they were pinned down brought the brushwooders that much closer, as well. Ryan had no doubts that the shots had been heard.

 

Pushing himself up against the rock, Ryan yelled, "Stop shooting!"

 

"Fuck you!" a man's voice yelled back. "You didn't seem to have a problem shooting at us!"

 

Us meant more than one. Ryan wondered exactly how many more. "That's because you shot first! Wanted you to know we could do this the easy way or the hard way!"

 

"You people just hold your position! You will not be allowed to reach a greater proximity!"

 

"What the hell do you want us to do?" Ryan asked.

 

"Go back the way you came!" The voice echoed off the higher position, rolling across the mountainside.

 

"Can't do that!"

 

"That will be your preference, but I assure you that inclination will categorically lead only to your demise!"

 

"Talks like Doc," J.B. commented.

 

"Do you see him?" Ryan asked.

 

"No. He's got himself set in good. Got more sense than to move, either."

 

"You figure one guy?"

 

"Mebbe. Bullets come kind of slow. That Sharps is a breechloader. One round at a time at that."

 

"If we give him multiple targets, he's going to be hard up against it trying to get us all," Ryan said.

 

Ryan scanned the terrain for the albino teenager, who was nowhere to be seen. "Jak?"

 

A pebble thudded softly against Ryan's right arm. He turned in that direction and barely made out the youth lying like a second layer of dirt over the stone shelf little more than ten yards away.

 

"If I give them a target," Ryan said, "do you think you can get up in there behind them without being seen?"

 

"Daylight makes hard. Mebbe. Drop into trees, could get around."

 

"J.B."

 

"I heard you," the Armorer said.

 

"When I go left, you break right. You get somewhere safe, bang a couple rounds at them to let them know we're still knocking at the door." Ryan spared a last glance at Jak, then pushed himself up from the ground and ran.

 

He dived behind a low hill of fresh-broken earth, then kicked his feet, pushing up flush against the earthen ridge.

 

A bullet slammed into the ground and tore away a piece bigger than the palm of Ryan's hand. He pulled the Steyr to his shoulder and fired two rounds at the sniper's perch. Then he was running again, his mind automatically figuring the time it would take a man to jack another round into the Sharps buffalo rifle.

 

Jak had already disappeared.