Deadly Sight (22 page)

They reached the end of the tunnel, turned off the lights and hiked back to the barn quickly, confident that the tunnel was clear of traps. He jogged up the first ladder and stood up in the short hole—

Zing. Ping.

He ducked, stunned. Sam bumped into his back and he yanked her down beside him.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“Gunshot.”

Chapter 16

S
am didn’t waste time on histrionics. She pulled the pieces of the small rifle she’d slipped into her pack just before they left the house and commenced assembling it quickly. Sometimes being able to see in the dark was really, really handy. Like now. When she had to have a weapon fast. It might be small-caliber and short-range, but in her hands, it was accurate and deadly.

“Where’s the shooter?” she breathed.

“Didn’t see. Outside the barn, I think. Silenced weapon.”

“Sound suppressors reduce accuracy,” she commented. “And since we’re blown, I don’t care about quiet.” She moved out from behind Gray and approached the edge of the hole.

“What are you planning?” he asked suspiciously.

“I’m gonna pop up, peek at what we’ve got out there, and take a shot if I’ve got one.”

“Are you insane?” he whispered.

“Have you got a better idea? It’s not like there’s another way out of the tunnel.”

He shuddered at the prospect of being trapped underground. A horrible way to die, to be sure.

Sam continued, “If the tunnel were wider or had some side branches, I’d draw them down there and use my eyesight to pick them off. As it is, we’ll have to use my eyesight to pick them off up top.”

She wasn’t anywhere near as calm as she sounded, but panicking wouldn’t do any good at the moment, so she held the terror at bay. She had no intention of dying tonight. Not when Gray was finally thawing out toward her.

Popping up, she looked around fast and ducked down to process the details. “The barn door is wide open. A dozen armed men are arrayed out front. Once I shoot the first one, they’ll have to take cover.”

“There’s not much out there to take cover behind,” Gray replied. “They’ll have to drive a tractor or some trucks in front of the door and hide behind those.”

“Let them. I see better than they do, and I’m a better shot.” He looked at her doubtfully, and she added, “Trust me.”

To his credit, he nodded. His acceptance of her skill warmed a little spot deep within the cold terror she currently was holding at bay.

“You want to pop up and shoot with me?” she asked. “You won’t have to aim. There’s a whole line of guys in front of the door.”

“Overconfident bastards,” he mumbled.

She grinned and breathed, “On three. One. Two. Three.”

She stood up, steadied her rifle on the edge of the hole and shot fast, double-tapping each target in turn. It was like shooting ducks in a gallery. Except these were big, man-size ducks who weren’t moving. At least not at first. After she and Gray dropped the first several guys, Proctor’s men woke up and dove out of sight. It actually would have been comical if she and Gray weren’t trapped, surrounded and seriously outnumbered.

While she reloaded, Gray did a strange thing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone.

“News flash, Sparky. There are no cell phone towers to receive your signal.”

“Sat phone,” he replied, grinning wolfishly.

“God bless the NSA for giving you decent equipment.”

“Amen,” he muttered as he dialed a number.

He rattled off a series of letters and numbers which she assumed were some sort of identity verification. And then he said, “Send the nearest marines. And tell them to expect a hell of a firefight.”

He hung up the phone and reported, “They’re on their way. But it’s about a twenty-minute drive over here, plus time to gear up. Estimated time of arrival—thirty to forty minutes.”

Her heart sank. “We won’t be alive that long.”

Sam popped up to take another shot and wasn’t surprised to see the doorway empty. But she did spot someone standing at the far side of the field, staring in their direction with binoculars. She grinned and took aim. Poor bastard didn’t know she could see him a whole lot better than he could see her. She pulled the trigger, and the guy dropped like a rock.

“Who’d you shoot?” Gray asked.

“Spotter. On the far side of the field.”

“Have I mentioned lately that I love your eyesight?”

“No, as a matter of fact, you haven’t.”

“Well, I do.”

“Thanks.” She smiled over at him. “Any chance I can borrow your phone? Maybe I can get us a faster rescue.”

As he held the device out to her, the telltale putt-putting of a diesel tractor became audible. She dialed fast. “Novak, it’s Sam. Any chance that Winston field team has arrived in West Virginia yet?”

The Winston Ops controller replied, “As a matter of fact, they have.”

“Tell them to get over to the Proctor compound ASAP. Gray and I are pinned down, surrounded and outgunned. We’ll be okay until we run out of ammunition, and then we’re screwed.”

“Got it. I’m on it.”

“And get me an ETA.”

Novak was off the line for a few seconds, and then said, “Estimated time of arrival, twenty minutes.”

They both knew that was a lifetime in a firefight.

“Hang on as long as you can,” the controller added. “I’ll see what I can do to shave a few minutes off that ETA.”

She disconnected without saying any more as a tractor pulled into view.

Gray murmured beside her, “We’ve got to conserve our ammo. Each bullet has to count.”

She nodded grimly. If help didn’t get here soon, it wasn’t going to matter how careful they were. Still, she wasn’t about to give up. “I’ll shoot. You reload.”

Gray nodded his agreement and handed her his pistol. “I’ll save two bullets,” he replied grimly.

She scowled over at him. “I’m not planning to die tonight. And you’d better not be, either. You fight to live. You hear me?”

Gray looked startled. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve got fifteen more days left before you have permission to check out, mister. If you’re too big a coward to pull the trigger yourself and decide to go out in a blaze of glory tonight, I’ll wring your neck myself if Proctor doesn’t manage to kill you. I’m just sayin’.”

“Duly noted,” he commented wryly. “And where’d you learn about my countdowns?”

“Jeff.”

“I’m going to kill him if we make it out of here,” Gray commented without any real heat.

“He loves you,” she replied. “Don’t bust his chops for fighting to save you.”

A brief stalemate ensued while Proctor’s men drove a heavy truck up beside the tractor. Sam shot a careless ankle she spotted under the belly of the pickup truck, and a shout of pain announced the accuracy of her shot. Gray nodded at her in grim approval.

The quiet didn’t last for long, however. Men started popping up and shooting in trios, laying down covering fire for each other and preventing Sam from popping up and shooting back. Every time she poked the rifle barrel above the rim of the hole, a fusillade of bullets pinned her down, unable to return fire.

Gray finally suggested, “You need a diversion. I’ll poke up a gun barrel on my side of the hole, and when they shoot at me, you come up on the other side of the hole and do your thing.”

Sam nodded. The tactic worked once, and she managed to take out another shooter with what was probably a kill shot to the face. She would feel bad about shooting these guys if they weren’t trying to kill her and Gray, and if she wasn’t sure that most of them were ex-military and knew the score. But as it was, she didn’t have time for guilt. Survival was a slightly higher priority at the moment.

The next time she and Gray tried the decoy gun thing, a shooter spun around the edge of the barn door and she barely ducked in time to avoid having her head blown off. Even though the near miss scared the heck out of her, she popped back up doggedly to fire through the wall at the spot where the guy had just taken cover. A cry announced that she’d gotten lucky.

A short pause ensued. On a hunch, she fired through the thin aluminum barn wall again, at about the spot where she’d just hit the shooter. Another cry rang out. Yup, as she’d expected. Someone had come over to retrieve their hurt buddy. Now Proctor’s men had two guys down and exposed. Should she try for a third lucky hit?

She reached over for a freshly loaded weapon, and Gray’s hand on her wrist made her look over at him. He shook his head. “Not enough ammo,” he breathed.

He was right. They couldn’t afford to take foolish shots.

Another pause ensued. She registered vaguely that time was wildly distorted at the moment. Pauses of seconds seemed to drag on for days. From the time the firefight had started till now had been under three minutes.

The pause continued. No doubt Proctor’s men were cautiously retrieving the bodies of their downed comrades. While they were busy, Gray whispered, “How ’bout you go blow up the tunnel?”

“How ’bout I stay here and lay down covering fire, and you blow it up,” she whispered back.

“I don’t want to leave you here—”

She cut him off. “We’ve been over this before. I can take care of myself.”

He gave her one hard look and then nodded. “I’ll be back in a minute. If it gets too hot out here, retreat to the tunnel. We’ve still got your eyes on our side.”

Son of a gun. Had the man finally learned to trust her?

“Roger,” she replied more jauntily than she felt. He passed her the spare pistol and remaining ammunition. There wasn’t a lot left. Their theory when they’d been planning this junket had been that, if it came to a firefight, they were screwed anyway, and it wouldn’t matter if they had a ton of ammunition or not. She had about two dozen shots left between both weapons. Time to improvise.

She thought hard about supplies she’d seen scattered around the barn before. It might be possible to blow up the barn with stuff on hand, but that wouldn’t do her and Gray a lot of good if they were inside it when it blew. The back side of the barn was maybe a hundred feet from a stretch of forest. If they could make it to the cover of the trees, the two of them would stand a fighting chance.

She went through four more precious bullets firing at shooters probing her defensive perimeter. Surely Proctor’s men knew if they were patient enough, she and Gray would run out of ammo.

She felt Gray’s presence behind her before she heard him. He put a hand in the middle of her back, and she took a ridiculously huge amount of comfort from his simple touch. “In about ten minutes, the tunnel will be history,” he reported quietly. “How are we doing up here?”

“Stalemated. They know we’ll run out of ammo, and they’re feinting now to draw my fire. I, however, am refusing to fire anymore unless they give me a clear shot.”

“They’ll rush the building before long,” he replied grimly. “It would be a long shot, but maybe we could cut a hole in the back wall of the barn and get out that way. We would have to create some sort of distraction that would buy us time to make for the woods, though.”

“How about a trip wire in the doorway that’ll blow up the building when they rush it?” she suggested.

“That would do it. We’d just have to be outside before it blew.”

“I’ll take my chances with tricky timing over no chance at all.”

He looked shocked as he breathed, “I actually agree with you.”

“Praise the Lord,” she replied fervently. If he wanted to live and put his formidable mind to the job, the two of them couldn’t help but find a way to survive. Passing the weapons to Gray, she breathed, “Cover me while I grab the stuff we’ll need to wire a bomb.”

Shock: he didn’t argue. Now that they were on the verge of dying, apparently he’d accepted that she could pull her own weight. Better late than never. Now they just had to make it out of here so it meant something.

He took up a firing position and nodded at her. She leaped out of the hole and sprinted across the open space in front of the door to the workbench in the corner. Bullets zinged past her, and one passed so close she felt it lift her hair. So terrified she could hardly think, she dived for cover behind the workbench. She stuck one arm up and grabbed everything she thought she’d need by feel. While she was at it, she randomly grabbed fistfuls of whatever else her hand encountered and stuffed it in her pockets.

Her slacks bulging with gadgets and wires, she crouched in the shadows, waiting, as a shooter popped up from behind a tractor. The guy sent a volley of shots at the hole, and Gray braved the withering fire to pop up and fire a round back. While the two men were occupied, she darted across the barn toward a pair of small propane tanks, the kind used with backyard grills. She prayed they weren’t empty. Her whole plan hinged on it.

She hefted the first tank. Oh, yeah. It was heavy. Felt full, in fact. She took a moment to attach the end of a spool of wire to the leg of a table beside her, and then she lifted the propane tanks. Carrying one in each hand, she ran to Gray.

Dirt sprayed up around her feet, and a bullet burned her arm as it creased her. Time stopped as Gray stood up, horror written on his face. All of Proctor’s men must have stepped out to have a go at her. She was so dead. She took a running step. Another.

Gray’s muzzle flashed and his mouth opened, shouting something she couldn’t hear in the deafening barrage. With all her strength, she leaped, diving headfirst for the hole.

She hit the dirt hard, and time lurched into motion as she knocked the breath out of herself. She fetched up hard, barely stopping her momentum before she crashed off the ledge and fell to the lower level. As it was, her legs swung out into empty space. She yanked them back before she overbalanced and fell anyway.

A barrage of weapons fire exploded and she crawled for Gray’s side. He passed her a pistol. “You hit?” he bit out.

“No. I’m good.”

He nodded, concentrating on the barn door. “They’re getting bold. They’ve figured out we’re light on ammo.”

“Two minutes,” she retorted. “Can you buy me that long?”

“I’ll find a way.”

She got to work fast. Thankfully, the key components she would need, an actuator and a remote control, were already assembled. She merely had to modify the actuator to create a spark and hook it to the propane tanks. The hole they stood in would work to contain most of the propane gas. She used the tarp she’d covered the computer glow with earlier to cover the open area above the lower level she’d almost fallen into. She used the second tarp to enclose the entire hole above. The pocket she’d created should hold the propane gas until they detonated it remotely.