War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel (11 page)

From his earlier canvass of the Huntsville area, he knew about a half mile past the factory were the grounds of a country club. It meant a lot of open water to cross, with an unknown number of enemies in the sky and maybe on foot.

Still, it was safer than the open road.

Tucker groped around until he found a clump of moss. He mashed it through his hair and draped strands over his shoulders like a dank shroud.

Kane studied his new look with his head cocked to one side.

Tucker leaned closer and whispered, “Boo.”

The shepherd licked his face.

“Yeah, nothing scares you.”

Tucker turned and headed away from the road. As he sidestroked into the deeper water, Kane paddled alongside him, the dog’s snout just above the surface. Tucker chose a path that hugged root mounds and fallen trees. Still, after only thirty yards, he felt a sting at the edge of his right ear—and a few feet ahead of him something splashed into the water.

Goddamn it . . .

He grabbed Kane’s collar, hugged the dog close, and whispered in his ear. “H
OLD
YOUR
BREATH
.”

Tucker ducked with Kane beneath the surface. He kicked and dug with one arm, swimming hard toward a half-submerged log. He surfaced with Kane beneath it, keeping both of them pressed against the curve of bark. Somewhat sheltered from above, Tucker watched and listened.

So far, no more bullets came.

He strove to pick out any telltale buzzing. But as his breath heaved and his heart pounded in his ears, he couldn’t be sure.

Closer at hand, an owl hooted three times. A moment later, the heavy flapping of wings passed overhead, followed by a feeble screech as the hunter found its dinner.

Let’s hope that’s the only successful hunter this night
.

Tucker reached up, touched the edge of his ear. He winced at the tiny gouge in his flesh. But he had no reason to complain. Another inch to the left, and the round would have drilled through his skull.

Knowing they had to keep moving, Tucker floated the log slowly through the water. He tried his best to stay hidden from the drone, but eventually the log snagged into a tangle of roots, forcing them to continue on a labyrinthine path that kept them pressed against logs, tree trunks, and root mounds. Whenever they reached a stretch of open water, they continued underwater, only surfacing long enough to snatch a breath.

Then after what seemed like hours, Tucker’s toes touched solid ground. After a few more steps, the mud underfoot turned to something even firmer. He reached down and scooped up a fistful of rough pebbles.

Gravel
.

They had reached the edge of the factory complex. The jumble of buildings, silos, and moss-shrouded catwalks rose fifty yards away.

With the goal in sight, Tucker continued more slowly. As the embankment sloped upward, he soon found himself having to crawl in order to keep only his moss-covered head above the water’s surface. Finally, he shimmied out of the shallows and up a gravel shore. With Kane pressed to his side, he chose a path through a stand of tall reeds to keep them hidden.

But it wasn’t enough.

Without any warning, a burst of rounds shredded through the reeds and pelted into the gravel.

Tucker bunched his legs and shouted to Kane, pointing toward the ruins of the factory.

“R
UN
AND
HIDE
!”

Kane wants to ignore the order, to keep the pack together. But he trusts his partner and obeys.

He races low to the ground, his ears high, his tail straight back. He hears gunfire roaring in short spats. He knows guns, knows the damage they can cause. He swerves through bushes, around piles of old equipment, under the rusted hulk of a massive vehicle with flattened tires.

Rounds ping off metal and ricochet off gravel with bright sparks in the night.

By now, he has left the other far behind him. Kane’s blood races with the urge to turn and return to his side, but he sticks to the path assigned him. He clears the vehicle’s bulk and crosses the last distance toward a black doorway in the nearest building.

Behind him, gunfire erupts—but it no longer chases him.

With no choice but to obey his last order, Kane flies over the threshold and into the waiting darkness
.

As soon as Kane had leapt from his side, Tucker had dodged away in the other direction. By splitting up, he had hoped to divide the drone’s attention as its operator tried to decide which target to pursue.

It seemed to work initially. The gunfire had momentarily ceased as he and Kane took off. That lapse had allowed Kane to get a head start in his flight toward the factory. Still, gunfire rained down from above soon thereafter. First toward Kane’s path—then the drone’s deadly attention returned to Tucker.

But Tucker had used the distraction to reach a small thicket of trees. Rounds tore through the canopy and pelted into the ground. Tucker dodged past trunks as shards of tree bark peppered his face.

Don’t look back . . .

With his heart pounding and his thighs burning, he focused on the goal ahead: a tall silo that speared into the night sky.

Slipping and sliding, Tucker dodged from tree to tree, hoping to present less of a target.

Crack!

A branch above Tucker’s head snapped.

Crack!

Something tugged at his pant leg, but he ignored it and kept running and weaving. Moonlight brightened ahead, reflecting off water, warning that he had reached the end of the copse of trees.

He didn’t slow.

He burst out of the tree line and dove low across what appeared to be a shallow lake, likely a former industrial pond for the factory. He slid beneath the surface as a scatter of rounds spat around him, but then the fusillade suddenly stopped.

Had the drone run out of ammunition?

With no way of knowing, he surfaced briefly, listening for any telltale buzzing, but he heard nothing. He pictured the drone banking away, readying to come back around again for another run. Confirming this conjecture, the nattering whine returned as he swam, growing louder by the second.

He searched for the enemy.

There!

Silhouetted against the moonlit sky, he spotted a fleeting, elongated shadow as it circled toward his position. It appeared to be a fixed-wing drone, but there was something off about it. The drone wasn’t quite a shadow, more like a fuzzy, mottled shape that seemed to blend into the stars.

Some kind of stealth material
, he realized.

Tucker swam faster, aiming for a dark, diagonal line that rose from the pond’s far bank. It was an old rubber conveyor belt that climbed toward a door high up the neighboring silo. He had no better option, especially with the whine of the drone almost upon him again.

Tucker dove back underwater, praying the pond’s reflective surface would hide him from the hunter in the sky. He kicked and paddled his way to the submerged end of the conveyor and ducked underneath it; only then did he risk coming up for air.

He glanced over his shoulder, studying the sloping belt and the metal buckets that dangled from beneath it. His plan had been to climb up to that silo door, keeping to the underside of the conveyor. The scheme had seemed far better from a distance.

But up close . . .

Above his head, the scaffolding dripped with Spanish moss. Wrist-sized vines snaked around the crossbeams and angle irons. What little steel Tucker could see was scabrous with rust. Even the rubber belt was worn thin with multiple holes.

He doubted the structure would hold his weight—and certainly not for long.

Any further reservations came to an abrupt halt as a fresh spatter of rounds tore into the conveyor, pinging off the scaffolding and ripping through the belt.

The drone must have spotted him after all.

Tucker lunged up, grabbed a crossbeam, and began to climb along the bottom of the conveyor belt, doing his best to use the large metal buckets as shields. If the drone didn’t kill him, the ascent might. He lost his footing several times as pieces of the conveyor’s support scaffolding gave way under his weight.

Still, he kept going.

Another round punched through the belt and sparked off a crossbeam beside Tucker’s hand.

He cursed brightly—but then the barrage abruptly stopped.

The hunter must be circling around again
.

He started counting in his head. When he reached thirty seconds, the buzz of the drone’s engine returned. It seemed there was roughly half a minute from one pass to the next. Knowing this, he took shelter beneath one of the buckets as the drone swept over, raining rounds all around. The conveyor’s scaffolding shook and shimmied. More sections came crashing down.

Tucker could swear that the entire structure had begun to list to one side.

Not good
.

Then the world went silent as the drone banked away for the next pass.

Counting down in his head, Tucker moved quickly. He had only this one chance. He pulled himself around the scaffolding and onto the top side of the belt. He stood up, teetering on the decomposing rubber. The belt swayed under his weight—or maybe it was the scaffolding, as the structure groaned beneath him.

Either way, he had only one path open to him. He headed up the conveyor’s slope—at first cautiously, then with more urgency as the distant buzzing rose in volume.

He ran the countdown in his head.

Another fifteen seconds . . . plenty of time
, he promised himself.
Only another thirty yards to go
.

He glanced over his shoulder.

A mistake.

His left foot plunged through the rubber, and he belly slammed onto the belt. He jerked his leg, but his boot was stuck in a tangle of vines below.

No, no, no—

He yanked harder and managed to pull his foot out of the boot. With his limb free now, he rolled and pushed back to his feet. Whether from his struggling or from the simple ravages of time, the entire conveyor’s structure began to give way, slowly toppling sideways.

Tucker sprinted.

The pitch of the drone increased, seeming to come from everywhere.

Out of time!

Six yards ahead, the end was in sight. The dark opening in the silo loomed, a black hole that led to who knows what? He didn’t care. It was either death by bullet or death by falling.

A bullet punched through the belt behind him.

Three yards to go
.

Tucker flung himself headlong as the scaffolding collapsed beneath him. He dove through the opening—and found nothing but open air on the other side.

With a gasp of defeat, he plummeted into the dark.

9

October 13, 9:34
P
.
M
. CDT

Huntsville, Alabama

Tucker squeezed his eyes shut as he fell, certain a bone-shattering impact was coming. But instead, after plunging for a long, frightening breath, he struck a surface that caved under his impact, knocking the wind out of him. Gasping, he slid and tumbled down a steep slope, then struck the far side of the metal silo with a ringing bang.

He lay on his back, gulping air back into his lungs. His fingers dug into the surface beneath him.
Sand
. He rested his head back as more rivulets of grains sifted around his body. This must be a sand collection silo for the factory.

Overhead, a scatter of rounds pinged off the outside of the silo, echoing through the hollow space. But he knew he was safe for the moment—at least from the drone.

So far, he had seen no sign of any hunters on the ground. But he knew the military often used drones to flush out quarry, to chase them into the arms of ground troops. He had to assume that might be the case or that others might be circling down upon his position.

Gotta keep moving
.

But first he had to find Kane—which could prove challenging. After leaving the meeting with Frank, Tucker hadn’t bothered to equip the shepherd with his Kevlar jacket and communication gear. He mentally kicked himself for not doing so, but how could he have anticipated this aerial ambush on the road back to his motel?

Okay, so we do this old school
.

By now, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. In the faint moonlight coming through the conveyor opening, he spotted another door opposite the one he had dived through a moment ago. The dark rectangle was about two yards up the wall on this side. He imagined it led into the main factory building. As well as he could tell from his brief and frantic survey of the grounds, there were four silos attached to the central building, one at each corner, like turrets on a castle.

When he and Kane had split up, the shepherd had taken off for a silo on the other side of the main building. Kane was likely still holed up in there, following Tucker’s last order:
RUN
AND
HIDE
.

Intending to reach his partner there, Tucker knee-walked through the sand to the ladder that led up to the dark door. He wrapped his hands on one of the rungs and gave it a tug, then another. Satisfied it was solid enough, he mounted the ladder and climbed up to the doorway.

He poked his head through and discovered a catwalk extended from the door and crossed high above the main collection floor of the factory. Large sections of the roof had caved in, allowing moonlight to better illuminate the cavernous space, which stretched a football field wide and twice as long. Below, old equipment and a row of massive ore carts—each the size of a train car—had rusted to the concrete floor. Above, a labyrinth of steel beams was entwined in a jungle of vines.

Tucker frowned, trying to judge the viability of using the catwalk to cross to the other side of the main floor. He pictured the conveyor’s structure collapsing a moment ago as he leapt for his life. If the catwalk didn’t hold under his weight, it was a four-story drop to the hard concrete floor.