Cole saw the men turning back to him, mouths open as they realized what he had done; weapons were already coming round towards him.
Cole immediately launched himself onto the pig which had stayed near him, jumping crab-like into its back, riding it as it reared and bucked, his hands going around its head, the rope sliding around its neck; and then Cole slipped back, his feet touching the floor, and he pulled the wildly bucking animal up in front of him, using its huge mass as a shield as he backed away.
Cole heard the pig squeal, felt it writhe and convulse in his arms as it was hit by handgun rounds; felt it shudder, push him back further as it was hit by a blast of the shotgun.
Cole was level with one of the guards now, the man’s handgun empty. As he frantically tried to reload, Cole turned and pushed the pig towards him, the huge, bloodied animal crashing through the pen door; the screaming guard was crushed beneath the pig’s broken, eviscerated body, and Cole jumped in after it.
Cole looked down, saw the handgun and the magazine lying on the floor next to the man who, barely conscious, still struggled to escape from under the crushing weight of the dead pig. Cole reached for it but then turned as if with a sixth sense, the guard with the Magnum revolver racing into the stall, gun aimed right at him.
Cole moved in a blur, leaving the handgun on the floor as his hand snaked out and grabbed a pitchfork from the wall, burying it straight through the man’s chest before he’d managed to fire even once. Blood spurted from the multiple stab wounds as the man fell helplessly to the floor.
Cole knelt down quickly, inserting the new magazine into the handgun and racking the slide, picking up the heavy revolver in the same motion before he came to his feet and opened fire at the remaining guards, both guns blasting as one.
Aoki couldn’t believe what she was seeing; it was one thing to have read about the man, another altogether to see him in action. His speed and coordination were unreal; even the Japanese masters she had trained with weren’t capable of moving like that.
But her amazement lasted only moments; she knew there were still two men with guns behind her.
Taking Cole’s cue and wasting not one more second, she stamped down hard with the heel of her shoe onto the top of Groves’ foot, digging it into the small bones with a sharp twisting action that brought a cry of pain to his lips.
At the same time, she swung her bound hands in a tight arc to her right, knocking Haynes’ arms upwards just as he fired his own weapon, the bullet hitting the roof instead of its target.
Aoki knew that it wouldn’t take long for Groves and Haynes to recover and — feeling Groves’ grip on her weaken from the unexpected blow to his foot — she launched herself forward into the barn.
She felt a whistle of warm air above her as she leapt towards the frightened pigs, heard a grunt, felt blood spattering over her back; knew that Cole had hit Groves.
She felt, rather than saw, Haynes return fire towards Cole, before he turned and ran, the barn doors banging closed behind him. She heard him screaming as he ran; not shouts of fear or pain, she realized, but orders.
He was getting back-up, calling to the other shaven-headed Aryan Ultra soldiers who lived on the ranch; and Aoki knew that reinforcements would be at the barn within minutes, all guns blazing.
3
Whoever the girl was, Cole was impressed; she’d used the distraction to take out the two men holding her and had thrown herself clear, giving him a clear shot at Haynes and Groves.
He’d managed to put a .357 Magnum slug right through Groves’ chest, but Haynes had been quicker off the mark, keeping Cole pinned down behind the stall with fire of his own, giving him the few seconds he needed to escape.
The other men in the barn were down from Cole’s well-placed shots, and the pigs were going wild; attracted to the sight and smell of blood, excited by the sounds of gunfire and screams, they were attacking the downed AU soldiers, tusks and teeth going to work with frightening savagery.
Cole put the horrendous noise of the disemboweled victims out of his mind, assessing the situation.
Haynes was gone. Cole already had the information he needed, but if Haynes managed to escape, he would still be in a position to plan yet more atrocities against the American people, and Cole couldn’t let that happen. If there was any chance at all that he could get to Haynes, he would take it.
He turned and saw Aoki struggling to get to her feet from the dirt floor of the barn’s central aisle, worried that her wounds would make her a target for the pigs.
He spotted a saw on the wall of the stall, used it to cut the rope that secured his wrists, and ran towards the girl, taking the saw with him.
He still had no idea who she was, but he knew she had taken a beating to try and help him; the fact that she had told them about him wasn’t important, Cole knew that people couldn’t resist forever. But she had tried, and that was the main thing; he owed her for that, whoever she was.
Cole got to her, sidestepping the ravenous, feasting pigs, glad to see that they were leaving the girl alone; there were better pickings elsewhere, he supposed.
He hauled her to her feet, pulled the gag from her mouth and used the saw to separate her hands, the sharp jagged teeth cutting through the rope easily. Without a word he handed her the saw, pointed at her ankles; and without a word of her own, the girl bent down and started cutting.
Cole used the time to scout the bodies, picking up the weapons of the dead and dying men, careful to avoid the bloodied tusks of the wild pigs. He found a cell phone on one of the men and dialed 911. He would have liked more back-up, but due to the nature of Force One, he was on his own and had to rely on conventional law enforcement.
He quickly explained the situation, and knew that the local PD would send units immediately, but would also pass it up the line; an FBI SWAT team would probably be on its way within minutes, scrambled from the Phoenix field office.
But SWAT would take time to get here, which meant that Cole would have to stop Haynes himself.
Cole saw that the girl had freed herself, standing shakily, eyes watching him warily.
Ignoring the strange look on her face, he held up a submachine gun with a questioning eye. ‘You know how to use one of these?’ he asked, pleased when she nodded her head.
He threw the weapon to her, was pleased again when she caught it, opened the slide and checked for a round in the breach before slamming it home again.
He nodded at her in satisfaction. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now stay here and shoot anyone who comes in here without a police badge.’
For a moment — a long, terrible moment — Aoki was at a loss to know what to do.
It was the moment she had been waiting for — dreaming about — for years. Here she was with a loaded gun, aimed directly at the man she hated, the man she had tracked and stalked, the man she wanted with all her heart to kill.
But now?
Now, the urge was still there, beating wildly in her heart. But hadn’t the man just saved her? He could have left her where she was, thought only about himself, tried to save only himself. And yet he had untied her, given her the gun.
Could she now shoot the man in the back?
Her hands trembled as her finger caressed the trigger, a fraction of an inch from pumping a high-velocity stream of 9mm rounds into Cole’s unprotected spine.
The only reason she had managed to hold out so long against her barbarous torture was her desire to kill the man herself, to not let the AU thugs get to him first, so that she could at last exact her sweet revenge — both for her mother, and for herself.