Not a warrior among them.
He backed away fast, surveying the territory behind and the potential threats. A sniper could never be dismissed but Jensen had no time for that. He sprayed the area in front of him and backed up some more. His men had seen him now, Labadee and Levy sprinting hard and keeping the pirates low with well-placed shots. They were outmanned, but their sudden assault, Jensen’s escape and the pirates’ general malaise evened the score. The leader was shouting at the top of his voice, thick curses, but at nobody in particular and nobody was listening. The cleaver beat ineffectually at the ground.
Jensen sprayed again and thought he saw a glimpse of figures way across the clearing, bodies moving through the trees. Not pirates. Then…
Could be. It could be them.
The race was going to be a tough one. All his life he’d prepared for something like this. Well, not really, but for the last ten years he’d wished to fall lucky just once, take that vast score, and today his numbers were up. Just bad luck it was all going to be in the midst of a firefight.
Labadee and Levy reached his side and he waved them back. “To the woods. Move it!”
Soon they cleared the tree line and melted away without looking back. Jensen raced to the center of his men as he saw Levy hang back to make sure nobody dared follow them. A brief check of the pirate campsite saw them milling back and forth, undisciplined and unsure what to do. Jensen knew it was imperative to take advantage of their confusion.
“Top of the mountain,” he said simply. “Any cost. Now.”
His men reacted immediately, the mercs a little more slowly. Jensen counted his men as the guys who’d been with him since near the very beginning. Only ten now, several had died recently. But those ten were loyal. The mercs outnumbered them three to one, but the promise of gold made their eyes shine and their brains take a break. Jensen would make sure he put them to the front and the sides of the pack as added insurance for stray bullets. No loss.
He wrapped it up and pointed the way forward. Nobody, not even his lieutenants questioned as to how he’d been captured, let alone what he’d recklessly told the pirates to save his life. Jensen was no coward; he’d faced down unspeakable dangers in his career, but seeing certain, indifferent death in the eyes of a man wielding a blood-caked cleaver? That made a man want to prolong everything, in any way possible. Jensen knew he’d made it all worse.
Still alive though…
And running. He hammered home a magazine into his handgun as he swept past a gaggle of trees, running downhill along a sweeping path and jumping over ruts. To their right the trees frequently thinned and then thickened, offering sporadic views of the pirate camp.
The indolence was lifting. The sullied men were gathering, forming a large hunting party it seemed. Their leader was pointing them toward the great hill with its dangerous obstructions and dense cover. Weapons were being held high and orders were being listened to.
Jensen ran harder, needing to pull out a lead. The man at the top of the hill was going to win this treasure hunt.
King of the mountain?
Shit, the schoolyard game had nothing on this.
“C’mon,” he hissed. “Draw your guns and take a bead. Shoot anything that moves that isn’t us. We have to reach the top first!”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Alicia saw Crouch struggle with the decision and then make it anyway. His eyes met hers first and asked a question.
“If we do this we do it fast,” she said.
He nodded, turned to the front and started sprinting through the trees. Russo loped along in his wake, rifle swinging from a shoulder. Healey and Caitlyn went next and Alicia brought up the rear. Down a slope and then over a small hillock, taking time to skirt the huge, overgrown bole of an ancient tree, scrambling in the undergrowth for a minute and then zigzagging through a thick stand, whipped by branches and almost tripped by concealed roots. Crouch led the team hard, calling on all his training and skills. To their right through the trees the pirate camp was in uproar, more men shouting than listening to their boss, others standing around in bewilderment and not having the awareness to find out. Drugs explained most of the uncertainty, but a lifetime of bullying and persecution also spoke for a portion of it. Alicia guessed that some of these men might not even know who their leader was.
Nevertheless, as Crouch passed the area where the prison tents sat, the pirate camp was starting to mobilize; the men were pointed toward the hill and galvanized to run. Several shots into the air helped. Alicia was forced to concentrate hard on the terrain for a minute as the path twisted and turned and crossed several pitfalls.
Russo, ahead, warned, “Pirates are coming.”
Alicia thought of several comebacks but held her breath. The hill might not be a mountain after all, but it was steep and high, and packed with danger. And that was without seventy pirates and forty or so mercs assaulting it. How crazy that their long, hazardous and meandering quest had finished in a race.
How the hell are we ever going to stand our ground at the top if we make it first?
Crouch dropped back through the pack as he fished out his cell and started to make a call. Alicia hoped it would be for reinforcements. Authorities. They couldn’t hope to hold out on their own. She stayed behind Caitlyn, keeping an eye on Crouch and now also eyeing Russo in front.
The ground leveled out and then started to rise up, the lower parts of the hill already beginning. Alicia got her first really good daylight look at the slope. It was worse than she had expected. The dangers lay everywhere and promised no easy climb. She called out to those in front.
“Stay together. Watch for dangers. The pirates will hit this hill hard and will pay the price.”
“They have the numbers to do that,” Russo returned.
“Arrive alive,” Alicia intoned. “Always a good motto.”
“As good as ‘One life, live it’?”
“Nah, that’s the best.”
“Don’t forget Jensen.” Crouch panted a little. “He’s running up the other side.”
“Don’t worry.” Alicia had no intentions of overlooking the man that had dogged them all the way. “That dude has a long life but a short future.”
Healey looked over his shoulder blankly, almost running slap-bang into a tree. “Eh?”
“Means prison,” Caitlyn told him. “She means he’s going to prison.”
“Ahh.”
“Zacky boy,” Alicia hurdled a double rut that looked like it had been made by a giant tractor wheel, and shook her head. “One day you’ll look back on all this and laugh.”
Healey grunted. Alicia loved the interaction between Healey and Russo and herself and even Caitlyn now that she was starting to gel nicely with the main team. Healey was a good soldier and, truth be told, wanted to stay young. It was one of his strengths, a forte she hoped he would never lose. If a grown man could keep a certain innocence, an air of virtue, and never let it go? That was a man she envied.
Upward she ran, the slope steepening with every step. The trees ended and a barren patch of land began that ran around the hill. Suddenly, everyone could see each other and even those oblivious to it all reacted with violence.
The pirates were in the middle and spun both ways. Russo flew to the ground, closely followed by the others. Pirates sprawled headlong as they hit tangled brush, their shots firing dangerously in every direction. To the far right, Jensen’s men returned fire, bullets zinging through the pirates and narrowly missing Crouch as he was last to duck.