The distance between Nate and the Tahoe melted away. He lowered his chin to his chest and braced himself, even though he knew that if the driver of the Tahoe didn’t veer away, it wouldn’t matter what he did to prepare for the impact. As he hurtled toward the SUV, Nate noted that the rear end of the Tahoe was suddenly fishtailing: the driver had hit his brakes. Nate didn’t slow down. He saw a pair of white palms flash up to the windshield of the Tahoe as the passenger panicked.
Nate bore down.
A second before he drove headlong into the front end of the Tahoe, it veered right. But not fast enough. The Jeep’s right front bumper clipped the rear quarter panel of the SUV and shattered the taillight. The collision had enough impact to wrench the steering wheel hard, but he fought to keep the Jeep on the road and he slammed on his brakes. Behind him, he heard an even louder crash of metal on metal and the crack of broken wood.
The driver of the Tahoe had taken the only available option other than hurtling off the mountain or heading for a fiery head-on collision: he’d shot into the same gravel pull-out Nate had used a few minutes before. But he’d done so recklessly due to the situation, and had flattened the guardrail and broken the posts that held it up. The two left tires of the Tahoe hung over the lip of the road and spun lazily, suspended in air.
When his Jeep finally stopped in a haze of burned tire smoke, Nate slammed the gearshift back and reversed. The side of the Tahoe filled his back plastic rear window and grew larger. But instead of ramming the Tahoe and sending it over the side, Nate jerked the wheel so he slid in next to the SUV with only inches between them. The two vehicles were side by side. Nate kept the motor running in his Jeep.
He bailed out of the cab and kept low. He’d stopped his Jeep so close to the Tahoe that the occupants were trapped inside. They wouldn’t be able to open the passenger door because his Jeep blocked it, and outside the driver’s side was nothing but thin air.
Nate crab-walked around the front of his Jeep with his .500 Wyoming Express drawn. He was still low enough that he couldn’t see the people inside, and therefore they couldn’t see him. The splinters from the exploded guardrail posts smelled of pine and creosote.
He squatted down by the bent rear bumper of the Tahoe. A deep male voice inside shouted, “Keep still! Don’t move or shift your weight!” As Nate reached up toward the back door handle, he knew why they were panicking. The SUV was literally balanced on the lip of the drop-off. He could feel the big vehicle shift slightly to the left, toward the abyss. It was a miracle it was even still up there.
Even though Nate was ninety-nine percent sure the occupants were operators from The Five, and Dalisay and the girls weren’t inside, he needed to make sure. He stood and threw open the back hatch and leveled his weapon.
“Raise your hands and press your palms to the roof liner!” he barked. “Both of you. Now.”
He didn’t recognize either of the men, but the sight of them jarred him, because they didn’t appear to be the righteous fresh-faced warriors he’d expected. They were older than he’d thought they’d be: late twenties, although ripped with lean muscle. The driver had a shaved head and a lantern jaw and wore a single diamond earring and wraparound sunglasses. He had scooted from behind the wheel toward the center of the Tahoe when he looked back. The passenger was dark-skinned and dark-eyed, and had a buzz cut. His shirtsleeves were rolled back to reveal a latticework of tattoos. He was pressed against the passenger door as if willing the vehicle to shift over to level. A stream of blood flowed down the side of the passenger’s nose from a cut he’d received in the crash.
“You’ve got to let us out of here, man,” the passenger said, pleading.
The bald driver didn’t move or speak, but Nate could feel his glare even though he couldn’t see his eyes.
“Nothing happens until you let me see your fucking hands.”
The passenger shot his arms up and did as he was told. The driver didn’t move.
“I’m not going to ask again …” Nate said, leveling his weapon at the driver’s head.
But before Nate could say another word there was the rapid crack-crack-crack of gunshots and the inside of the Tahoe was suddenly filled with swirling debris from the exploded cushioning from the bench seats. The driver was trying to put bullets into Nate by firing through the two sets of seats, and Nate dropped to the gravel. But he wasn’t hit. The steel framework and springs inside had stopped or diverted the rounds.
He rolled away back to his Jeep and clambered inside. He could hear the two men shouting inside the Tahoe. The passenger was screaming at the driver to stop firing, saying he’d seen the big blond man go down.
Behind the wheel of his Jeep, Nate cranked the front wheels and drove quickly out onto the road. Then he shoved the gearshift into reverse again and goosed it and T-boned the SUV. The spare tire mounted on the back of his Jeep hit the Tahoe squarely between the front and back doors on the exposed side. Nate’s head snapped back from the force of the collision, but the last thing he saw before the impact and pure blue sky was the muzzle of the driver’s weapon being raised toward the glass of the passenger window.
The Tahoe made an unholy racket as it rolled down the mountainside, snapping trees and breaking up in showers of glass and plastic and pine boughs until it settled upside down eight hundred feet below in a small rocky ravine.
In Nate’s mind, the faces of the two men — one of his brethren raising his weapon to try and take him out before the impact — hung suspended in the air. But something about them didn’t jibe. Unlike Nate’s fellow operators in The Five, these guys looked less like cool and efficient warriors than well-conditioned thugs. Either The Five were recruiting a different class of special operators, or he was so far away from his days in the unit that he remembered his brothers with murky nostalgia. He shook his head sharply, trying to make their faces and his thoughts go away.
He parked in the trees so his Jeep couldn’t be seen from the highway or from his father’s home. He kept in the timber as he skirted the clearing, getting just close enough to confirm there were fresh tracks in the drive from when the Tahoe had come and gone earlier. He suspected there was a third operator of The Five inside, possibly two, and prayed that Dalisay and the girls had been returned unharmed. The operators were no doubt waiting for the two men in the Tahoe to come back and pick them up after dispatching Nate.
He approached the house from the side, running from tree to tree, keeping low. He had to close a distance of eighty yards from the timber to the siding of the structure. The three windows on the side of the house went to the back bedrooms and the bathroom. All had curtains drawn, but as he made his last desperate sprint to the house over open lawn, he looked up and saw the curtains part on the bathroom window. Nate dropped to a squat and raised his weapon and cocked the hammer in a single move.
The crosshairs through his scope settled on the bridge of his father’s nose as the old man looked out. He was using the toilet and happened to part the curtains while he stood. Nate saw his Dad’s eyes widen in shock and surprise when he saw him.
Nate lowered the gun and raised a single finger to his lips to indicate “Sssshhh.”
His father nodded slightly before looking over his shoulder. Then, apparently satisfied no one was watching, he turned back.
Nate mouthed, “How many?”
His father mouthed, “One.”
“Front or back?”
“Front.”