A couple of the men yelled in Korean and Jake guessed they were asking the man he had just killed for his status. But Jake didn’t understand Korean or speak more than enough to get a beer in a restaurant.
Clicking off the flashlight, Jake crept off into the forest. Movement to his right stopped him in his tracks.
A flashlight clicked on him, followed by a couple of shots. Jake returned fire with two rounds and then ran off behind a large tree. Two more bullets struck the tree in front of him.
More Korean yelling. Giving away his position.
Move Jake!
Light shone on both sides of the tree. Jake got down to his belly and rolled to the edge of the tree trunk, firing as soon as he could acquire a target. The light dropped, followed by the man who had been holding it.
This cat and mouse continued until Jake no longer had any bullets for the 9mm Sig or the Glock he had gotten from the first man he’d shot. In the process he had at least wounded two more men. But the others were closing in on his position.
Leaning against the tree, he retrieved the Glock from his pocket. It had fifteen rounds, and he had only one extra magazine for it.
Suddenly, one of the Slavs yelled, “Come on, Jake. We don’t want to kill you. We just want your encryption code.”
“That didn’t keep you from killing my friend,” Jake yelled back, and he regretted doing so immediately.
Bullets showered down on his position. If they didn’t want to kill him, they were sure putting a lot of lead in the air.
“Come on, Mister Adams,” the Slav pled. “We are even now. You killed my friend in Montana.”
Jake could hear movement to his left, the crunching of feet in snow. He aimed his gun in that direction and waited. They wanted him to talk again to pinpoint his location. When Jake saw movement, he fired twice and another man hit the snow.
Jake rose up, considered his options, and ran toward the man he had just shot.
Guns fired at him as he rushed forward. He vectored toward the man who was talking with him. Bullets whizzed by him striking branches. But he continued to run in an arch toward the Slav’s last position.
One second Jake was running and the next he was laying flat on his back in the snow, his head feeling like a truck had just hit him. Disoriented, he got to his knees and felt the ground for his gun. Then something struck him in the chest, nearly taking his breath away.
“Over here,” the Slav yelled.
Pretending to be more hurt than he was, Jake’s left hand went into his pocket and grasped the Glock. He rolled to his back and shot twice. The first bullet hit the bald man in the neck and the second one missed, since the man was falling backwards to the snow. Laying on the snowy surface, the Slav could not speak. Blood gurgled into his throat.
Jake got to him and pointed his gun at the man. He could see blood spurting from the man’s neck. He considered putting the man down for good, but then Jake remembered that these men had shown no mercy for Toni.
Jake took the man’s gun and rushed off as the flashlights and men got closer. Now he just needed to find the man with long hair. He didn’t care about the others. They could live or die in this forest. The choice was theirs.
Once Jake got safely away, he paused for a second to check on the gun he had taken from the Slav. Damn it. Only two bullets left in the magazine and one in the chamber. He should have searched for extra mags. That meant he had three bullets in that gun, four more in the other Glock, and one more magazine for that gun. If his count was right. He also lost count of how many men were left. Had to be at least four, he thought.
Jake startled when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and considered silencing it, but the caller was from Pizza Hut. He hit the receive button and listened.
“Jake? This is Kurt.”
“I’m a little busy here,” Jake whispered.
“I know. We have a drone overhead with four heat signatures heading toward you. Less than fifty meters to your west. You have two friendlies two hundred meters to the south.”
Jake found his blue-tooth ear piece and put it in. Then he shoved his phone into his pocket and said, “Roger that. Pam and Kim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Unless they have NVGs, tell them to hold for ten minutes,” Jake whispered.
“No,” the Agency director said. “They will acquire the two men toward the parking lot. Acknowledge.”
“Yeah,” Jake said lamely. “But leave the long-haired guy for me.”
Keeping the line open, Jake moved toward the men coming after him. He switched the acquired gun with three rounds into his right hand and put the Glock into his right pocket. Make them count, Jake reminded himself.
As Jake closed the distance, taking careful, quiet steps, he heard the other man to his right. First it was a swishing of tree branches. Then it was his footfalls in the snow.
Jake froze and pointed his gun toward the sounds. His heart raced and attempted to explode from his chest.
Gunshots to his left, followed by return fire. Pam and Kim had found their target.
Then a flash of light and the explosion of a gun straight ahead. But the gun wasn’t firing at him. Jake aimed at the flashpoints and fired three times, then threw the empty gun away and got out his other Glock. He made sure his last magazine was in his left jacket pocket as he crept toward the man he had just shot at. Jake cautiously stepped through the snow, his gun pointing toward his target. When he nearly stumbled on the man, Jake pulled out his cell phone and turned on the light, revealing a gruesome scene. The Korean man lay on his back. His face had a new hole, with blood seeping out onto the white snow. Another bullet had hit the man in the chest six inches below his neck. Jake turned off his cell phone and returned it to his pants pocket.
“Jake? You still there?” It was Kurt Jenkins in his ear piece.
“Yeah,” Jake whispered.
“The last man is right on you. Moving your way.”
Jake shifted his eyes around and saw the man with the long hair come out from a group of pines, his gun pointed right at Jake.
“I see that,” Jake said. Then he tapped off the blue-tooth and aimed his Glock at the man.
“You see what?” the Slav asked.
“The man who killed my friend. And the man I will kill.”
The Slav smiled and turned his gun sideways. “But I’m out of bullets. I surrender.”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t accept that. You think this is a normal battlefield? I don’t take prisoners.”
Long hair stepped closer to Jake. “You don’t trust your justice system?”
“I’ve seen twelve people get it wrong too many times,” Jake said.
“So you become judge, jury and executioner?”
“Something like that. You see, I don’t trust you either. What’s to say you don’t have another gun tucked into your back?”
Now the Slav was within a few feet of the end of Jake’s gun barrel.
“That wouldn’t be very sporting,” the Slav declared.
Jake lowered his gun and shoved it into his right jacket pocket. As soon as he did so, the Slav released the slide and pointed his gun at Jake. But Jake expected this, twisting his body to the left just as the gun report exploded in the night sending a flash toward him.
Rushing the man the rest of the way, Jake simultaneously removed the gun from the Slav’s hand and kicked the guy in his right knee, buckling his body toward the ground. As he went down, Jake snapped a roundhouse knee into the man’s face, sending the guy flying onto his back.
Before the man could recover, Jake kicked the man in his groin, crushing the man’s balls and making him wail in pain. The Slav rolled around on the ground. As Jake considered his options, the man swept his leg and caught Jake off-guard, sending him onto his back.