He fired and hit him center mass. WHITE PRIDE flopped straight back and landed on his butt, still.
“Two down,” he coldly said.
He heard a bang, then something hit him with the force of a mule kick and threw him flat on his back.
He couldn’t move his upper body.
But his grip on his .45 never wavered.
Pickett rushed over and dragged him along the ground to the log wall.
PICKETT WAS SURPRISED BY HOW heavy Coburn was. He was dead weight, but still alive. Proof of that was the litany of profanity that poured out as he propped the agent against the wall.
“Son of a bitch, that hurts,” Coburn hissed through gritted teeth.
“Where are you hit?”
“Chest.”
Not good. A high-velocity round through the chest could be fatal. He reached up and peeled back Coburn’s jacket. The bullet had struck just below the clavicle, closer to the shoulder than heart. It looked like a through shot because there was blood coming out from both sides. He’d seen the damage gunshots could do to big-game animals and had become inured to the sight of them. But when a human being was hit, that was different, even if it was a man he had no reason to like.
“I don’t think anything vital was hit,” he said. “I’m not sure it even broke any bones.”
“It hurts like hell.”
“You bleeding out is a worry, though.”
Coburn grunted.
Joe didn’t have access to the first aid kit. That was with Rojo and his saddlebag. “I’m going to use your shirt to bind it up. Lean forward so I can get your jacket off.”
Coburn took a deep breath and bent forward. Joe could only imagine how much it hurt to do that. He eased the arms free, pulled Coburn’s jacket over his head, then removed the bloodstained shoulder holster. Not taking the time to unbutton Coburn’s shirt, he ripped it open and the buttons popped off.
He couldn’t help but notice the scar on Coburn’s belly. Pink, puckered, recent. “Is that where you were shot?”
“No, I cut myself shaving.”
At least that wonderful personality seemed unaffected. Coburn’s arms were muscled and rippling with veins. A barbed-wire tattoo banded the left biceps, while the right displayed the words HONOR &.
The second word was missing.
“Honor and what?” he asked, as he fashioned a sling out of Coburn’s shirt that went over the left shoulder, under the right armpit, and across the chest. He hoped it would stanch the bleeding on both the entry and exit wounds. “Honor and duty? Honor and sacrifice? Or couldn’t you make up your mind?”
Coburn mumbled something incomprehensible.
“Hang on,” he said, “I’m going to cinch this tight and tie it off. It’s gonna hurt.”
Coburn gave a quick nod, the go-ahead, and Joe took that as his cue to pull the shirt as tight as he could and knot it. Coburn didn’t cry out, his jawbone locked tight.
He checked his handiwork.
The shirt was taut, but blood was still seeping through. Best he could hope for was that it would slow down the bleeding.
“I don’t suppose you can raise your right arm,” he asked.
Coburn winced as he tried, but his right hand and the .45 it held stayed in his lap.
“Didn’t think so.”
“I can shoot with my left.”
Empty boast? Hard to say. But he transferred the pistol to Coburn’s left hand.
“Just sit here. No more Whac-A-Mole for you.”
“We need to keep an eye out.”
“I’m not sticking my head up like you did.”
“This completely screws up my plan.”
“With all due respect, it was a crappy plan anyway.”
“Still haven’t heard one from you.”
He sat back. “Honor and what?”
Coburn sighed.
“Honor and why don’t you shut the hell up.”
NOTHING HAPPENED FOR THREE HOURS.
Coburn was getting antsy, and becoming more annoyed with Joe Pickett by the minute. The evening sun was dropping below the tops of the trees, casting deep shadows through the golden light. The smell of the cool pines seemed to intensify. The temperature had dropped ten degrees. It would be dark in two hours.
His shoulder had gone from screaming pain to what was now a low throbbing. If he sat still, he could stand it. But when he moved, even when he took a deep breath, he had to clench his teeth to keep from moaning, groaning, or cussing a blue streak. Despite the chilly air, he was sweating. Only an act of will, and his training for covert missions, prevented him from shivering. He had no doubt he could do what he needed to do with the .45 in his left hand. Especially at close range.
But he wasn’t sure he’d even get the chance.
The game warden sat still.
He worried that Pickett had fallen asleep. He stared across at the man who seemed to be looking at nothing. Face stoic. Or was it empty? He wasn’t sure which, but either way it was getting on his nerves.
“Blink if you can hear me, Pickett.”
“I hear you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Please don’t strain yourself, but could you speed it along so I don’t bleed out?”
“I’ve been waiting for Rojo to come back.”
“Rojo?”
“My steed,” Pickett said, with an embarrassed smile. “It doesn’t look like he’s coming.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Pickett was quiet for a long time. Then said, “Do you hear anything?”
He perked up, but when he tried to straighten his shoulders, pain pulsed through them.
“No,” he said. “It’s perfectly quiet, except for a little bit of wind.”
“Right,” Joe said. “We’ve been waiting three hours and the natural sounds haven’t come back. No birds, squirrels, anything. Meaning, those guys are still up there.”
He was more than a little impressed that the game warden had determined that. Coburn had engaged in guerrilla warfare in Central America. When the birds quit calling and the monkeys stopped chattering, you unsheathed your machete because somebody was close.
“It also probably means they aren’t exactly sure what they’re going to do,” Pickett said. “Otherwise we would have heard something. Low talking. A branch snapping underfoot. Something. I think they’re still up there, but confused.”
“By what?”
“Think about it,” Pickett said. “It was around noon when they were peppering us with gunfire and watched us take cover here. But because they’ve only seen you, they might assume I was hit and died in here. They haven’t even caught a glimpse of me. They’re pretty sure you’re hit. And since that happened we haven’t shown ourselves. For all they know there are two dead men down here.”
He gave a curt nod of agreement.
Pickett asked, “Have you ever hunted?”
“You mean game?”
“What else?”
He turned his head aside, looked into the darkness, and said quietly, “Men.”
“Only bad men, though.”
“Sort of depends on who you ask, doesn’t it?”
Pickett said nothing for a moment, then cleared his throat. “I was thinking elk or deer.”
“Long ago in Idaho, with my dad,” he said.
He’d been twelve years old. His father shot a mule deer from the window of their truck before the sun came up, which was illegal. In the headlights, his dad had put the wounded animal out of its misery by hitting it on the head with a shovel.
“Didn’t like it much,” he said.
“Maybe you can still relate to my point.”
“Which is?”
“You can spend weeks in a wilderness like this, going after elk or moose. Stalking. Camping. Moving on foot. The first few years you hunt you’re filled with bloodlust. It’s how men are wired. We want to blast away and kill something and get our hands bloody. But it gets frustrating after a while because these animals we hunt are prey. That’s how they’re wired. They aren’t particularly smart, but they know not to charge into a confrontation. Instead, they avoid ’em.”