Slow stood his ground, ejected the empty magazine, and reached for a new one.
Nathan was slow to return fire because his freshly injured forearm had landed on a sharp rock.
Shit!
He aimed from a prone position and squeezed off a fifth round.
At the same instant he fired, the laser’s dot vanished from Slow’s chest. His bullet flew wide. He’d pulled the shot.
His lungs screamed for air.
Holding the same breath, he ignored the hideous sensation of suffocating, fired again, and scored a hit.
His bullet plowed into Slow’s hip before the guy could insert the magazine. The man shuddered and made a second attempt to jam the magazine home. Nathan shot him again. The laser had been dead center on the man’s chest, but it drifted off target and found the outside edge of Slow’s left shoulder. The guy’s tactical sling kept his rifle from falling to the ground when he let go of it.
Eight rounds left.
Close to passing out, Nathan exhaled and took several quick breaths as he instinctively rolled away from his current location. He couldn’t continue fighting like this — especially against Raven. He needed cover and needed it quickly, but he saw nothing available in this open expanse of gravel and rock.
Raven had dropped out of sight over the edge. Nathan felt certain the scope he’d seen atop his adversary’s rifle was NV capable. At this very moment, Raven would be relocating below Nathan’s line of sight. Within seconds, his former student would have a clear bead on him. He was tempted to finish off the men he’d shot, but he didn’t have time. The stopwatch in his head was ticking down to zero. He couldn’t wait out in the open for Raven to reappear, because he had no way to know where that would occur. If he didn’t find immediate cover, he’d have no chance of surviving the next few seconds.
Nathan whipped his head around and scanned the area again. This expanse hadn’t been created from a road cut, it was a flattened spoil dump from a mine. No more than ten yards behind him, the area of deep shadow he’d seen earlier was a dark opening into the rock face and it represented his only hope of survival. Without knowing where Raven was, running toward the edge of the road was paramount to suicide.
Gritting his teeth, he made a beeline for the pitch-black hole.
CHAPTER 32
Nathan ran in a zigzag pattern toward the opening. As he did so, he considered scaling the exposed rock face rather than going inside the mountain. In daylight he might’ve been able to climb the wall, but he’d never manage it now, especially in his fatigued condition. Like a fly on a window, he’d make an easy target for Raven.
Just inside the mine’s entrance, an ore car sat atop narrow rails. Its rusty form would offer waist-high protection. He had no idea if rifle rounds would penetrate its iron plating, but his options were severely limited. He reached down and pressed the transmit button.
“Harv, do you copy?”
Nothing.
Four strides left.
“Estefan! Do you copy?”
Shit! The terrain blocked his transmission.
Just ahead, an area of finer, powderlike dirt covered the ground. Nathan purposely angled toward it and left Harv a footprint. He and Harv always removed specific cleats from the waffle patterns of their boot soles for this very purpose.
From behind him, where he’d shot the two men, Nathan heard the distinctive sound of an M-4 bolt being released and knew he had mere seconds to reach the ore car. An M-4 could be handled with one arm but not as accurately. He didn’t know which of the two men he’d shot was wielding the rifle, and it didn’t matter. He didn’t think it was Raven, because Raven would be using his sniper rifle, likely his old Remington 700. If so, it packed quite a punch and its slugs might cleave through the ore car — at least one side of it.
Two strides from the car, Nathan’s world transformed into a maelstrom of sparks, high-speed chips of rock, and choking dust as bullets slammed into the wall in front of him. Fortunately, the shooter was twenty yards away, and his bullets went high. Unfortunately, Nathan felt half a dozen wasplike stings as shrapnel peppered his chest and legs. None of the wounds felt too serious, and thankfully they’d missed his face and groin, but they were definitely going to draw blood, especially the deeper wound on his thigh.
From the length of the burst, he knew the shooter had emptied the magazine. He cried out and cursed loudly, faking like he’d been shot. He purposely fell, got back up, and hobbled the last two steps.
Nathan tucked the Sig into his waist, maneuvered himself behind the ore car, and got his feet on the steel rails just in time.
The shooter fired two quick bursts, more accurately this time. The ore car vibrated as bullets pinged off its surface. Several rounds whistled down the tunnel, reverberating in eerie whines. Nathan couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think any of the bullets had breached the metal. He was sure his right calf had taken a fragment. Aside from the fresh puncture wound, he was otherwise unscathed by the latest barrage. Rather than expose himself over the top of the car to return fire, he used its mass as a moving shield and pulled it deeper into the mine.
Nathan heard a familiar whoomp as the wall of the mine exploded at knee level. The trailing end of the ore car absorbed the bullet fragments with a metallic thump.
Son of a bitch!
Before Nathan could shield his face, Raven fired again.
The ceiling ignited in a shower of sparks and dust, breaking a bare light bulb. Glass rained into the ore car.
As much as Nathan disliked backing himself into a tunnel, if he hadn’t moved deeper inside, he’d have been bleeding even more. Or dead. Even though he’d retreated beyond Raven’s direct line of sight, the man had aimed his shots quite deliberately. And the effect of those strategically placed rounds was unnerving. Nathan had been on the wrong end of gunfire many times, but this was different. With no place to go but deeper into the mountain, he’d just entombed himself in an oversized coffin.
Screw this.
Nathan pulled his Sig, leaned out from his hiding place, and activated the laser.
The result churned his stomach. The suspended dust turned his beam into a bright green vector, pointing directly to his position.
He released the button and returned fire, walking his eight remaining bullets across the open expanse outside the tunnel. Scoring a hit was a long shot, but it might buy him a few extra seconds. Each suppressed shot flashed in the narrow tunnel, producing stroboscopic vertigo. Nathan closed his eyes for his last four shots and ducked behind the car again.
A third bullet from Raven’s weapon shrieked down the tunnel, impacting the mine’s wall somewhere behind him.
Nathan coughed and hacked from the dust. He needed clean air in a hurry. Abandoning all stealth, he hauled the ore car even deeper into the mine.
Fifty feet inside the mountain he found better air — it was also cooler. He stopped pulling the car at a shallow alcove in the tunnel’s wall. About the size of a household refrigerator, it held half a dozen sledgehammers, pick axes, and shovels. Estefan had said they broke the ore by hand before hauling it down the mountain. It would be cramped, but he was certain he could get his entire body into the indentation.
The near absence of light severely hampered his NV, but he wasn’t willing to activate its infrared flashlight because Raven’s NVGs would easily see it.
Using feel only, he took a few seconds to insert a new magazine into his Sig and evaluated his tactical situation. From this point on, he believed he’d be facing Raven only. Fast Draw had taken three rounds in the torso. If the guy wasn’t down for the count, he soon would be. The other man had one crippling wound, possibly two, and wouldn’t be any use to Raven except to guard the entrance to the tunnel.