Dusty looked at the house and then back at Gil. “I don’t know, Gil. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. The house was already burning when we crested the rise.”
“Marie!” Gil shouted, looking helplessly around. “Marie!… Marieee!” He turned on Dusty. “Where was the last place you saw her?”
“Just over the rise.” Dusty pointed back toward his ranch. “She bolted on ahead of me. I’m sorry, Gil, I froze up… I was afraid to follow her with all the shooting.”
“Did she ride in on the dead horse out back?”
Dusty nodded.
Gil ran back around the house to double-check the bodies, finding Hal Ferguson struggling to get to his feet, coughing blood and bleeding from a hole through the left side of his chest.
“Hal!”
Hal saw him and fell back to the ground. “Christ, am I glad to see you.”
Gil took a knee and rolled the wounded man onto his bad side to keep the blood from draining into the good lung. “Have you seen Marie?”
“Not since I got hit,” Hal grunted. “You shoulda seen her, Gil. Christ, she was blazing away with a .45 like a cavalryman.”
“Hal, I can’t find her. Was she hit?”
“I dunno. Last I saw her, she was running off with Janet.”
This gave Gil hope. “Okay, Marine. Hold on.” He took Hal by the arm and hefted him up over his shoulder.
“My dad’s dead, ain’t he?”
“Yeah,” Gil grunted, his foot hurting like hell under the added weight.
He carried the wounded Marine around to the front of the house, putting him down beside Buck’s body. “I’m sorry I got your family involved in this, Hal.”
Hal pulled himself up alongside his father, seeing the bullet holes in his chest, the calmness of his death mask. He looked up at Gil with tears rolling down his cheeks. “We’re Marines, Gil. My family’s been involved in this shit since Guadalcanal.” He wiped his face with bloody fingers and shook off the dread, knowing that Gil didn’t yet realize his younger brothers were very likely dead as well. “Better go find your wife now. Don’t let all this be for nothin’.”
Gil lifted Janet’s legs, resting her feet on the edge of the well to help keep the blood flowing to her vital organs, where she needed it most. Then he looked at Dusty. “My team will be here soon. Keep Hal on his wounded side so he doesn’t bleed into the good lung.”
Dusty nodded. “Gil, I’m sorry about—”
“Don’t apologize.” Gil put a hand on his shoulder. “You showed up, and that means a lot.” With that, he moved out toward the stable where his men were dragging an enemy survivor out of the main door by his heels.
The survivor was shot in the hip and couldn’t walk. “Just shoot me,” he said in American English. “I’ve said my prayers.”
Gil ignored him for the moment, turning to Alpha. “Who bought it on the way down?”
“Clancy,” Alpha said. “Took one in the head.”
Gil turned back around to step on the Al Qaeda man’s fractured pelvis, causing him to howl. “Why is your English so fuckin’ good?” He took his foot off the wound so the man could answer.
“Because I’m an American!” the Al Qaeda man gasped. “And you’re a—”
Gil stepped on him again. “Where’s my wife?”
The man gritted his teeth in agony, sneering. “Go fuck yourself!”
Gil stomped on the hip, breaking the fractured pelvis apart with a sickening crunch. “I said, Where the fuck is my wife?”
The Al Qaeda man screamed in furious agony. “Go fuck your mother!”
Gil lifted his bloody foot and stepped back. “He’s not gonna talk.”
Crosswhite drew his knife. “I’ll make the man talk.”
Gil shook his head. “Not this one.”
“Then he’s dead.”
“No. We’ll let the FBI have him. Did you clear the stable?”
“We did. She’s not in there, Gil.”
One of the SEALs pointed toward the well, where Oso was sniffing the unconscious Janet. “That your dog, Chief?”
Gil turned. “Sure as hell is.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and whistled. The dog froze and looked toward the stable, spotted Gil, and came running.
Gil ducked inside and reemerged with one of Marie’s Carhartts. He held the jacket to the dog’s snout. “Where’s Mama? Find your mama now!”
The dog ran back to the well, with Gil hot on his heels. He put his nose to the ground and began moving in a zigzag pattern toward the northwest. After forty or fifty seconds of sniffing, he stopped and looked back at Gil, barking once to let him know he’d picked up the scent.
Gil turned to Dusty. “Can I borrow your horse?”
Dusty handed him the reins. “He’s all yours.”
Gil mounted up, looking down at Crosswhite. “Secure the area as best you can, then pull yourselves into a defensive perimeter. Get Pope on the horn and bring him up to speed on everything that’s happened. Tell him it’s safe to get the FBI in here. I’m going after Marie.”
“Sure you want to do that alone?”
“Got no choice. You boys can’t ride, and you’ll never keep up on foot.” He looked down at all of them, saying, “I can’t ever repay what you men have done.” Then he reined the stallion around and dug in his heels. “Oso, find your mama!”
The dog took off, and Gil galloped after him.
Crosswhite and the others watched them go.
“What’s he gonna find out there?” Alpha wondered aloud.
Crosswhite shook his head and shouted, “Doc!” at the corpsman who was busy tending to the wounded Al Qaeda fighter near the entrance to the stable. “Leave that fucker alone for now. There’s three of our people over here who need help!”
71
Holding another human being dead to rights in the crosshairs can fill a sniper with an undeniable sense of invincibility. Akram had never before experienced that feeling of power, and as he watched the thermal image of Gil making his way up the slope on the back of the horse, the Remington sniper rifle resting butt down on his thigh, his face cracked into a smirk. For almost a year now, he had planned for Shannon’s death, and Allah had at last seen fit to grant him the privilege of killing the American at his own game.
He knocked Marie to the ground with the butt of the TAC-50 and took a knee behind a granite boulder, placing the reticule on Gil’s chest at one hundred yards. He fingered the heavy trigger, drawing a shallow breath as he began to gently squeeze, awaiting the surprise of the rifle’s report.
Marie had listened to the gunfight back at the ranch as Akram dragged her up the slope through the rocks, wondering who had arrived to help and where they had come from. She knew that her mother would soon die without medical attention, and she was hard pressed to fight off an encroaching feeling of despair as Akram took her farther and farther away. The firing had died off fifteen minutes ago, leaving her to guess at the outcome of the battle below, but whatever the situation was back on the ranch, one thing was obvious: her captor was about to blow somebody out of his socks — and she was damned if she was going to just lie there on the ground like a half-wit and watch him do it.
She kicked out with both feet, catching Akram on the hip with the heels of her boots. The big rifle went off, and he whipped around angrily, snarling, “Stupid bitch!” and stomping her shin with a combat boot. He swung the rifle back down the slope, quickly working the bolt and squeezing off another shot.
“Yes!” he hissed in English, working the bolt again to squeeze off a third a shot. Then he jumped to his feet, holding the rifle high over his head in triumph.
“Allahu Akbaaaaaar!” he shouted at the heavens. “Allahu Akbaaaar!” God is great!