But all he could do was to lay in wait as the beast drew near.
Hawk loved the animal more than he loved most people, its loyalty immeasurable and its companionship always an unwavering joy. From the moment Dog took off from the stoop, Hawk recalled the entire moments of the dog’s life from a puppy with a penchant to play to the moment it ran off into the darkness. It was a quick collage of wonderful snippets filled with good remembrances.
A horrible sadness crept over him, but Hawk remained stoic, his face betraying little as his emotions warred for the release of pent up sorrows in the form of tears.
While Dog served as a distraction, Hawk bolted from the porch and ran into the darkness to set himself up with a vantage point. The strategy was for Dog to locate the assassin so that he could find them through the scope, hone in, draw a bead with the CheyTac, and pull the trigger.
Pressing himself against a sandstone block wall, Hawk quickly established himself by mounting the rifle on the ledge, removed his NVG, and placed an eye over the eyepiece of the weapon’s scope, searching.
Through the lens the world became of planet of lime green light as he tried to center his site on Dog and his target.
And then he saw him, a man in a Ghillie suit waiting as Dog approached him.
Hawk began to draw a bead. “I got you,” he whispered, and put his finger on the trigger.
The assassin could feel his temples throbbing as adrenaline coursed through every minute fiber of his body and being. His position had been compromised — his mission, his life, everything he worked for now in jeopardy as the dog raced toward him with the intent to do nothing less than to rip his throat free and clear from his body.
The problem was that he needed to focus on the animal knowing that the Indian was maneuvering into position to make the kill. It was a simple choreographic device of distraction in order to provide oneself enough time for a tactical advantage.
And it was working. The assassin knew he could not keep an eye on the beast and an eye on Hawk at the same time. And no doubt the Indian was already on the move as Dog closed the distance between them with his teeth gnashing and eyes gleaming like silver dollars in the faint moonlight.
With his mind and heart racing with the speed of a passing cheetah, the assassin realized that the Indian now had the advantage.
One of the oldest moves ever created, he thought. And it was still effective.
With the knife held firmly within his grasp, Dog approached him with incredible velocity, and then propelled himself toward the assassin by leaping through the air like a projectile.
Hawk watched Dog run straight toward the man wearing the Ghillie suit, the assassin standing to meet his attacker, a knife in his hand.
Beautiful!
Hawk wrapped the crook of his finger across the CheyTac’s trigger, the assassin’s head dead center of the crosshairs.
And he began to squeeze, slowly, his breath coming in shallow pulls.
Behind the assassin, on the sandy rise where the western sky served as the backdrop, a staircase of lightning crossed the night sky turning darkness into day for the briefest moment, the burst of white-hot light rendering the CheyTac’s NV scope inoperable, as the illumination turned the landscape from a marshy green glow to snow-blind white. Everything in Hawk’s vision was immediately washed away, the sudden flash sending intense pain to his optic nerves as he errantly pulled the trigger, the bullet going wide.
Dropping the barrel of the CheyTac toward the ground, Hawk quickly began to rub the sting from his eye with his forefinger.
In the distance he could hear Dog engaged in battle, the animal growling, barking, his jaws snapping.
A shot at this point would be difficult, thought Hawk, with Dog and the assassin fighting each other on the mound in a drunken tango, the masses becoming one.
In the distance, coming closer, thunder rumbled.
Hawk took a quick look through the scope, searching for Dog and zooming in, the land once again a marshy and luminescent green where everything was once again pronounced, the sage, the brush, the saguaros.
But he could not find Dog or the assassin through the lens.
Worse, everything went quiet.
He panned the scope to the left, to the right: Nothing.
The mound where they engaged in battle was now empty.
Hawk quickly turned toward the porch. By the rocker was the assault weapon he left behind in his rush to grab the advantage on the hillside, the MP-5.
Damn!
The CheyTac M200 was excellent as a sniper rifle, but in battle the assault weapon was the key to survival. And with the MP-5 on the porch he might as well have been miles away. There was no doubt that he had missed his mark; therefore, he was now in the crosshairs.
He then lowered his NV monocular and searched the landscape.
There was nothing but the soft swaying of sage and brush, as the wind continued to march in from the west.
Where are you?
The sound of the wind soughing through the land began to pick up, the song a continuing sigh of gentle whispers.
“You are ‘The Ghost,’” he told himself. You can do this.
Hawk tossed the CheyTac aside and methodically removed the Bowie, the long blade sliding neatly from its sheath. Hunkering down, Hawk, ‘The Ghost,’ closed his eyes and called upon the spirits. Although it had been awhile he was confident that the skill of his people was something inborn. Taking down ‘The Ghost’ was like trying to catch a wispy comma of smoke within the clench of a hand, which is impossible. And Hawk believed himself to be that smoke. He would use stealth as his tool, locate the assassin, and drive the blade across his throat.
After all, he was an elitist on his land and knew every nuance about it, which gave him the advantage.
Low to the surface of the sand, using the NVG as an aid and with the Bowie in his hand casting glints of light whenever the mirror polish of the blade reflected the cold moonlight from the east, Hawk went to find his quarry.
The last thing the assassin saw before the impact was the canine’s long teeth. As the dog was taking flight the assassin’s world seemed to move with the slowness of a bad dream. He noted its teeth, long and dangerously keen, and the fury within its eyes.
Just before the moment of collision the assassin heard what he thought was the waspy hum of a bullet missing wide, and then the impact that struck him like a hammer and sending him to his backside, the knife in his hand taking flight.
The assassin held the dog at bay, at least for the moment, watching the silvery threads of drool cascading down from its jaws, snapping — could smell its fetid breath as the gnashing teeth drew closer to the assassin’s throat.
The knife!
Where… is… the… knife?
With one hand on the dog, the assassin reached blindly to his right, his hand scrabbling through the sand like an arachnid searching for the blade, the hilt, a stone.
There. In the sand. Was that a glint of steel?
The assassin reached out, stretched his arm, his fingers flexing for the purchase of the handle.
Dog’s teeth were closing in on the throat — inches away now, closer, the grazing of teeth against flesh.
The hand found something solid, the end of the knife’s hilt, his fingers grazing the tip, but just out of grasp.
The German Shepherd’s teeth touched the assassin’s throat, the skin parting, but barely, the blood now beading, then flowing.
Dog was now going wild with blood lust.
The tip of the handle — the hilt — was now within his grasp.
The dog, in frenzy, reared his head back for the final blow.