The Protector Read online

  The path ahead of him forked abruptly. A steep climb to the left led to Calhoun’s southern boundary and an ambush. The path to the right led to an impassable gorge. With Eryn tagging along, Calhoun probably hadn’t gone that way. But Winston’s bushy tail said otherwise as it disappeared ahead of him. Jackson picked up his pace.

  Here and there, the imprint of a sole corroborated the dog’s tracking ability. Plumbing the light brush ahead, Jackson sensed that he was closing in. The sound of rushing water swelled with every step.

  He arrived abruptly at the gorge, which was far more impressive in real life than when viewed via satellite.

  Winston eyed the sheer drop to the streambed and barked his frustration. A metallic humming sound snatched Jackson’s gaze to a sturdy steel wire that spanned the ravine. So that’s how they got across. Reaching up to touch it, he detected a subtle vibration. It hadn’t been long since they’d used it, either. But the bar, if there was one, had been taken down.

  He could maybe use his belt to slide across, if he could get enough momentum, but then he’d have to leave the dog behind. “Calhoun!” he shouted, fairly certain the man was within range to overhear him. “You should surrender or face charges. We have your property surrounded.”

  The warning echoed back at him, mocking his good intentions. He applied himself to calming Winston’s agitation. “It’s okay, boy. We’ll get her back.”

  His ringing cell phone had him groping in his pocket. “Maddox.”

  It was Caine. “Get your ass down here, Rookie. Calhoun is moving down the north side of the mountain. We’ll intercept him at the bottom.”

  Jackson consulted the compass on his watch. “The north side, sir? I’ve got him headed west.” North was where all the tumbling water was headed.

  “Negative. I’ve got him on GPS, remember?”

  Ah, decoy time. Calhoun must have dropped the SIM card into the rapids while crossing to the other side. In an airtight container, it would flow downhill for hours, sending the FBI on a wild goose chase. Jackson found himself grinning.

  “We’ll be looking for him from the air,” Caine added, shouting over the whopping of a helicopter’s rotors.

  Oh, Jesus. The air support team was getting underway.

  Jackson took one last look at the other side of the ravine. Maybe Calhoun didn’t need his help. His odds were looking pretty good right now, and Jackson didn’t respect his supervisor enough to correct his assumptions.

  Finding a granola bar tucked inside his jacket, he waved it under Winston’s nose and turned him around. “I got you, buddy,” he said, leading him by the collar.

  **

  Eryn felt like her insides had been knotted together and then stapled, but she gritted her teeth and forced one foot in front of the other. After crossing the gorge, they had veered off the path and waded through a deep forest traveling down the shadowed side of the mountain.

  It seemed a sacrilege to disturb the quiet. She tried moving on the soles of her feet like Ike, who scarcely made a sound as he stepped through last year’s fallen leaves. Beams of sunlight, slanting through the tree trunks, imbued the cool air with warmth as the sun rose steadily higher. She was soon perspiring in her BDUs.

  Despite the warning shouted across the ravine half an hour earlier in a voice belonging to Jackson Maddox, they did not come across any more FBI agents. Eryn’s worries subsided, especially when Ike took her hand and kept her anchored next to him. The strength of his grip and the calm, self-assured way he moved through the forest eased her worries that they would be caught. He knew what he was doing.

  Then, unexpectedly, he dropped to a crouch, startling her as he hauled her down beside him. With a warning, “Shhh,” he put his forefinger to his lips and searched the shadowy forest, listening intently.

  Eryn did the same. Over the creaking of branches, she heard a muted conversation and a stifled cough floating up from the area below. Ike hefted his rifle, and she gasped, but he only used it to peer through the scope. Lowering it again, he sent her a thought-filled look that stirred her uneasiness. He shook off his rucksack, opening the flap to take out his sturdy laptop.

  Curious, Eryn watched him rouse it from hibernation and access a program. One by one, he opened image files. They all showed pictures of men in uniform, toting rifles, their faces concealed by helmets and camo paint, moving stealthily uphill.

  It dawned on Eryn that those were the same men she could hear below them. Startled, she looked up at Ike, who appeared tense but not the least bit harried. “What do we do?” she whispered.

  He shut the laptop, slipping it back into his rucksack. “I’m going to distract them. Need to leave you here for just a minute. When you hear an explosion, drop down and cover your head. Stay that way till I get back.”

  Eryn’s mouth fell open. Explosion? She watched him withdraw a weapon from his rucksack, something she didn’t have a name for, but it looked lethal. “How long will you be?” she whispered as he tucked it under one arm and hefted his rifle.

  “Ten minutes, tops.” He planted a swift kiss on her forehead. “Keep your head down and wait for me.” Leaves rustled at his departure. In an instant, he had disappeared from sight, and all was quiet.

  Eryn swallowed hard. Her heart beat so loudly she couldn’t hear the soldiers anymore. Who’d have thought the FBI would send soldiers after them! She and Ike were evidently in big trouble now. Would they be shot at if they were spotted?

  A sudden boom! shattered the quiet and shook the ground. With a squeak of fear, Eryn dove onto her stomach and landed on a rock. Oooph. The percussion faded almost at once. Shouting took its place. She could sense movement below her. With her face buried in dry leaves, she prayed no one would stumble upon her.

  Suddenly, Ike was back, hauling her to her feet and swinging his pack over his shoulder. “Run,” he said.

  She didn’t need much encouragement. Breaking into a mad dash, she clung to Ike’s hand as he pulled her downhill to the right, away from the melee.

  In her peripheral vision, she caught flashes of movement. Men raced uphill to their left, shouting orders and warnings. Ike caught her back suddenly, crowding her against a tree trunk, where he held perfectly still, his stare enjoining her to do the same. And then they were running again, slipping and sliding down the steep grade.

  Eryn’s lungs ached. Her legs wind-milled beneath her. The shouts behind them grew more distant.

  We did it! she marveled. We made it past the soldiers. Suddenly, Ike yanked her to a halt, preventing her just in time from plunging off a cliff.

  “Oh, my God!” She scrambled away from the rocky edge, watching in horror as the rocks she’d kicked loose plummeted out of sight. “How do we get down?” she asked, looking for a way around the sheer drop.

  “We rappel.” In the next instant, he pulled a rope and harness from his pack.

  **

  “Land her on the road,” Caine called to the pilot. Being certified to fly himself, he occupied the co-pilot’s seat which offered a bird’s eye view through the rounded windscreen. He hadn’t caught sight of the suspect or their client yet, but according to his tracking program, they were right below him, moving along the streambed. He shouted over his shoulder at the squad leader in the back. “Prepare your men, Sergeant!”

  Sergeant Malloy gave a thumbs-up and issued orders to his men who sat on benches soldered to the exterior walls of the chopper on either side of the open doors, their legs dangling in the air. At his order, they lowering their visors and adjusted their Heckler and Koch submachine guns.

  “Right here,” said Caine, and the MH-6 Little Bird wobbled briefly in the air before dropping lightly onto the dirt road, within a hundred meters of the suspect’s location.

  Sergeant Malloy shouted, “Go!” and six men, outfitted in bulletproof vests and helmets, jumped off the perches on either side and fanned toward the brush that lined Naked Creek.

  Confident Isaac Calhoun would be arrested shortly, Caine sat back in his
seat and waited. No sense putting himself in danger if the former sniper started popping off shots.

  As he watched, the air support team melted cautiously into the vegetation. His cell phone started ringing. Ringo, who was in direct contact with the HRT unit coordinator, was calling him. “Caine here.”

  “Sir,” Ringo exclaimed, “the team on Calhoun’s west boundary reports that he just detonated a claymore mine. They suspect it was a decoy and that he may have gone right past them.”

  What? “I told you, Ringo, he’s following the creek on the northeast side. We’re about to arrest him now.”

  “You sure about that?” Ringo didn’t sound convinced. “Jackson said he saw the suspect heading west. Isn’t that the side the cliff is on?”

  The damn cliff. They’d run into it the first night, forcing them to turn back. No way in hell could Eryn McClellan climb down something like that. “Stand by,” Caine commanded, as Sergeant Malloy jogged out of the tree line, back toward the chopper.

  Caine cracked his door to talk to him. “Where is he?” he shouted over the spooling rotors.

  “Not here, sir.”

  Caine glanced down at his tracking program, comparing its report to the sergeant’s, and nearly had a heart attack. “He’s practically on top of us!”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Malloy said. “But we did find this.” He extended what looked like a fat pill bottle in his gloved hand.

  Caine took it, thinking it was nothing. But then he read Eryn McClellan’s name on the bottle. Several small components rattled inside. With a sinking sensation in his stomach and a good idea of what he was going to find, he twisted off the safety lid. A SIM card, antenna, and a battery, all still connected and functional, fell into his hand.

  Fuck! “Summon your men,” Caine said to the sergeant, aware that his face was hot with chagrin. “We’re heading to the mountain’s west side.”

  **

  Half an hour later, Eryn was numb with fear and pouring rivers of sweat. “Just relax,” Ike said in her ear. “Don’t use up all your strength holding onto me.”

  Relax? How could anyone relax while dangling in thin air a hundred yards from the ground, while counting on a slim nylon rope, an anchor, and a pulley to lower them down? She reminded herself that she could always count on Ike, who would never let her come to harm.

  But then she made the mistake of gauging their progress. Oh, God. There was nothing but jagged, gray rock below them. If the rope snapped they’d crack open like eggs and die.

  Their only harness was strapped around Ike’s hips and between his legs. Eryn sat on his thighs, facing him, her arms and legs hooked tightly around him, competing with the pack on his back and the rifle on his shoulder. In order to work the pulley, he had to leave both hands free, meaning it was completely up to her to remain in his lap and not slip off.

  “How do you know the anchor’s going to hold?” she asked for the umpteenth time.

  “It’ll hold.” Suddenly, he went perfectly still.

  Glancing up, Eryn saw him searching the blue sky. “What?” she breathed. In the next instant, she had her answer. He was listening to the distant clatter of a helicopter.

  “Is that for us?” Her voice sounded unnaturally high.

  “Probably. We need to move faster. Hold tight.” He swung them out. Zip! Down the rope they slid, coming to a jarring halt that nearly unseated her. Eryn swallowed a scream. Ike repeated the motion three more times. The helicopter thundered closer.

  “Rope’s not quite long enough.”

  His announcement froze the blood in her veins. “What?”

  Out of nowhere, he produced a knife. “We’re going to jump. It’s not far. I’ll protect you.”

  He didn’t give her a chance to argue. In the next instant, he pushed them away from the wall of granite while cutting one of the two lines of rope simultaneously. For a terrible second, they just hung there. Suddenly, they plummeted.

  Eryn screamed and squeezed her eyes shut. They hit the ground hard, Ike on his back, Eryn on her hands and knees. As she fell against him, his breath came out with a whoosh.

  “Ike!” She levered herself off him. “Oh, my God are you hurt?” She would never forgive herself if he’d broken his back.

  Ike gritted his teeth, shook his head, and sucked in a painful breath. Grateful to his pack for breaking his fall, he ignored the contusions along his spine and forced himself to sit up. In just seconds, the helicopter would be right on top of them.

  He gave the rope in his hand a yank, pulling the rest of it down to snake around them. Shrugging off his pack, he tore into it. “Quick, put this on,” he said, lobbing a Ghillie suit at Eryn while putting away the rope and tunneling into a suit of his own. There was very little tree coverage on this side, just shrubs and bushes.

  “Keep your head down and hold still,” he instructed, helping her disappear into her own grassy suit. Then he pushed her head to the ground. Just then, the helo broke over the ridge above them.

  Ike froze. Peering through the netted hood of the suit that camouflaged him, he watched the incoming bird. He could see three men on either perch, guns pointed at the ground. If this were a war, Ike would put his rifle to his shoulder, fix the crosshairs on the fuel tank, and turn the helo into a ball of fire. But this wasn’t a war. Those men were like him, defenders of the peace.

  “We should surrender,” Eryn suggested in a muffled, frightened voice.

  “No,” he said. “They won’t see us.” Not without thermal imaging goggles, which he could tell the soldiers weren’t wearing.

  The helo circled round them, flying so low that the rotor wash flattened the wild wheat in the field behind them. Then it banked sharply to the north, increased its elevation and thundered out of sight. Eryn sat up slowly, pulling back her hood. Perspiration dotted her forehead. Her hair looked wildly disheveled. “How much farther?” she asked on an exhausted note.

  He wished he could wave a magic wand and transport them. Or better yet, call on teammates to pick them up.

  “Not far,” he lied. “We cross this field. At the foot of that mountain, there’s an old road that isn’t used any more. We follow that, and then we’re almost there. Come on. You can make it,” he added, pulling her to her feet.

  She swayed for a moment, prompting him to grub in his pack for his canteen. “Here, drink some water.”

  As she drank her fill, he eyed the sky nervously. Just because the helo hadn’t seen them, it didn’t mean they were out of the woods yet. He looked back at Eryn and his heart hurt. “I need you to run for me,” he said, reluctantly. “Just one more time.”

  She screwed the lid on the canteen and handed it back. “Okay,” she said.

  He’d never realized how much of her father she had in her. He felt his eyes sting. “I’m sorry, princess.”

  She managed a weak smile at the endearment. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” Dragging his pack off the ground, she thrust it at him and started to run.

  “Whoa.” He grabbed her back, pointed her in the right direction, then released her. Together, they cut through the knee-high grass, heading for the deer-stand and the old mountain road Dwayne Barnes had shown him last year.

  On the other side of the field, Jollet’s Hollow yielded to Green Mountain. Ike spotted the deer-stand in the forked trunk of a birch tree overlooking the hollow. “Road’s just over this rise,” he assured her, pointing into the forest.

  Eryn nodded. Ike had to push her up the leaf-slick incline, one palm on her rounded bottom. She crawled the last few feet on her hands and knees, panting for breath, but she didn’t complain.

  Just as he gained the rise behind her, his sixth sense whispered words of danger.

  Too late. He should have made certain the road was clear first. A police cruiser stood directly in their path, parked on a road obscured by the passing of decades. The Sheriff of Rockingham County leaned against it, gripping his holstered side arm.

  “Drop your weapons, Calhoun,” he
drawled on a note of authority.

  Berating himself viciously, Ike eased his sniper rifle off his shoulder and placed it slowly at his feet. He flicked a pale-faced Eryn a reassuring look. He still had his Python, his Gerber blade, and the Glock in his pack.

  “Take it easy, Calhoun. We’re not here to arrest you,” the Sheriff drawled.

  We?

  The passenger door opened suddenly, and Dwayne Barnes emerged from behind the tinted windows to send Ike a conciliatory grin. “I figured you’d come this way,” he said.

  “You need our help, LT,” added his uncle. “Between the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and the State Police, there are over two hundred men in uniform out there looking for you. Every road in and out of the county is blocked.”