Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(83)

It’s a good thing, Sampson decided before starting north himself. We’re not hanging back. We’re taking the fight to them on our terms.

But that didn’t mean acting foolhardy. Sampson forced himself to move at a much slower pace, stopping constantly to scan the way ahead and peer downriver at the west flank of the canyon, trying to spot the sniper attempting to kill him.

As he walked on, he did simple subtraction and geometry.

The day before, there’d been five men with Durango. One died in the S below Big Salmon Lake, shot from the air by one of M’s men.

Another had died just a few minutes ago on Sampson’s side of the river, killed by the sniper. Alex had left one of them subdued on the ledge on the east bank. And Durango was dead. That meant there were at least two more narcos to deal with.

It also meant Maestro had sent men up here as well, the sniper, certainly, and probably more. There’d been three men in that helicopter both times they’d seen it.

Is one of them the sniper? Or is this a new player?

As Sampson kept pushing north, he realized he had to act as if there were two cartel gunmen and three or even four of M’s men in the six miles of rugged terrain between him and the trailhead and civilization.

When he was forced to cross open ground, Sampson hung back in the shadows until he could see exactly where the bridle trail met the far woods. Then he ducked down and sprinted in a straight line to that spot, getting back in the trees as quick as he could.

The first time he did it, he knew not even the best sniper in the world could hit a running man at that long a distance. But with every step he was getting closer, closing the gap on the shooter’s limits, making himself more and more a viable target.

Sampson had gone three hundred yards north when he looked down into the canyon and saw the wreckage of their raft, deflated and wrapped around a log that had fallen in the river. Downstream, a few of their brightly colored dry bags were floating north, along with their cooler.

Far ahead of the last of their gear, more than a mile off now, he made out the other raft with the young family in it, heading toward the takeout and the trailhead.

They had to have heard all the shooting. They’ll report it, won’t they?

From a thick patch of trees not a hundred yards in front of him, the air was split by a burst of machine-gun fire followed by a second burst from another angle. Sampson took cover in time to hear two men screaming in agony in Spanish.

Two pistol shots silenced their pain.





Chapter





99




I was back on the bridle trail, moving slowly north, when I heard the shooting from the other side of the canyon, two bursts of automatic-weapon fire and then a single shot that sounded like a pistol.

My stomach turned over. Had I just listened to John’s death?

I wanted to cut back toward the river and use my binoculars to see if I could spot Sampson again, make sure he was still standing. But then a branch cracked uphill and to my left, deeper into the patch of timber I was traversing.

The crack was followed by crashing.

My mind screamed: It’s the bear!

On our long horseback ride into the Bob Marshall, Bauer had told us to never try to outrun a grizzly bear, to stand our ground. But my gut told me to get downhill.

I stepped off the path and side-slid down the steep embankment. The crashing came louder and closer. Four feet down, I hit level ground, pinned my left side to a tree trunk, got the shotgun up, and pointed at the noise, with only my upper chest and head exposed above the level of the path.

Three big mule-deer bucks exploded from the thicket and charged downhill. They vaulted over the trail in front of me and bounced down the slope and out of sight.

My clothes were soaked from rain and sweat. The wind had picked up.

I tried hard not to shiver as I lowered the shotgun and peered uphill with my binoculars, looking for the source of the loud crack that had spooked the deer, looking for the big grizzly I knew was prowling somewhere in the area.

Almost five minutes passed before I caught a flicker of movement; it was followed by the soft snapping and popping of brush that at seventy-five yards became the torso and legs of a man—a skilled and trained man, by the way he fluidly moved in an athletic stance, his head swiveling, his gun held like a commando and clipped to a SWAT-style chest harness.

I recognized him. He was the same burly Hispanic who’d been hanging out the side of the helicopter during the first attack, the one who’d shot at us.

Somehow, I knew I would not get the drop on him the way I had Durango’s man. I had no choice. I had to kill him or be killed.

Carefully, I lowered the binoculars and tried to raise the shotgun up just as slowly.

But he was a pro and must have caught movement.

Bolting and scrambling across the hill, he fired a sweeping burst, left to right, that broke branches and ripped into trees, including the one I was leaning against. I kicked my feet out and fell hard on the gun and my binoculars and the forest floor, knocking the wind from my lungs.

Stifling a groan, I tried to get to my knees. But another burst of gunfire clipped the trail above me, sending dirt and rocks down on my head.

I rolled over on my back, still fighting to breathe and holding the shotgun close to my chest, the muzzle above my head. The shooting stopped.

Given the circumstances, I was outgunned, but I did not reach for the pistol at my left hip. I didn’t want him to hear anything but the rain falling and the wind blowing as I stayed perfectly still and prayed that I’d dropped from sight so fast and so close to where he’d been aiming that he’d think I was dead already.