Mercy (Atlee Pine #4)(109)

Then Pine groaned as a piece of sharpened rock, blown off by all the concentrated gunfire, slashed her in the arm, shredding the skin and flinging blood over her.

Pine grabbed her arm but managed to turn and run.

Spector slung her rifle over her shoulder, pulled a pistol, and sprayed the area behind them with gunfire to buy them some time. They rounded a bend, sprinted ahead, and reached the SUV.

Pine grabbed the first aid kit, and Mercy helped her bandage her arm.

“You gonna be okay?” asked Mercy.

“Oh, yeah,” said Pine. “No way I’m missing this shit.”

Pine grabbed some spare mags from one of the duffels.

Mercy snatched up the shotgun and held the weapon at the ready.

“I laid Carol down in the back seat,” she told Pine. “Figure bullets are going to be flying.”

“You’re the failsafe, Mercy. If they get past us it’s up to you.”

She racked the pistol’s slide, slid the mags into her jacket pocket, handed some to Spector, and said, “Now, let’s finish this.”





CHAPTER





75


PINE WAS ON THE LEFT SIDE of the trail and Spector on the right. They crept forward, trying not to make any noise, and pausing and listening in the still air for the sounds of anything coming their way. Pine knew that the fact that they were hearing nothing meant Buckley and his men had hunkered down and were reevaluating things in light of their heavy losses.

Pine looked across the trail and saw Spector pause and kneel down. She glanced at Pine and pointed ahead, held up her pistol, and then made an X with her forearms followed by a sweeping motion in front of her. Pine gave her a thumbs-up.

She took aim with her pistol, pointing it to the far right, about two feet in front of Spector’s position.

And waited.

When the two men came into view, Spector’s gun fired; a split second later so did Pine’s. They were employing a cross-stream tactic, meaning they had overlapping fields of fire covering the entire space in front of them.

They both emptied their fifteen-shot mags, paused to reload, and commenced firing again.

Three men eventually dropped dead in front of them.

The only drawback to this tactic was their muzzle flashes had revealed their positions.

Concentrated gunfire started to rain down on them. It was so intense that both women had to hurl themselves over rocks and fall flat to their bellies. When it stopped, Pine jumped up and ran over to Spector, and helped her up.

“We need to go, now!” barked Pine.

Out of the darkness, two men appeared, guns pointed at them. Pine whirled and kicked the weapon out of one man’s hand. The other man fired at her, but missed because Spector had kicked him right in the nuts.

Then they went at it, hand to hand. The men were far bigger and far stronger. And they ended up being no match for the two women because, in a fight like this, physical strength was vastly overrated. Spector ended the life of one by gutting him with a knife. Pine broke the neck of the other man by pinning him with her legs and wrenching his head violently to the right. Both women rose, breathless and hurting. They had won this battle, but the men had managed to inflict considerable damage on both of them. The women were cut, bruised, and exhausted. Pine could barely move her left arm, and her right knee was swollen tight against her pants.

“Let’s go,” said Spector.

The next moment she grunted as a round pierced her left calf and shot out the back, taking part of her with it. A piece of shrapnel sliced into her cheek, another gouged deeply into her oblique.

As the rounds continued to hurtle down on them, Pine fractured her ankle falling over a rock and cut both her hands and her face when she landed on the hard ground; she also broke one of her fingers. A bullet sliced through her jacket, burning through the surface of her forearm but luckily not entering her body. She jumped up, turned, and emptied her mag across the mouth of the trail. This cover allowed Spector to get up and join her, firing as she retreated.

Pine was breathing hard and gritting her teeth with each step as blood leached from her lips. When she looked at Spector she saw her face was ashen, except where the blood streamed down her face from the wound there.

“Where else are you hit?”

“Calf, oblique, but I’m good,” Spector lied. “You?”

“I’m good, too,” Pine lied right back.

They both fast-limped toward the truck. Both of them understood this would be their last stand.

They reached the SUV, and Mercy stood up from behind the front of the vehicle. She eyed both women, saw the awkward gaits, the blood, and the gritted teeth.

“How bad?” she said.

“It’s not a problem,” said Spector, and Pine nodded in agreement. But both slumped against the SUV’s side and sucked in air, trying to catch their breath as sweat slipped down their faces and mixed with the blood.

Mercy came around the side of the truck and looked toward the trail. “How many are left?”

Spector said, “Not sure. But probably too damn many.”

Pine looked down at the blood all over her, and her damaged hand meant she was having trouble gripping her gun. Spector did the same survey of her body. And by the look on her face, trying to simply stand on her wounded leg was absolutely killing the lady.

“The odds are not in our favor,” said Pine. “And we’re running out of ammo.”