Dead in Their Tracks (A Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Story Book 1) (6 page)

Chapter 11

Mitch and Dev had been trotting along the
faint gravel trail for the past mile, snaking their way past boulders that had
become dislodged from the rim above as they traveled deeper into the wash which
had slowly transitioned into a canyon. Being in such a chokepoint was something
he wanted to avoid as it set them up for easy containment and a potential ambush.
This was the method the Apaches used to lure U.S. troops during the Geronimo
Campaign in the 1880s. The war of counter-insurgency that had taken place in
this very region was one which Mitch was intimately familiar with. The Apaches’
guerilla tactics were required reading in the special operations community and
he found that the exact same methods were of great use across the globe in
modern times in Afghanistan, another desert proving ground for unconventional
warfare.

As they rounded a curve in the canyon
where a large hackberry tree hung out over a huge finger of sandstone, Mitch
saw a small spring bubbling out from under the roots. The water trickled over
the rocks into the sandy wash and then disappeared in the soil twenty feet away
like most desert springs. He stopped in the shade and set down his cumbersome
pack, then removed his large fixed blade and began cutting down a handful of
finger-thick saplings. He handed several to Dev, who had just swigged down a
mouthful of water from the flask in her small pack.

“Sharpen both ends. We’re going to use an
old Vietnamese mantrap to slow down the goons on our trail.” He continued
sharpening the tips of the four-foot-long saplings, tossing each one down by
his boots upon completion. “Most mantraps you see in the movies are just pure
bullshit, done for theatrics. Like the old jungle foot snare that yanks the guy
up in the air. Those take around four hours to make and then you gotta have a
giant rock on the other end that weighs double your victim to provide the
leverage. How the hell is someone supposed to set that up when they’re on the
run?”

Mitch finished carving the last point and
retrieved the newly formed weapons off the ground. “I learned this one from an
old marine recon guy who used it on more than one occasion in Vietnam. The natives
here also employed this for impaling deer on the trail. It takes mere minutes
to set up and can buy you time at the end of the day for getting back to
friendly forces.”

“What great pals you have. Sounds like
some guys I know in my organization—the kind of people you want on your side
when the world around you gets ugly.”

Mitch craned his head up towards the
sylvan canopy of broad-leaved trees. “This world isn’t ugly—it’s perhaps the
only place left that is a temple in the truest sense of that word. It’s only
man’s actions that make things ugly.”

Dev stopped whittling for a second while
looking at him. She was surprised by the philosophical tone of someone given to
pondering his surroundings in a non-tactical manner. It contrasted sharply with
the maiming weapon he was fashioning and she wasn’t sure what to make of him.
She had worked with plenty of special operations types before, mostly Israeli,
and wondered if other American military men were so inclined or if this was
peculiar to Mitch.

“So why were you living in that run-down
shack back there? You fall on hard times or something?”

Mitch shook his head and emitted a crooked
smile. “That ‘shack’ was my castle in a land of plenty. Far more luxurious than
the tiny room I had growing up on my uncle’s ranch and anything I stayed in
during my army days.”

“What did you do for entertainment? I
didn’t even see a TV,” she said with a hint of repulsion.

“There’s nothing like waking up to the
sounds of the canyon and then spending time working with your hands under open
skies. That’s the life we were meant to live—not reclining in front of a laptop
in a café clicking ‘Like’ buttons while wondering if the lady at the checkout
counter made the foam on your pumpkin-spice latte thick enough.”

“Wow—don’t sugar-coat things for me, Agent
Kearns. I can take it.” She chuckled and then resumed preparing the sapling in
her hand.

When they had finished carving, making
sure the shavings had fallen between the boulders at their feet to cloak their
efforts, Mitch walked up the trail. He stopped at a point where it meandered
between heavy clumps of overhanging tree branches then he drove the half-dozen
spears into the ground on a sixty-degree angle so one end protruded towards the
incoming trail. “This heavy foliage will obscure the traps, causing the lead
guy to get impaled where it counts,” he said, pointing to the groin area. “Such
traps are designed to maim and slow the pursuers down and will sometimes even
cause them to reconsider whether they should continue the chase.”

“You ever have to use this before?”

“Not here, but I’ve seen dope fields in
the mountains outside of Phoenix with this setup. It’ll make you think twice
about where you’re hiking.”

He grabbed his pack and picked up some
handfuls of water, splashing it over the tracks they’d made to make it look
like they were filling up on water. Once he’d manicured the area enough, they
carefully skirted around the mantraps and continued heading north through the
serpentine canyon until they found a horse packer’s trail leading up. A mile further,
they veered off to the right in a side canyon, making a few obvious tracks in
the sand. After a hundred yards, they backtracked, making sure to step on rocks
to conceal their movement.

“Dummy trails like this don’t take a lot
of time to make but can buy you some time at the end of the day in getting
away,” Mitch said. “We’ll head up the other canyon and hope they get hung up in
this one for a while.”

They resumed their travel along the larger
canyon to the northwest, picking up their pace while skirting around the
clusters of prickly pear cactus and agave. As they crested the shrub-choked
rim, Mitch squatted low to avoid silhouetting himself. Ahead of them were miles
of open mesa interspersed with occasional juniper trees which stood out like
lone sentinels and provided the only shade in the otherwise bleak landscape.
Four miles distant was a ridgeline in the limestone which revealed rows of caves,
their darkened cavities resembling sunken eye sockets.

“We’ve got just over an hour of daylight
left,” Dev said, glancing at her watch. He nodded in confirmation, looking at
the position of the sun on the horizon which was nestled below a massive blood-orange
thundercloud.

“Caves—God I hate being in caves. I spent
half my time in Trashcanistan scouring through caves or hiding out in them,” he
said, scratching the stubble on his chin. “Let’s head there for now. It’ll give
us a good tactical overview of the area and we can rest for a bit.”

“I don’t need to rest—do you?”

His forehead wrinkled and he cast an
irritated glance at her. “Of course not but with us pushing so hard I don’t
need either of us wrenching an ankle—that’d put a damper on our retreat real
fast, don’t you think?”

“I think you are always used to being in
charge. I don’t mind that in this situation but you can talk with me instead of
issuing commands, that’d be a big help.”

“You mean the fucking situation you
brought down upon me when you showed up on my doorstep? The one that ended the
life of a dear old friend of mine?”

She lowered her head, brushing a strand of
black hair off her face. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to…”

He stood up and started walking, cutting
her off. “Let’s go, I’ll sort this out later.”

For the past hour since their hasty
departure from the ranch, he’d only had time to think about their escape. Now,
the gravity of the situation struck him in the gut like a boxer’s right hook
and he felt waves of fury rush over him. He had always been on the right side
of the mission and the law. Now he wasn’t sure what he was up against and what
this woman’s end game was. They needed to keep pushing on. Hopefully, there’d
be time later for learning more about the details of the operation she had uncovered
but first they had to put some distance between themselves and their pursuers. He
forced his feet forward, plowing through the ankle-high scrub, keeping the
distant caves in his focus like a boat captain navigating through murky waters
amidst a jagged shoreline.

Chapter 12

Perry discerned Mitch’s desert boots from
the jumble of others as he wove his way through the tangled wash of briars and
boulders. The faint impression showed the Danner brand boot tread which Mitch
always wore and that Perry knew well. Mitch was evidently moving fast given the
displacement of the track in the soil and the kicked-up edges. The actual term
was ‘dishing,’ which happened when the toe portion kicked back a dish of soil
onto the midsection of the print. Perry recognized that dishing meant that the
subject was either trotting, sprinting, or carrying a heavy load. A shorter
stride would be indicative of the latter while an increase in stride with
dishing meant the subject was running.

In this case, Mitch inadvertently left a
slight toe print in the wet soil near the spring which could mean he was either
in a hurry or tired and getting sloppy. Perry knew Mitch had the endurance of a
mountain goat and that this rare sight in the soil was due to the fact that he
was being pursued. What Perry didn’t understand was how Mitch was involved.

He pulled out his GPS unit to check the
coordinates and then looked up at the canyon walls to match the features that
were showing on his screen.

Perry and his three men rounded the bend
in the arroyo where he saw faint movement fifty yards ahead. A group of men
dressed in para-military gear were walking single file, their heads scanning
the rim ahead. He raised his hand in a fist, motioning for his team to stop. He
waved his hands to the right and left, indicating he wanted them to fan out around
him while he went up the middle. Perry saw the group ahead disappear into the
foliage. A large man who was at the rear issuing orders to the others turned
and then slunk off into the undergrowth.

As Perry moved forward, the muffled sound
of a single bullet sliced through the stout operator’s neck to his right,
spraying a v-shaped pattern of red mist over the sandstone slab behind him.
Another round tore through the lower jaw of the tall man on Perry’s left while
the third man was struck in the forehead. His bone fragments showered over the
manzanita bushes, sending a flurry of now-crimson butterflies skyward.

Perry raised his weapon and steadied his
gait, his attention focused ahead. The large man from the grove emerged with
six others behind him and began moving towards Perry, their weapons fixed on
the terrain on either side.

“Only three—I thought you’d have a whole
fucking platoon with you,” said Drake. He squinted at Perry and glanced over
the man. “Good thing you sent me a photo of yourself on my phone earlier. You
fucking feds all dress the same.”

Perry lowered his rifle, his gaze centered
on Drake. “Just glad these were the newbies in the unit. It’ll be easier to
explain their deaths,” said Perry. “How far away are the two fugitives?” Perry
reluctantly spit out the last word, still puzzled as to how Mitch was involved
in this.

“Two? I thought it was just the woman?”
said Drake.

Perry rolled his eyes and pointed to the
damp sand, presenting his evidence. “Surprised you made it this far. They’ve
probably gotten a good lead on you by now.”

“We’ve been fifteen minutes behind them
since we left the ranch but that gap keeps growing as this fucker’s a ghost.”

“We’re on his turf. He’s FBI as well as a
seasoned combat tracker.” Perry heard some of Drake’s men grumble at his
statement and cast concerned glances at each other.

“He’s going to be pushing forward with a
few sideways dummy trails every mile or so to throw us off. He knows he has to
get out of the region as quickly as possible before the search envelope folds
in on him.” Perry looked at his GPS unit again, pulling up the topographic map
for the area. “My guess is that he will head northwest until he can get up on the
mesa and then make a beeline for the highway.”

While Drake’s men removed spare magazines
from the dead agents, Perry got on the radio to Ryker, simulating transmission
interference by issuing a garbled message. “This is Alpha….Team…over.”

“Go ahead.”

“In pursuit…hostiles, heading….east. No
sign of….primary subjects.”  

When he was done letting the static linger
for a few seconds, Perry turned off his radio then moved back towards Drake.

“Ritter said that you were in need of my
mantracking skills so I’ll take point on this leg of the operation.”

“He told me you were at my disposal as an
advisor. I’ll let you know if I need any help, pal.”

Perry looked at the hulking figure’s
forearms, which had numerous small lacerations from bushwhacking, then glanced down
at the man’s nearly brand new, fresh from the box boots. “Back at Aeneid, you
must be the top dog, but out here things are different. One of your guys steps
on a Gila monster or runs into a javelina, it’ll only slow us down and allow
our subjects to slip away.” Perry’s eyes remained unflinching as he took a step
closer to Drake. “I’m guessing the old man told you to wrap this up quickly
without a lot of attention being drawn to your presence here, am I right?”

Drake nodded, taking a step back. “Alright,
lead on then, but you run anything by me first when it comes to major decisions.”

A few minutes later, a short man with a
thick goatee came over, holding a blood-soaked wad of gauze in his hand.
“Jameson is not looking good.”

Perry gave the man a puzzled expression
until Drake spoke up. “He walked into a bunch of punji-type sticks on the
trail.”

Perry shook his head in disgust as he
walked with Drake to the swath of hackberry trees where a man was lying on his
back in the shade. He saw the remains of the mantrap and looked at the moaning
figure whose upper thighs were perforated with several jagged holes. “Ah, Mitch—you
always did like the old-school shit.”

Perry shuffled forward towards the injured
man, who appeared to be in his late twenties with powder-blue eyes. “That’s a
nasty wound, son. Let me help you with that.” In a fluid motion, he flipped
open the folding knife from his pocket and slashed the man’s throat. As the
desperate figure clutched his gushing carotids, Perry stood up and looked at
the other mercenaries who’d gathered in a circle, looking on in shock.

Perry stabbed his blade into the sand,
removing the blood, then stood up. “Everybody clear on how I work? You fuck up
out here, some coyote is gonna be shittin’ out your remains tomorrow.”

The men’s faces grew solemn and they
focused their eyes squarely on Perry, averting their gaze as he glanced at each
one of them. He rested his eyes on Drake, who had a startled demeanor cloaked
by a veneer of anger. The brutish figure exhaled deeply and then looked away.

Perry unslung his rifle and walked through
the center of the group back to the trail. “Good, now let’s push on and wrap
this up by sundown.”