Freedom
Chapter 6
I threw myself behind the car, and the Americans followed suit. That was good, because I hadn't spared a thought for them. I was glad they had at least a little self-preservation instinct.
"Oh God," Slayer said, clutching his Benelli to his chest. "What was that?"
"Sniper." Dixon said, looking like he was trying not to hyperventilate. Sniper? Hardly. A sniper would have hit us. But I wasn't doing much better. My heart was going a mile a minute. The shot was still echoing off the bluffs. I had to pull it together.
"What do we do?"
"Shut up."
He did. I thought. Well, it wasn't like I hadn't done my research, but this situation sounds a lot more manageable on paper. I listened. No follow-up shots. There had been no delay between the impact and the report, which meant the shooter was pretty close. Close enough that they shouldn't have missed. Did they hit the car deliberately? Why?
For the first time since the shot, the blood pounding in my ears quieted enough for me to notice my Geiger counter clicking furiously – and I understood. This setup was planned. The shooter pinned his victim down behind the highly irradiated car, hoping the standoff would do the job. That way there wouldn't be any inconvenient bullet holes in the loot.
A clever plot. It made the most of one man. But it also meant we were only up against one man. And he was close. Now that I was thinking, I remembered the shot. There were some low hills up ahead – more like drifts of mud and junk, actually. He was up there somewhere. Why'd he pick a place so close? Why not get up on the bluffs, out of reach? Maybe his weapon didn't have the range.
Dixon was jabbing me with his elbow. "Wake up!"
I gave him an unfriendly look. "I wasn't asleep."
"You looked like it."
"I was thinking."
"What do we do?"
"The only thing we can." I leaned over and peered out. I had the shooter's location down to a stretch of maybe a dozen yards along the drift. As I looked now, I narrowed it down further. There are a number of ways to handle snipers, but very few of them were available to us. Time was a factor. My Geiger counter clicked madly; we couldn't stay here long. That was that. It was decided.
"There's only one," I said.
"How do you know?"
I wasn't in the mood to explain. "Trust me."
"Where is he?"
"At about eleven o'clock. All three of us are going to get up and fire on him. You'll see a wheelbarrow sticking up, make that area your target." I eyed the Beowulf. Just the sound of that thing ought to get the guy to put his head down.
"And?"
"And I'm the fastest, so I'll run left. Let me get halfway to the drift, then you two go right. Don't cross our fire."
"Left? There is no left."
"I'll go up and over."
The Americans exchanged glances. "We can't cover you."
"You don't have to, you just have to suppress him."
"Wait a minute," Slayer cut in. "What if we get on the channel? We can see if there are any stalkers around here that can help."
"He'll be listening. And there's no time." I tapped the metal of the car. "We're sitting on a hotspot. We have to move."
The American turned slightly green at that. He nodded, hefting his Benelli. "I can empty this thing in about half a second. He's only got ten in a mag," he jerked his chin at Dixon. He meant they'd be empty almost as soon as they started shooting; the suppression wouldn't last.
"You've got a Five Seven. Spam it." I got my AK into my hands and checked the chamber, then got into a crouch. "On three." Having the Americans at my back wasn't very reassuring, but they could at least shoot in the vague direction of the enemy, right? They had to be able to do that much. I took a couple of breaths. "Three."
I sprinted into the open, putting the AK to my shoulder and pulling the trigger as fast as I could. It was only a semi-automatic carbine, but there was nothing wrong with my finger. Just my own shooting would have been enough to burst eardrums, but the blast of the shotgun and the deep booming of the Beowulf drowned it out completely.
Even as I ran forward, firing every step of the way, I could see the debris stuck in the mud atop the drift being torn apart by the Americans. What they lacked in competence they made up for in firepower. The shotgun stopped, and a frenzied popping began, no doubt the sound of a sidearm.
My 105 went empty and I let go of it, letting the harness catch it and swing it around my back. I leapt atop the wreckage, jumping nimbly to a protruding girder, then some rubble. In a heartbeat I was at the top. Both Americans were still firing, and not as accurately as I liked. A round whizzed past me. I'd intended to take a more reasoned approach to confronting our assailant, but under heavy fire from my own people, there was no time.
I dropped, sliding down the opposite side and jerking my pistol out of its holster. It happened fast; there was movement, and I pointed and fired three times as fast as I could. The distant shots of the Americans were one thing; the up-close ones from my Glock 34 were quite another. The world blurred and echoed, and I slid to a stop, gun still outstretched in both hands.
A body sagged and slid down a few feet, coming to rest just below me, eyes closed, blood bubbling from the holes in his chest. I stared down at the man I'd just killed. His rifle, a Mosin Nagant, lay at the bottom of the drift, the bolt locked open. A rusted relic, missing its sights, and completely empty.
I looked at the man, who had been dead before my third bullet struck home. Gray-skinned and gray-bearded. His sunken face looked about sixty years old, but that probably wasn't the case. It was just hard living and malnutrition. No armor to speak of. His clothes were barely more than tatters. His threadbare gloves didn't match. One of his boots was held together with tape, and there was a crude splint on his right ankle. That was why he'd pinned us down from the drift instead of the bluffs; he couldn't climb.
There were clumsy sounds from the other side of the drift as the Americans clambered up. They crested the top with their weapons at the ready, looking if not professional, at least not like total amateurs.
I just sat there on the slope, gazing without seeing much. It wasn't like I'd come to the Zone thinking I'd be able to skate by without combat. I'd just thought maybe I could work my way up to it. Maybe I could shoot a mutant dog or something first. At the very least, I thought my victims would be faceless, masked and armored professionals, like you see in the pictures that end up on the internet. Stalkers in anonymous, dehumanizing gas masks. Guys with heavy weapons and questionable motives.
Not starving men with antique guns and no bullets. I didn't have any money, but I could have given him food. I even could have given him a weapon. Surely just approaching us wouldn't have been more of a gamble than what he'd just tried to pull on us.
"He played his hand." I looked up at Dixon. He'd pieced together what happened. That didn't make it any easier to take.
The Glock still hung from my hand. I shifted to put it back in its holster. It felt like a lot of effort. I'd have rather just dropped it in the mud and left it there, but some part of my brain was still functioning.
My ears still rang from the shooting. One of the Americans was saying something to me, but I couldn't be bothered to listen. I looked at my wristwatch. It wasn't even eight o'clock in the morning.
So much for the five precepts, not that I'd ever really given them any thought before today. Now, in about five seconds I'd trampled all over them. There was a distant rumble of thunder, and the air crackled. My skin prickled. The hair on my arms stood up. And just like that, the charge left the air, and there was nothing to feel but the wind and a faint sense of vertigo.
The blood from the body was soaking the wet soil around it. Did this guy have a name? How had he come to be out here on the frontier, starving and alone, hoping to kill newcomers for their belongings? What could have possibly led him to this place? I gazed down at his lined face and wide, staring eyes. Was this how things were here?