The deer fought to shake Jak off, yet the youth clung to him fiercely, avoiding the sharp-tipped horns that raked toward his face. Lying alongside the deer’s back, Jak sunk the knife into his neck and severed the throat.
Bright blood spilled to the ground as the buck continued to struggle to break free. Jak hung on, his face tucked up under his shoulder protectively. Within seconds life left the animal. His legs shivered and would no longer take the weight, then the buck collapsed.
Mildred watched as the teenager pushed himself up from the deer. He started to clean his knife in the grass nearby, then froze.
Shoving the journal in her pocket, Mildred stood and drew the ZKR 551. The albino, she knew, wasn’t given to false starts. She scanned the terrain, wondering what had set Jak on edge. But then she felt it, too, like silent talons running down the back of her neck. She knew someone was out there watching them.
Whoever their stalkers were, Mildred knew they were good, because they’d gotten to almost within a hundred paces of Jak before he had them on his sensory radar screen. The youth drew his .357 Colt Python and fired a shot down the mountainside.
Abruptly green-garbed men scattered from the area, leaving one of their number sprawled on the ground clutching his leg. The others quickly found positions behind trees and outcroppings.
The return fire, from blasters and crossbows, drove Jak to ground. The teenager didn’t light in one spot, though; he just hunkered down and kept covering distance.
Four of the green-clad men broke from their positions at the urging of another, all of them chasing Jak.
Mildred steadied herself against the nearest tree, the Czech-built pistol at full extension. She cracked off three rounds in quick succession. At least one of them went through one man’s face, and another went spinning away. The others dived to the ground.
Jak vanished.
Mildred knew they had only a couple minutes to make an escape before the attack party overran their position. She finished off the other three shots, then ducked as bullets slammed into the tree and cut through the grass and brush around her. Breaking open the cylinder, she reloaded quickly.
She pushed away from the tree, already figuring out the path she was going to take to get back to the cave. Jak would get there ahead of the others, so they’d know she was coming.
Keeping her pistol close to her, Mildred used her other hand to slap branches and brush out of the way as she ran. She didn’t think she had much of a chance of outrunning the men behind her, but she had to try.
An attacker came out of the brush ahead of her with his pistol already raised.
Without hesitation, firing on the fly, Mildred put a bullet into the man’s throat. He went over backward, blood gouting out the front of his neck.
Two shots cracked around her. At first she thought she’d been hit. But there was no pain, no numbness. A heartbeat later a green-clad man dropped from a tree in front of her. He landed in a loose-limbed sprawl, the top of his head missing.
“Jak,” she said, because it had to have been him. The fear was working in her, feeding her adrenaline as the fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. She vaulted the dead man in front of her.
Before she had time to touch down on the other side, a man hurtled from the brush, driving a forearm deep into her side. Her breath came out in a rush, and it felt as though her ribs snapped. She slammed against the ground, but she managed to keep her fist tight around her blaster. Rough bark and splintered branches lacerated the side of her face. Blood spit into her eye as she tried to roll over on her stomach and bring the .38 up at the same time.
“Alive!” a deep voice snarled.
Mildred moved, trying to find the man who’d blind-sided her. She spotted one man almost twenty feet away, hidden by the tall grass. Knowing he couldn’t have been the man who’d given the order or the one who’d hit her, she still set herself for the shot.