She turned slowly, feeling the wind tugging at her long dark ponytail. Behind
her she caught the sound of stones shifting, as if a piece of frozen earth had
slithered down the hill. Okie whirled, finger on the trigger of her carbine.
For a few moments, she stood there, still as a statue, ears straining for any
odd sound.
It was repeated.
It came from her right, where an old concrete sluice hung perilously over the
side of the valley, stretching up into the darkness. If anything were to happen
to it, then the whole tangle of stone and metal would come grinding down on the
sleeping camp.
Okie moved slowly, keeping to the shadows, gun questing ahead of her. She placed
each step with utmost care, as silent as a lover’s touch on velvet skin.
Her ears caught the frail scraping of metal on metal. She stopped, letting her
eyes rake around the ghost town—drawing a slow breath as she saw them. Three.
No, four. One stooped over by the foot of the sluice’s main support girders. The
others ringed him, facing her.
Okie raised her gun to shoulder level, bracing it, squinting down the barrel.
She tightened her finger on the trigger.
The explosion woke the night. The M-16 spat out death, empty cartridge cases
tinkling on the stones. She saw the bursting sparks as the 5.56 mm bullets
bounced off the rocks and the iron, screeching into the dark valley. Two of the
four strangers went down under the first hail of lead. The third dived sideways,
snapping off shots from a Kalashnikov AKM, the heavy 7.62 mm bullets whining
high over Okie’s head, dashing splinters of rock around her.
The fourth figure vanished into the maze of twisted metal. Okie’s guess was that
the fourth man who had been, crouched over the girders, was an explosives
expert. If she was right, then he was the prime target. She waited, knowing that
the third blaster was likely to try for better cover.
He did.
She bowled him over in a jumble of kicking legs and scrabbling hands.
There was no need for her to warn Ryan and the others. At the first echo of the
hammering carbine, they were awake. Within seconds they were beside her, holding
their weapons. Lori and Doc were the last to show.
“Cover me!” yelled Okie, making her move—a dodging, crouched run toward the spot
where the fourth man had disappeared.
Ryan and J.B. both gave scattering fire, raking the hillside to right and left
of the darting girl. Hen-nings and Finnegan were behind them, taking shelter
behind an overturned water tank. The four men hadn’t come raiding alone. Already
there was spasmodic fire from farther down the trail, but it was poorly aimed.
The big man who’d gone into hiding was Grom; nicknamed Thunder, he was the
expert in the gang on all manner of bombs, mines and explosives. Uchitel had
sent him in with a small support party to try to bring the sluice down on the
sleeping Americans. Nobody had seen Okie, patrolling like a panther in the
shadows.
Grom was deaf and hadn’t heard the opening burst of fire, but he’d seen his
friends falling. Now he was on his own, with the long-haired woman after him. He
held a parcel of plastic explosives, primed and attached to a timer. But there
was a manual override on the bomb. He saw that he was trapped, but he grinned;
he could still set off his bomb and take these Americans with him in death. With
Uchitel as his leader, he feared failure much more than mere death.
Someone farther down the trail fired a phos gren, flooding the whole area with a
stark white light. It flushed the lurking Russian from his hiding place, sending
him scampering toward the blind corner of the trail. He clutched the bomb to his
chest like an undelivered birthday present. Okie spotted him and fired from the
hip, the bullets lancing through the dirt all round the Russian. Miraculously
Grom wasn’t hit, though he stumbled and fell, nearly dropping the bomb.
Okie, lusting to kill, dropped the empty M-16. Not bothering to draw her machine