Hunter's Rain: A John Chase Novella by Patton Dirk

Author:Patton, Dirk [Patton, Dirk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Voodoo Dog Publishing LLC
Published: 2016-10-21T04:00:00+00:00

13

We left the villagers, melting into the jungle and forming up to head back to camp. The game trail we were using paralleled the rough track for half a mile before turning and heading up the side of a mountain. We hadn’t reached the turn when the Aussie on point signaled, and we all froze.

A couple of moments later we spread into the underbrush at a sign from him that there was someone approaching. Lucas and I silently made our way to where he had sought cover behind a thick tree. He was focused in the direction of the road and didn’t turn his head when we knelt next to him.

“What?” Lucas mumbled.

“Engines approaching,” he mumbled, pointing with the blade of his hand.

It was raining again, and I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of water striking the leaves and ground, but I wasn’t going to dismiss something just because someone else could hear it and I couldn’t. A few moments later I began to pick up the sound of a motor straining to move its load on the muddy track.

“Headed for the village,” Lucas said. “No one around here is going to have a vehicle unless they’re a bad guy.”

I nodded and issued commands over the radio for the team to move to the road. We pushed through the undergrowth and stopped at the abrupt forest edge where it had been carved out of the earth.

“How long?” I asked the point man.

“A minute, maybe.” He answered.

I knew he was basing his answer on the arrival of the vehicle strictly on the sounds that were reaching his ears. Hopefully, he was conservative with his estimate. We split, sending half the team to the far side where they concealed themselves in the foliage. Two Step took a few seconds to scatter tire spikes as he crossed the track.

The spikes we carried were made of machined aluminum and were very strong and extremely sharp. For safe carry in our packs, they were encased inside a protective plastic sheath that peeled off easily. Flat on one side for stability, they had a small forest of three-inch spikes that protruded straight up from the ground.

They would sink slightly into the mud under the weight of a vehicle tire, but were designed to penetrate the rubber and steel belts rather than just be pushed deep below the surface. The first time I’d witnessed them being demonstrated was on a training range at Fort Bragg. Thick mud so deep it was damn near impossible to walk in had been the test environment.

They were tossed out by hand, the flat, weighted side landing face down so the razor sharp spikes were pointing at the sky. We’d driven several different vehicles across them at everything from a creeping five miles an hour to a mud blasting forty, and without fail, they’d flattened the tires on every attempt. I’d made the mistake of trying to pick one up by its spikes and had wound up with nearly thirty stitches in my hand.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.