The Silver Serpent by Scott Mariani

Author:Scott Mariani [Mariani, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2022-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

After that brief, explosive crescendo he sensed the enemy’s rate of fire slackening, and peered out from cover to see them beginning to fall back. Maybe they were running low on ammunition; or maybe they just wanted to save themselves before what should have been an easy victory for them turned into a rout. Running shapes were abandoning their cover and beating a retreat back to their vehicles. One of them reached his truck, jittery with panic, and went to yank open the driver’s door and hurl himself behind the wheel, but he hesitated for just half a second too long in full view and clearly backlit in the glow of one of the remaining spotlamps. Ben’s seventh rifle bullet passed through the glass of the open driver’s door window and blew the man back from the truck as though he’d been kicked by a horse.

Four men down, one round left in the rifle. If anyone else was thinking of trying to take the guy’s place, they were neither brave nor foolish enough to chance it. That vehicle was abandoned as the surviving men all piled into the other truck. Some threw themselves into the crew cab while others leaped up onto the load bed, clinging wildly to the bars of the roll cage or anything else they could latch onto. The truck’s engine burst into life and clouds of dust kicked up from its spinning wheels as it slewed violently around in a U-turn, racing back from the road and towards the shadowy dip.

Ben was already tearing out from behind the cover of Napier’s bullet-shredded vehicle, slinging the rifle over his shoulder, snatching up the shotgun and pumping round after round into the back of the escaping truck in the hope that he might be able to nick a fuel line or disable something mechanical. A shotgun was an inherently less precise tool than a rifle, and he hit something else instead; there was a howl and one of the men clinging like monkeys to the roll cage came flying off to go tumbling into the dirt. Then the truck was gone, hurtling down into the dip, flooding the shadows with its lights.

Ben’s shotgun was empty. He ran towards the edge of the road, plucking cartridges from the holder on the butt and thumbing them into the tube magazine as he went. Moments later, the truck surged back into sight on the far side of the dip, fifty or sixty yards away now, revving like a mad bull, bucking and jolting over the rough ground. The remaining men in the load bay were being tossed around like rag dolls. Ben fired off another blast from the shotgun, but by now the truck was moving fast out of range. Sixty yards, seventy, eighty. He laid that weapon down and unslung the near-empty rifle.

Just one cartridge left. His marksmanship skills may not have been quite on a par with those of master sniper Tuesday Fletcher, back home at Le Val,

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