began to fire simultaneously, making it impossible to see. Great clouds of smoke and debris rose into the air. Craters appeared in the mountain and trees exploded in every direction. They could do little but hunker down until it was over.
Rubin had the presence of mind to check on the owl. She’d managed to rip the rifle from the leader’s hands, and once she’d done that, he’d tried to use a knife on her. That had been a mistake, getting him too close. The owl had killed him in much the same way she’d killed the assassin on the ground, going first for his eyes and then ripping at the soft parts of his body like the raptor she was.
The men retreated, two at a time, covering one another in pairs. Rubin raced to check on his brother. Diego had rolled through the brush just before the squirrel men had begun shooting and had found a wide crack just below the stream. He’d wedged himself in it and covered his face and ears while the guns had rained hell down on them.
“Who the hell are these people?” Rubin demanded, after giving his brother a quick inspection to make certain he wasn’t injured other than a graze or two. “What did you get out of squirrel man?”
Diego rolled back out of the crevice, lying on his back for a moment, staring up at the smoky sky, breathing hard. “They aren’t Whitney’s men, and they aren’t a terrorist cell either. They’ve been tracking her for some time.” He sat up slowly, shaking his head several times, trying to clear his ears.
Rubin handed him water. They were going to have to move fast, but he needed Diego at full strength, and the concussion from the weapons had nearly knocked him out.
“She’s been doing research in laboratories at night for a couple of years on how to reverse what Whitney did to her. She was careful, but apparently not careful enough.” Diego got to his feet and slung his rifle in his scabbard. “Where are they taking her? We’ll have to get there first.”
“They have to have a plane to fly her out of here.”
“With those kinds of weapons, they could make a landing strip,” Diego said.
“True, but they won’t. They can do what they did here, destroy everything and dig big craters in the ground, but they aren’t going to be able to take off or land a plane. They have one somewhere. We have to figure out where and get there ahead of them,” Rubin said.
“Whitney hired several different brilliant scientists to help him with his experiments,” Diego said. “One was an American with way too much money, no morals and, unlike Whitney, no fanatical patriotism. He had ties to several of the men in the military and when he realized the GhostWalker program was successful, he wanted his own personal team. He also saw the potential to sell the abilities of his team for missions, especially when his main purpose for Whitney was developing weapons.”
There was little doubt that members of Jonquille’s recovery team would be waiting to ambush them when they came after her. There was no way for a group that size to cover their tracks, not when they were moving fast through heavy brush.
“They have a superior force,” Diego reminded. “They may not think they have to move fast. They may decide to send a few of their men after us. They don’t care who we are. We’re just in their way. They don’t want to harm civilians or engage with them if it isn’t necessary. They just want to take Jonquille and leave. They think we’re civilians.”
Rubin and Diego faded back into the trees. They didn’t need to track the men holding Jonquille. They needed to figure out where they would take her. Rubin considered that carefully. These men wouldn’t want to be seen. They were a large party. They liked to stay in trees. They seemed to be at home in the mountain environment, so much so that neither Rubin nor Diego had known they were anywhere near. The animals hadn’t tipped them off.
They would need the least-traveled way possible but one where there might be a very clear meadow out of the woods at the very bottom of the trails. There was only one place that he knew of. Old man Gunthrie lived at the end of a holler, down a dirt road few ever traveled. It was at the very base of the mountain