Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,37
hounds chasing a fox, they followed the Chess Team’s footprints toward the mountain and up it. They continued to fire their weapons as they gave chase. King doubted any were taking aim, but eventually, one of them would get lucky.
“Knight,” King said. “Find us a place to pin these bastards down.”
Knight, being the fastest member on the team, bounded up the mountainside. He scanned left and right as he ascended, looking for cover. Sparse tree trunks rose up and fanned out into thick-leaved trees, creating a canopy that all but blocked the sun. The forest floor held a thick mat of detritus and little else. They needed something big and bulletproof and they needed it now.
Knight’s pulse quickened as he ran farther and higher. With each step he felt failure looming closer. His teammates’ lives depended on his success. He’d been in similar situations before. Every member of the team had depended on Knight taking a perfect shot at least once. But this was different. His skill with a sniper rifle wouldn’t help them now, just his speed and Mother Nature providing a boulder or crevice or . . .
There! The gray stone stood out in stark contrast compared to the brown litter on the forest floor. A smile crept onto his face. He paused and looked back. He could see the heads of the others bobbing back and forth as they ran to catch up.
Farther down he saw the first of the pursuing force. There were more olive green uniforms than he could count. He wondered if this would be their Alamo. Then he shook his head. If the Chess Team had been at the Alamo, things would have turned out differently.
“King, straight up from your position. About a minute at your current pace. Plenty of cover.”
“Copy that, Knight. Mind giving us some breathing room?”
“One dose of ‘fear of God,’ coming up.” Knight covered the remaining distance to the stone in three strides. It wasn’t until he was on top of it that he realized this wasn’t some kind of natural formation. It was a wall. Or what remained of one—thirty feet long, five feet tall, and two thick. Ancient by the looks of it, but sturdy as hell. You couldn’t ask for a better defensive position.
He jumped behind the wall, leaned on the top for balance, and dropped down the bipod supporting the front end of his German-made Heckler & Koch PSG-1 semiautomatic sniper rifle. Looking through the scope he saw Somi in the lead, followed by Queen, Bishop, Rook, and Pawn. King brought up the rear and as a result, became the primary target for the pursuing soldiers.
Knight adjusted his aim slightly. A fleet-footed soldier had gained on King. He was only twenty feet back and about to unload a clip from his assault rifle into King’s back. The shot was tricky; King was bobbing back and forth as he ran, his head coming and going in the sight. Before he could tell King to duck, the soldier took aim. Knight pulled the trigger. The man’s head disappeared.
“Damnit, Knight,” came King’s surprised voice. “You almost took off my ear . . . nice shot.”
Knight smiled. You haven’t seen anything yet. He moved through his targets quickly, not going for head shots every time, just trying to make contact. A single shot from a PSG-1 to any part of the body was enough to take an assailant out. And out here, with no hospital, every shot would eventually lead to death. The team was thirty seconds away now.
After the tenth soldier dropped, his arm severed at the shoulder, his scream inhuman, the rising tide of men stayed close to the trees, snaking in and out of sight. Knight had a harder time finding targets, but their ascent had slowed. Knight squeezed the trigger for the seventeenth time and the seventeenth enemy fell, clutching a hand over a fresh hole in his chest. But where one man fell, five took his place. They were fighting an army.
One by one the team jumped over the wall and took up position. Sara slumped over the barrier and collapsed behind the others, heaving one breath after the next. Her lungs and legs burned. Her mind swirled with overloaded senses brought on by the close-range gunfire. She covered her ears and scuttled back away from the wall, watching as her protectors prepared to make a final stand for her sake.
King hopped the wall and landed next to Knight. He tapped his shoulder.