Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2), Jack Lively [ebook voice reader txt] 📗

from the gate, I raised one of the Breachers and blew the lock off. I kicked through it. The pickup truck was off to the side and about twenty feet from the fence. The windshield was starred by the two rifle rounds and buckled inward. I pulled the driver’s side door open. The driver had no face. I pulled the corpse out of the truck and threw it to the ground.

The passenger was making shallow breaths and humming to himself, like a mantra. Maybe he was a religious person. He had an assault rifle across his knees, a Tavor bullpup. His hands were nowhere near it. And even if they were, so what? The guy was gut-shot. His torso was one dark wet stain from the chest down through the groin. The human gut is lined with nerve cells, like a second brain. You get shredded metal up in there and you’re not going to be thinking about much else. Maybe in the movies a gut-shot man can keep on fighting, in reality he can’t. He can keep on dying, is all. The guy looked at me and mouthed words, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. It all sounded like moaning to me. I stacked the Breachers over his knees. Then I unslung the Remington and stacked that on top.

I said, “Hold those for me.”

He moaned again, a sorrowful sound. In the middle of the moan were words. I finally made them out. “Finish me.” It had been the Russian accent.

I ignored him. A wounded enemy was worth more than a dead one at this stage. I had been making a plan on the walk over from the fence. Ellie had said that there were two outbuildings, then the main house. My plan wasn’t complicated. Take the outbuildings first, then the main house. That way, the important people would have more time to get scared and come together in one place.

The truck was new. I thought of the mercenaries out there waiting. Defense in depth. They would not be far away. The guy next to me had a radio ear-piece. But he wasn’t in any condition to be communicating. Looked like he couldn’t even move his hands. Which meant that his living team members didn’t know what the deal was.

They’d find out soon enough. I turned the ignition key. The engine kicked over nicely.

Fifty-One

The sky was clear, black and speckled with stars. Residual mist hung low, on the way to disappearing. This was high ground. The ocean looked clean and black in the moonlight. The orchard was a beautiful spot. I turned the truck around, so that it faced toward the house and shifted the gear box into park. The guy next to me had found a position where it hurt less, and he was trying to keep it. I lifted the Remington off his legs and he moaned. I got the rifle pointed out the window and looked through the scope.

The driveway curved up through the apple trees. It was hard to see anything up ahead. A couple of hundred yards away the orchard ended in a thicket. There were boulders in and around the heavy growth. The driveway punched through all of that, presumably to the house. I liked what I was seeing. It fit right in with my plans. There was risk, but there’s always risk. The rifle went back on the pile. I flipped the high beams up. Fed the engine gas and the tires bit into dirt and launched us up the track.

Not too fast, not too slow.

I figured a ninety percent chance there were guys out there in the brush watching. Fifty-fifty chance of a bullet. The men out there would be uncertain. Waiting to see what was going on. They couldn’t know for sure who was driving, if it was their friend or their enemy. If there were two of them out there waiting, maybe one of them thought they should fire on the truck immediately, the other felt differently. Maybe they’d align. Maybe not. The compromise was most likely. They would wait until the truck got closer.

The truck was getting closer.

I steered with my knees, picked up the Remington and looped the strap over my shoulder. We were about two hundred yards from the tree line. I had the truck moving at around twenty miles per hour. Nice and easy. I took one of the Breachers and fit it between the seat and the gas pedal. There was too much room, so I had to ease the seat forward in little jerking intervals. The guy screamed like someone was stirring his intestines with a knife. I ignored him and adjusted position so that the Breacher was feeding the right amount of gas into the engine. The needle stayed at twenty.

One hundred yards from the tree line I grabbed the second Breacher from the guy’s legs. He was looking pretty bad, definitely delirious. His moaning had turned into a high keening, like an unhappy ghost.

Jumping out of a moving vehicle isn’t a recommended activity. If you’re going to do it, you should make sure there is a soft landing. You’d also want to keep an eye out for rocks and tree stumps. Two types of hard object a guy wouldn’t want to meet when landing.

I looked ahead as much as that was possible. Picked my moment and flipped the door latch. One hand clutched the Breacher and the Remington’s strap. The other hand opened the door. I had my feet out on the running board. Pushed off with the legs, while at the same time flipping the door shut again with the strength of my fingers. I was hoping the high beams would be blinding enough to mask my movement.

I landed on my ass, skidded through the dirt and weeds for about ten feet and bumped right into a rock at the end of it. If there were guys out there watching, they were keeping discipline. I dropped to a