Disavowed(5)

Whoever was out here was getting closer.

Briar scanned her surroundings. Couldn’t see anyone.

Dammit.

She cast a glance up the slope, where she’d left her snowmobile. It was maybe an eighty-yard dash but she’d be mostly out in the open and have nothing to screen her movements.

Briar regulated her breathing, took one last look around and darted from her hiding spot. She wasn’t nearly as fast as she would be on pavement in running shoes but the snowshoes helped her get a solid footing and prevented her from sinking in the snow as she ran. Her pack bumped against her back with each step, hands steady around her rifle, her eyes locked on the abandoned mineshaft entrance ahead. In just over a minute she was there.

Her footsteps echoed slightly in the cavernous space as she rushed inside. Dropping her pack, she disassembled her rifle and packed it, stored her snowshoes and hefted the pack over her shoulders once more.

Straddling the snowmobile’s seat, she turned the engine over and hit the throttle. The sleek vehicle tore out of the mineshaft and shot through the drifts of snow. With the wind beating against her body Briar gunned it and headed due west toward an access road that would take her to where a truck waited to get her out of the area. From there it was less than an hour’s drive to the highway where she’d left yet another vehicle to take her to the airport.

Icy snowflakes pelted her, the snowmobile’s tracks kicking up a slight spray behind her. Couldn’t be helped. She rose to the balls of her feet as she took it over the crest of a small rise, sailing through the air for a second or two before landing with a thud. Easing back on the throttle she quickly regained control and sped onward, racing across the open ground between her and the start of the tree line ahead.

She entered the trees at full speed, only cutting back when the increasing density of trunks forced her to slow. The whine of the engine lowered in pitch as she twisted left then right, then right again to dodge the trees. The GPS on her wristwatch showed the access road less than a mile away.

The treads tore through the snow, the vehicle steady beneath her. Almost there—

She gasped and jerked in her seat as a sudden hot, searing pain tore across the top of her right hipbone, the impact of the bullet throwing her off balance. She released the handlebars, her right hand automatically flying down to press against the wound. The snowmobile came to a sudden stop, pitching her forward. Briar flew off it and fell heavily to her knees in the snow. Automatically she rolled to her uninjured side then scrambled behind a tree trunk and reached for the pistol in the holster strapped to her thigh.

Pain burned through the right side of her waist and even though she couldn’t feel the blood because of her gloves, she could smell it. Her breathing increased as she raised her sidearm and swung it in an arc, searching for a target. Nothing moved except the tree branches.

She pushed to one knee, gritting her teeth against the pain, fighting back the shock that would make her numb if she let it. Numb would slow her reflexes and get her killed. She preferred the pain, used it to center herself and keep her senses alert.

As she started to push to her feet a round slammed into the snowmobile, just yards away. Briar leaned around the tree the other way, only enough to steal a glance and saw the giant hole through the engine block. Her heart sunk.

Shit. She was pinned down and the only way out was on foot.



****



Hidden in a natural sniper hide made of fallen pine boughs, George paused, gloved finger on the trigger of the customized M40-A1 rifle. The first shot had hit the target in the right side. She’d fallen, then kept moving. No telling if the wound was fatal or not. The second round had punched through the engine block.

Stranded, and with blood loss slowing her down, the target would be easy enough to smoke out now. Almost unfair, really, to kill a fellow assassin when she was weak and helpless.

Then movement from down the mountain caught George’s attention. A look through the rifle’s high-powered scope showed a team of men moving up the slope. The same ones from earlier at the cabin.

Now they were after the same quarry. Except they were no doubt hoping to capture the female operative.

No way. She’s mine. They could carry her body down the mountain when they found it.

Swinging the barrel of the rifle around toward the target once more, George tightened the scope’s focus, a gloved finger resting on the curved edge of the trigger. No further visual of the target or movement among the trees now and it was too dark to see a blood trail at this distance. The men moving toward them made it impossible to risk taking another shot. Only remaining option now was to retreat and double back around, maybe take the target from behind.