Hangman (Jason Trapp: Origin Story Book 1) Read online

  As the bike plowed through the filth, its rear wheel kicking up slack gobs of muck on either side that instantly painted both him and Shea coalminer black, it naturally began to slow. Trapp gripped the chassis tight between his thighs, and as the front of the bike bounced over rocks and divots in the dirt, he rode the thing like a bucking bronco.

  “Jason!” Shea called out, the panic in her voice barely audible over the sound of the engine and the heavy, flat impacts of the raindrops still falling in endless multitudes overhead.

  He twisted his neck to determine the cause of her worry and saw that the other truck—the Ford—was now coming up fast on their rear. The maniac in the Cherokee was a couple of hundred yards away now, still wrenching the big vehicle around. It would be out of the fight for a minute or so, at least—more if he could build up a little distance.

  Trapp understood instinctively that he needed to do something to even the odds while the two trucks were momentarily separated. He would probably have been capable of outrunning either vehicle if the asphalt had stayed dry, but in these conditions, he couldn’t afford to push the bike to its limits. Though his power to weight ratio far outstripped that of either truck, they were blessed with four-wheel-drive, and the downpour overhead meant that was a cheat card.

  What the hell do I do?

  As he guided the bike back onto the asphalt, still a hundred yards or so ahead of the F-150, he jumped ahead a little as the bike naturally picked up speed. It bought him a second or two of thinking time, but not a whole lot more than that.

  If they had been in a car of their own, this would have been a whole different ballgame. But on a bike, he couldn’t go off road—at least not through this mud—and ramming a truck was obviously out of the question. That was just doing their work for them.

  Unless…

  An option surfaced in Trapp’s mind, and he seized on it instantly, knowing that it was all he had. He purposefully killed a little speed, just enough to ensure the truck behind gained on him a little, without its driver becoming aware of what he was doing. It closed the gap fast, first ninety yards back, then seventy, then fifty, and before long it was only a car’s length behind.

  Shea’s arms were clutched so tightly around his torso it was almost difficult to breathe. That was good. He needed her to be secure if his plan was to have any chance of succeeding.

  He watched in his mirrors as the driver of the F150 did exactly what he expected and stomped on the gas, causing the truck to jump forward with the urgency of a racehorse emerging from the gates. It swerved to the left at exactly the same time, coming fast toward him, and Trapp fed his own engine a little gas to make sure there was no chance of collision.

  He started weaving the bike across the road, tempting the driver of the truck right and left, and all the while building up speed and momentum in every turn, like some kind of elaborate double helix dance. It was a scene out of an adrenaline-soaked version of Pride and Prejudice: Trapp’s job was to show a little bit of ankle and let the man’s ego take care of the rest.

  For the second time, he killed a little speed, and the black Ford crept almost level with him. If he looked to his left, he could see the driver through the rain-scarred door window. Trapp didn’t know whether he saw the battle-lust in the dark-haired man’s eyes, or whether his brain just filled that detail in for him, but it mattered little.

  The stage was set.

  Gotcha.

  As it had been before the Cherokee tried ramming him, Trapp’s bike was parallel with the edge of the asphalt when the truck’s driver made his move. Trapp watched as the man yanked the steering wheel to the right, momentarily muting his sense of self-preservation in his desire to end the fight.

  Trapp twisted his knuckles around the Harley’s brakes as much as he dared, feathering the handlebars to the left so that the bike seemed to zigzag-slide across the road, leaving behind it a contrail of water spray that momentarily scraped the asphalt dry.

  The bike slowed just in time, and he watched the Ford skid past him, the driver desperately attempting to backpedal, twisting the steering wheel as fast in the other direction as his hands could manage.

  Too fast, as it transpired.

  The truck zagged left, but found its momentum was too great to fight. Physics can be a bitch like that. It rocked onto its left two wheels, almost spinning around entirely before the internal pressure of the rearmost tire on the right exceeded its design specifications, blowing in spectacular fashion, and rendering the doomed attempt to recover the skid entirely moot from that point forth.

  The flip was as sensational as it was predictable, and the majesty of the sideways spin would have pleased any Hollywood stunt coordinator. The vehicle rotated one and a half times before impacting the edge of the asphalt, collapsing the front portion of the cabin like a crumpled soda can. It dragged across the ground on its roof before hitting a small ditch a few feet from the road, which flipped it upright again, and it came to rest with its hood steaming.

  “Take that, you piece of shit!” Trapp yelled, clenching his right fist triumphantly around the handlebar. The rush of adrenaline that flooded through his system left anything he’d experienced in his 18 months in Iraq in the shade.

  His initial instinct, as the blood thundered in his ears, as the sweat and rain coursed down his face, was to run. To rev the bike’s engine as hard and fast as it would go and outrun the Cherokee. And for a little while, that was what he did, opening up the motorcycle’s throttle and eating up a hundred yards of rain-soaked asphalt.

  But as he prepared to flee, training battled instinct in his mind, and the former won out. The Ford couldn’t fight the laws of momentum, and neither could they. There was an inexorable logic to their current position—the Cherokee was already too close to outrun, and with no end to the rain in sight, the truck’s inherent advantage in the wet would win out, whether it took one mile or three.

  His tactical position was far from promising. The men in the truck were no doubt armed, and if they failed to ram him off his bike, then they would start shooting. And if he couldn’t outrun a Jeep, there was no way he’d be able to dodge a bullet. Not without skidding off the road, anyway.

  But it wasn’t fear for his own life that worried Trapp. It was the picture of Shea’s eyes, cold and glassy like those of his buddies in the desert. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow that to happen.

  Unfortunately, resolve wasn’t the same as a plan.

  That was when it struck him. If the guys in the Cherokee were armed—didn’t that mean the man in the smoking F150 would be similarly equipped?

  You’ve got to go back.

  “Jason!” Shea yelled, her helmet-muffled lips only a few inches from his ear, her voice growing more louder and more frantic as he slowed the bike. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? We gotta get out of here.”

  He turned the nose of the bike around and pointed it back at the steaming, destroyed Ford, guiding it in as fast as he dared. The second he stopped, he kicked out the kickstand and leapt off, running toward the damaged vehicle and leaving Shea behind.

  “Get off!” he called out, glancing over his shoulder at the oncoming second truck. It was still a few hundred yards away, one wheel in the irrigation ditch that ran to the side of the road, rear wheels spinning as it attempted to reverse to freedom. It would buy them a few seconds but wouldn’t last long.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Get off the bike, Shea,” he said, his voice cold and emotionless as the greater part of his brain was occupied in drawing up a tactical plan to save her life. If she never trusted him again, that was fine—just so long as she survived that long. “Listen to me, okay?”

  Wordlessly, she obeyed, keeping her helmet on, though he couldn’t see, since he was on the destroyed truck now, attempting to pull the driver’s door open. The cracked windshield was streaked with a single, thin rivulet of blood that had somehow been driven from the driver’s body by the force of the crash. The
door was stuck fast, held in place by the bent metal. No matter how hard he pulled at the handle, it wouldn’t move an inch.

  Trapp gave up and tried on the other side, which was a bust as well. He yanked the helmet from his head and used it to smash the already damaged window glass, running it along the frame to clear a path. When the job was mostly done, he dove through the passenger window, leaving only his feet dangling out.

  “Jason—they’re coming!” Shea called out from a few feet away.

  He glanced up through the destroyed windshield and scanned the horizon, noting that the ground rose up into a section of rock about 50 yards away from the road, no doubt born from the same prehistoric tectonic movement that had created the picnic spot they’d visited earlier that evening.

  “Head for the gully,” he called out, raising his voice over the beating of the rain. “I’ll be right there.”

  “I’m not leaving you, Jason,” Shea replied, her voice so high-pitched from terror that Trapp knew she was telling the truth—intentionally or not. There was no point attempting to convince her.

  Instead, he redoubled his search for a weapon. The driver was slumped forward, and the blood dripping from a wound on his forehead had already matted the right-hand side of his face. It was pooling on the floor, mixing with water leaking through the cracks in the windshield to form a diluted pink soup that sloshed around his ankles.

  He wasn’t dead.

  Not yet, anyway, though his shallow breath suggested that death’s embrace wasn’t far away. The head wound—and the violent intensity of the crash—would have worried any first responder enough to ensure that they wouldn’t have touched him without first securing his neck in a spinal brace.

  You forfeited that right, buddy.

  Trapp grabbed the driver’s torso, struggling to apply much leverage in his current contorted position as he pushed the man back, freeing up his belt. It was empty.

  There was no holster. No gun.

  In fact, the only thing it contained other than a dull bronze buckle was a small black flip phone in a case that clipped onto the leather. Trapp grabbed it and shoved it into his back pocket. He swore under his breath, knowing that every second he delayed, the men in the Cherokee were gaining on him.

  They needed to move. Fast.

  Trapp grabbed the unconscious driver by the back of the neck, yanking him forward and returning him to the dangling position he’d first found him in, not caring much if he did him any harm. Next, he unclipped the man’s seatbelt, which shifted his bulk forward against the steering wheel. His right shoulder rested against the horn, which emitted a low, mournful groan that accented the background beat of the rain.

  But the prize gleamed as bright as any diamond, even though it was as black as coal: the grip of a 9 mm pistol.

  He reached for it and slithered his way out of the truck, leaving the driver’s body slumped against the wheel. He was soaked, and the rain wasn’t stopping, but it at least washed away the blood before Shea’s shocked eyes truly registered it.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing her arm. “We’ve got to go.”

  He propelled her forward and away from the destroyed truck, gripping her wrist tightly with his left hand and holding her body up so that when she stumbled, she didn’t fall. She was damp and cold, but as yet unharmed.

  “There’s a cell phone in my back pocket,” he said, twisting his neck and searching for the onrushing Cherokee. It was only a hundred yards away now, a distance that would be covered in a matter of seconds. “Can you get it?”

  “Let go of my hand, Jason,” Shea replied, her voice pained, though no longer pinched with terror.

  He released his grip, trusting her, and his eyes instantly dropped to the gun in his hand. It was a Beretta. The standard magazine contained 15 rounds, plus one in the chamber—if he was lucky. He checked.

  For once, he was.

  Trapp felt Shea’s fingers slide into his back pocket as they ran, then fumble, then draw back out.

  “I got it!” she exclaimed.

  “Good,” he replied absently, flicking off the Beretta’s safety. He twisted around, set his feet into a wide shooting stance, and fired two rounds at the slowing Jeep, now just 30 yards away.

  Unfortunately, he was a grunt, not an Olympic target shooter, and though he was certainly well acquainted with the mechanics of a pistol, he was out of practice. Besides, 30 yards in the wet, with adrenaline pumping through your veins and your heart jackhammering at 150 beats per minute might as well be half a mile.

  The first shot missed entirely, lodging itself in the dirt too far away to see. The second winged the Cherokee’s mirror, not shooting it clean off, but leaving it dangling by a cable.

  Trapp grimaced, weighing up whether it was worth taking a second shot. He decided not. He only had 14 rounds remaining, and there was no telling how long it might be before backup arrived.

  Shea shrieked with shock at the unexpected roar of the gun, but kept going, shielding the phone with her left hand, fingers desperately typing in a number with the right. As Trapp spun around again, now a few yards behind her, he saw her press it to her ear and wait for the call to connect.

  “Daddy,” she panted, holding back a sob as they dove into the gully. “There are men after us, Daddy. We’re about half a mile north of the Milton farm. They have guns, you need to come quick.”

  21

  Trapp only registered the sound of gunfire after his body hit the dirt. He registered that he must have acted on instinct, throwing himself to the ground and dragging Shea after him. They were sheltered by one of the many dried-out shells of bushes and low, gnarled trees that dotted the landscape. They came up to just under waist height. It kept them hidden from view but would do nothing to stop a chunk of lead.

  “You okay?” he gasped, pushing her flat against the ground.

  She nodded, eyes wide with terror. They widened even further, and she lurched toward the gunfire, stopping only when Trapp called her back. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “The phone,” she panted, pointing at the cell phone, which was now coated with ocher dust, and lay a dozen feet behind them. “My dad, he—”

  “Did he get the message?” Trapp asked brusquely, cutting her off. “Does he know where we are?”

  Another hail of gunfire split the air, and a distant part of Trapp’s mind that wasn’t presently engaged in mere survival recognized the crack of rifles. Shit, this day was just going from bad to worse.

  “I think so,” Shea replied, getting paler by the second. “I—”

  She fell silent, and Trapp realized that she was falling into shock. He grabbed her by the shoulders, squeezed hard with his left fingers, not caring when he drew a slight cry of pain. “Stay with me, okay? I’m gonna get you out of this. I just need you to stay with me.”

  “I’m here,” she whispered. Then, growing stronger, “What do you need me to do?”

  “Your dad,” Trapp repeated, re-treading his earlier steps, since his strategy depended on her answer. “Does he know where we are?”

  “Yes.” She nodded, growing more confident now she had something to focus on. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Good. I’m not going to lie to you, Shea,” he said, raising his voice over the gunfire—which, though relentless, was at least aimless. He showed her the pistol. “They’re packing long guns, and all I’ve got is this. We can’t hope to beat them in a straight gunfight, so all we can do is slow them down and hope your dad gets the cavalry here in time.”

  “Tell me what to do,” she said firmly, the shock now clearly receded from her mind.

  Trapp grinned. “Atta girl. We gonna get out of this, you hear?”

  He paused, closing his eyes and listening to the rifle cracks. He picked out two shooters, occupying slightly different positions from each other. The first was at about 10 o’clock, the other a little past three. The gunfire slowed, then stopped, and he spied the two men, now out of their vehicle, walking slowly through the brush.r />
  He opened his eyes and scanned the terrain behind them. About ten yards back, a low gully bit into the desert floor. It was littered with tiny oval stones, suggesting it housed a fast-flowing stream in the spring, and lead all the way to the rocky outcropping that was their target.

  Trapp pointed at it. “You see that?”

  Shea’s head turned. “Yeah.”

  “In about 10 seconds, I’m going to pop up and draw their fire. When I give the signal, I want you to crawl to the ditch with your belly flat against the ground. Go slow, and keep low. When you’re in, you can go a bit faster—but keep your head down.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “You are,” Trapp hissed. “Trust me, I’ll be fine. I’ve done this before. But I need you to do exactly what I say.”

  It wasn’t a lie, but it certainly strayed far from the entire truth. He’d found himself in plenty of gunfights before, but usually in the company of dozens of fellow Rangers, protected by body armor and the full weight of armament that only the US Army can bring to bear.

  But he spoke with confidence, and it did the trick.

  “Okay,” she mumbled. “When?”

  Trapp pointed at the gully and hissed, “Now.”

  The command took a second to register in Shea’s mind, but she quickly clocked on, crawling backward until a gap in the brush opened up, and spinning, covering herself in soupy red mud as she hugged the ground. Trapp watched, counting to 20 in his mind, until she was almost at the ditch. Then he rose to a low crouch, bringing the pistol up in one clean movement. He focused his eyes on the man at 3 o’clock, who was facing away. He was tall, with a shaved head and a red beard, and was still close to the road.

  Trapp squeezed the trigger twice. At the same instant, he drew in a ragged breath, which disrupted his aim, causing both rounds to skew hard left. He saw a cloud of dust where the first hit. The end result only served to enrage the beast.

  “Oh, shit…”

  He dropped, and a second later a hail of gunfire from Red Beard’s partner pummeled his position, kicking up explosions of water vapor as the lead hit the sodden ground. A mosquito bit his side as Trapp rolled to his right, away from Shea, and behind the meager protection of a low boulder.