Chapter 11

The quiet lasted until nearly three A.M.

Princess circled back to me about then and licked the side of my face before running off to join the other dogs in their hunt. I could hear Breaker moving away to take a position that gave him a clear field of fire, and I slithered out of my sleeping bag and over to the hiding spot I’d found the day before.

We’d talked at length about what to do when the time came, and now that it was here, I remembered everything I was supposed to do. The night was still. There was very little wind and no animal sounds that I could detect. The silence was our best friend, because those coming after us would have no natural noise to cover their approach.

Spike and Killer wouldn’t make a sound as they crept up on our foes. According to Breaker, Princess liked to set up in a dark shadow and catch her prey as they snuck by her. No matter which dog got them, they weren’t going to like the outcome.

We waited so long for something to happen that I had just convinced myself that this wasn’t going to be the night when an agonizing scream ripped through the valley. It sounded like some poor soul had met our advance guards. The screaming didn’t last long, and the rustling that came after told us where some of the others were hiding.

Breaker fired first.

The gunshot caused me to jump. I could hear return fire but had trouble immediately pinning down the location of the shooters. Spike decided to help me out by killing the one farthest out from our cabin. Whoever it was died rather quickly, but the noise he made in the process of dying was impossible to miss.

As I was instructed, I kept scanning right to left for movement. When I finally caught sight of one of our attackers, I took my time and took the top of his head off with my first shot. It was a good thing I ducked as soon as I fired, because several shooters fired back immediately. Their shots went high because I was flat on the ground, crawling to my secondary shooting location.

Breaker took advantage of the shooting to pick off one more, and wound another. We had four out of the fight, maybe five. The odds were not so much against us, and the fear had to be creeping up on our adversaries.

It was just a short time before Princess made an awful noise when she caught the sixth killer sneaking towards the cabin. We could see him when the body jerked up and then fell where he had stood. Of course he was missing his throat at the time. That had to hurt ... but not for too long.

Breaker made a move to find a closer perch, and got shot in the process.

It was impossible to tell if he was still in the game, so I waited for the other side to make a move on him before opening up and hitting two more. They didn’t count on Breaker having so much help and thought the game was over with only a child to deal with.

Their over confidence got the two of them quite dead.

Spike and Killer converged on Breaker and went on guard. Princess came to me, urging me to come help her master. We scrambled down the rock trail and I found Breaker nursing a relatively minor wound. The round barely nicked him along the side of the head, so other than a good bit of bleeding; he was going to be fine.

We hurried inside the cabin where I bandaged his wound and cleaned up the blood. He was more annoyed than hurt, but his dogs were emphatic that he needed care. They arranged themselves around him, protectively and lay down to protect him from our enemies.

Once he was recovered from the glancing bullet wound, Breaker was ready to take the fight to our enemies. “Let’s sneak out and see if we can strand our visitors on foot, then turn the dogs loose to make what’s left of their wasted lives a living hell.” I was all for it. After decades of being pursued, shot, stabbed and poisoned, turning the tables on my enemies seemed like a great way go. Breaker prepared some special toys that should change the momentum and create mayhem for all concerned, and we snuck out to make it happen.

The ground we had to cross was flat and pretty open, but Breaker had a plan to solve that. Long before I got there the dogs had used a little trail to get from the cabin to the valley opening without being seen. We followed their trail until it let us out at the mouth of the canyon. We found three jeeps tucked out of sight that were used to transport the hunters from the road. Breaker snapped the neck of the man left to guard the jeeps, and then fixed all three so they wouldn’t be going anywhere until he replaced what he removed.

Having solved the transportation issue, we slowly worked our way around to the far side of the canyon, which allowed us to come up on the backside of our quarry. They were watching the cabin side of the valley and forgot all about their backside. Once we were settled in to wait, there was no way anyone would realize we had them right where Breaker wanted them until we started shooting.

Spike and Killer snuck off to upset the shooters, while Breaker chose a spot for me to shoot from cover, while he moved to a spot higher and farther along the rock wall. From there he could command the valley entrance without sky lining himself to do it. The night was cool and still. We waited in silence for the dogs to disrupt our visitors and open the ball.

From far to our right, much farther into the valley, I heard one of the dogs take out a shooter. The noise was quite muted, which meant the dog tore out the man’s throat before he could properly scream. The lack of noise would make it hard for our enemies to know exactly where to shoot, which gave the dog some cover while he moved on to make another kill.

Breaker spoiled the surprise and the silence, by shooting one of the killers as he stood to try and figure out where the noise came from. That meant two more would not be a factor. Princess jumped to her feet and charged to my left in time for me to see another one raise up to get a shot at me. I fired first and Princess took him off his feet before anyone had time to react.

That meant three were down. They had to be running out of assassins soon.

Breaker snapped off a series of shots into a cluster of boulders, eliciting a fusillade of shots back into his cover.