Chapter 5 - The Reckoning in the Woods
The mountain forest was a maze of thick roots, slick moss, and sharp granite ledges.
I moved silently through the dark, tracking Travis Cole by the sound of his panicked breathing and the heavy snapping of pine branches as he crashed blindly through the underbrush.
He was running toward the edge of the Bear Creek gorge—a sixty-foot sheer drop into roaring, ice-cold mountain water. He was terrified, disoriented from the flashbang, and driven by pure, animal panic.
"Cole!" my voice boomed through the trees, flat and calm, echoing off the stone cliff faces. "You're running out of mountain!"
A muzzle flash cut through the darkness thirty yards ahead.
BANG!
A bullet snapped through the branches four feet above my head, barking off a pine trunk.
Cole was shooting blindly over his shoulder.
"Stay back, you crazy bastard!" Cole shrieked, his voice cracked with hysteria. "I'll shoot you! I swear to God I'll kill you!"
I shifted six feet to the right, stepping behind a massive Douglas fir tree. "Your mechanics skills are terrible, Travis. And your marksmanship is even worse."
I heard the heavy clack-clack of his pistol slide locking back. He was out of ammunition.
"Damn it!" he screamed, tossing the empty weapon into the darkness.
I stepped out from behind the tree, lowering my rifle, letting it hang from its tactical sling across my chest. The moonlight filtered through the canopy, lighting up the small clearing near the cliff edge.
Travis Cole was pinned against the precipice. His official uniform was torn, soaked in mud and snow. His face was covered in soot from the flashbang, his eyes wide, bloodshot, and filled with wild, hunted terror.
He looked at me—really looked at me—for the first time.
He didn't see the quiet guy who fixed his cruisers at Miller's shop. He didn't see the passive husband who let him pour a milkshake over his head without saying a word.
He saw six feet two inches of hardened combat veteran standing in absolute, lethal balance.
"Who... who the hell are you?" Cole panted, backing up until the heels of his boots slipped on the loose gravel at the cliff edge. "You're not just a mechanic..."
"I spent fourteen years hunting men far more dangerous than you in places far worse than this valley, Travis," I said, taking a slow, measured step forward. "Men who thought power was built on fear."
Cole's jaw worked silently. "Rachel... Rachel told me you were nothing! She said you were broken!"
"Rachel saw what she wanted to see," I said. "Just like you did. You saw an easy target. A quiet man you could push around to make yourself feel like a king in front of a small town."
Cole suddenly reached toward his boot, pulling a hidden five-inch combat knife from his leather holster. His eyes flashed with desperate, pathetic rage.
"I run this county!" he screamed, lunging forward with a wild, clumsy knife thrust aimed directly at my chest.
To an untrained man, a knife lunging in the dark is terrifying.
To a DEVGRU instructor, it was moving in slow motion.
I stepped inside his reach, sidestepping the blade by two inches. My left hand shot out like a steel vice, grabbing his right wrist, twisting it outward to lock his elbow joint. My right hand struck his jaw in a short, devastating palm-heel strike.
CRACK!
Cole’s head snapped back. The knife dropped harmlessly into the pine needles.
Before he could fall, I grabbed him by his heavy tactical vest, spun him around, and slammed him chest-first against the cold trunk of a pine tree, pinning his right arm high behind his shoulder blades in a shoulder lock.
He let out a pathetic, high-pitched scream of pain. "Aaargh! My shoulder! You're breaking my shoulder!"
I leaned down close to his ear, my voice quiet, cold, and steady.
"Do you remember what you said to me in the diner today, Travis?"
He gasped for air, weeping into the bark of the tree. "Please... please, man... don't..."
"You called me the town ghost," I whispered. "You were right about one thing. A ghost is invisible. You never see him coming until it's already over."
I pulled a pair of heavy steel handcuffs from my belt and snapped them tight around his wrists until the metal clicked into the final notch.
Behind us, tactical flashlights cut through the woods as Agent Miller and six HRT operators ran into the clearing, rifles raised.
"Commander! You good?" Miller called out.
"Target secured," I said, shoving Travis Cole roughly toward Miller. "Take him away."
Miller grabbed Cole by his collar, dragging the weeping, shivering sheriff toward the trail. As he passed me, Cole looked up one last time, his spirit completely broken, his eyes empty.
May you like
I looked down at my hands. The mud from the forest had washed away the last traces of the pink strawberry syrup.
The score was settled.
