Page 28 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest

“There was a Boy Scout troop at my reform school,” Linc said as he tested the tensile strength of his own weapon, making sure the pouch was snugly tied to the paracord.

“Seriously?”

Linc gathered up a handful of large rocks.

“Nah. Just watched a lot ofMacGyver. We clear on the plan?”

“You know what they say about plans.”

“Let’s go.”

The two operators bolted up and dashed forward.

Raven crested the hill, got her bearings, and plunged into the brush, racing down the steepest part of the hill in a headlong rush, desperately trying to keep quiet. Luckily, rain masked most of the noise.

Linc ran in a low crouch as he loaded up his weapon. He was making his own calculations. He had to time his attack with hers.

Without comms.

In the rain.

And the looming shadows growing darker by the minute.

?

The lead kidnapper’s lurid mind was focused on the prettiest girl in the line. He marched blithely down the hill, his imagination filling his mind’s eye with salacious images, keeping him from seeing the length of nylon filament stretched across the path.

He released his grip on his gun as he fell to catch himself before he hit the rocky ground. Pain shot through both of his palms as the sharp rocks cut into them, his agony temporarily blinding him to the appearance of a pair of women’s sneakers suddenly standing by his face.

He glanced up just in time to see the determined face of a black-haired woman swinging her club from high over her head and burying the stone between his eyes, killing him instantly.

The man behind him laughed at first when his commander nearly face-planted in the dirt. But the sudden appearance of the murderous, swift-footed beauty wielding a two-fisted club startled him. He fumbled as he tried to raise his weapon to fire, but he was too slow. Justas he pointed the gun toward her she smashed at it with a baseball swing of her club, breaking his hand before he could pull the trigger.

He screamed in pain as he flinched, his final, fatal mistake. The rock on the end of her club crashed into his jaw with a spray of blood and teeth, knocking him out cold. He crumbled to the muddy ground, never feeling the second blow sinking into the back of his skull and ending his life.

?

Linc had timed his shot perfectly.

He and Raven had worked together enough that they knew each other’s capabilities. With nearly clocklike perfection, he had estimated how long it would take for Raven to careen down the hill and get ahead of the cruel parade they were determined to stop. He then added the time he thought it would take to run the paracord across the trail, and he had been keeping track of the marching pace of the group.

Just as the first kidnapper was tripping on Raven’s paracord booby trap, he swung his own sling like a young David and let fly with all of his might. The paracord sling snapped on release like a mini bullwhip and the fist-size stone rocketed through the air in an unwavering line. It had been a while since Linc had thrown a sling, one of the many primitive weapons he and Eddie Seng, his Gundog boss, liked to build and practice with. But a simple injury wouldn’t be enough. Linc had to take the man down, and there was only one strike zone that would do the trick.

His aim proved true.

The hurtling rock hit the man’s neck just below the skull with a sickening crunch. The crushing blow split the C2 and C3 vertebrae and severed his spinal cord. He cried out softly as his paralyzed limbs gave way and he tumbled into the dirt.

The kidnapper in front of the man started to turn around at the confusing sounds behind him, but one of his companions up front let out a bloodcurdling scream. He snatched up his weapon as the women began bunching up, shocked by the commotion ahead of them.

“¡Fuera de mi camino!”Out of my way, he shouted as he grabbed one of the women and tossed her aside to clear a path. But the few seconds it took to move her away were all that Linc needed to close the gap. Linc was as big as a defensive lineman, but he ran like a wide receiver, and tackled the thug from behind, knocking him down. He pinned the man’s face into the mud with his frying pan–size hand and slit the killer’s carotid artery with his three-inch blade.

Everything happened so fast the women hardly had time to react. When one of them turned around and saw Linc straddling the corpse, she screamed. The other women gasped in horror, quailing and huddling together, confused and terrified all at the same time, unable to comprehend what they were seeing in either direction.

Linc stood as Raven raced up to him. The rain suddenly stopped as if God himself shut off the spigot.

The women saw her and surged forward, grasping at her, begging to be released, or crying tears of thanks.

“You good?” Raven asked. Linc’s muddy clothes were slathered in arterial blood.