The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

through the brush stopped. Evidently, whoever it was could now see the unanticipated gulch before them and was figuring on what to do next. Micah found himself momentarily squeezing his eyes shut, focusing his remaining senses to concentrate on the unknown from behind and above. Then he heard it, the sound of a twig brushing up against clothing as whoever it was moved nearer. They were now so close that Micah could literally feel them in the small of his back.

   Micah studied the ground around him, searching for the slightest shadow. But it was late October and any human silhouette created by the sun would be to his rear, not the front. He then gauged the rough ground at the bottom of the cut closely, all the way to the opposite wall of the arroyo. If he decided to move, it would have to be fast and he needed the certainty of firm footing.

The trooper’s heart was pounding in his chest, and the accompanying adrenaline coursed through his veins like a raging flood crashing through a narrow mountain canyon. The man was so close that none of Micah’s five normal senses had him located so exactly as that unnamed sixth sense, the one perfected over eons of man being both hunter and hunted. That primeval instinct for self-preservation was screaming that at any moment, the man above would look over the edge and see Micah below.

It was now or never.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The battered highway patrolman propelled himself away from the vertical face, his right thumb busting the retention snap on the DPS regulation holster. He palmed the .357 Magnum, turning as he did so. Micah looked up and saw the Hezbollah gunman who had fled through the brush just seconds before looming over him, holding his weapon muzzle high and framed by the perfectly blue sky.

The Lebanese was leaning forward, slightly off balance, trying to look into the small gorge beneath him. The lawman continued to draw, forcing himself to be as smooth as possible with his bruised and swollen right hand. The Hezbollah terrorist, startled at first, recovered rapidly and began to bring the muzzle of the AK down and on to the trooper.

Micah’s left hand met his right and both enveloped the black Pachmayr grip of the revolver, locking it into a vise like grip. Forcing himself to take another fraction of a second, the trooper picked up the front sight and centered it squarely on the shooter’s chest. The AK muzzle continued to swing down while the hammer of the Smith & Wesson started back as if it had a life of its own. The Model 28 roared and dust kicked up on the front of the Arab’s khaki shirt, slightly off the second button from the top.

But the AK muzzle continued its arc, unfettered by the blast of the magnum and still seeking its own target to engage in return. Methodically, Micah sidestepped to the right as the hammer of the S&W came back again. He had trained for decades with the big double action revolver, and had carried it from the time of recruit school. It was like a part of him, and everything he was doing now he had practiced untold times before.

The magnum blasted again, and another puff of dust kicked up on the terrorist’s shirt. His rhythm now set, Micah took one more step to the side as he fought the front sight back into line, and triggered another round. He was rewarded by a third impact on the man’s chest, even as the flash hider of the assault rifle continued bearing down on him.

Awkwardly, the AK’s muzzle swept past the Texan, now pointing straight down. Micah was looking directly into the man’s eyes and saw the light had gone out of them. The Hezbollah terrorist tottered forward and fell in a lifeless heap at Micah’s feet. The man twitched once and lay still, and the ground around him turned into a deep, rich color of red.

The highway patrolman reached down with his left hand and picked up the dropped AK, still clutching the magnum in his right. Glancing quickly up and down the draw, he moved back to where he had been before, his back locked against the wall of the arroyo. Checking the Kalashnikov, he flipped the safety on and placed it to the side. Then he picked up his own rifle and resumed the interrupted reloading.

Micah had finished with the Marlin and was trying to reload the Smith & Wesson when it started. At first there was only a slight tremor in his right fingers, and then both of his hands started shaking. They shook so badly that it was almost impossible to pull the cartridges from his belt slide and put them in the chambers of the revolver.

One round from his fumbling fingers fell to the sandy ground, followed by another. He thought of the younger troops in his area who were now carrying speed loaders, and promised himself that he would get a pair for his own duty belt; the bulky, untraditional appearance be damned.

Finally getting the Smith & Wesson reloaded, he shoved it back into the holster and reset the snap. Squatting down, the trooper picked up the dropped .357 cartridges and reinserted them in the loops of his belt slide. He had gone through the shakes before, but not since the Da Krong Valley in Vietnam. They were already starting to subside as they had done all those many years ago. At the time, he had hoped he would never experience that sort of sensation again.

Yet here he was. Fear, exhaustion and raw adrenaline made for inexplicable human body responses, and Micah’s body was running on nothing but a straight mixture of all three.

After getting control of himself again and formulating the next move in his head, Micah moved away from the embankment and to the body of