Her anger grew, along with fear, and she thought fast to come up with a plan.
She could shoot Hiyoki if she had her pistol, but it was somewhere in the river below. Besides, she didn’t think shooting all three men was something she could pull off without getting killed. Moving higher in the arroyo until she was inches from the top caused her to dislodge a plate-sized shelf of packed dirt.
It tumbled down the arroyo toward the water, making noise all the way before splashing into the river at the bottom.
The two men across the river turned toward the sound. Hiyoki trotted to the edge of the arroyo–
–and saw Hunter Kincaid’s face.
He fell backwards with an yelled, “Whua!” Scrambling to his feet, Hiyoki ran toward the line of brush as Hunter seemed to spring from the earth. Shots barked from across the river and bullets immediately hit all around her.
She went to her belly behind a boulder as a round whined off the rock and something that felt like a bad wasp sting hit her in the thigh, making her stumble. She crawled further from the bluff edge until the firing stopped. They now knew her location.
The moon lit the top of the bluff in silver light. The brush line stood out in clear relief, as did the dilapidated shack a hundred yards distant. She looked for Hiyoki but didn’t see him, until his head rose above the brush thirty yards away. He stayed half-hidden by mesquite as he fired. She scrambled and limped to nearby cover.
The ground where she lay was covered in smooth, egg-sized river stones, and she put a half-dozen in her pockets while keeping one in each hand. It was desperate, but there were no other weapons near her.
She peered through the brush and spotted Hiyoki’s head and upper torso as he searched for her. She crawled forward until there was no more cover, then checked for Hiyoki. Maybe twenty yards away, a little less. He stepped from cover and walked toward her position with his pistol extended.
The brush she hid behind covered little more than a ten foot-square area, and open all around the edges. Hunter had no place to go.
Hiyoki advanced, and she spotted his nervousness, the shaking hand and constant licking of his lips, but the pistol was ready.
She mentally went over the throw, then stood and threw the rock as one of the men fired from across the river.
The rock hit Hiyoki at his hairline with a thock. He spun and fell to his knees, immediately rising and staggering into the brush. He screamed at the men across the river, “You shot me!” She saw him moving away from the river in a hurry.
Keeping her head down, Hunter went to where Hiyoki fell, but there was no pistol, so she followed his path into the brush.
She searched for his dropped weapon, knowing that the two men were coming. They wouldn’t stay on the far side of the river, they would come to her side, hunting.
She dropped to her hands and knees to look under the deeper shadows of the mesquite and greasewood, knowing her time was running out, and that Hiyoki might come back any second, along with the two men crossing the river to kill her.
A reflective glint showed under a shaggy clump of bear grass, a reflection of the moon’s light off the laptop’s screen. She picked it up, noticing Hiyoki’s laptop still ran the control program for the drone. She took a chance and stood, spotting the drone above the cane on the other side of the river.
She also saw the two men in the boat, coming across.
She looked once more for Hiyoki and didn’t see him, so she turned her attention to the laptop’s drone’s controls and tried to remember everything David and his two friends had taught her about flying one of these things.
Her leg throbbed. She checked the wound that had already soaked her pants a dark maroon under the moonlight. “Shit,” she said to herself. She didn’t know how bad it was or if the bullet had cut a major vein or artery in her leg, but there was no choice but to keep going, and try to stop the men hunting her. She turned to the laptop as a sharp crack sounded and a bullet clipped her shirtsleeve.
Hunter dropped to her left and immediately did a one-eighty on her knees and scooted to the right, deeper into the small patch of sparse brush as several more bullets cut twigs and leaves where she had been.
She still had the laptop and pulled herself to a sitting position as she worked the keys and the touchpad. The screen showed a luminous green world through the night vision scope, looking across the river to where two men had been showed no one, and the boat was also gone. Movement near the arroyo caught her eye and she saw the two killers emerge on top of the bluff with pistols in their hands.
She tapped several keys and the drone responded, rotating left and right. She tapped two more, but it didn’t move. So these controls were different.
The men were only fifty yards from the brush line where she hid, and Hunter knew she had to make this work or leave it and try to run.
She typed another key and slid her index finger across the touchpad. The drone moved forward.
She hit another one and at the same time moved her finger on the pad. The drone dropped in a shallow dive as it went forward.
That was enough. She flew the drone toward the two men, watching through the green world as they whirled to face it, thinking Hiyoki still had control.
One of them looked at the drone and pointed into the brush to indicate where Hunter was hidden. When the drone didn’t veer away, both men stopped moving to look at it.
The other one gave a “What’s up?” sign using shrugging shoulders and both hands.