The Ties That Bind. Cliff Ryder

tracked the round and his visual response. The bullet took the man just below the collarbone and punched through the other side, shattering his shoulder blade. He screamed and fell to the ground, his blood staining the grass and the patchy snow a bright crimson.

      “Four and a half inches high at twenty-nine feet,” he estimated, gauging the feedback that ran in a tiny font along the bottom of his lenses. “And slightly to the right.”

      The other two men dived for cover of their own, one behind a log and another behind a small cluster of stones. Neither one seemed too interested in retrieving their bleeding friend, whose moans could be heard between the shots they were firing for cover.

      They weren’t using military-grade weapons, he realized, but heavy-duty bolt-action hunting rifles. When they paused to reload, he risked another glance over the top of the ATV. One man had moved closer, crawling through the scrub grass. He’d drawn a revolver. He popped his head up every few feet to take another look. There wasn’t anything special about him that Jason could see. He looked quite a bit like a hunter who’d been caught poaching, but either way, he and his friends seemed serious about doing harm.

      As the man low-crawled past his wounded comrade, he muttered, “Shut up, will you?”

      The momentary distraction was all Jason needed. He slipped around the front tires, sighted and fired. This time, his aim was perfect—the round entered the man’s forehead one inch above his eyebrows and dead center. The force shoved him upright, his features straining with shock, and Jason fired again, aiming center mass and driving him backward into the ground, dead before he landed.

      “That’s two for me and none for you,” he called out to the last man. “I advise you to throw down your weapons and come out where I can see you.”

      There was a long pause, then, “You won’t shoot?”

      Grinning to himself, Jason called, “No, I won’t shoot. Come on out.”

      He watched as the man tossed a rifle to the ground, then stepped out from behind the cluster of rocks, his hands raised. His features were unremarkable—fair skin, blue eyes, a mop of sweaty brown hair.

      Jason got to his feet and closed the space between them. Behind him, he could hear the sound of Tina’s ATV returning. She must have realized that he hadn’t followed or had been watching and figured out that the situation was under control.

      “Who are you?” Jason barked at the man. “And why’d you try to shoot us?”

      The man stepped closer. “No one you know,” he said. His hand was a blur as he reached for the handgun behind his back. Jason didn’t even blink, but dropped two rounds into the man’s chest, killing him instantly. He fell over backward, his scream of pain cut short as the last of the air left his lungs.

      “Stupid fool,” Jason said to himself. He looked down at the wounded man on the ground and assessed his condition. He’d lost too much blood and was already fading into unconsciousness. They were too far from anywhere to save him. “Sorry,” he said, “but this is the best I can do for you.” He shot him once in the head, ending the man’s misery.

      Behind him, he heard a sharp intake of breath and turned to see Tina staring at him, her eyes wide with outrage. “You…you just shot those men in cold blood!”

      “What?” Jason asked, even as he loaded a fresh clip. “I did not!”

      “You did! I saw you. The one man surrendered and the other was wounded and you just…you just killed them like it was nothing.”

      Shaking his head, Jason moved to gather up their weapons. He tossed them in a pile between the three bodies. “The man who surrendered was going for a gun behind his back,” he explained. “Roll him over and take a look if you don’t believe me. As for the man on the ground…he was going to die, Tina. A slow and painful death. I killed him because we’re too far away from anywhere to do anything for him.”

      “Right,” she said, her voice rising an octave. “So now you’re a doctor, too?” She stumped over to the second man and rolled him over, then gasped. The gun he’d been going for was on the ground beneath him. Then she turned to look at the last man he’d killed. The pool of blood that had spread from beneath his back was testament to how badly he’d been wounded.

      Tina turned back to Jason and nodded. “All right,” she said, angry. “Fine, you were telling the truth. But where did you learn to fight like that? You killed three armed men and never even broke a sweat.”

      “I grew up in a rough neighborhood,” Jason joked, then he turned serious when he saw that she wouldn’t accept a flip answer. “I’ve been in a lot of tight scrapes over the years—the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia to name a few. You either learn how to fight in places like that or you die. I learned how to shoot pretty well.”

      Looking over the bodies once more, she shook her head. “That’s the understatement of the year, if I’ve ever heard one. Now what do we do?”

      “Check them out. Look the place over, then move on with our journey,” he said.

      “We’re not going to take them back?”

      “To Nome?” he asked. “Why would we? We can let the local authorities know what’s happened when we reach a village. Someone must have a phone somewhere.”

      She laughed. “No, there aren’t too many phones out here, but the village we’re going to stay in has shortwave radio.”

      “That should work,” he said. “In the meantime, let’s see if we can figure out why these guys came out shooting. Even if they were poachers, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to attack us the way they did.” He turned to move toward the buildings and she followed along behind.

      “I have a guess,” she said, her voice hesitant. “They were probably smugglers.”

      “Drugs?” he asked.

      “Guns,” she replied. “They move them from here and down into Canada, where someone else sells them cheap into the United States. I read an article about it in the paper.”

      “People are running guns in Alaska?” he asked, surprised. “Seems like a hard way to go about it. There are easier ways to get things into the U.S. than trekking across the Alaskan tundra.”

      “Maybe,” she said, “but think of it this way. Out here, what are the chances of running into anyone, let alone law enforcement? Out here, we’re mostly on our own. And there’s a whole lot of big empty between here, Canada and the U.S.”

      “True enough,” he said.

      They stopped in front of a dilapidated hut. The boot tracks on the ground were fresh and he followed them inside. Sure enough, there were several large crates. He opened the top one to find it filled to the brim with Russian AN-94 assault rifles and clips. They were brand-new.

      “Jesus,” he whispered. “Why were those guys shooting at me with hunting rifles when they had these?”

      Tina’s voice was equally quiet. “I don’t know, but I’ve heard rumors that people who cross the smugglers are usually found during the spring thaw. Maybe they didn’t have ammunition?”

      Jason quickly opened the other crates. He found more rifles and clips, along with one set of the older-style LAW rockets used by the U.S. military forces until the late eighties or so. But no ammunition. “You’re right,” he said. “No ammo. Just the weapons and the rockets. I suppose I should be glad they weren’t able to use one of these on me.”

      “Yes,” she said, “you should. Can we go now? I want to get out of here in case someone comes looking for them. This could be where they were dropping them.”

      He looked around the ancient building once more, then shook his head. “It’s an inconvenient spot for a drop point, but you’re right. We need to keep moving. How far is the coast from here?”

      “Not far,” she said. “Maybe three or four miles.”