Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [89]
The Land Rover’s roof was caved in, the undercarriage facing up. Muldaur lay on his belly in the rocks and peered inside. As his eyes damped down from the bright sunshine, he recognized a man inside, his shoulders and head showing. He was pinned in the twisted sheet metal.
“You okay, buddy?” Muldaur said. “Hey, buddy. Buddy?”
“Can’t breathe,” gasped the man in the car. His lips and face were dark with loss of oxygen, his features bloody, battered, and unrecognizable, his eyes open but filled with blood and earth from the crash so that it was impossible to know if he was gazing at Muldaur or his maker. The interior of the Land Rover reeked of gasoline, beer, fresh pine needles, and mountain dust. Muldaur knew there’d been two men in the Land Rover, Scooter and Ryan Perry, but he had no clue which this was.
“Listen, we’re going to get you out of there.”
“Can’t breathe.”
“Get up, motherfucker!” Muldaur looked up from the position he’d taken on his stomach to see Scooter standing over him with a rifle. Scooter’s forehead was bruised and swelling, and blood ran down his face from his scalp. “Get up, you idiot! Move!”
“He needs help.”
“And you’re going to give it to him?”
“Look, the two of us can get the jack out and pry some of this loose. We can at least give him some space so he can breathe, but we have to move fast.”
Scooter considered the notion for a few seconds and then pumped a cartridge into the chamber of the rifle. “Stand up before I do you right here.”
“But he’s suffocating.”
Scooter fired the rifle into the rocks behind Muldaur, then motioned for Muldaur to move away, kept motioning until Muldaur was fifteen feet from Scooter. It was an effective tactic, Muldaur thought, because the rocks would slow him considerably if he tried to rush the other man.
After Muldaur had moved away, Scooter peered into the crushed SUV. “Ryan. Ryan? You all right?” He reached inside with one hand, came out with a handful of dirt, then a shoe. He looked at Muldaur. “You killed him.”
“He’s not dead. We can get him out. I’m telling you.”
“You’re not telling me anything, you moron. Get up the hill.”
“No, let me check. I can—” Scooter fired another bullet into the rocks, this one closer than the last. He did it carelessly, as if he didn’t mind kneecapping Muldaur or shooting one of his toes off.
As they climbed through the rocks to the road, Muldaur conjured up several stratagems to take the gun from Scooter, but Scooter kept his distance, and the muzzle remained trained on his target.
Scooter gestured for him to kneel in the road in the classic assassination pose. “Get down, motherfucker.”
Before he could comply, Scooter walked behind Muldaur and struck him across the shoulder blades with the butt of the rifle. The blow knocked him to the ground on his face, the Styrofoam helmet crunching against the rocks. “Up! Up, you bastard!” As soon as Muldaur got to his knees, Scooter hit him again. He smacked Muldaur in the head until the helmet came apart, leaving only a system of straps and a couple of strands of Styrofoam. One of the lenses on the sunglasses popped out.
The gun came down again on the back of Muldaur’s neck and threw him to the roadway. For a moment he thought he wouldn’t be able to get back up. The blow could easily have paralyzed him. Scooter kicked him in the ribs. “Where are they?”
“Where are who?”
“Your friends.”
“I don’t know.”
Scooter kicked Muldaur again, and Muldaur, thinking about the appropriate time to make a grab for the rifle, covered his head with his hands and curled into a fetal position. “Just tell me where your friends are hiding!”
Scooter barraged Muldaur with blows, kicking and slapping and swinging the rifle down hard while Muldaur slapped back ineffectually, hoping to grab the rifle but coming up empty each time.
40
Zak knew the Land Rover had crashed but didn’t know how badly, and a minute after he heard all the noise, he managed to find a vantage point in the road where he spotted Scooter wandering in the trees with a rifle. The Land Rover