Drone Strike: A Dreamland Thriller (Dale Brown's Dreamland) by Jim DeFelice, Dale Brown Read Free Book Online

his head down as he ran through the scrub at the foot of the hill. Two men were following him, but he was more concerned about what lay in the hills. The curve ahead looked like a perfect place for an ambush.
    When Breanna told him that he’d start training right away, he assumed she meant working with the nano-UAVs. But he hadn’t seen the aircraft, or any aircraft, since arriving at the “camp” in the Arizona scrubland. Instead, training had been more like SERE on steroids.
    SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape—was the Air Force survival course designed to help prepare pilots who bailed out over enemy territory. It had never exactly been his favorite class. He’d taken the course twice at Fort Bragg, and nearly washed out both times.
    This was a hundred times worse. He’d been here five days and trained the entire time; no breaks. The sun beat down relentlessly during the day. Nighttime temperatures dropped close to freezing. The ranch covered thousands of acres, with hills of all sizes and shapes. There was a dry streambed, an almost wet streambed, and a raging creek. Name a wild beast and it was most likely hiding behind a nearby crag.
    The remains of ranch buildings abandoned some thirty or forty years before were scattered in various places. Turk had visited them all, running mostly, occasionally under live fire. For a break the first day, he’d spent two hours on a target range with rifles and pistols nearly as old as he was. That was fun, but as soon as his trainers saw that he was a comparatively good shot—he’d won several state marksman competitions as a Boy Scout—they replaced the gun instruction with more survival training.
    They were very big on running, especially from armed pursuers, as he was doing now.
    Turk slowed as he reached the crease of the hill, trying to catch his breath and listen. He needed to keep moving, but he didn’t want to fall into a trap.
    It was morning, or so he thought—his watch had been taken from him upon arrival. Assuming it in fact was morning, he put the sun over his shoulder and faced what he reckoned was north. His objective lay in that direction.
    As he turned, he thought he saw something flickering on the ground in the pass ahead.
    A trap?
    He couldn’t retreat; the two men chasing him were no more than five minutes behind. Going straight over the top of the hill and trying to ambush whoever was hiding probably wouldn’t work either; he’d been caught in a similar situation the day before, ambushed in his own ambush by a lookout.
    Turk stooped and picked up a few small rocks. Then he slipped along the face of the slope, moving as quietly as possible. When he was within three feet of the point where the side of the hill fell off, he tossed two of the rocks down in the direction of the trail. Nothing happened for a moment. Then the barrel of an AK-47 poked around the side of the hill, eight feet below him.
    He waited until a shoulder appeared, then launched himself.
    The gun rapped out a three-shot burst. Turk’s ears exploded. His fist landed on the side of the man’s face and both of them went down, Turk on top. He punched hard with his right fist and felt the other man’s body collapse beneath him. Turk gave him another punch, then leapt for the rifle, which had fallen to the ground.
    He had just reached the stock when something grabbed his leg. He flailed back with the gun, gashing the man he’d jumped hard on the forehead. Blood began to spurt. Turk got to his feet as the man collapsed, horrified yet satisfied as well.
    “Hey!” Turk started to yell, his shout was cut off by a thick arm that grabbed him around the throat and began choking. He kicked, then remembered one of the techniques he’d been taught on day two. He grabbed at the elbow with both hands, pushed his chin down, then tried to hook his leg behind his enemy’s, turning toward the arm holding him. But his attacker anticipated that and managed to move around with him. Turk