No Man's Land - A Russell Carter Thriller by Roland Fishman Read Free Book Online Page B

Thomas an update when he heard a loud clap followed by a whooshing sound coming from the bush near the homestead.
    Half a second later the unmistakable crash of breaking glass from the house caused his gut to tighten.
    The sound almost certainly came from a high-tech grenade launcher firing a gas canister through a window. If he was right, the gas would knock them out within seconds.
    “Thomas, Wayan. If you can hear me, get the fuck out of there.”
    There was no answer over the phone.
    “Thomas, can you hear me?”
    No reply came. Instead, he heard the faint whir of an engine starting and switched his attention back to where the track met the lawn.
    A glint of metal flashed through the overhanging trees and a khaki-colored Humvee with a bull bar at the front glided out of the bushes.
    The three-ton metal monster headed straight for the homestead at around five or six miles an hour, barely making a sound as it moved across the grass. The vehicle had bulletproof tires, was powered by an electric engine and didn’t appear to be in a hurry.
    He put the binoculars down and, in a reflex action, fitted the Glock to its stock and jammed it against his right shoulder, lining up the Humvee in his sights and brushing the trigger with his finger.
    A slow breath helped calm his mind. The last thing he needed was to act impulsively and make a bad situation worse.
    He eased his finger off the trigger, laid the weapon on the ground and stared through the binoculars.
    The Humvee disappeared from Carter’s line of sight, presumably pulling up close to the front of the house.
    The sound of the vehicle’s doors opening and closing cut through the quiet of the bush. After a brief silence the front door of the house slammed shut.
    Carter was about to move further down the ridge when a solidly built Indonesian dressed in dark brown overalls, probably a clan member, ran around the corner of the house, carrying an automatic assault weapon in two hands. He looked through the windows of Thomas’s four-wheel drive and then underneath it before heading to the back of the house, swinging his gun in an arc, scanning the ridge where Carter lay hidden as if expecting to find someone, probably him.
    Carter didn’t move a muscle. An eerie silence descended over the property. Every cell in his body wanted to charge down the hill and attack the intruders. He reminded himself that any rash action on his part would only put Thomas and Wayan’s lives in even greater danger.
    An excruciating thirty seconds ticked by. Even the birds had gone quiet, as if sensing trouble brewing.
    He heard the front door opening, followed by three Humvee doors opening and closing, one after the other. He saw the vehicle appear again as it slowly backed away from the house, veering to the right before coming to a stop.
    The guard at the back abandoned his post and ran toward the front of the house. The vehicle’s passenger window slid down and a man shouted, “Kamu melihatnja?” You see him?
    The guard shook his head.
    The man in the Humvee said something Carter couldn’t quite hear and the guard turned and walked back toward Thomas’s four-wheel drive.
    Carter raised the Glock’s stock to his shoulder and tried to line up the guy’s head in the gun sight. But he knew a hundred yards was way too far to even consider taking a shot. To do so would’ve been pointless.
    He put the gun down.
    The guard moved around the four-wheel drive and shot out each tire. The vehicle sunk to the rims. He then ran to the Humvee, opened the back door and climbed in. The vehicle turned and headed across the open lawn at a steady pace before disappearing under the canopy of trees.
    Carter grabbed the binoculars and trained them on the stationary truck out on the highway. The back door was now open and a ramp led up to it.
    The Humvee emerged from the cover of foliage and drove up into the truck’s bowels. The two Caucasians loaded the ramp and shut the back door before climbing into the