Mountain Man (Book 5): Final Stand [Last Ditch] Read online

  Final Stand

  Last Ditch

  Book Five of the

  Mountain Man series.

  by

  Nathan Jones

  Copyright © 2019 Nathan Jones

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the author

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The events depicted in this novel are fictional. The characters in this story are also fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is entirely unintentional.

  by Nathan Jones

  POST-APOCALYPTIC

  BEST LAID PLANS

  Fuel

  Shortage

  Invasion

  Reclamation

  Determination

  NUCLEAR WINTER

  First Winter

  First Spring

  Chain Breakers

  Going Home

  Fallen City

  MOUNTAIN MAN

  Badlands

  Homecoming

  Homeland

  Mountain War

  Final Stand

  Lone Valley (upcoming)

  SCIENCE FICTION

  STELLAR MERGER

  Boralene

  Ensom (upcoming)

  STAG PRIVATEERS

  Last Stand

  Caretakers

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Links to books by Nathan Jones

  Prologue

  First Nick

  Brandon watched grimly as dozens of Sangue soldiers poured out of the backs of trucks parked in the foothills below, on the eastern edge of the Manti-La Sal range northwest of Emery. The closest they could get to the mountains before being forced to continue on foot.

  All he could say was, it was a good thing he'd kept his skirmishers back to cover the retreat of Brady Everett's convoy.

  Brady's group, which included every single pack animal they could get their hands on and as many strong backs as they could spare, was probably safely back in Camptown by now. Them, and all the precious weapons, explosives, medicine, and other supplies they'd captured from the joint attack on Sangue occupied Emery by Gray's militia and Trapper's volunteers.

  Those supplies would be a tremendous boon for the growing tent city hidden in the bowl valley in the high mountains, where the displaced residents of Emery, and now the Grand Junction refugees as well, were struggling to rebuild their lives. And now also the dozens of slaves freed from Emery, saved from a horrible fate and offered an opportunity to rebuild their lives.

  But even though they'd all made it safely back to their mountain home, their troubles had only begun.

  From the moment Brandon heard of the planned raid on Emery, he hadn't had any illusions about Sangue coming after them with a vengeance afterwards. Over the course of the southern invaders' entire campaign to take over what remained of the United States, he doubted many of their victims had ever had the stones, or the fighters and firepower for that matter, to raid one of their staging and resupply areas.

  And he was equally confident that any that had soon faced the full fury of the bloodies; the enemy had an awful big advantage with their vehicles and modern military technology, after all.

  As far as he knew, Sangue was the only group who'd survived the Ultimatum, the global thermonuclear war between NATO and BRICKS fifteen or so years back, with any sort of tech at all. Even outside the population centers devastated by direct nuclear strikes, turning most of the habitable land in the US and across the rest of the developed world into deadly fallout zones, the EMPs had flown fast and hard to send any survivors across the globe back to nineteenth century living.

  If they were lucky.

  But not Sangue. And they'd used their advantage to conquer most of South America, then up into Central America, across Mexico, and finally into the United States. And conquer they had, in the most brutal fashion imaginable; they spread with relentless efficiency, hunting anyone they found like dogs and torturing and murdering most of those they caught, enslaving the rest and dooming them to a fate worse than death.

  Brandon had been one of those enslaved way back near the beginning of their invasion, along with the woman he loved and her brother and many of their friends. Even after five years, he still grit his teeth at the reminder of what Fiona had suffered; she still struggled to recover from the unspeakable abuses she'd endured at their hands, terrified at the prospect of being captured again.

  His wife was back in Camptown now, depending on him to keep those monsters far from her and their newborn son Thomas, Trapper's namesake. And he fully intended to. No matter what hornet's nest Trapper and Mitchells and Gray, the leaders of the Emery volunteers and former Grand Junction militia, had stirred up with their raid, no enemy was coming anywhere near Camptown, anywhere near Brandon's family, as long as he drew breath.

  Still, there were three squads down there.

  Sixty soldiers, armed with fully automatic AK-47s and grenades and wearing helmets and body armor. That many enemies just for this one area, when Brandon was confident he'd covered Brady's tracks well. On top of that, Sangue shouldn't have even known where the raiding fighters had dropped off the supplies to be packed west to the bowl valley.

  For all he knew, the dozens of men beginning their climb up the first true slope of the mountains were simply more scouts, diverted to searching for Camptown in the wake of the raid on occupied Emery. That Sangue didn't actually know this was the way Brady had come, and that they were practically following the footsteps the convoy had taken with their stolen supplies.

  But whether or not that was the case, they were still moving westward in the general direction of the bowl valley. And from this location, they'd reach it sooner rather than later.

  To make matters worse, the soldiers down there had dogs to sniff out trails, which they already had them doing. They even had horses, something Brandon hadn't seen from the enemy before, although he wasn't sure why he was surprised at that. Just because the enemy had trucks, no reason why they couldn't go low tech to operate in areas where vehicles couldn't go.

  So much for Trapper's talk about what an advantage their own mounts were. An advantage they'd almost never used, now that he thought of it.

  Either way, he was confident the bloodies couldn't have discovered Brady's trail yet; they were still a hillside or two away, and moved like people still setting up to begin a search, without the excitement of any discoveries made. But once they put those dogs to work, it wouldn't take long for them to see right past the meager efforts Brandon and his skirmishers had made to hide the signs of dozens of heavily laden men and horses moving through these mountains.

  He had to strike first. It was time to see if all the training he'd put himself and his people through was
worth it.

  With a last slow inspection of the forces arrayed against him, threatening his family and friends, Brandon shimmied down the slope behind him. Then he scrambled up the steeper slope to the ridge on the far side of the valley, to meet up with the other two members of his team waiting just on the other side of it.

  The ones who'd be making the first strike against the enemy forces with him. He hoped they'd kept planning out their escape routes while he'd been scouting ahead.

  For that matter, he hoped the rest of his skirmishers arrayed in the hills even farther west of them, ready to cover their escapes before bolting on their own escape routes, had also been using the time well. It could mean all their lives in the coming minutes and hours.

  Neal and Reina were waiting at the center point between all three of the sniping positions they'd carefully picked out, the moment they knew these bloodies were encroaching into the mountains. The two were clutching their rifles tensely as they waited for him to give them the final rundown on the enemy, at which point they'd deliberately set out to do everything in their power to tick those soldiers off and get them chasing them howling for blood.

  Considering there were enough soldiers down there to kill them twenty times over, not to mention dogs to sniff them out and horses to run them down if things went wrong, they were right to be nervous.

  It was only at this moment that Brandon considered the fact that sitting in a well prepared ambush position planned out over weeks, with a few dozen of Trapper's volunteers backing him up, did a lot for a man's confidence in a fight. So much so that it was easy to diminish the threat of what they were facing.

  Then again, this wasn't supposed to be a fight. And for the sake of his skirmishers, he sincerely hoped it didn't become one.

  “Remember,” he hissed as he joined his team members. “Three aimed shots, move a few feet to your new position, two more shots, empty the rest of your magazine at the biggest clump of enemies you can find, then we rabbit. Make every shot count, even the spray and pray if you can, then get out!”

  “You ever wonder how we ended up in this situation?” Neal hissed back, although his words seemed mostly directed at Reina. “We should be back in Emery, serving drinks and cooking bad food for drunk patrons. What the blazes are we doing fighting a guerrilla war against overwhelming numbers of murderous invaders? We're not soldiers.”

  “You're right, you're not,” Brandon snapped, struggling to keep his voice low. “You're skirmishers. So aim for the dogs first priority, then the horses.”

  The bartender went white. “They have dogs?” he nearly yelped. “And we're still going after them?”

  Reina had a different objection. “All these Sangue monsters to kill, and you want us to snipe the pup pups and faithful mounts? That's some messed up targeting priorities, Gerry.”

  “Welcome to skirmishing,” Brandon shot back, although to be honest he didn't like the idea any more than she did; the poor animals didn't get to choose who owned them. But he liked the idea of being sniffed out by tracking dogs, who looked a lot more like vicious man eaters than like puppies, or being run down by horsemen, even less.

  So he went ahead and briefly explained that to her.

  The former barmaid grimaced. “Hard to argue the finer points of not wasting all that time we spent carefully preparing escape routes. Also, you know, not dying.”

  Brandon glanced over his shoulder. The bloodies weren't exactly rushing as they started their search, but they'd be coming into view sooner rather than later. He curtly motioned for his team to move out to their individual positions, then suited his own words by angling back up the slope he'd just come over to his prepared ambush spot.

  Behind him, he heard the soft rustle of the other two following suit; it eased some of his worries that a few rustles was all he heard, and then silence. Maybe they really did know what they were doing here, and this wasn't going to turn into a disaster.

  Think positive.

  The slope across the valley that he'd recently skulked down remained empty while he checked and double checked the position of his rifle, bipod resting securely on a fallen log, and made sure he could pan his scope across the entire area. Then he went still, just in case some Sangue soldier coming over the rise had eagle eyes and spotted his small movements even in his concealed position.

  After waiting three or four minutes, he caught his first sign of motion as enemy scouts began flowing over the rise and down the slope, moving smoothly from cover to cover. They took no chances, even if it meant dropping to their belly and crawling in some places. That was worrisome.

  Luckily his real targets, the dogs, couldn't handle stealth quite as well. Their trainers were cautious with them, of course, but in order for the tracking animals to do their job they had to range over the area, noses busy.

  Brandon aimed his crosshairs at the spot where he'd been looking over the rise at the mustering enemy, tense and ready as a dog meandered that way, ears and tail alert. As it got within a few yards, it began to to show signs of excitement at possibly finding something, moving more quickly. It was pretty obvious when the beast found Brandon's abandoned hiding spot, as its entire body quivered in excitement. Its handlers noticed and turned to look closer at the animal, ready to follow its guidance.

  Holding his breath, Brandon gently squeezed the trigger and put a bullet in the dog's chest, hoping to at least kill it quickly. Then he shifted his aim and fired at the closest handler. On the ridge to either side he heard more gunshots ring out as his team, following his lead, also opened fire.

  He missed the handler with his first shot, bit back a curse and took a precious second adjusting his aim as the soldier dropped prone, and hit him with the next shot. He was already squeezing the trigger to put another bullet in the man, just to be safe, when he remembered his own orders to his team. Three shots, then duck and move.

  The order proved a sound one, as only moments after Brandon began shimmying to his second firing position the ridgeline around him was ripped to shreds by a hail of incoming bullets.

  His second position was a bit more protected from return fire, but even so it took most of Brandon's courage to settle his rifle into position, then peek up enough to look at the far slope through his scope. As he'd expected, all the enemy soldiers had gone to ground, and he caught only glimpses of rifle barrels and flashes of uniform and helmeted heads peeking out from cover.

  And muzzle flashes, lots of muzzle flashes. Brandon took two carefully aimed shots at two bloodies that were closer together, then worked from memory to pinpoint the biggest clumping of enemy soldiers, confirming that the small thicket bristled with firing weapons. He poured the rest of the rounds in his magazine across the trees and underbrush in the thicket, then dropped flat again and shimmied backwards.

  As he moved, he ejected the empty magazine and pocketed it, slammed a full one in, and held the rifle ready as he prepared to stand and get out of there. After checking to make sure he was below the ridgeline, he rose to a crouch and scurried away on his prepared escape route.

  Even though he was fairly confident he was safe from enemy fire for the moment, that didn't stop him from ducking from cover to cover along the concealed trail down the steep slope, just in case.

  Brandon was so focused on where he was going, on making the best possible speed without twisting his ankle on a rock or running face first into a low hanging tree branch, that he was only distantly aware of the two loudest sources of gunfire, thirty or so yards to the north and south where Neal and Reina were holed up, stopping in quick succession as they too made good their escape.

  Reina would be headed south and a bit west, shaking off pursuit and then swinging wide around to rejoin them at an agreed spot southwest of their current position. Neal would be going almost due west, almost in the direction of Camptown, before veering off southwest to the meeting spot if he was able to shake pursuit, or northwards if he wasn't.

  As for Brandon, he'd be going southwest, more or less toward
s the meeting spot along the route where the majority of the skirmishers were set up to cover their retreat. That was because his center position was the most likely to draw pursuit, and if it did he was pinned between his two team members and didn't want to risk drawing enemies their way.

  On the other side of the ridge behind him, the slightly muted roar of gunfire gradually petered out as the bloodies realized their ambushers were likely making a break for it, not simply ducking and scrambling to a new location. Then he heard shouted orders in the distance and, more unnervingly, the baying of hunting dogs as the enemy took up the chase.

  Brandon wondered if he couldn't use that in a future ambush, cutting off the gunfire to make it seem like he'd bolted, letting Sangue poke their heads out and really believe he and his people were gone. Then, just as the enemy threw caution to the wind and took up the chase, his skirmishers could let them have it and drive them back into hiding.

  Risky, but worth considering. Some other time, when he wasn't in the middle of running for his life from enemy soldiers literally howling for his blood.

  Even though he'd only used this path a couple times, he'd been very careful to familiarize himself with it in the time he had. That allowed him to arrow down the steep incline in spite of roots, buried rocks, branches, and other obstacles, so fast the wind roared in his ears as he neared the bottom of the valley.

  Unfortunately, there were other animals faster and more surefooted than him, and the enemy had them.

  A low rumble coming from the north solved the mystery of where the horsemen had been while Brandon was taking potshots at the scouts and tracking dogs. That sound was pretty much the only warning he had before a dozen mounted men, with a few dogs running alongside them like smaller, furry bullets, poured into view at the top of the valley, sweeping down into it like a tide of death that threatened to bury him in tons of horseflesh and flying hooves.