Before tossing the stick, he removed
his old Zippo lighter from his coat pocket. He threw the branch,
which landed in the bushes with a soft brushy splash. He imagined
the sentry tensing and straining at the night, then pointing his
rifle. Sam lit the lighter and tossed it in a gentle arc. As Sam
glanced around the opposite side of the tree, a burst from an
automatic weapon lit the night. Sam now threw the heavy rock as
hard as he could at the shooter and heard a slight smack followed
by a low groan. There was a little luck in the throw, but Sam
was good with a rock and the target had been close, albeit above
him. Quickly he loaded a rubber bullet into the chamber and another
in the magazine. These were the only two rubber stun rounds that
he carried and for that reason he had first tried the stone. After
those two bullets he would be shooting hollow points and armor-piercing
rounds called talons in an alternating sequence.
He waited for a moment; then the forest
lit with the blast of the automatic weapon firing blindly into
the night. The muzzle flash illuminated the man like a spotlight.
Sam fired the two hand-loaded rubber rounds. He heard a crash
followed by complete silence. Sam picked up a stick and tossed
it. Nothing. He stuck his gun around the tree and fired a single
lead round well over the man’s head. Still nothing. In his
pocket he carried a small but powerful Nicad light. He removed
the night vision. Trying to stay hidden as much as possible, he
shone the light around the tree and drew no fire. The bark of
the tree was uneven enough for him to pull back a flap and wedge
the flashlight in place so that he could leave it and scan from
the other side of the tree. He saw bushes and ferns, but no person
in the deep shadows. It might be a trap, or the rubber bullets
had done the trick. Either way, Sam expected to be swarmed by
reinforcements drawn to the sound of gunfire like moths to a light.
