“It’s not so bad,” she assured him, before he secured the field dressing with a gauze strip.
The four attackers stayed hunkered down in the woods.
“We obviously didn’t expect a defense quite so sophisticated,” Jake muttered. “I wonder what’s happening with the other team.”
“There was a big explosion,” Craig said. “Let’s hope they’re okay. We’re supposed to be helping them,” he added, “but unless something changes, we can’t even get across the street.”
“What if we don’t try to go directly across? We can keep walking on this side until we find out where it’s possible to cross,” Rachel answered. “Then we have to work our way back and hope he doesn’t have the same kind of setup at the rear of the house.”
“Why would you assume he doesn’t?” Stephanie asked.
“Because we heard that explosion. If he needed to blow something up, that means he didn’t think he could stop them the same way he stopped us,” Jake answered.
The explanation made sense, and Rachel prayed that it was true.
* * *
Gabeand the three others who had been in the boat were still on the ground. “Everyone okay?” he asked.
One by one, they checked in. The shield had worked. There were no injuries.
When they dissolved the bubble, smoke drifted in around them, and he could hear everyone struggling not to cough.
“We’ve got to move and we’ve got to find shelter before he figures out the explosion didn’t get us.”
Switch to silent communications,Travis said.
Sorry, I...heard your warning, but I’m not so sure of myself with this mind-to-mind stuff.
Travis interrupted the other man sharing a body with him.I know you’re not used to it. Okay if I do it for you?
Fine.
Matt spoke.I remember the aerial Google view. There’s some kind of small structure up along the slope.
Gabe let Travis convey his thought.Let’s head for it.But be careful. I heard gunfire from the other side of the house. Someone must have been shooting at the road team.
I hope they could return fire with a mental blast,Elizabeth said.
They stayed low and silent as they moved up the hill. Gabe also remembered the small structure, but they had landed before he got a chance to orient himself to the property. And the smoke wasn’t helping. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be sure where they were going.
Olivia was the one who found the small building. As an artist, she had good spatial visualization, and she silently directed them to the right. They came to a small structure that stuck out from the hill. There was no wall on the front, but an iron gate barred the way to the interior.
Gabe looked up the hill, seeing the beams of three flashlights coming from the house.
They’re on their way to investigate,he silently told the others.
On it,Matt answered.
He, Elizabeth, and Olivia had formed a unit. They were doing something to the gate that Gabe couldn’t see.
As the lights drew closer, he sidestepped to the front of the building where the others were gathered. He heard the gate creak as it swung to the side. The rest of the group moved quickly inside. The interior space was small and dank, but they managed to cram in, just as a beam of light reached the side of the building.
The barrier was already back in place, and the lights continued down the hill, all except one, which swung to the bars behind which they crouched.
As the light played over the opening, a hand reached out to try and rattle the gate.
Somehow it held fast.
