I shrugged. “It’s what I would do.”
King and Cap looked at one another before Scout spoke up. “I’m with Doc. It makes sense. You burn something down, you take a twofold problem and cure it with one action. They cover up their steps and they get the distraction they need to set up elsewhere.”
“Which is why I believe we should double down on the drones,” Maverick said.
King drew in a deep breath through his nose. “You know what I think?”
“Nope, but you can tell us,” Cap said as he turned toward the man.
King flashed him a smirk before he turned to face us. “If they’re setting up somewhere else and they’re using the fires as a distraction, then that means they’re most likely rushing. Working through the night. Walking to and from. It’ll be easy to spot those patterns with some drones. But I think when we find the place they’ve built up, or even other places they’ve got out there in the state park, we should use their rushing around to our advantage.”
One of his guys, a guy they simply called Croc, chuckled raspily. “I like where your head is.”
I blinked. “Care to clarify for the rest of us?”
King turned his attention to me. “If they’re rushing, then they’re most likely cutting corners. Think about when you rush to do things.”
“I never rush to do things.”
King rolled his eyes. “Then use that big ass brain of yours and imagine.”
I blinked. “All right, I’m with you.”
“If you rushed around trying to get something done in a short amount of time, would you be focused on your other surroundings? What you hear? What you see? If someone opened a door, would you even know who came through it before you knew they were there?”
I felt a grin tug at my cheeks. “Oh, I see where you’re going with it.”
“All right, that’s great,” Ghost said, “now spit it out.”
King chuckled. “We’ve got a drone guy. You’ve got a tech guy. Why don’t we drop surveillance equipment onto this new place of theirs while they’re scrambling to use as much distraction time as they can?”
The room fell eerily silent before Brutus’s voice boomed. “We could drop microphones, too.”
Ranger nodded. “Long range, to pick up audio whenever they’re in the building.”
“I could put some drones in the trees, so that we’ve always got a source of transmission,” Maverick said as he stepped forward. “That way, the only reason we’d have to fly them and risk being seen is to change out batteries.”
“Could we port them with some sort of solar power?” Ranger asked.
“I could help with that,” King said. “Tinkering is sort of my deal.”
Cap nodded as he crossed his arms over his chest. “How does everyone feel about that plan? Using the drones to search for things in the state park with the idea going forward that we plant as much surveillance shit as we can?”
Hands shot into the air so quickly that I was almost embarrassed to be one of the last ones to raise my own.
Cap and King’s heads bobbed as they counted the hands, then looked at one another. King nodded, then he whistled through his lips, and his men fell in line behind him as they left our little church area.
Which left only us.
“All right,” Cap said as he motioned for us to squeeze closer. “Bring it in.”
I stood from my chair and approached our president as we all gathered around him.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
Wrecker cleared his throat, his face set into stone. My stomach bottomed out into my toes. What could be so important that we couldn’t clue in King and his crew?
Wrecker turned to me with that shit-eating grin of his. “So. How them jets treat you last night, Doc?”
