“Captain,” I said to draw his attention back to me
It worked. “Yes, Doc.”
I tilted my head. “All of us have a reason to want every single heat signature we come across dead. But we’ve got to play this smart. The plan was never to infiltrate and kill. It was always toinfiltrate and gain information. We can still do that here. We’ve still got the upper hand.”
Cap’s body was pulled taut with tension. “Explain.”
I just shrugged softly. “They don’t have a clue that we know how many places out there they have. Nor do they have a clue that we are finding locations for them. They hear something, sure, but they won’t find it, and then they’ll just keep on trucking. Ranger could keep doing silent fly overs. He could get a gist for their routines. When they switch people out. How they’re getting to all of these places in the state park in the first place. There’s a lot that we could gather, staying in the background. Stuff that the DOJ could definitely use.”
My words seemed to disarm him, at least a little bit.
It was rough, working with a bunch of hotheads.
Especially ones that had something to protect.
“Deep breath, Captain,” I said as I puffed out my chest with an overexaggerated breath that I took in through my nose.
He followed my instincts, breathing with me for a while until I watched his shoulders drop as well.
“All right,” Cap said as he turned to face us. “I like Doc’s idea of continuing to patrol with drones to try and get some answers on transportation and movement rhythms. But with the buildings so spread out, we’ll have to choose one to infiltrate and set up all of our surveillance shit in. With how spread out all of these places are, we’ll just have to choose the one we feel is right and focus on it.”
“Let’s go with the one with the most heat signatures in it,” Brutus said as he crossed his arms over his chest. “More people equals more chances for someone to fuck up and do or say something.”
I pointed at him. “I like that idea.”
“Me, too,” Ranger said.
“I’ve been keeping tabs on the map about the number of heat signatures,” Scout said as he wrangled the map back into his grasp. “Right now, the third place we scouted out had the most. There were six heat signatures in that building.”
Cap nodded. “All right. We’ll see what else Ranger comes up with during this first flight, and then we’ll go from there.”
“Found another one,” Ranger said.
“Let me see,” Scout said as he shouldered his way back to the laptop setup.
This went back and forth for a while, but by the time Ranger was done with his flyover from the state park, there were five places we had mapped out with various human heat signatures. That third building we came across was still the one with the most.
But it was also the one that was deepest into the state park.
“I still think that third building is our best bet,” Ranger said as he swiveled to face us in his chair.
“Getting to it is going to be a bitch, though,” Wrecker said as he studied the map over Scout’s shoulder. “It’s deep into the state park. There isn’t a direction we can come at it that won’t have us in the woods for miles beforehand.”
“That’s good, though,” Ghost said as he stood by Brutus. “Means that whatever we pull, it’s not likely to draw in people from town.”
“No crossfire,” Brutus added.
“Doc?” Cap asked.
I looked over at him. “Yes?”
He motioned to the computer screen. “What are you thinking?”
My gaze darted in between my president and the computer screen behind the curtain of Ranger’s hair. “I think that I’ll need to transport a lot of medical supplies with me, in case shit goes south.”
“What else are you thinking?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek as my attention bounced between the partially-obscured screen and the map Scout held in his hands.
