“Perfect,” Cap growled with a smile on his face.
Engines roared in the distance as Ranger gave the countdown. “Four inside now. One driving away.”
“Driving?” Wrecker asked.
“He’s not moving at human speed, so he’s in something,” Ranger said. “Three inside.”
The countdown paused as Ranger squinted and leaned forward, closer to his view finder.
“Talk to me, Range,” Cap said as he took a hard left when Wrecker pointed.
We all had to hang onto something with that particular turn.
“There aren’t any women in this house,” Ranger said.
“What?” we all asked at once.
Ranger looked around at all of us before he shrugged. “All bodies are out of the house, Cap. But there are no women there with them.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“This is ground penetrating to a certain degree,” Ranger said as he motioned to the viewfinder that his drone reported back to. “I should’ve been able to see them walking up and down steps inside of the building retrieving people to take with them. But there aren’t even heat signatures registering down there.”
“If there even is a ‘down there,’” Brutus said.
“There wasn’t in the place where Amanda and I were,” Wrecker said.
“Which is why we need to get inside,” Cap said. “Are you sure they’re all gone, Ranger?”
“Yep,” he said as his attention returned to the screen in his hand. “The last two just drove away. And they’ve left no other heat signatures behind, so unless they’ve got women with them, there aren’t any women in that house.”
“The distraction is working,” Ghost said.
“Showtime,” Cap said as the van came to a halted stop.
There was something gnawing at the pit of my gut that I couldn’t let go of, though. My gut never fired off. In fact, the last time it fired off the way I felt it at that moment was back when I was on the battlefield. Out there being bombarded by mines, I failed to put the pieces together that were right there in front of me.
And four soldiers lost their lives because of it.
Because of my brain’s inability to work quickly enough.
They were the first four faces on the tree of death on my back.
I wasn’t about to add more names to its branches.
It took some maneuvering to finally get ourselves parked in a relatively disguised place. Being so deep in the woods, it wasn’t like we could scout it ahead of time. We had Ranger’s drone passovers, sure, but it wasn’t like seeing it with one’s own eyes. Drone footage only went so far, and never gave details that were important. Like where bushes were to conceal things, or how light penetrated the treetops. What needed to be avoided. What could be utilized. Trees where we could perch. All of that took time and scouting.
We had neither on our side.
My gut screamed at me as we unloaded and made our way to the dilapidated structure. Ranger got to work quickly, rushing to place all of the pinhole microphones and cameras that he brought in his pack. Brutus walked around with him, handing him things and watching him calibrate his tablet. It was our job to case the joint slowly, not only looking for vantage points, but looking for any sort of information that we could take back. Ghost was tasked with taking photographs of anything and everything he laid eyes on. Wrecker was on the lookout in back while Scout was on the lookout near the front corner of the rundown house we had found.
I didn’t understand, though, why so many of their heat signatures would register here.
I mean, there was nothing special about it. It wasn’t technologically advanced. It didn’t have any of their women in it. As I walked around aimlessly, trying to figure out why in the world my gut hated me at that moment, I tried to find why they’d relish this building so deep into the state park. In some ways,with how things were laid out strategically, it was almost like they were trying to keep this location hidden.
I just didn’t know why.
Until…
