Three dispersed hunters are converging from the north, working downhill toward the bunker.The pair from the southeast is tighter, moving together.
The helicopter is still circling.The sound changing when it swings around, running a search pattern.
The navigation lights flash through gaps in the canopy each time it passes overhead.
If they have thermal imaging, we’re lit up like campfires.
Nothing I can do about that.
But thermal doesn’t tell you who is on the ground, and right now that confusion might work in our favor.
I leave the app running.For the moment, whoever’s monitoring the field and the players probably thinks I’m the guy I took out.
Slipping it into my pocket, I settle into the scope and start glassing the terrain below.
“One of the hunters should be entering my field of view within minutes.If he held his course,” I tell her, so I don’t startle Jade when I fire.
There’s no doubt she knows what I’m doing.Also knows I’m wearing a dead man’s shirt.
There’s no way she will want me when this is done.She’ll know exactly what I am and what I’m capable of.
That digs in, claws attacking my stomach.For a second, I let myself look at her.
Huddled in the darkness, bravely looking into the forest.I want nothing more than to keep her.
Forever.
But to do that I have to save her first.
I settle my breathing.Slow the heart rate.Let the scope become an extension of my eye the way it has hundreds of times on deployments.
Two minutes pass.Maybe three.
Movement flickers in the trees at the bottom of the slope, about two hundred yards out.
There’s a shape working between the trunks, moving with the careful stop-and-start pattern of someone hunting.Or evading.
Medium build.He’s got a rifle in his hands.A darkened headlamp on his forehead.
He’s smart enough to not use the light.Not smart enough to check his high ground.Course, he’s not expecting to be hunted.
I track him for three more steps, let him clear a tree so I’ve got an open lane, and put the crosshairs on his chest.
Clear shot.
I exhale half a breath and squeeze.
The rifle kicks against my shoulder.The suppressor takes most of the report, but it’s still loud enough to send birds scattering from the canopy above us.
Through the scope I watch him fold.Clean hit, center mass.He drops behind a fern and doesn’t move.
Two hunters down.Four left.Plus Trevor, Vesuvius, and the men who grabbed us at the wreck, which I think are the same men who were around the staging area.
Jade’s staring at the spot where the man went down, her face unreadable in the dark.
“You okay?” I ask, but it’s a stupid question.She’s in a live-action nightmare.
“Good.”
