Page 112 of Duty Preserved

We left the truck a kilometer out and covered the rest on foot. The terrain was flat scrubland broken by scattered acacia. Good concealment on the approach. Bad for extraction if things went sideways.

We settled into a position fifty meters out and watched.

Three buildings. Two were lit from inside, shadows moving behind the glass. The third sat apart from the other two, smaller, its windows dark. Two guards posted on it, one at the front door and one at the back.

Three vehicles parked between the buildings. Men moved between the two lit structures. Two more walked a loose patrol around the perimeter, rifles slung, talking to each other but keeping their eyes on the tree line.

“I’ve got at least a dozen,” Andrew whispered.

“Look at the guards on the dark building. They’re facing inboard.”

“Why would you face guards inward?”

“Prison guards face inboard.”

We watched. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Then the door of the nearest lit building opened, and a man walked out carrying a single plate. He crossed the gap between the buildings, opened the door of the dark one, went inside. Came back out a minute later without the plate. The guard didn’t move. The man went back the way he’d come.

Andrew looked at me. “So what’s the play? We start dropping them from here? Concealed positions, pick them off before they know what’s happening?”

“And someone inside puts a bullet in her head the second the first shot cracks.”

He was quiet.

“We have to get in close somehow and get Sarah out without a firefight,” I said.

“Through a dozen men.”

“Around them. Maybe through some of them.” I looked at the guards on the shack and the two men patrolling.

He didn’t argue. We both knew the other option was worse.

The plan required quiet, so we’d have to use blades. We each slung our rifles tightly to our backs and drew our bush knives.

It took twenty minutes to time the patrol’s loop. They were lazy, following the same path, pausing at the same corners. Andrew and I crept forward to a thicker stand of brush along their route and waited for them to come around again.

We lay in wait on opposite sides of their path in the thick grass. As they came closer, they stopped for their usual break at this spot. Andrew and I seized the moment. Each one of us took a guard. Hand over mouth, blade into the artery on the neck.

We laid them down and hid their bodies in the grass where we had been hidden.

Two down. The compound didn’t react.

We circled south together, keeping the dark building between us and the front guard’s sightline. The back guard was leaning against the wall, rifle across his chest, playing a game on his phone. The light from the screen had destroyed whatever natural night vision his eyes had, and it let us approach quickly and quietly almost straight on.

The knife did the rest.

Three down.

“Playing with your phone while on guard duty?” Andrew whispered. “Maybe these guys aren’t as high-speed as we thought.”

“Complacency kills.”

I edged along the back wall and peered through a gap in the window covering. Dark inside, but enough light bled through the curtain to make out shapes. A figure on the floor, hunched forward, hands in front. Small frame.

Sarah!

I turned to Andrew and gave him the okay signal. He nodded.

The back window was hinged at the top, propped open a few inches for air. Andrew braced himself against the wall and laced his fingers together. I stepped into his hands, and he boosted me up. I caught the window frame, eased it open, and pulled myself through. Andrew handed my rifle up after me so it wouldn’t clatter on the way in.