Page 88 of Duty Preserved

They moved. Every man there started gearing up from what they had with them, checking weapons, checking magazines, slinging radios and spare batteries without a wasted motion. The drills, the obstacle course, the ruck marches—all of it led to this.

Sarah had the vehicle keys in her hand. Her samples were already secured for transport. Tracking armed men in the dark wasn’t her work, and neither of us needed to say so.

She stood by the truck with her bag on the seat behind her.

I crossed to her.

“Drive straight back,” I said. “Radio me when you’re in.”

She nodded.

I kissed her. Her hand found the front of my shirt, fingers closing on the fabric.

“Be careful,” she said.

She searched my face for something. I didn’t know if she found it.

“You too. Straight back.” She nodded and I stepped back.

She climbed into the truck. The engine turned over. She pulled out onto the track. The dust rose behind her, and I stood there watching until the vehicle disappeared behind the first stand of acacias.

Then I turned back to the men.

Zayn was at the front, his eyes already on the ground where the tracks led away from the carcass. Baraka was at the rear. The others filled the gaps between, weapons ready and determination in their eyes.

“Gentlemen, my patience for these hunters is running out about as fast as our daylight. Let’s go find them.”

Chapter 24

Donovan

Zayn moved fifteen meters ahead of me, his tactical flashlight filtered down to a tight red beam that barely reached the ground in front of his boots. The rangers called them torches.

The rangers spread out behind Zayn in the staggered formation we’d drilled into them over weeks of training. Andrew fell in beside me near the middle of the column. The pace was slower than any of us wanted it to be, but Zayn was reading spoor in near-darkness and rushing him could cost us the trail.

He’d picked up the group’s tracks at the carcass site itself. The tracks were clear enough to follow. Wherever there was topsoil, he followed the indentations of boot prints. Where the ground cover thickened, Zayn read the brush instead. He followed the flattened grass and snapped branches.

The last of the afternoon light had gone fast. It always did this close to the equator. Within the hour, we were moving through a darkness cut only by starlight, enough to see the man in front of you and not much else. The only thing guiding us was the thin red sweep of Zayn’s filtered torch on the ground ahead.

Sarah had called when she’d gotten back to camp. She hadn’t run into any trouble, and camp was clear. A slight weight lifted off my chest at hearing her voice. Now my mind could fully focus on the mission.

The bush was alive around us. Things moved in the grass that I could hear and couldn’t see. One of the rangers flinched hard when something large crashed through the brush to our left, the sound of it explosive in the silence. I watched him lock up, watched his rifle come around toward the noise. Then he caught himself. We all steadied ourselves and kept moving.

“You know who we remind me of right now?” Andrew said, low and dry at my shoulder.

“Who do we remind you of?”

“Captain John Parker’s militia on Lexington Green. April 1775. A bunch of farmers who’d never fired a shot in anger, standing in the dark waiting for a column of British regulars who might or might not be coming down the road. Half of them weren’t sure they wanted to be there. The other half weren’t sure the British were real.” He paused. “Do you want to know what the real plot twist was?”

“Sure.”

“The British were real.”

A couple of the rangers close enough to hear him laughed quietly. I felt myself grin in the dark. The humor definitely eased some of the tension we were all feeling.

We continued on for another half hour before Zayn killed his light and froze. The rest of the column halted immediately, and everyone took a knee. The rustle of our movement died out.

In the silence, I heard what Zayn already had. Voices. Ahead and to the right. Low and casual. The nighttime carried voices much farther than most people realized.