Cover Of Night

Still, when shooting started, anything could happen, and Cate was over there.

He had two choices: slip by the three on watch, locate their vehicles, take care of the three who would probably be there resting, and go for help; or take out all six, one by one, make it look as if they’d turned on each other, and then go for help. He could do it; he could set that scene with no problem at all. He really liked that idea a lot. He didn’t want a single one of these bastards getting out alive.

Generally he was an easygoing guy, but you didn’t want to piss him off. Right now, he was pissed off, big time.

He kept an eye on his watch. The shift changes wouldn’t be at dumb-ass times like nine am and nine pm; they would be straight-up-and-down times like noon and midnight, or six am and six pm. If he didn’t see any movement at six pm, that meant each shooter had been on watch since noon and was tired, but would be on duty for another six. A smart tactician would have staggered them, had one position swapping out at noon and midnight and the other swapping on the sixes, so one was always fresh while the other was tiring, but most people went for simplicity – and predictability. It boggled the mind.

At six pm, all was quiet. He didn’t detect any activity.

Too bad. If a fresh shift had come on at six, he’d have waited until midnight, let them get tired, and they would all have lived a little longer.

As silent as a snake, each movement slow and deliberate, Cal crawled higher on the mountain, above where he’d marked the shooting locations, and began a meticulous grid search, looking for the first shooter. Cal had taken care to disguise his silhouette, with the olive drab blanket draped around him. He’d cut strips off the blanket and tied them around his hands and fingers, both for warmth and to keep him from leaving any telltale fingerprints on anything. Another strip was tied around his head, and small branches and leaves were stuck under the strip. When he was still, the naked eve would pass right over him.

Time passed and he didn’t see anything. He began to wonder if either he’d mistaken the location or they’d moved around; if the latter, he might well be screwed and someone was drawing a bead on his head right now. But his head remained unexploded, and he continued his painfully slow crawl, looking for something, anything, that would betray the shooter’s position.

There was a faint glint of metal about fifteen feet ahead and to the right, then a tiny green glow that immediately winked out. The stupid asshole had lit up his watch to check the time. Dumb. You didn’t wear a watch that had to be backlit; you wore one with luminous hands and covered the face with a peel-back flap. The devil was truly in the details, and that little detail had just betrayed the shooter. Otherwise it was a good position; the guy was prone, which made a more stable platform for shooting, and he had good cover in the rocks. His head didn’t stick up above the rocks, which was why Cal hadn’t spotted him before.

The guy was totally focused on a slow, continuous sweep with the scope, even after all these hours. He didn’t sense Cal’s nearness, even when Cal was just a whisper away. He died without even knowing Death had come calling, his spinal cord snapped at C-2.

It was a difficult maneuver to perfect. It required skill, technique, and a lot of strength. Another obstacle to mastery was that not many people were stupid enough to let you practice on them. For that reason, it was often practiced in real-time situations, where a mistake could be costly.

The guy just went limp, the stink telling Cal he was dead, though the audible snap had been proof enough for him. He patted the body until he found the hunting knife on the man’s belt, which he’d known would be there. He drew the knife and inspected it as much as he could. It would do. He slipped the knife inside his belt and hoped to hell he didn’t accidentally stick himself, then quietly heaved the guy up and over the rocks, as if he’d slipped. It happened. Too bad.

He picked up the man’s rifle and put it to his shoulder, his eye to the scope as he scanned the mountainside, looking for the bright glow of thermal signatures. Aha. The next position was a hundred yards away and somewhat lower, for flatter, more accurate shooting. Farther still, about where he judged the bridge to be, was another flare of light. That was it. Three, just as he’d thought. He scanned higher and lower, making certain. Nothing, except for some small animals and a couple of deer.

The rifle was a fine piece of work; it felt like magic in his hands, the balance perfect. Regretfully, he held it over the rocks and let it join the guy who had owned it. Now it really did look like an accident, as if the guy had stood up to take a piss, tripped, and went headlong down the rocks, taking his rifle with him.

Silently, he began stalking the next shooter.

Goss could feel it all going to hell. He sat in the tent playing Texas hold ’em with Teague and his cousin, Troy Gunnell, but his mind wasn’t on the game and he was losing regularly.

Toxtel was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. After telling the old guy what they wanted, they had heard… nothing. Not a peep out of them. You couldn’t negotiate with people who wouldn’t talk. They hadn’t seen any movement over there lately, either, but Goss knew damn good and well they were moving around behind those fortifications they’d thrown up. They had somehow retrieved their dead. Teague had said they’d either drenched themselves with icy water or somehow mounted some kind of rolling barricade they could hide behind, which sounded like something out of a movie about a medieval war, so Goss went with the simplest explanation: water.

Teague was so proud of those fucking scopes, and they could be fooled by cold water. Great.

Teague was sort of losing it, too. He looked like hell, and he was popping ibuprofen as if they were candy. But he was functioning, and except for being obsessed with this guy Creed, he made sense when he talked. His three pals didn’t seem to notice anything funny about him, so maybe it was only that he was still dealing with the effects of a concussion. Having been there himself just a week ago, Goss could sympathize.