“The latter—” Gunner broke off, reaching for his ear with his right hand.
“What?”
“Hush.”
Chas fell silent and heard the faintest of sound coming from Gunner’s earpiece. Someone was speaking on the radio frequency Gunner was monitoring.
“Gotta go,” Gunner bit out.
“What’s happening?”
“Spence and Dray have company. They need me to help out.”
“Where are they?”
“In the woods above the motel. They’ve got five tangoes moving around behind the building, and there are only two of them. Spence and Dray can’t keep track of all of them alone.”
“The bad guys are already here?” Chas asked in dismay. Without having to be told, he stomped into his running shoes and quickly laced them up.
“You can stay here. The tangoes appear to be running reconnaissance right now.”
Chas squawked, “You want me to stay here by myself with bad guys closing in on me?”
“On you and Poppy,” Gunner said dryly.
“It’s a doll. I’ll be all alone. I waited for you under that desk for two hours that first night in Misty Falls, and it was a goddamned nightmare. I can’t do that again.”
“The only other option is to come out in the woods with me, and you don’t know anything about operating in stealth and darkness. I don’t even have a pair of NODs for you. You’d be blind out there.”
“I can hang on to your belt,” he said desperately. “Please don’t leave me in here. I’m a sitting duck.”
Gunner huffed. “I can take you out into the woods and find you a hidey-hole. You’d have to hunker down there and would still have to sit and wait it out. But you wouldn’t be in here.”
“I’ll take it,” Chas declared.
Gunner rummaged in one of his two big duffel bags. “Put this on.” He held out a black floppy hat with a wavy brim.
Chas jammed it on his head and then stood still while Gunner striped his face with a stick of camo grease that looked like a black version of children’s glue sticks.
“Put on a coat. You’ll get cold sitting still at night,” Gunner ordered.
Chas shrugged into a thick zip-up hoodie and threw his jacket over it as Gunner pulled down a microphone boom in front of his mouth and murmured into it.
“Okay. Spencer and Drago know the plan. They advise that we should go out the back way.”
“The back way?”
“The window. And bring the doll.”
Right. They had to pretend they had Poppy with them if this ruse was going to work. Chas tucked Poppy 2.0 into his coat and nodded gamely at Gunner that he was ready to roll.
It was exciting to be included in a SEAL operation, but it was also scary as hell. Breathing too fast, he followed Gunner into the bathroom and waited for him to climb out the window. Honestly, Chas was impressed at how easily Gunner maneuvered his big body and all his gear out that narrow opening. It was almost as if he’d practiced doing that a time or ten.
Gunner’s gloved hand came into view and waved for him to come out.
Chas climbed onto the toilet seat and then onto the nightstand. While he was pondering head first or feet first, Gunner whispered, “Head first. I’ll catch you.”
That solved that. Chas grabbed the edge of the windowsill and pushed his torso through the opening. Big, familiar hands grasped his shoulders from below, and Gunner whispered, “Kick your feet over your head. You’ll do a flip and land on your feet facing outward.”
Trusting Gunner to keep him from killing himself in the move, Chas threw his feet over his head. He landed in a crouch, startled at how easy it had been. The big shadow that was Gunner moved around in front of him and breathed into his ear on the way past, “Grab my belt. I’ll go slow. Try not to make much noise.”
They moved off into the bushes and brambles. How Gunner found his way through them, Chas had no idea. But for the most part, they moved unimpeded into the woods, always going steadily uphill. Gunner led them at an angle more fully behind the main structure of the motel. As Chas’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw that the undergrowth thinned out as they moved higher up the slope. Gunner was absolutely silent. Chas never heard him take a step, never even heard him breathing.
As for himself, Chas winced every time he shuffled through a patch of dry leaves or exhaled hard. The noises sounded twice as loud as normal in the utter silence. And to think, at least seven other men were creeping around out here too. And some of them meant to kill him.
The more he thought about it, the scarier it got. The sense of this being a giant game wore off and the cold, hard danger of being hunted like prey settled in his gut like a lump of lead. He hated violence in all forms. He’d spent too much of his life being a target of it and watching people he cared about be affected by it.
He hated that Gunner was out here at risk, and he hated that Gunner had to be prepared to do violence to protect him and Poppy.
Eventually, Gunner stopped beside a big, jagged boulder. He pointed to Chas and then to the indentation at the base of the massive rock. That space didn’t look very big, and the boulder looked in danger of tumbling forward and crushing anyone beneath it. Frowning, Chas crouched and crawled under the overhang.
“Get comfortable,” Gunner breathed as he spread some sort of cloth over him. “You’ll be here a while.”
Chas reached up to drag the edge of the cloth aside, leaving him a slit to peer through. Otherwise he would get claustrophobic for sure. Gunner scooped up handfuls of twigs and leaves that he sprinkled over the cloth. He stood back, made a few adjustments, and flashed Chas a quick thumbs-up.
And then he was gone, as silent as the night that settled around Chas.
GUNNER HATED leaving Chas, but he had no choice. His teammates needed him. Apparently Spencer and Drago had spotted five tangoes but thought there might be a sixth one out here somewhere.
The hostiles had parked down the road a couple hundred yards in two SUVs and had fanned out from there. Drago had visual on two guys sitting across the road from the motel, one using some sort of sniper rig. Two more had circled around behind the motel and were more or less together. Spencer was tracking them. The fifth one had headed for the top of the ridge Gunner was currently about two-thirds of the way up. His job was to get eyes on number five and check out a possible sixth tango. Easy peasy.
Except the hillside in this area ended with a nearly vertical stone face about twenty feet tall, with the top of the ridgeline above that. He had to make a dicey free climb on loose, unstable rock without making any noise. He stowed his short-barreled urban assault weapon across his back and commenced the climb.
He was perhaps four feet from the flat summit when he heard movement above his head. He froze, clinging precariously to the cliff face by his fingertips and his left foot. His right knee was bent by his hip as he froze in the middle of reaching for another foothold.
Whoever was creeping around above him was doing so stealthily, moving with exaggerated care. But the guy wasn’t rolling from heel to toe, which was resulting in leaves crunching and the occasional scuffing noise. Not Special Forces trained, then.
Gunner’s left leg was trembling with fatigue before he felt safe enough to pull himself up the rest of the way onto the ridgeline, lying flat on his stomach. He gazed around cautiously. Off to his right, he saw faint movement. That would be the guy who’d walked past.