Jonas “Smoke” Harper, Dr. Kyle Forbes and Jeff Hollister, three of the genetically and psychically enhanced members of GhostWalker Team One, continued along the nearly nonexistent game trail they’d been traveling for the past three hours.
“You still getting that bad feeling in your gut, Jonas?” Jeff asked.
Jonas scanned the dense forest with narrowed eyes, maintaining his purposefully relaxed gait while keeping his hand close to his weapon. “Yep.”
Kyle sighed. “You sure it isn’t just a stitch in your side?”
“Yep.”
“You did notice that the higher we climb, the more bear scat we’re coming across,” Jeff said.
“Yep.”
“Just thought I’d point that out.” A small grin lit Jeff’s face.
“I’m not sure he actually knows how to talk, Jeff,” Kyle said. “Ryland did warn us. Said if we volunteered to come with him, we’d hear nothing but grunts for days.”
“Wait.” Smile fading, Jeff halted abruptly and glared at his companions. “You volunteered? Ryland ordered me to come with you two. Said I had to protect your asses.”
Jonas and Kyle stopped as well, and Jonas took the opportunity to study Jeff without appearing to do so. It had been a couple of years since Jeff had recovered from a stroke that would have put any normal soldier out of commission for good. Jeff had fought his way back.
Jeff, like men in the government’s GhostWalker program, wasn’t anyone’s definition of a normal soldier anymore. They were, instead, the products of a military experiment that hadn’t quite gone off as expected. They had gone into the program volunteering for psychic enhancement with the expectation of being of more use to their country, but along with removing filters in their brains, Dr. Peter Whitney had also performed experimental gene coding on them. That part, they had not signed up for.
Worse, the first of Whitney’s gene coding experiments had been illegally performed on young orphan girls, with disastrous results. Those initial failures hadn’t stopped Whitney though. Instead, he’d forged ahead with similar gene modifications on the soldiers, believing that grown men could better handle the pressures of the enhancements than the female children had. Team One had lost several of the men in their unit and Jeff had suffered a brain bleed and stroke. He was fully recovered, but the entire team tended to watch over him, Jonas especially.
The survivors of Whitney’s experiments were all admittedly stronger, and they now possessed some very incredible abilities, but those benefits had come at a steep price. They were all continuing to learn just how steep that price could be. Lily Whitney-Miller, Peter Whitney’s adopted daughter, now married to their team leader, Captain Ryland Miller, had given them all exercises to do to strengthen the barricades in their minds. That allowed the ones who had been wide open to be able to be in public without an “anchor”—one who drew emotion and psychic overload from them—at least for short periods of time.
Jeff looked good to Jonas, but still, he glanced at Kyle just to make certain. Kyle would be better at making an assessment. If the doc thought Jeff needed a break, he’d find an excuse to take one. Jeff never shirked the physical therapy designed to strengthen the weaker side of his body or the mental exercises to strengthen the barriers in his brain. He stayed in therapy the brain surgeon recommended to ensure the psychic talents he used didn’t bring on another bleed. He was one of the hardest-working GhostWalkers Jonas knew—and that was saying a lot.
Their unit, GhostWalker Team One, was tight. They looked out for one another. They trusted few others, and those they brought in, they did so slowly and carefully. Years ago, their team had been set up for murder, separated and held in cages, essentially waiting to die. Ryland had planned their escape and Lily had hid them at her estate until they could get to the bottom of the conspiracy against them. In the end, they had managed to come out on top, thanks in no small part to their dedication to training hard and working together. They still ran missions, but they trusted and depended only on one another.
Now, there were three other GhostWalker teams. Whitney had used each team to perfect his technique so that each subsequent unit was able to handle their enhancements much better than the team before them. But he’d also added more and more genetic coding, turning the soldiers into much more than they ever expected—or wanted—to be.
There was a special place in hell reserved for sociopathic monsters like Peter Whitney—or if there wasn’t, there ought to be. Jonas wouldn’t mind bringing a little—or maybe a lot—of that hell to Whitney in the here and now, especially as more and more of his most diabolical experiments, all on orphaned girls, came to light. Unfortunately, as evil as he was, Whitney had a solid network of connections among America’s most powerful, including high-ranking government officials, billionaire defense contractors and bankers, as well as his own private army of expendable super-soldiers, all of them would-be GhostWalkers who hadn’t made the official cut. Between his connections and his army, Whitney was virtually untouchable.
Jonas sighed as his gaze swept the surrounding forest. He used every enhanced sense he had, both animal and human. They were being watched. He had been aware of it for the last few miles but hadn’t been able to identify exactly where the threat was coming from—or whom. Or rather, from what. He was certain their observers were not human.
“You feel it?” Kyle asked him quietly, turning toward him.
“Yep.”
Jeff heaved an exaggerated sigh. “You ever think a word now and again might be helpful?”
“Not certain what it is yet.”
Jeff shoved a hand through his perpetually sun-bleached hair. “It? Not a who. An it?” When Jonas didn’t answer, Jeff rolled his eyes. “Why did I agree to keep the two of you alive? You’re both a pain in the ass.” He began walking again, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other. “Do we even know where we’re going?”
“Nope.” Jonas hid his grin. Annoying Jeff was one of his favorite pastimes, and when the tension was beginning to stretch out, like now, a little humor went a long way. In spite of his amusement, he stayed on full alert, looking for the sentries watching them.
He was fully aware Ryland hadn’t sent Jeff. Jeff had come with him, like Kyle, because they were his friends and they hadn’t wanted him to check out his strange feeling alone. It had been that simple. Friendship. The feeling, at first, had been a vague calling to him. For the last mile, along with that compulsion he felt, he now felt uneasy as if there was a threat, but he couldn’t place where it was coming from.
Night was falling. In the forest, especially this deep in the interior, it was always a good thing to establish a camp before sunset. Too many wild animals hunted after dark. He could connect with them and, if he was lucky, keep them away, but it was silly to take chances. The trees were thick, the brush heavy. The trail they were on was very narrow. Tree frogs were abundant, staring at them with round eyes as they passed. In the vegetation at their feet was the constant rustle of leaves as rodents rushed to get undercover.
“We should find a place to camp for the night. Build a fire.”
“I tried to send word back to the others,” Kyle said. “But I’m not getting through. Could be the density of the canopy, but I should be able to … ” He trailed off.