by T. W. Connor
Which, I had come to realize, was a very real possibility when it came to Henry.
Yeah, he’d lived in this area of Michigan for nearly his entire life. Yes, he definitely knew how to handle the outdoors—and this wasn’t his first adventure with the snow. But when it came to being subtle, and moving in a way that didn’t attract a whole lot of attention, Henry left a lot to be desired. I’d already had to stop him from running right into the open space between the town and the forest, and when he’d looked at me, confused, I’d had to tell him that there were actually people about five hundred feet away that would kill us if they saw us.
That had gotten his attention. I hoped.
Luckily, this patch of bank was heavily forested, so we were able to go from tree to tree down the bank. It gave us a better chance of getting to the bottom without any major mishaps. And there, I knew, we would find the rickety old footbridge that someone had built over the river about one hundred years ago.
It wasn’t in good shape. It definitely wasn’t good for human travel. But it was also the only option we had for crossing to the other side—where Randall and his camp were waiting for us. I still wasn’t sure whether it was actually going to support us, but Marlon and I had decided that we had a better chance of making it across the bridge in one piece than we did if we tried to cross the river itself.
It might look frozen. That didn’t mean the ice was stable enough to support us. And I’d already seen firsthand how easy it was for someone to go through a thin spot—and get sucked into the rapids underneath.
Henry cussed then, and I looked back to see him standing on one foot and shaking the other.
“Problem?” I hissed, annoyed beyond belief at this man.
You’d think he’d never set foot in the wilderness in his life, for all the moaning that was going on. If I didn’t need him, I would have sent him back to town ten times already.
“Twisted my damned ankle,” he moaned, jumping up and down. Then, catching a glimpse of my face and seeming to realize how serious I was about this whole thing, he hobbled down toward me.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m out in the woods a lot but I’m not used to hills. Definitely not used to there being people who’re going to try to shoot me. Guess I’m not dealing with it well.”
I gave him half a smile, and reminded myself again that I was dealing with a civilian here. “They’re only going to try to shoot us if they see us, Henry. As long as we’re in the woods, we’re safe.”
He lifted his eyebrows at me. “And after we’re out of the woods? No pun intended.”
I tipped my head back and forth in a gesture that said I wasn’t completely sure, but hoped for the best. “We’ll deal with that when it comes up. The plan right now is to get down there, make sure the bridge is stable enough to support us, and get over it when we think no one is watching. After that, we regroup and figure out our next steps.”
Henry nodded, and I could see the wheels in his head turning. The questions starting. The doubts coming up.
Dammit.
“I still don’t think Randall would shoot me. Not if he recognizes me,” he said, repeating something he’d told me at least three times.
So I repeated the thing I’d told him three times, as well. “He might not have yesterday, Henry. Today, he knows that you came to town instead of joining him. And if he sees you with me, he won’t have any doubts about whose side you’ve come down on. That will make you his enemy rather than his friend, and that definitely means he’s going to shoot first and ask questions later, if he bothers to ask them at all. Got it?”
I watched Henry’s face fall—for the third time—and felt a little bit bad for him. He’d obviously thought that he and Randall were friends. Or if not friends, at least acquaintances who were on friendly terms. People who didn’t try to shoot each other.
It was hard hearing that someone like that was going to kill you. Hard knowing that you were now on opposite sides of the line. I knew. I’d experienced that myself.
But I’d also learned the next step, and I’d learned it the hard way. Once you were on opposite sides of the line, you had to settle down and do your job. You couldn’t play the “what if” game and wonder whether the other guy would actually shoot at you.
Believe me, he will. If he doesn’t, you have to let it be a happy surprise. Because if you’re expecting him not to shoot, and then he does, you’re dead.
I reached out, grasped Henry’s arm, and gave it a slight shake.
“Don’t worry about it, Henry. You’ve got me. I’m not going to let you get hurt, okay? I need you with me. You’re my partner on this particular mission. My backup.”
His face cleared and took on a stronger expression, and he nodded firmly.
I turned around and kept walking, trying to get down the hill as quickly as possible, and trusting Henry to come down right after me and keep from hurting himself in the process. The poor guy had been a friend of Randall’s and had actually been summoned to the camp we were going to visit, but had refused, not wanting the trouble, and had come to town instead.
He was the reason we’d originally known anything about Randall’s camp at all.
And now I was leading him right back toward the place that he’d tried to avoid.
You might be wondering why the hell I would have chosen someone like him. Someone who didn’t have any military experience and definitely wasn’t going to be the most dependable backup if—or when—I needed it. Marlon would have been the better choice. Hell, Sean Slatten, the police chief, would have been a better choice. Anyone with any sort of real experience with crime or firearms used against people rather than animals you were hunting.
The thing was, Henry O’Connor had been Randall’s friend. They had both lived outside of town, and as such had been part of that peculiar brotherhood that made their living off the land, and depending on each other for things like shelter and partnership. He’d been our first source when it came to Randall, arriving at Town Hall shortly after we did with news that not only had Randall sent a call out to his friends to join him, but was also set up outside of town. With guns. Intent on invasion.
I still didn’t understand how Randall had gotten the word out to all his friends so quickly—particularly when there was no electricity and nearly all small electronics were fried, and therefore nothing like phones or walkie-talkies were working. How the hell had he accessed his network so quickly?
Putting that aside for the moment, I stopped up against one of the trees toward the edge of this bit of woods and motioned for Henry to slow down. We were getting into sparser coverage here, and I wanted to see whether we were at risk for actually being seen. We were about a mile north of where Randall and his men had set up camp, and I was hoping that was enough to keep us safe.
I was, however, also hoping that they weren’t looking in this direction at all. If they weren’t looking at us, there was a whole lot less chance of them noticing us when we crossed the bridge. Because once we were out over that water, we were going to be easily visible. If they started shooting at us, we weren’t going to have much hope of escape.
I put the binocs up to my face and ducked around the tree, crouching down and scanning the horizon. A quick look back in town showed me the car that Marlon was almost inevitably hiding behind—with the man we’d decided was the best sharpshooter in town, who we’d chosen to use one of the sniper rifles we found in Randall’s stash—and I turned my gaze directly across the river from where he was, to Randall’s encampment.
There were still an awful lot of men milling around over there, I saw. More activity than there had been when Henry and I first made our way into the forest. I wasn’t going to take the time to count, but it looked like a whole lot more than sixty men to me, now, and that brought me right to the question I’d been mulling over since the first time we’d observed his camp.
Where the hell had all those men come from? How was he finding them? And the same question went for the weapons.
Something was fishy here. There were definitely details that we didn’t yet know. And that was exactly why Henry and I were on our way into their camp—to try to overhear what they were doing.
Which was also why I had Henry with me. If the worst happened, and they saw us—or captured us—I was hoping like hell that Henry could lean on his relationship with Randall to get us out of that jam.
I didn’t know if it would work. It definitely wasn’t a solid plan. But that just meant, I supposed, that we had to do our absolute best not to get caught.
“It’s time to get to the bridge,” I said, dropping the binocs to my side. I glanced at my watch. “Marlon should be in place by now, with Joe. They’ll have eyes on the camp, and they’ll be giving us cover while we cross. If they see anyone getting ready to shoot, they’ll do their best to distract them.” I turned to Henry and looked him up and down once. “Are you ready?”
Henry didn’t look ready. He looked terrified.
But he nodded quickly. “Ready as I’m ever going to be,” he answered. “Let’s get this done.”
We didn’t try to be subtle. I took one quick glance at the camp through the binoculars—just enough to make sure there wasn’t a lookout on this side of the camp, watching for us—and told Henry to run.
We dashed across the fifty-yard open space between us and the river, slipping and sliding on the slight slope and heading for the bridge a whole lot faster than I had anticipated we would be going. I tried to get a good idea of the bridge’s construction on my way down the slope, but it was difficult when I was not only trying to stay on my own feet but trying to keep Henry on his as well—while worrying that someone in camp was going to see us and start shooting—while hoping that Marlon and Joe were in place and ready to distract anyone who might have seen us. From what I could see, there were more boards missing from the bridge than there were intact, and some of the stabilizers looked like they were rotting. The thing was barely wide enough for one man at a time, and though I couldn’t exactly see it swaying in the wind, it looked like it was anything but solid.
God, I thought, it was going to be a miracle if we managed to get across that thing without either being shot or going down into the river.
We pressed forward, though, our decision already made. It was far too late to turn back now. Or rather, it wasn’t, but that would have defeated the purpose of us exposing ourselves like this in the first place.
When we hit the start of the bridge, we slowed a bit, but not by much. We just didn’t have time to play it safe. I flew across the bridge, trying to jump as lightly as possible over the missing planks, and counting on my momentum to keep me going straight instead of sending me over the side. I could hear Henry banging along behind me and prayed that he was taking as much care with the rickety old structure. I could feel the thing shaking behind us—and cast a quick thought toward whether it was still going to be standing when we tried to come back—and then my feet were suddenly on snow again and I was racing all-out for the forest beyond the clear patch, my heart pounding in my ears, all my senses attuned to the camp in the distance—and the lack of gunfire.
Once we hit the trees, we both slid to a stop on our knees, our chests heaving, our breath hissing through our lips. I held up a hand, and Henry grew as quiet as he could as I listened intently to the sounds of the camp. We were closer, now, though not by much, and I could hear the murmur of men speaking in the distance, along with hammering and sawing.
No guns. No shouts of alarm. No running feet.
“My God, I don’t think they saw us,” I breathed. “I think we actually did it.”
I looked up and met Henry’s eyes, and could see that he was wearing the same expression as me: somewhat shocked and somewhat relieved, but already planning for the next step in our mission. Because we weren’t there, yet. We weren’t even close.
Now we had to get to their camp—and we had to get close enough to hear what the hell they were planning.
6
We were on our feet and moving again within minutes, heading for the camp. Although we were hidden now, courtesy of the forest, it was also midday, and we both knew that we had to get to that camp, listen for however long it took to get some information, and then get back to the warmth and safety of Town Hall before night fell.
Henry and I were both outdoorsmen, but neither of us wanted to get caught outside after darkness fell. I’d never had any wish to freeze to death, and the last couple days—the journey through the wilderness with an injured Angie—had made me even more jumpy than usual at the idea of being trapped outside in the snow at night.
It was also going to take us quite some time to get to the camp, as it was a mile north of the bridge, more or less. And if we got away from the camp—if we weren’t discovered—it was going to take us the same amount of time to get back down here. Unless we were in such a bad way that we decided to risk crossing the river itself. Risking the ice.
I put that on the list of things that I wasn’t going to think about right now and pushed forward, counting on Henry to keep up. The sooner we got to that camp, the sooner we should be able to get some information and get the hell out of there.
As we ran, I started to plan for the next steps. Marlon and I hadn’t come up with anything before Henry and I left town, partially because we didn’t know what the situation was in camp, and partially because we weren’t certain whether Henry and I would make it across the bridge or not. There were other factors, of course, like that I had plenty of specialized training when it came to planning and running missions in short order.
Hell, sometimes I’d run them without even knowing that I was going to have to. I was an expert at making shit up on the fly—and making sure it worked.
But mostly, we hadn’t known what we were going to face once we got to the camp, and a whole lot could change based on what we found. Best case scenario, Randall would still be giving his lecture to the entire group of men. When we’d looked at the camp before we left, we’d seen him still standing in front of his men, screaming at them about who knew what.
If he was still doing that pep talking, it would be the easiest possible thing to get as close as possible, listen for as long as I needed to, and then get the hell out of there.
If he wasn’t, things were going to get a little bit hairier. We were going to have to find someone who was talking about it casually in the camp—maybe updating someone who hadn’t been in on the pep talk, for one reason or another—and find a way to listen to them as they talked to their buddy. I wouldn’t be able to control where anyone else in the camp was, if we did that. I wouldn’t even know what they were doing.
In short, the chances of being discovered while we were busy listening to some random conversation were very, very good. And I didn’t really want to think about what would happen if we were captured.
So I’d just have to hope Randall was still camped out in front of his men, bragging about what they were about to do. Given what I knew about the guy, I thought there was a pretty good chance that he was doing exactly that.
By the time I came to that conclusion, we’d been running for at least ten minutes, and I glanced down at my watch, which I’d set to track our mileage once we got over the bridge. We’d gone three-quarters of a mile already.
We were nearly there.
I skidded to a stop and propped my hands on my knees, breathing heavily. When I felt like I could speak again, I glanced up at Henry. He looked like he was in even worse condition than I was, and I spared a quick thought to appreciate that he must have been working his ass off to keep up with me as we ran through the forest.
Whatever else he was, he wasn’t a quitter. If he had been, I reasoned, he probably wouldn’t have agreed to come with me in the first place.
“How you doing?” I gasped out.
“I think I might have had a heart attack about five minutes ago,” he noted casually. “But I was too busy running to really pay attention to it.”
I grinned at that. I couldn’t help it.
“It couldn’t have been a big one,” I said, “since it didn’t take you down.”
Henry grinned back. “My mama always said I wasn’t a quitter.”
I gave him a brisk nod. “Good. We’re about one-quarter of a mile from the camp, so we need to go more slowly from here on out. I don’t think they’re listening for us—don’t even think they know we’re on the way, honestly—but I don’t want to take the chance of them hearing anything. We need the element of surprise, here.”
“We’re going to hunt them,” Henry noted.
Well I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that about covered it. “Right, exactly. Only we don’t have to worry about the wind. They aren’t going to be able to smell us coming. But hear us and see us, yes. Especially if they have lookouts around the camp.”
“And I’m thinking they’d be foolish not to,” he pointed out. Then he tipped his head. “Then again, Randall has never been the smartest man. Not the one you went to if you needed anything fancy or complicated. I wouldn’t put it past him to have…overlooked that part. Seems to me like he might be thinking he’s too scary for anyone to come after, you know?”
I laughed at the statement. It echoed my opinion of Randall almost exactly, that not smart part. But I hadn’t thought about the fact that he might actually be too arrogant to think that lookouts were a good idea.
I clapped Henry on the shoulder. “That’s exactly why I brought you with me, Henry. You know that sort of thing about him. I would never have thought of it.”
Henry’s face started to glow with pride, and I squeezed his shoulder in thanks.
