Defensive Action

by Jenna Kernan

  But if he did so, he’d be dead. Ryan was sure of that though he did not say so aloud.

  “I told the three who took me that I had hidden it. That’s why they didn’t kill me. They believed I was taking them to recover it.”

  “So your courier might be kidnapped. Or he might have escaped and be okay?”

  Ryan’s face was grim. “Come on. We need to go.”

  Chapter Ten

  Ryan hoped they didn’t have Takashi, that he had escaped or was dead. Either was preferable to capture.

  Ryan hiked at a brisk pace on the descent. Behind him, Haley trotted along, keeping up with him as they tackled the steep trail. In some places this meant scrambling down over boulders. This route was not a beginning hike, as the signage had indicated.

  Ryan glanced through the trees to the lake. He expected the female agents to be traveling with a tracker. The logical drop point would be Pharaoh Lake. From there the retrieval operation would have to hike to the summit to find the missing pair.

  “What’s that?” asked Haley.

  He turned to see her pointing skyward. Ryan didn’t see it yet but the prickling warning caused him to pluck Haley off the exposed rock face and run with her to the cover of the trees some fifteen yards away.

  They reached the thick network of branches just before he heard the familiar thump of the chopper blades. He’d been wrong about the drop point.

  “They’re back.”

  As he watched from beneath the thick leafy canopy, two men fell backward from the open helicopter doors, one on each side. They repelled on cables straight down to the exposed rock surface of the summit. They would find the agents within minutes.

  Ryan calculated the distance they had to travel and how far he could safely continue on the trail before they would need to leave it and bushwhack to make it more difficult for their pursuers to follow them.

  “They’re here for us. Right?” asked Haley.

  “Yes.” He grasped her shoulders and stared down at her beautiful flushed face. “Haley, those two men will be after us in a few minutes. The only way we avoid them is by hiding. I’m going to take us another mile down. Hopefully, get off the mountain. But then we’re going to need to leave the trail. They don’t have dogs so we may be able to elude them.”

  But that would depend on how good those men were at tracking.

  “There’s only two of them. Same as us.”

  He shook his head. “That’s just the vanguard. They’ll have agents spread out throughout the trail, coming from the top and from the bottom.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever know. The intel we collected is Chinese. I’ll try to explain later. Have to go.”

  Ryan knew they had made the right decision reducing his pack to the bare essentials needed for survival. Now he could scramble over rocks when he had to. Haley trailed behind and he paused to wait for her. Her legs were becoming clumsy. She couldn’t keep up this pace much longer. But he had to admire her for sticking with him this long. He could, of course, leave her behind. Should, in fact. But he found the thought brought him physical pain. How had he become so attached to her so quickly?

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had been even vaguely attached to anyone or anything. The supervisor said it was what made him so perfect for these assignments. This apparent detachment from danger. He wasn’t reckless on the job, just fearless. The shrinks said it stemmed from his father’s death. Ryan didn’t know or care. It made him an asset and that was what mattered.

  “Not much farther and we can rest.”

  He led them along to the place where the mountain trail intersected the lake trail. He paused to listen. How far behind them were their pursuers? He didn’t know but the time pressed heavily upon them.

  “Orange trail,” said Haley. “Where does that go?”

  “That’s our trail, but we can’t take it. I have to see if those two are on us. We’ll leave this one at the stream.”

  “Voices,” hissed Haley, hunching and pointing to the lake trail.

  There was no time to run, so Ryan led them from the trail and into the forest of white birch and maple. He sank down at the base of a large oak and pulled Haley down beside him.

  From his position low to the ground he watched two hikers with day packs. One male, one female. The woman was chattering away as they paused at the junction of the yellow and orange trails.

  “Love to summit,” said the young man. “But no time on a day hike.” He was blond with a bushy brown beard and a bandanna tied across his forehead to absorb the sweat. He wore an athletic T-shirt with a plaid flannel shirt tied around his waist. Shorts, woolen socks and well-worn hiking boots finished his outfit.

  “Next trip,” said the small brunette. She looked fit and young, with long tanned legs that stretched beneath short shorts. She adjusted her day pack and looked in the direction that Haley and Ryan had just come. She smiled and lifted a hand to someone Ryan could not see.

  “Hey there,” she called.

  The sound of automatic weapon gunfire caused Haley to gasp and then press both hands over her mouth.

  The two hikers fell back as if knocked to the ground by a strong wind. Ryan could no longer see them but he did see the two men dressed in combat fatigues carrying semiautomatic rifles.

  He glanced at Haley to see her hand still pressed tight over her mouth. Above her clenching fingers her nostrils flared and her eyes went wide with shock.

  Ryan watched as the men crept forward, weapons raised.

  The first said, “One male. One female.”

  The second said, “Yellow. His hair isn’t yellow.”

  What followed was very colorful cursing. “Not them. Keep going.”

  The two men flipped their rifles mechanically to their backs and continued along the ascending summit trail. Their footfalls were heavy as the two men jogged away from this position. The stillness was broken only by the wind moving through the leaves above them. The next sound they heard was the harsh cry of a jay farther down the trail. The men had reached a bird, who called a warning to the forest. A red squirrel rustled the leaves below the maple to their left. Then, spotting them, it scrambled up the trunk and out of sight.

  Ryan shifted so that his mouth was pressed to Haley’s ear.

  “We have to move.”

  She lowered her trembling hand from her mouth. Her words came in frantic little pants as she struggled to breathe past the horror.

  “They thought they were us.”

  Ryan nodded as he sat up and pulled her beneath one arm. Her entire body shook.

  “They just shot them down. Like the men in the cabin and those women. They want to kill us.”

  “Easy to search a dead man.”

  Haley stared toward the two fallen hikers.

  “They were just having a hike. They aren’t even a part of this.”

  Wrong place, wrong time, Ryan thought but said nothing as he rubbed her back in wide circles.

  “Breathe,” he whispered.

  “Should we go and check them? Be sure that they’re...”

  No, he thought. The two females might be behind them.

  But he said, “Yes. I’ll check.”

  And he did, but not for the reason she thought.

  “Will they just shoot anyone they meet?” Haley’s voice now held a note of indignation. “Just kill them because they happen to be on the same trail where we might be?”

  She looked away from him and stood up. He was certain she could now see at least some part of the two bodies on the trail. He watched as her hands curled into fists.

  “This isn’t right. Before I was just trying to survive. But now I want those two killers caught and punished. I want to get that information to our government.”

  Ryan saw the determination in her stance and t
he white in her knuckles. Haley was no longer afraid. Now she was furious. She turned to him, eyes flashing. He thought he’d never seen a more stirring sight.

  “Let’s go,” she said, chin high and gaze cold as cut crystal. “We have to find your friend and get that flash drive.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ryan nodded and stood. Haley was no longer running for her life. Now she was running to help him complete his mission. It was something he could never have predicted from the shy, timid little female who rescued him from the road.

  But she did look both determined and fierce, not at all the female he had met only a day ago.

  “Wait here.” He left her to move from cover to the trail. There, he checked the two, finding them both dead. Then he released the knot from the shirt tied about the man’s hips and dragged the garment from the corpse. By the time he’d returned to her, he had shed his blanket poncho and shrugged into the flannel. This would make him far less memorable to anyone who might see them. Then he shouldered his pack and consulted his compass, picking his direction, aiming for the stream he knew ran in the direction of Lake George and the town of Graphite.

  They moved swiftly and as quietly as possible, reaching the stream in less than two miles. From there it was only a matter of scrambling along the bank, keeping parallel to the shore until they reached an improved, graded dirt road. Ryan chose not to move from cover but to remain in the woods. He kept the road in sight and the going was slower. When a chopper swept low over the trees, he knew he’d made the right call.

  “Same one?” she asked.

  He paused to glance upward. “Yes.”

  Ryan handed her the water bottle and she drank thirstily. He took a few swallows and then tucked the nearly empty bottle into the pack. A fenced gravel pit was the first sign of civilization. There were no structures within the fencing, so he continued on. They made their way around an occupied cabin, judging from the curl of wood smoke. They passed a double-wide trailer surrounded by yard ornaments and hummingbird feeders buzzing with the jewel-colored creatures.

  Haley was stumbling along now, past exhausted. Her fury had ebbed and now she rocked wearily on her feet like a prize fighter whose body has not yet realized it has been knocked out.

  Dusk stole the colors from the day. Ryan knew that soon he’d have to make a decision on a place to bed down.

  With the sun now well behind the ridgeline, Ryan risked moving to the road. Helicopters did not often fly at night and unless they had thermal imaging, he and Haley would be invisible in the darkness.

  He slowed his pace again as Haley’s tread grew more clumsy. She needed rest and he needed to find a place where they could sleep in safety. The opportunity came three-quarters of a mile down the road.

  There he found a ranch-style home. Behind the drawn curtains, the front window glowed with the flickering blue light of a large television. Beside the house in the wide drive were a collection of vehicles. There was a pickup truck, an older-model Dodge Caravan and a small economy car. Beside this and off the drive was a trailer holding a small motorboat that was draped with a fitted blue vinyl cover. Beside that was a Coachmen travel trailer.

  It was the sort of RV that one hauls with a pickup truck. He judged it to be about twenty-one feet in length and exceedingly easy to break into.

  “Wait here.”

  She clutched his arm. “Why?”

  “I just need to scout the area and be certain that we can get out of here if we need to.”

  Haley waited with his pack as he circled the house. He found no evidence of a dog. From the back deck, he had a clear view through the kitchen window into the living room at the front of the small house. There were two people, middle-aged, one male and one female, sitting in overstuffed chairs watching the television with faces slack and eyes vacant. The bedrooms were all illuminated so he guessed there might be two teenagers in the house. This was only a guess from the age of the couple and the number of autos the family had collected, and the lights. He circled the garage and found that it overflowed with a collection of both useful and discarded household gear. Behind the garage was a shed and beyond was a wide yard that dipped down to the stream. Past that, the forest stood dark against the rising moon.

  He returned to Haley and together they made it to the camper. As it turned out, he didn’t even have to break in because the door was unlocked.

  Haley quietly mounted the stairs and then stopped on the linoleum just inside before the dinette and kitchen area. He dropped his pack at the top of the stairs and opened the blinds on the opposite side of the camper, above the combo sink and stove. Moonlight filtered into the space, showing a living area with sleeper sofa and lounge chairs in the forward section.

  In the opposite direction, the trailer narrowed to a corridor leading to what he assumed would be a cramped bathroom and a bedroom beyond.

  “Are we staying here?” she asked.

  “Yes. I’ll fix us some supper and then we can rest for a few hours. We need to be up and out before they are,” he said, thumbing toward the house.

  “What if they come out here?”

  He shook his head. “They won’t. They’re in for the night. No reason to come out here unless they see a light or hear something.”

  Ryan moved to open the kitchen window and then the one on the opposite side. The fresh air filtered through the trailer, gradually removing the stale odor within.

  Instead of using his supplies, he checked the camper cabinets and found no food but a completely stocked kitchen including dishes, pots, pans, utensils and several cans of Sterno. So he used a borrowed pot and Sterno to cook a double serving of beef Stroganoff. They sat side by side at the narrow dinette shoveling the food into their mouths. He felt the lift of the food reaching his stomach and the sustenance surging into his body, giving it energy.

  They ate from a single pot. Afterward they tried the dehydrated ice cream, which he found crunchy and weird.

  “Sticks to my teeth,” she said. “But it’s sweet.”

  He nodded.

  “Ryan, is this normal for you?”

  “What?”

  “Running from helicopters, watching people killed right in front of you?”

  “Every operation is different.”

  “Do you like this work?”

  “It’s important.”

  She went quiet, thinking, he supposed. Finally, she asked, “What prepares you for this? What I mean is, what did you do before you were a spy?”

  “Operative.”

  “Hmm?”

  “We’re called operatives or agents. Not spies. I was a soldier,” he said. “Marines. The Company recruited me from there. I’m good at blending in.”

  “Do you have a wife or girlfriend?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Hmm,” she said, thoughtful again. “What about family?”

  “Aunts, uncles, cousins. My mom and dad died when I was young.”

  She shifted in the seat so she faced him. “How young?”

  He watched her as he spoke. “Twelve.”

  She flinched. “What happened? An accident?”

  “No. They were older when they had me. Mom was forty-three and dad was forty-eight when I was born. My dad was diagnosed with liver cancer when he turned sixty. It was everywhere by the time he had symptoms. My mom died eleven days after he did. Undiagnosed heart condition, they said. Worn out taking care of my dad. That’s what my aunt Deanna said.”

  Haley said nothing for a time, just watched him with her shimmering pale eyes. The silence growing heavy, pressing down on him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last.

  He said nothing to this.

  “Who took care of you? Afterward, I mean.”

  “My father’s younger sister. That’s what was in his will. My grandfather was appointed to handle the money becaus
e my dad didn’t trust his sister not to spend it on her kids. She had eight. But then Gramps was dead before my parents so that didn’t work out as planned. There was nothing left for school so I joined up. Best move I ever made.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “Because it gave me a purpose.”

  “What purpose?”

  “To protect this country.”

  “Is that why you do this?”

  His nod was mechanical. She narrowed her eyes on him as if she did not quite buy what he was selling. How had she sensed the half-truth?

  His stomach squeezed and his breath grew shallow. He lifted his chin against the challenge in her gaze. “Hey, I like a challenge. I’ve hiked Everest. I’ve surfed in New Zealand. I’ve jumped out of airplanes more times than I can remember and I’ve swum with hammerhead sharks in Australia.”

  “You seem like you’re tempting fate.”

  “Just letting her know I’m not afraid.”

  “Hmm,” she said again. “I try to avoid unnecessary risks.”

  “Seems like you avoid the necessary ones, as well.”

  “Better than being so cavalier with your life.”

  He shrugged. “If you say so.”

  Her voice took on a defensive edge. “It would kill my parents if anything happened to me.”

  “Not living is maybe worse than dying, Haley.”

  “I’m living.”

  “Really. Living in your sister’s apartment. Hiding from people and experiences.” He shook his head. “Be honest, can you really say your life is what you want it to be?”

  “Currently, no.”

  “Will you go back to your old life after what we’ve been through?” he asked.

  “Just as fast as I can. If I live through this, I plan to lie to my parents and tell them that I had a wonderful time at adventure camp.”

  “You have a boyfriend?”

  “We were talking about you.”

  “Were we?”

  “I asked if you had a wife or girlfriend and you said, ‘Not anymore.’ Were you married?”

  “Almost. I was engaged when I joined the service. Katie was pretty, smart, too smart to wait around for me.”