But I drew up short as something caught my eye, and I nearly stumbled over an arm half-covered by a bush.
Despite the urgency, I knelt and pushed back the dense undergrowth with my gun. The arm, flung out to the side, belonged to a man. He looked to be in his mid-forties, slim, vaguely Middle Eastern, with a neatly trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard.
But his skin was the ashen gray of death, his eyes open to stare sightlessly at the sky, his expression frozen into one of fear and surprise.
When I moved closer, pushing more of the brush out of my way, I could see why—several bullet holes in his chest had bled profusely. If he hadn’t died instantly from a wound to the heart, he would have died quickly from the loss of blood.
Who was this stranger who had been killed and left to rot under a bush? His clothing looked like he had been expecting to work outside, or at least sleep outside, not tactical but sturdy and well-used. A patch attached to one of the front pockets of his vest read “Oceanic Institute.”
Leaning closer to the patch to read the scrawled words, I caught sight of another foot. This one belonged to a young man, thin and reedy with a shock of red hair beneath a beanie that had gone askew. He’d been shot in the chest, too, as well as the stomach. Further on, I could see a booted foot. The woman it belonged to had tried to run and been gunned down from the back. Face-down in the dirt, I didn’t get to see anything more about her.
All three looked like they had been dead for at least a day, maybe more. A wild animal had already started gnawing on one, and something else—human? Animal?—had rooted through their scattered packs. A quick look revealed no weapons but what looked to be food, computers, and unfamiliar instruments.
Scientists?
I knew instantly that they must have stumbled unwittingly across the terrorists and had paid the ultimate price for it. But what had they been doing here, and why now? Who could I tell, or alert, of their deaths?
Those were questions to which I would probably never have the answer to because I didn’t have time to find out. More rounds of gunfire exploded from ahead of me, echoing through the trees, and I was up and running again. I pushed the dead scientists out of my mind—there was nothing I could do for them now, and stopping the terrorists was the number one priority.
The forest suddenly thinned out, and I was back closer to the shore. I could see the building we’d seen from the coast ahead of me. It was corrugated metal, the kind used by research stations and way stops. The metal showed evidence of the explosion, the small windows in the front blown out.
My chest tightened for a heartbeat, my calm slipping for just a moment—two of my teammates were sprawled on the ground, and they weren’t moving. Instead, blood pooled an ever-growing stain beneath their bodies.
How had the terrorists taken us by surprise like this? Had they seen our boat? Had they been waiting? Had we stumbled on them like the team of dead scientists?
This has instantly gone from a reconnaissance mission to a life-or-death fight.
I heard gunfire to my right. Carter was crouched behind a large boulder. As I watched, he moved up to one knee and popped up over the rock, his gun blazing. Return fire came from behind another rock, and my teammate ducked again.
Creeping swiftly towards him, I waited until I was close enough to let out a sea hawk’s whistling call. Carter’s head snapped in my direction, but it still took him a moment to see me in the foliage that was my cover.
His expression was tense, grim, sweat pouring down his face. I signaled towards the building, and a shake of his head told me that hadn’t been where our attackers had come from.
We both ducked at another round of fire, Carter behind his rock, me behind a dense bush. Carter popped up again, returning the fire, before sinking back down.
I looked back towards the building, trying to get a read on exactly how many people we were facing, but with the landscape, it was impossible. There were too many places to hide, and they all wore black, their faces obscured by masks and goggles. They would look almost like shadows close to the rocks or the brush if they held still enough.
A man in the same black as the others was moving towards the door of the building, the guy behind the other boulder covering him with his sprays of bullets towards Carter. The man kicked at the door, and it flew open. A scream, a woman’s scream, was the answer to the action, and Carter and I both looked at each other, our eyes wide.
Someone was in there, and they were in danger.
Carter gestured towards the building, his hand signs telling me he’d cover me as I went. I tore off, dropping my machine gun and pulling my sidearm from its place on my tactical vest. The quarters would be too close to use it effectively, especially with an unknown civilian in the mix.
No longer under the cover of the trees, sunlight hit my face at the same time I heard Carter’s machinegun fire explode behind me, providing my cover. But two terrorists appeared out of nowhere, guns raised and aimed at to kill. I shot them down, barely breaking my stride. I saw them go down out of the corner of my eye, and I continued on without making sure they were down for good. It wasn’t the most brilliant plan—I should have made sure no one would be coming for my back—but I had no time. I had to rely on Carter to hold them off because I knew I only had a matter of moments. I could hear angry shouts from inside, the language and words unintelligible from this distance and with the noise.
As I reached the building, I heard a gunshot and another scream and prayed I wasn’t too late.
I slammed into the door that had swung shut again, and it flew open. The terrorist whirled around at the noise, releasing a spray of bullets before he was even aware of my direction. I rolled forward and ducked behind a low wall just as more bullets filled the space where he had been. Holes riddled door that was now flapping at an awkward angle.
As my vision adjusted from the brightness of the day to the dim interior, I listened in the silence to the man’s footsteps as he moved closer. We were at a stand-still, him and I. He knew where I was, and I knew where he was, and now it was a game of waiting and advantage and tactics.
Then Carter’s machinegun fire rang through the space again, and I took several deep breaths, waiting for my eyes to adjust fully and the sound of the terrorist’s footsteps to grow closer. Then I grabbed for the fishing pole of dense fiberglass leaning against the wall.
I was the predator, he was the prey, and I was the best hunter I knew.