Xavier had set up this training from beginning to end, selecting the lodge, planning the obstacles, even going so far as to undermine Audrey’s job to make it happen. Everything that went down in these woods was his fault.
A noise caught his attention. Barely discernible above the pounding rain, he’d heard a click—a mechanical sound unnatural in these woods. He grabbed Audrey’s hand and dropped, pulling her down with him. In the same moment, he pulled his flashlight—he didn’t dare use the gun in case it was a friendly—and directed the full white beam in the direction of the noise, uphill from them.
He caught a man wearing night vision goggles. The light would trigger the NVGs to bloom out—blanking the screen, giving Xavier a temporary advantage.
Xavier’s uniform had matte black infrared markers that glowed brightly through NVGs. Meant to signal friendlies with the SEALs, but in this situation, they would also identify him to the enemy. Lacking his own goggles, he didn’t know if this man was a SEAL or one of the unknown enemies.
The bullet that whizzed by answered that question. The rifle—probably another AK-47—had a suppressor, but Xavier caught the supersonic crack as it passed his head. Without a suppressor, it would have carried through the forest, alerting everyone with the distinctive sound of an AK.
No SEAL would take that shot before his night vision returned. And no SEAL would shoot upon seeing the friendly IR markers. Not to mention that the team didn’t have AKs with suppressors.
They’d walked right into the path of a tango.
“Stay flat on the ground,” he told Audrey as he flashed the light again, this time on strobe to disorient the sonofabitch. Then he took his own shot, wasting a precious bullet.
The loud bang echoed in the woods, audible above the rain.
He took her hand and pulled her downslope, crawling across the muddy ground. After they moved several feet, he fired another shot. Two bullets down. He couldn’t afford to shoot again unless a tango was directly in his sights.
Again, he pulled her downslope, away from the tango and now there was a thick patch of woods with several large trees between them. The shots hadn’t been wasted; they’d served the purpose of providing cover so they could put distance between themselves and the tango.
With his mouth next to Audrey’s ear, he whispered, “We need to get out of here. Without NVGs, we’re screwed. They’ve got night vision and assault rifles. We need to find a safe place to hole up.”
“The blacksmith shop?”
“Too close. We need to leave the lodge complex. Maybe go to a campground or, better yet, a cabin.”
They crawled along, the rain covering the sound of their progress as they burrowed through the woods.
“The Jamison place,” Audrey said. “It’s on the lake, a few cabins over from the yurt. We’ll have to go back to the trail that runs behind the command center.”
He knew the cabin she was talking about. It was a good choice, with thick log walls. Bulletproof. They could break into the cabin, and he could tuck her safely away while he figured out what to do next.