Chapter 4
768 Words
4
Hal made a quick scan of the yard as he laughed at her joke. Their arrival had gone by unobserved, which was good as they were still snarled together and he couldn’t draw so much as a penknife. Her humor after so dangerous a flight helped steady him as he worked to free himself and pack his chute. And their brief entanglement that had forced him into contact with a number of parts of Petty Officer Mann’s body—for which he apologized—he couldn’t regret for an instant. Despite flight gear, harness, and a small field pack, it had been impossible to avoid the body he’d sat only inches from for the last twenty-seven hours.
Every curve that he’d so appreciated watching, he now knew was backed up by muscle in the best way possible.
She’d also proven to have a sharp intellect and hadn’t panicked during the scariest jump he had ever been on. Now it was time to see if her skills played out in the field. He certainly hoped so, because they were in the deep end now. For one, he hadn’t planned on landing inside the compound itself—if this was the right one. The houses were crowded close together here up against the city walls, the big homes of the wealthy and powerful. Here they were close enough to the country to still have ties and traditions there, like the farm animals in the courtyard.
After untangling himself, Hal was only seconds ahead of Mann on stuffing away his chute, and assembling his HK416 rifle and scope. By unspoken consent they swept the compound from opposite directions. The scopes interfaced with their NVGs and showed no guards, which was odd.
Actually, maybe it wasn’t. After the pounding they’d taken in the storm, it seemed mild here on the ground by comparison. By any other standards though it was an awful night—a mush of sleet and freezing rain thick enough to haze the main house and the guard’s quarters only a hundred feet away.
His scan also proved that they were in the right place. A pre-storm drone’s surveillance had matched the layout which he had memorized during planning.
Inspection complete, he chopped a hand toward the guard’s quarters where a dim light showed in the window. They’d all be huddled inside, out of the storm, probably coming out only for hourly patrols.
Hal checked his watch, oh-two-fourteen. If the guards had any common sense, none of them would be any emerging for another forty-six minutes. A single light in one of the windows showed that someone was still awake.
He was ten feet from the door when it swung open.
Crap! Fifteen-minute patrols. Oh-two-fifteen. Oh-two-thirty.
Maintaining his sprint, he drove his shoulder straight into the man’s gut. With a grunt he collapsed back into the room with Hal on top of him. He brought the stock of his rifle sharply up against the man’s chin who then collapsed into unconsciousness. Since the guard had stepped from the lit room into the darkness, his vision had been compromised. He wouldn’t be able to report anything of what or who had hit him.
Hal crouched, tense and alert.
A single lamp. A half dozen chairs. A table with a book set face down on its surface. A door to the right and another to the left. A deafening drum roll of rain drove against the tin roof in sharp gusts.
There was a brush against his shoulder, just enough contact to tell him Teresa was rushing by him on the right side.
Hal rolled back to his feet and eased up to the left-hand door. Teresa turned off the light and the room plunged back into night-vision green.
Poised at the doors, they both pulled out dart guns.
At a shared nod they rolled through the doors simultaneously.
Hal was standing in a tiny barren room with a circular hole in the floor and a brass pot of water for rinsing one’s left hand and flushing any waste down the hole. He could see the warmth of a recent handprint on the rim of the bowl and a distinct heat by the hole in the floor. He was in a typical mid-Eastern toilet.
By the time he’d re-crossed the main room and reached the other door, Teresa was already retrieving the four darts that had knocked out the other guards.
“Got the bathroom, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
She pointed at the two doors and said, “No immediate outbuilding equals inside toilet. You won by…” then her grin turned wicked, “…process of elimination.”
He groaned.
She held up a hand and when he responded in kind she high-fived it with enthusiasm.
Absolutely his kind of woman.
- Writer
