Page 32 of Knot Guilty

His eyes don’t stop moving, jumping from one victim to another. We’re about to lose him. Keeping my voice calm and my movements slow, I step in front of the sergeant. “Avara, listen to me. I swear we will get these men home, but I need you to stay focused on the living for right now. We still have four people missing. Tell me who I’m looking for.”

The rattled sergeant stammers through a list of names, then shuts down completely. I motion Zach to step in close, and he leans a shoulder against Avara for support. “Zach, I want you to stay here and help Avara and his team. We’ve got to press on and find the others.”

“Sure, Sadie,” he responds with a nod.

Zach steers Avara back through the tunnel, and the rest of us proceed toward two additional openings in the rear of this room. The lights strung along the ceiling go through the access on the right, which likely means anything to be found will be located through there. Still, I won’t take anything for granted. I want to find out what else this cave has been hiding. “Maxen, you and Brock go right. I want to see what’s hidden to the left.”

The two set off, and I activate the light on my helmet since I’ll have to crawl on all fours to make it through the child-sized opening. Confident with Aaron guarding my six, I drop to my knees and get moving.

The squatty tunnel is about seven feet long and, at the end, opens into a bedroom-sized area. I sweep my light over the small cavern but have a little trouble processing what I see.

Aaron grips my calf from behind when I stop. “What is it?”

“It’s guns.”

I crawl the rest of the way into the cavern and stand, joined shortly by Aaron. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he says.

At the first raid location, the guns were packaged securely in wooden crates. Though clean and appearing to be in good working condition, these are scattered all over the ground. It looks like someone dumped them out and took the crates.

Aaron picks up a rifle and inspects it as well as he can in the limited light. “I can’t find anything wrong with it.”

He tosses the M-16 back onto the pile and walks around the space, thinking out loud. “They took the crates but left the guns.”

“A quick getaway,” I muse. “They had something more valuable than the rifles. The crates would make moving whatever it was easier.”

“The cash?”

I shrug my shoulders and kick a discarded gun. “Has to be.”

Aaron drops down and begins crawling back the way we came. I follow close behind and emerge, finding a somber group of soldiers tending to the dead in the middle cavern. As I get to my feet, Brock jogs out of the path he and Maxen took.

“We found the other four. There’s no rear entrance.”

Avara approaches, anger painting harsh lines on his forehead. “What the hell happened? From where I stand, it looks like my team was set up by dirty treasury agents who were killed when our guys fought back.”

Brock is adamant. “None of us can explain what went down, but I know for sure that didn’t happen. The two civilians in the next room were… executed.” He means tortured.

Needing to refocus everyone, I ask, “What else have you found?”

Brock answers, “The cash is gone. No guns were found, but the next room is huge. We haven’t checked everything yet.”

“We found the guns abandoned in the other path. Have you noticed any place where someone or several someones could hide well enough to keep Bash from finding them?”

“Not yet, but we haven’t made it all the way to the back.”

I nod absently, deep in thought over how these bastards avoided detection by Chelsea and Bastien. They wouldn’t have just accepted that the Army did a thorough job securing the cave. “There has to be something. Get back to Maxen and keep looking.”

To Avara, I say, “I need you to move fast to get your men out. Those bastards will come back for their guns, and I don’t want to be here when they do. Have one of the choppers take as many bodies as possible and tell Shindand to launch a replacement.”

I glance at Aaron and gesture toward the second, larger tunnel entrance. The two of us will help Maxen and Brock check every inch of that last cave so our group can get the hell out of here.

Aaron and I have just reached the mouth of the tunnel when Maxen’s panicked voice echoes through the passage, “Brock! Get down!”

A fraction of a second later, a single gunshot rings out. The sound reverberates off the walls and shakes me to my core. Please, God. No. Aaron and I take off running, led by Maxen’s enraged screams. Several more shots are fired, this time from a familiar gun, and then all noise ceases.

Fifty or so feet inside the cavernous room, I spot Brock lying on the ground, bleeding from a wound in his neck. Abandoning all else, I rush to his side, falling to my knees, and press my hand against the wound. “Hold on, Brock! Aaron, go find a medic!”

“I got the shooter,” Maxen yells as he runs over. “How is he?”

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