Page 11 of Holiday Hostage
We topped a small hill, and I stopped to consider our possible next steps.
The woods were thicker here, the overlapping branches keeping most of the snow in their heavy limbs.
They creaked and groaned, waiting for the perfect moment to dump a payload of snow on our heads.
Maverick and Reed stopped on either side of me, the two of them waiting for my assessment.
“Is it me, or does it look like there might be an old structure over there?”
I pointed in the general direction where a slope looked different from the rest of our surroundings.
Reed squinted. “Hard to say.”
“We should leave the snowmobiles. Sound carries so far out here, we risk them hearing us. No one else would be outhere, and if they’re any good at their jobs, they’ll be listening for anything out of the ordinary.” Maverick swung off his snowmobile and pocketed the keys. “We’ll check that area first.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for more tracks.” The ones we’d been following continued in a straight line toward the area that concerned me, but there was a good chance there were more, or they’d changed direction.
The three of us slipped into stealth mode with the kind of ease that reminded me of all we’d lost.
We hadn’t lost each other, and that was all that mattered.
My low crouch forced me to walk in a sweeping motion that we’d all learned with the Rangers.
Upper body still, weapon at the ready.
Our feet and legs took all the pressure of movement.
I drove myself forward, moving among the trees with my gaze set on the unobtrusive anomaly that had triggered my suspicious brain.
Maverick remained on my left, Reed on my right.
They stayed half a step behind me, providing cover while allowing me to scan for tracks.
There were no deviations, and the tight feeling in my chest expanded.
A voice carried on the breeze, and we all froze. “I don’t give a flying fuck about your asshole. You’ll do the job or I’ll throw you off a fucking mountain and no one will find your body.”
The disembodied voice had a mean edge to it, one that implied the threat should be heeded.
I cocked my head toward the sound and dropped into my belly.
Slithering through the snow sucked, but it gave us an advantage as we made our way up another hill and paused.
“Shit.” Maverick hissed the curse and fisted his hands in the snow. “Fucking mercenaries.”
I examined the sloped hill and the men standing in front of the single door tucked into a rocky hillside.
They’d walked back and forth in front of the door long enough to pack the snow into dirty lines that crisscrossed the area.
“Looks like an old fort.” Reed put a pair of binoculars to his eyes and panned left to right. “I see four guys in the back. Might be another door back there. Five guys in the front. All heavily armed. Can’t tell much about the inside of the structure, but it’s built into the rock. Could be a hundred rooms inside.”
“If it’s an old fort, it should follow the typical layout, but we can’t risk Payton’s life on a guess. We need to get inside, quickly and quietly.”
I took my time working through possibilities while cupping my binoculars around my eyes.
The men we were up against wore weapons like a porcupine did quills.
Every one of them held an assault rifle, wore two pistols on their hips, and probably had more weapons hiding in their clothes.
