She took a deep breath and dashed out of the forest, heading toward the parking lot. She kept close to the front of the guesthouse, moving low so she might not be visible from the windows. She heard the device clanking in Malin’s backpack behind her. As she ran, she rested a hand on the Beretta holstered at her side, in case she suddenly had to draw and fire.
She felt terribly exposed, as if a thousand snipers had trained their rifles on her from dark places. It made her skin crawl, but it also helped her push through the pain. When she reached the veranda, she stayed close to the handrail. The windows on either side of the front door were tall, and she saw a hint of the dim lobby on the other side. Nobody seemed to be moving inside.
Good job, Spence and Mac, she thought. You did it, boys.
Her world had always seemed so small, but right now the damned guesthouse seemed to go on for a thousand miles. She hugged the wall as she reached the far corner, moving below the sill of the guestroom windows. Then she passed the winery, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder as she went. Malin had pulled the pack off his shoulder, and he was fumbling around inside. Finally, he retrieved the repeater, holding it in his right hand while slinging the backpack over his left shoulder again.
As they reached the fence beyond the winery building, Elna heard another burst of gunfire. It sounded like it might be coming from somewhere down by the lighthouse. She hoped not, but she couldn’t be sure. Still in terrible pain, she slipped through an old gap cut into the chain-link fence and moved up the open, rocky slope at the center of the island. The hilltop was little more than an enormous hump of gray rock rising above the trees. Unfortunately, they couldn’t reach the actual peak. The slope got too steep at a certain point.
“How high do we need to go?” Malin asked.
“Just out into the open, I suppose,” she said. “Above the trees. That’ll have to do.”
She walked another ten yards or so, picking her way up the slope, before finally dropping down onto the warm rocks. There was a crevice in the ground nearby with a small overhanging ledge to provide some cover from bad weather. Elna pointed it out, and Malin dropped down beside her and set the device there, sliding it back under the ledge. As he did that, Elna reached down and flipped the power switch. It was still such a strange thrill to see the little power light come on.
How did we ever take such small miracles for granted? she wondered.
She half expected the repeater to say something or do something, but it just sat there. She reached into the backpack and pulled out the two-way radio, turning it on.
“Let’s see if that worked,” she said, raising the radio to her mouth. She hit the talk button and said, “Hey there, Staff Sergeant. Can you hear me? The repeater is in place and activated. Do you have a signal?”
She released the button and waited for a response. There was a brief moment of static, then silence. She tried again.
“Hey, Prig, we’re here. The repeater is on. Come back.”
Still no response. She felt a moment of panic and glanced at Malin.
“Maybe the shielding on the bunker is blocking the radio,” he suggested with a shrug.
She tried the radio a third time, still to no avail. No one responded. Other than brief flashes of static, she got nothing in return. She even tried turning the radio on and off again.
“Well, let me double-check the device to make sure it’s working,” Malin said. “I guess we just leave it here and hope for the best.”
He bent over the small black box, examining it closely, as Elna slid the radio into the front pocket of her denim shirt. She was watching him check that the antenna was firmly socketed when she heard the sound of a single footstep on the rocks behind her. She froze, holding her breath, hoping she’d imagined it. Then the voice spoke, low and angry.
“No sudden movements,” he said. He had some kind of accent that she couldn’t identify. “Turn around very slowly. Reach for those guns and I’ll kill you both.”
Elna raised her hands above her head and slowly turned around. Somehow, the mercenary had snuck up on them while they were fiddling with the repeater. He stood just a few feet away, an AK-47 trained on them. The mercenary was dressed all in black, with a tactical vest, heavy boots, and a black-brimmed hat cocked at an angle on his head. He had a long, lean face with a prominent nose and big blue eyes. He looked young, his face still speckled with acne, but Elna recognized the bottomless gaze of a killer when she saw it.
“Hey, man, we’re not your enemies here,” Malin said, holding his hands up. “We’re just civilians caught in the middle of something that has nothing to do with us.”
Elna rose, trying not to startle the young merc. She didn’t want to be on the ground if things went south. Not that she could do much with a rifle trained on her.
“You guys can do whatever you want,” she said. “We just run the winery down there. We don’t want any trouble.”
“Oh yeah?” the mercenary replied, thrusting his prominent jaw out. “Are you the people who set off the bomb in the cellar? They said there might be civilians working with the Marines.”
“That wasn’t us,” Elna said. “We heard an explosion, but we were just trying to get out of the way of whatever’s going on.”
“Well, you two are coming
