Mac did. It would be like navigating through a green sandstorm. He wouldn’t be able to see farther than a few feet in front of him. Well, he’d made it through real sandstorms, this wouldn’t be worse.
The only way to solve this thing was to reach Norton. Get him to call his men back. Or they would be under attack all night. Helpless to fight back. That was the part he hated. He didn’t like being a sitting duck in someone’s shooting range.
He looked at the spot the shooter was coming from. Looked at the tree the man had shot. Well, the least he could do was scare the bastard out of there, he thought. He slung his rifle across his back, leaped up and dove behind the tree. Another shot rang out.
Got you bastard, he thought. He jumped as high as he could, grabbed a branch and pulled himself up and onto the branch. He scrambled up the tree a bit farther, as far as the branches looked sturdy enough to hold his weight.
The shooter fired again. Mac ignored him. He was either a bad shot, or he didn’t really want to hit him. Probably a bad shot, but Mac wasn’t going to take chances. He propped his Remington along a branch. He sunk into the moment. All the time in the world, he thought.
He hadn’t been the sniper on his team. But he was a decent shooter. Just not as good as Danny had been. He winced. Danny was dead. And he had died here in the States for a man’s ambition and lust for power. He let it go. Let everything go. And then he saw a flash off the shooter’s gun as he shifted slightly. He smiled grimly, eased the tension on the trigger and fired.
He fired again. Don’t hit the bastard, he chanted to himself. Just panic him and get him out of there. He took a third shot. Damn, that was a bit close, he thought. Oops.
And then there was the sound of a man crashing through the undergrowth. Mac took another shot in the direction of the noise for good measure.
And then he slid down the tree. “OK,” he said. He found the bullets in the pack, reloaded. “Hope to God there’s just the one. Let’s get you guys out of here.”
“Why didn’t we try that?” one of the men demanded.
Mark snorted. “Because I’m not good enough of a shot to come close,” he said. “And you couldn’t climb the tree to start with. Just because he made it look easy? It wasn’t.”
The man mumbled something, but the other three men ignored him.
Mark had made a makeshift crutch for the guy with the leg wound. With some assistance they’d get back, he thought. Mark seemed to be sensible enough.
He looked at Angie. She smiled. “You’re going to leave me behind, aren’t you,” she said wistfully.
He considered it. No doubt he could make better time without her, although she’d been a real trooper. But his heart about stopped when he thought of all the things that could happen to her if he wasn’t around.
“Your call, babe,” he said finally.
Her eyes widened and she grinned. “Really? Then I’m going,” she said. “I want to be there when you take that bastard Norton down.”
“Yeah, still haven’t gotten that part figured out,” he admitted. “Kinda winging it here. What do you think? The straight-as-the-crow-flies route or the backtrack-to-the-trail route?”
She looked up at the sun, and glanced at her watch. “We’ve got about two hours of daylight,” she said. “And then it’s going to get dark, really dark and really fast. Remember last night? So, it’s not about distance, it’s about speed.”
Mac nodded. “Mark, take the pack with you,” he ordered. “Tell Rand and Ken where we went. OK? Rand and Ken.” These guys would also know, but nothing he could do about that.
Mark nodded, with a quick glance at his team. He didn’t trust anyone either. Good.
“You’re going to find Cleve,” Mac continued. “Make a mental note of where he is, because someone will have to come after him later. No way to pack him out now.”
Mark nodded again. “Which way are you going?” he asked.
“Speed,” Mac said. “We’re going straight there.” And he hoped to God he could trust Mark’s intel. And that Mark wouldn’t set them up or call Norton and sell them out. Or any of the myriad of ways things could go wrong when he couldn’t trust his allies and he couldn’t shoot his enemies.
Chapter 22
They were moving rapidly, as fast as the undergrowth would let them. Angie was navigating; Mac was on guard. He thought she was getting really good at this. She followed an animal trail for a ways that allowed them to make a bit better time, and seemed to know when it was time to strike off of it again. Mac trusted her to get them there. His job was to get them there in one piece. He was looking, searching for sign of Norton’s men, and didn’t see any. Didn’t know quite what that meant. Surely Norton would have a perimeter guard around his base camp? Surely?
Of course, there was no guarantee that they were actually headed to Norton’s base, he thought grimly, although he thought Mark’s reasoning was sound. In fact, that was probably why Sensei had moved Ken Bryson deeper in. He knew how to set up a camp and had the staff and equipment to do it. Norton got to use the old camp as his base.
But what was Sensei’s end game here? A war game? Maybe. But Janet’s observations kept coming back to him. Norton challenging Sensei? Or, Sensei seeing that day coming was using this to take out Norton — or at least set him back. Was Sensei using him as his weapon to do that? He rather thought he might be. And he wasn’t anyone’s weapon, not anymore.
Angie stopped. It was getting dark. She studied the map
