Heather was resting flat on the ground, right behind her father. “Couldn’t I have a gun, Dad?” she whispered to him.
“Sorry, kitten.”
“Dad!”
“Sorry, honey. Forgot about calling you ‘kitten.’ Just stay there and keep quiet. If things go wrong, head out back and keep running.”
“They aim to chill us, Dad?”
“You saw what they did to the chopper. Not too friendly.”
The first noise was a single snapping round from Nanci Simms. The echo from the rifle rolled around them.
It was followed by a yelping gasp, and the clatter of someone falling down.
“One less, Jim,” she called.
He thought he glimpsed someone moving out of the corner of his vision, but he couldn’t be certain. The desert at night was eternally silent yet filled with an infinity of tiny sounds.
The voice seemed to come from about three hundred yards ahead of him. Immediately Jim checked behind to make sure it wasn’t a trick to distract them. But there was nothing there.
“Yo, the camp! You hear us?”
“Don’t say anything, Jim,” hissed Nanci.
“I know that,” he retorted, angry that she thought he could be that stupid.
“We don’t mean no harm. Only that the chopper was after us. We haven’t done anything to justify that kind of retaliation.”
Whoever he was, the man out in the blackness was well educated, with a pleasant, convincing kind of a voice.
“Hello! Hello in there!”
The reply came from just to the left, behind Jim Hilton, making him jump.
“Hello!”
Steve Romero was quickest to react. “Sly. Keep your mouth shut.”
“Man was friendly, Dad.” The voice was soft, gentle and puzzled.
“Yeah, son. But he’s not really a friend. Trying to trick us. Don’t say a word. How do we keep our lips when we want to be quiet?”
“Huh?”
“When we keep quiet, our lips have to be… be what, Sly?”
A chuckle of delight. “Oh, yeah. Like a great big zipper.”
“Good.” Steve turned toward Jim. “Sorry ’bout that, Skipper.”
“No problem.”
“Nice one of you showed some manners. If he wants to come out here, then we’ll guarantee his safety. Rest of you keep your silence, and we can’t make any promises.”
Jim kept checking behind him. There was just enough filtered moonlight for him to notice Nanci Simms doing the same.
“Losing patience. You saw what happened to the Chinook. Likely to find yourselves going down under a triple-red code.” Anger flared in the voice. “We got the men and the firepower to wipe you out without a trace.”
Sly spoke very quietly to himself. “Gee, Dad was sure right. Man isn’t friendly. The painted smile’s gone.”
For over half an hour there was no more talk and no sign of life out in the raven black desert. Then the voice made one last effort. The anger had been carefully smoothed over, so that it was almost gone.
“Captain Hilton. Jim. We know who’s there. Know about your mission. General Zelig’s sent us to get you and Marcey Cording and the rest of you and bring you to safety.”
Marcey Cortling had been second in command of the Aquila and had been decapitated in the landing crash. It was odd that the invisible speaker knew so much and yet so little.
Out of cautious habit, Jim Hilton glanced behind him again, toward the township.
He saw half a dozen shadowy figures creeping toward him, less than twenty feet away.
Chapter Six
Two months earlier Jim Hilton would certainly have hesitated for a fraction of a second, with his mind blurred by the sanctity of human life. Something to preserve, not destroy.
But that was then.
This was now.
The wide-spurred hammer clicked back, falling on the full-metal-jacket round.
The gun kicked, barrel seeking the sky. But Jim was braced and ready, wrist strong. Beyond the flash of the muzzle, he saw one of the figures go tumbling out of sight, as if someone had pulled a rug out under its feet.
There was no need to shout a warning to the others in his group. The boom of the GPF-555 Ruger was enough to alert them to the sneak attack.
Heather screamed and Sly jumped up, waving his arms as if he were being attacked by a swarm of vicious mosquitoes.