Chapter 108
They had been navigating the ridgelines for five days when the terrain shifted beneath them.
The maps called the new area the Eastern Plateau, a vast and gentle expanse where the trees thinned, allowing sightlines to stretch for miles in every direction.
Charlotte rode with binoculars in one hand, the familiar weight of her Walkman headphones resting around her neck.
A Russian-language tape played on a loop, its sounds curling into her muscle memory.
Mason, ever the curious learner, had embraced the language tapes with the innocent fascination of a child finding solace in puzzles.
Whenever Charlotte wasn’t using the headphones, he would put them on and softly repeat phrases to himself, his voice barely rising above the sound of Jack trotting alongside the gelding.
Watching him, she felt a tightness in her chest, a bittersweet tug at the sight of a child’s resilience outshining the challenges of the world around him.
On the sixth day, they crested a low rise east of a junction labeled on the map as a checkpoint.
The plateau opened before them in the soft light of late morning, and when Charlotte peered through her binoculars, the sight made her lower them and instinctively reach for Mason’s reins, her heart heavy with what lay ahead.
“Down,” she said. “Now.”
They dismounted on the sheltered side of the rise. Charlotte guided the horses into a shallow depression where the tall grass helped conceal their presence. Mason dropped to a crouch beside her, with Jack pressed against his leg and a hand covering the dog’s muzzle.
The patrol was a mile to the south, moving along the gravel road that bordered the plateau’s southern edge.
It wasn’t a reconnaissance team. It was a column consisting of two armored vehicles modified from civilian truck frames, three motorcycles, and a troop carrier that had once been a school bus.
There were at least twenty men, possibly thirty.
They moved with the relaxed vigilance characteristic of an occupying force rather than the tense alertness typical of an advancing unit.
Charlotte observed them through her binoculars.
They wore plate carriers and carried rifles, all dressed in the same dull green uniforms she’d seen on the dead men in the meadow and at Claudia’s farm.
“We go north,” she whispered. “Behind this ridge, then cut west through the draw the map shows. We’ll be visible for about two hundred yards crossing the open ground, but if we time it between their scouts…”
Charlotte led the horses along the reverse slope of the rise, using the terrain’s folds for cover.
The draw appeared ahead, offering concealment for most of its length except for a brief exposed section where the walls flattened and the grass grew short.
They reached the exposed section as the patrol’s lead motorcycle crested a rise to the south.
Charlotte pressed herself and the mare into the scant cover of a rock outcrop while Mason did the same with the gelding ten yards behind her.
The rider’s gaze swept across their position, and Charlotte held her breath.
The mare stood still, and Mason had gone perfectly motionless.
They crossed the exposed section at a walk that felt endless.
By the time they reached the draw’s western bend, where the walls steepened and offered real cover, Charlotte’s shirt beneath the hazmat suit was soaked, and her hands had begun to tremble.
The draw carried them west for another mile before the terrain forced a decision. The channel ended at a rocky slope that descended toward a creek, bare rock with no cover, and a clear sight line from the plateau’s southern edge.
“We’ll stay here until dark,” Charlotte said. “Then we can cross the slope at night and pick up the trail on the other side.”
Mason nodded and scanned the draw’s walls for a place to secure the horses. They found a recess in the draw’s northern wall where the rock overhung enough to break their outline from above. Charlotte positioned the horses in the deepest section with their bodies blocking the narrow entrance.
As night gradually enveloped the landscape, Charlotte found herself leaning against a rock, her eyes fixed on the southern horizon.
There, the patrol’s vehicles had become mere distant points along the road.
Beside her, Mason slept uneasily, cradling Jack against his chest. In the stillness of the night, he murmured fragments of Russian from the language tapes, his dreams weaving into the quiet air.
Charlotte, however, couldn’t find rest. A heavy weight settled in the silence, and she held a knife across her lap, her thoughts racing as she focused on the southern approach and the rocky slope they would need to cross at first light.
The Walkman’s batteries had given out hours earlier, leaving her with only her thoughts for company.
As dawn began to paint the sky in soft hues of light, Charlotte gently touched Mason’s shoulder, hoping to ease him awake.
They moved quietly, preparing to depart in the early light.
Charlotte saddled the horses by touch, feeling a sense of responsibility for their safety, while Mason packed their camp with a calm efficiency that spoke of his determination.
Just as they were mounting, an unsettling sound reached them, not from the south where the patrol had been, but from the west. The low, menacing growl of engines.
In that moment, Charlotte’s heart sank, and she froze, instinctively aware of the danger that loomed closer.
She raised the binoculars. The rocky slope they had planned to cross was visible in the predawn, and what she saw made her lower the glasses and reach for Mason’s arm.
Vehicles were positioned at the base of the slope where the trail resumed, and men moved between them.
One figure stood apart near the lead vehicle.
He was speaking into a radio and gesturing toward the draw where Charlotte and Mason hid.
Charlotte knew in an instant that they had been found, or they were about to be.
The difference hardly mattered. The patrol was searching, and the draw offered nowhere to run that wouldn’t be within sight from multiple angles once the sun fully rose.
Charlotte looked at Mason. His face was pale in the gray light, but his eyes met hers.