Chapter 116
They moved through the dark with the precision of people who knew every sound carried. The game trail followed the creek, and Charlotte kept them in the water where possible, their footsteps masked by the flow over stone. The cold reached through her clothes and settled into her bones.
Her feet had gone beyond numbness into a dull ache that traveled up her calves with each step, but she ignored it.
What mattered was that someone was following their trail with military patience.
The creek narrowed between two rock walls, forcing the trail into a channel barely wide enough for one person.
Her father had pointed it out on maps as a choke point during elk migration.
They climbed the eastern wall using handholds Charlotte found by feel. Loose stones gave way beneath her boots, but they reached a ledge ten feet above the trail where the rock overhung enough to break their outline from below.
“Stay flat,” Charlotte said. “Don’t move unless I tell you to. Keep Jack with you, and keep him quiet.”
She positioned herself at the ledge’s edge where she could see the entrance to the defile.
The folding knife was in her right hand.
Her left braced against the rock, and she waited.
They came twenty minutes later. Two figures moved with the interval of men who understood the patrol formation.
The lead soldier carried a rifle low. The second followed ten yards back, covering the rear.
Charlotte let the first man pass under the ledge.
The second entered the defile, his helmet appearing first, then the shoulders of his plate carrier catching starlight where the rock walls opened above him.
She dropped onto him from the ledge. Her weight drove him forward onto the trail.
The knife went in below the plate carrier where the armor ended, angled upward, and she rode his collapse to the ground with her hand over his mouth.
He thrashed. His rifle discharged into the rock wall, the shot echoing off the stone.
Charlotte held the knife and kept her weight on him until the movement stopped.
The lead soldier turned at the shot. Charlotte saw him pivot, rifle coming up, and move along the gorge wall with nowhere to go that wouldn’t put her in his sight.
He fired. The bullet struck the rock where she had been a second earlier.
She closed the distance in three steps while he worked the rifle’s action, then drove the knife into the gap between his plate carrier and his armpit with both hands.
He staggered backward with the knife still buried in him, and his free hand found Charlotte’s throat.
His grip clamped down with trained strength.
She couldn’t breathe. Black spots bloomed at the edges of her vision.
Her hands found the knife handle and twisted, driving the blade deeper while his grip held, and her pulse hammered in her ears.
His grip faltered. He took one step back, then sat heavily against the rock wall with his breath coming in wet, ragged pulls.
Charlotte stayed on her knees. Her throat burned.
The man died quietly. His head tipped forward, and the defile went still except for the creek and Charlotte’s painful breathing.
She rose, noticing that her hands were shaking.
Blood covered the front of her jacket and forearms. She wiped the knife clean on pine duff and returned it to her pocket.
Mason was still on the ledge, Jack beside him.
“Come down,” Charlotte said. “Carefully.”
He climbed down with Jack following. When he reached the trail, he looked at the two dead men with the measured attention of a child who had already learned that death didn’t change.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” Charlotte said. “My throat’s bruised, but it’ll heal.”
The question in his eyes went unspoken. She searched the bodies with detachment.
The first soldier carried extra ammunition, a water filter, and a radio like the one she’d taken in the meadow.
The second carried something more valuable.
In his pack, beneath rations and a blanket, was a complete uniform.
There was a plate carrier, trousers, a jacket, and boots.
Identification papers were tucked into the jacket’s inner pocket, along with a plastic card with a photograph, a Cyrillic name, and military markings Charlotte recognized from the compound.
The second pack held the same: a spare uniform and identification.
Charlotte held the papers in her hands. The implications fell into place with cold clarity.
They could become the men, or close enough to pass at a distance in the contested country between here and the cabin.
The uniforms fit neither of them, but altered, they might serve.
The identification gave them names, ranks, and a cover story written in a language neither of them spoke fluently, though Mason had been studying it for weeks.
“We can use these,” she said.