Top Secret Target

by Dana Mentink

  She glanced at the reporter. No visible weapon. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t carrying a gun in her small pack. Keeping Jenks in her line of sight as best she could, she scooped water into the small bowl from her pack and carried it to a flat spot under a thick canopy of trees. The ground was wet but she managed to find some relatively dry twigs. Removing the faro fire starter from her pack, she knelt and began to rub the striker against the block, a trick Ethan had tried to explain during their drive back to Baylor after leaving Baby with Mindy.

  A spark dropped into the tinder, eliciting a wisp of smoke. Elated, she blew gently on the pile, but instead of igniting a flame she promptly extinguished it. She slapped a hand to her thigh.

  “A little rusty?” Jenks said.

  “Everything’s too wet,” she muttered.

  “I’ll see if I can find something drier.”

  Kendra stared. “You’re helping?”

  “Yeah, ’cuz you’re going to share the water with me, right?”

  Mutual cooperation, or an excuse to stay close? Kendra kept at the fire starter until her hands were cramped. The stiff breeze left over from the storm both chilled and frustrated her.

  Jenks returned. “Nothing much drier than what you’ve got.”

  Kendra fastened a hand on Jenks’s notebook. “I need that tape.”

  “What?”

  “The tape that’s holding your book together. Let’s have it.”

  “But I—”

  “You want the water or not?”

  Jenks reluctantly peeled away the tape and handed it over. Kendra made a loose ball of it and nestled it on top of the tinder. This time, the spark caught the tape and sent up a respectable flame that ignited the tinder. Fire. Awesome.

  Jenks nodded. “I have to admit, I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

  The fire boiled the water and after it cooled, Kendra filled both their bottles. Never had she appreciated clean water more.

  “Thank you,” Jenks said. She checked her phone. “Uh-oh. I have to go.”

  “Where?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You think you’re the only one with a duty here?”

  “What’s your duty exactly?”

  “Sniffing out a story, just like I said. I have great instincts and something tells me you’ve got newsworthy written all over you.”

  “I’m just a soldier trying to get through training.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Somehow, I doubt that.” A few drops of rain began to fall. “Oh, boy. Another storm. Looks like you’re in for long night.”

  Kendra shrugged. “I’ve had plenty of long nights.”

  The shadows shifted, painting Jenks’s face in eerie stripes of light and dark. “Some nights are longer than others.”

  Was that a threat? A promise of trouble to come?

  Jenks opened her pack and Kendra bolted to her feet. No sense reaching for her weapon as they were not allowed to use live ammo.

  She calmed down when Jenks merely stowed the water bottle in her pack and fastened it closed.

  The reporter wasted no time. She shouldered the pack and went on her way. “Hope the morning comes quickly.”

  Kendra waited until Jenks vanished into the trees before she struck out into the woods. The more tree trunks between her and Jenks the better. Wind rattled the leaves, teased prickles on her skin, but it dampened the heat of the day. She kept within earshot of the river to maintain her sense of direction.

  As she hiked the clammy ground she thought she heard someone behind her. She stopped and turned. No one. A few yards off a bird shot from the bushes, startled by something. Ethan and Titus were out there somewhere but for the moment, Kendra was totally and completely alone.

  Unless there was someone in the shadows, watching and waiting for their moment to strike.

  * * *

  Kendra followed the river and Ethan and Titus trailed her. There was no imminent danger, yet his instincts were poking him like a kid with a sharp stick as he trailed her.Sullivan was at large; he’d murdered a marine not fifteen miles from here. And now Jenks was cozying up?

  Titus managed the hike with his typical enthusiasm, finally flopping down in the shade to rest while Ethan boiled water for both of them when Heidi and Kendra stopped to rest. They’d been hiking for a few hours. Technically, they were not allowed cell phones, but since this wasn’t official training for him, he’d taken it along. Unfortunately, the farther he delved into the woods, the worse his signal became. Anticipating the problem, he’d strapped on the trusty Timex he’d bought when he delivered pizza as a sixteen-year-old kid to track the time. The thing had seen him through two deployments, not to mention the adventure when he’d tumbled off a mountain bike back home. It was almost five o’clock. His stomach grumbled. Food was the last item on the agenda. A person could live for weeks without anything to eat, but drinking was another matter entirely.

  The canopy of branches squeezed out the light, stripping away the warmth. A branch caught his ankle and he tumbled down a steep incline, the breath driven out of him. Titus looked down from the ridge as if to say, “What did you do that for?” He wagged his tail and barked.

  Muttering, Ethan climbed laboriously out. “You could have come and helped,” he grumbled to Titus. He huffed out a breath when he realized he was no longer within sight of Kendra. She’d moved out during his tumble.

  Quickly, he drank again, refilled the bottle for him and Titus and shouldered his pack.

  “Time to find Kendra, boy.” He pulled her sweater from his pack. Titus sniffed and tongued the fabric before trotting confidently off between the tangles of spiky branches. Titus wasn’t a scent dog, but he’d never failed to blow Ethan away with his skills. Trusting his dog, he followed. He wished he had a good scent article for Sullivan. He’d feel a lot safer knowing Titus had Sullivan’s essence stored in that amazing nose of his.

  But the woods were full of invisible aromas, and Titus took off after one. Ethan prayed it would lead to Kendra.

  * * *

  As the sun set completely, the rain started to come down in sheets. Kendra figured there was no point in putting up the shelter since there would be an “enemy” soldier combing the woods for her in a matter of moments.

  She pulled on the dark-patterned poncho that billowed over her with enough room left over to cover her backpack. Sitting in the scant shelter of a rock formation, she tried to pick out a path. The rising darkness cloaked everything in odd shadows, and a wall of clouds obliterated the moon. The only sound she could discern above the crashing rain was the pounding of her own heart. She’d always avoided the darkness, ever since those long-ago nights when Andy would pace in manic circles deep into the night, smoking and drinking with his friends after she’d crawled away to her own room, addled by drugs, filled with self-loathing. Now, she and Baby slept with a small lamp on so when the nightmares came, bringing the self-recrimination, she would sit up and read the little plaque set on the night table.

  There is therefore now no condemnation...

  She’d been forgiven, washed clean, but sometimes, especially on moonless rainy nights, she still felt the vicious bite of fear. She wondered why Ethan hadn’t tried to make contact.

  “Get moving,” she ordered herself. “You know which way the river is, so follow it.” She forced her cold limbs into motion. As she picked her way over slick logs, past dripping trees, something stirred in the brush. She took cover behind a tree, crouching as small as she could manage, her pulse thundering.

  A flicker of light shone, small, the soft glow of a cell phone screen. Phones weren’t allowed by the SERE participants, but Kendra had one anyway. Useless without a signal. Those playing the enemy had satellite phones, which worked in spite of the terrain. The glow could be a soldier enacting the enemy role. They had privileges the hunted did not.

  Someone moved through
the bushes five feet to her right, a man in cammies, walking soft-footed with his rifle raised, water dripping from the brim of his hat. He was tall, like every soldier, it seemed. Like Sullivan. Fright roared through her.

  Who are you hunting? her mind screamed. If it was Sullivan, it would be a relief to confront him, to finally face the man she’d been hired to capture. But she could not see clearly through the pounding rain.

  When he’d moved a safe distance away, she eased up from her hiding place, intending to follow at a safe distance. If it was a marine tracking her, she’d have to head in the other direction and loop around when the coast was clear. Easing each booted foot along as quietly as she could, she kept her eyes on the ground, scanning for twigs that might snap and give her away, or rocks that might result in a noisy fall. She’d made it several yards when a rough palm clamped over her mouth, holding in her scream.

  TWELVE

  Ethan felt Kendra tense under his palm.

  “It’s me,” he whispered, but not before she drove an elbow into his stomach. He lurched back, doubled over, and Titus shoved a wet nose in his face. “I’m okay,” he assured the dog.

  Kendra whirled, hands on hips, glaring at him. “What were you thinking?” she whispered in a tone just south of furious.

  “I was thinking,” he muttered back, “that you might cry out and give away our location.”

  She was breathing hard. “You scared me.”

  He managed an upright posture and a half-hearted breath. “I’m sorry.” Titus stood on hind legs and licked Ethan’s face, double-checking his handler. “Okay, down, you big galoot.” He pressed a hand to his throbbing gut. “I saw the sentry. He’s twenty yards to the north.”

  “I saw him, too,” she said. “I was busy avoiding him when you decided to scare the wits out of me with your ninja skills.”

  “Seems like you still have your wits to me,” he said. “I think you might have damaged my spleen.”

  “Serves you right for that bonehead move.” She shook her head, disgusted, then her expression shifted into concern. “Did I really hurt you?”

  He smiled. “No, ma’am. I was just looking for some sympathy.”

  She exhaled. “Okay. Sorry about the elbow.” She offered a small pat to his shoulder. “If your spleen is fully functional, we’d better move.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” They continued looping around away from the river, making their mucky way over the forest detritus.

  “Did you recognize the soldier?” Kendra asked.

  “Tall, dark and deadly, that’s all I got.”

  “Me, too. Probably a marine.”

  “Probably.” He picked up the pace. In spite of the doggy raincoat Ethan had put on him, Titus kept stopping to shake the moisture from his ears. “He’s more used to dry conditions than rain.”

  “Me, too,” she said. They continued on, the irregular slope requiring all their mental and physical energies. The night ticked away and fatigue began to prey on Ethan, but Kendra did not complain nor slow, so they pushed on, Titus as tireless as ever.

  After an arduous uphill climb, Ethan signaled a stop. They’d arrived at a mad jumble of rocks, some piled as high as fifty feet. “Good lookout point.” He ordered Titus to sit at Kendra’s side under the shelter of a rock overhang. He began to climb, the footholds easy to find but slippery. When he reached a smooth section of stone, he lay down and peered through his night-vision binocs. He located one soldier easily enough, probably a newbie to the SERE training or cold enough to risk a fire where he thought he wouldn’t be seen. He’d be captured quickly. Nothing else moved that he could detect. To the east lay the road they would take to Baylor before sunup in order to reach the base by the appointed hour.

  His watch read 2:00 a.m., still three hours to evade capture. At that point, the evasion portion would be complete and all they would have to do was get back to base. Best to hole up. He figured this was the optimal location and time to do it. Good view, plenty of hiding spots, shelter from the rain.

  He returned to ground level and found Kendra and Titus gone. His stomach dropped to his boots. For a moment he second-guessed himself, but it was precisely the spot he’d left them with strict orders not to leave.

  Frantically he examined the ground for any signs of attack. Why hadn’t Titus barked? He plunged into the shrubs, wildly scanning, calling as loud as he dared. A gleam of movement, a subtle shifting in the darkness burned into his vision. He drew his weapon, figuring blanks were better than nothing as he raced forward, keeping low under an overgrown thicket with razor-sharp thorns. He must have misjudged their safety, missed a sentry or missed Sullivan. Nerves kicked up all over his body.

  Titus darted out from behind a bush, running at Ethan, blood showing on his mouth. Ethan’s breath crystallized in his lungs. Where was Kendra? The dog bounded up, and Ethan inhaled the smell of berries.

  Not blood. Juice.

  “You rotten dog...”

  “Quiet,” Kendra said, stepping out of the shrubs. “You’re making enough noise to bring in the marines for sure.”

  “Where...where did you go?” he sputtered.

  “I got us some dinner.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. “What?” he finally managed.

  She held out a handkerchief full of glistening blackberries. “There’s a whole thicket of them.”

  He goggled, fear crystallizing into anger. “You shouldn’t have moved. I thought something happened to you.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Did I scare you?”

  If the light had been better, he figured he’d have seen a glint of satisfaction on her face. “Dumb move.”

  “I weighed the risks.”

  “You didn’t have the right to take my dog off his assignment.”

  “He shouldn’t have let me, right?”

  Ethan glowered at Titus. “Right, and we’re going to have to do some retraining.”

  The dog snaked a tongue over his lips. Kendra laughed. “He doesn’t look the least bit sorry.”

  “Well, you should be,” he snapped. “This isn’t a game, Kendra.”

  She went still. “It’s never been a game for me, Ethan.”

  “Then stop treating it like one. One bullet and you’re dead, don’t you understand that?” One bullet, like Martelli, like the others. One shot you didn’t see coming, from an enemy you’d let stray from your mind for one second.

  Even in the darkness he could see her eyes glimmer. “I know what it’s like to be hunted.”

  Hunted. The word disintegrated his anger. Hunted, by a man she thought she’d loved. Stung, shot at, terrorized. She’d lived her own kind of war for longer than he had. Yeah, dumb comment, Webb.

  “Let’s get to shelter,” he said before anything else came out of his mouth.

  Titus trotted to his side. “I mean it, dog. You need retraining,” he said. “Since when do you take orders from her?”

  Ethan scouted the area until he located the crevice he’d spotted earlier, a depression punched into the rock wall. It was not high enough for them to stand up, but it was comfortable for two sitting adults and a sprawling dog. The floor was mostly dry and clean after he kicked the debris away. By the time they entered, Kendra was shivering, her teeth chattering together.

  “Sorry, we can’t risk a fire.”

  “It’s okay. At least we have dinner.” She laid the berries out between them. Perfectly ripe, thumb-sized, succulent.

  He ate a handful. “Best berries I’ve ever had,” he declared, “but it still doesn’t make it okay what you did wandering off.”

  “So Titus and I are still in the doghouse?”

  “He’s definitely in the doghouse.” He rubbed his sticky hands clean on his wet pant leg. “But, uh, what I said back there, that wasn’t cool.”

  She wiped her fingers on her pants. “It’s okay. In
a way there’s some truth to it. I think Andy thought of our relationship as a game. How far could he string me along, how much could he push.” She leaned against the rock, her gaze drifting to the rain falling outside the cave. “He was raised by a single parent, too, an alcoholic.” Her smile was rueful. “We had a lot in common.”

  “Not the right stuff, though.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t think I was worth too much when I met him and he agreed. Just strung me along, like I said, and I was dumb enough to let him.”

  “What was the turning point?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment, and then she rolled up her right sleeve to show a long narrow scar. “I found a stray cat starving under our apartment step. I took her in and Andy grumbled, but he didn’t resist too much until she used his guitar case as a scratching post.”

  He saw the play of emotion as the memory unfolded itself.

  “He went after her with a kitchen knife. I fended him off with a chair, but he cut me.” Her fingers stroked the edge of her sleeve, as if she was comforting the terrified cat. “The cat was able to hide, though.”

  “Baby?” he said.

  She nodded. “I realized that we weren’t alike, Andy and me, not fundamentally, not deep down, but I wasn’t sure how to get out of the mess I’d made. A few days later he told me we were going to rob a mini mart and if I didn’t go along with the plan, he would kill me and the cat. That’s when I decided to call Jillian.” She looked at him then, tears glistening in her eyes. “See why Baby means so much to me?”

  He took her hand and pulled her into the circle of his arm. “Yeah, I sure do.”

  She snuggled next to him, leaning against his chest as if they’d known each other forever. The scent of the woods clung to her wet hair, as alluring as the silk of her cheek brushing his chin. He kissed her temple, pressed her close as if he could blast away her terrible past.

  Not possible.

  And not the right thing anyway. Her past was what made her who she was, turned her to God. The fact that she’d shared it with him, her worst moment, made something inside him crack open. He wanted to kiss her as she turned her face to his. She was so beautiful, like an angel painted on the wall of stone behind her. He cupped her face, bent close and fitted her mouth to his. A current of electricity jolted through him, the completion of a circuit he hadn’t known about. She kissed him back, warm, giving, tender.