He was, very soon, going to be carrying way more shit.
Because by this point, he’d figured out the rest of his plan.
Since Army and Stooges One through Three seemed to want to find Tasha, Thomas would oblige and lead them to Tasha. Or at least to where she and Thomas had been “recently taking shelter.” Or so they would believe, because Thomas was going to fool them into thinking that.
After dropping off the rifle, he moved swiftly back through the forest, to where he’d last seen his four new friends. He quickly caught up to them—they’d paused for a group conference, temporarily uncertain, because they’d stopped catching glimpses of him, and his physical trail had gone cold. So he silently moved far enough ahead of them and showed them a flash of his red-plaid ass as he crested a hill, and just like that, they were back to their scuttling-follow mode.
He raced ahead, but left them an obvious path to follow—not as quite as in-their-faces as Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs because that would’ve raised a red flag for Army, but obvious enough. And then he vanished again, racing as fast as he could toward the hide where Tasha had stayed when he’d first approached the ski lodge.
He stripped off the raincoat he was wearing beneath his blanket-poncho, using it to create a carry-sack into which he dumped as much of the ashes and charred wood as he could scoop up from the pit fire he’d lit just a few days ago. He tossed in some of the smaller charred stones that he’d heated to help keep Tasha warm, and wrapped it all up so it wouldn’t spill out as he carried it. The branches that he’d gathered to provide coverage and a rather ineffective roof would help, too, so he grabbed as much as he could carry of that and headed out.
He moved as quickly as he dared, circling back north again, hoping both that no other hostiles were out patrolling, and that Army didn’t have access to cell or SAT service and therefore hadn’t been able to call for backup.
He headed slightly west and there it was. The cave-like entrance to the glacial dump of huge rock slabs that he’d happened upon. It was where he was intending to take Tasha before she’d dropped the words bomb shelter into their conversation about the burned-out ski lodge.
Since he’d already had a cursory look around the first time he’d been here, he knew to dump the ashes from his raincoat near the entrance—as if he’d built a fire there for warmth. It looked stupid, exactly like it had been dumped there, so he got down on his knees and rearranged the pieces of charred wood to make it look more like a fire that had burned and then been stirred to make sure it was fully out.
He’d never been particularly good at art projects, but somehow he managed to make it look real enough.
Thomas then dragged the branches further into the cave, past a jumble of smaller rubble and rocks. There was a little protected nook back there. He dumped them into a pile that could be interpreted as maybe we slept on this or maybe we used these branches to cover us, for warmth.
Next up was the contents of his raincoat pocket: The plastic baggie with a handful of peanuts that he’d brought along to keep his stomach from getting too empty. It rumbled now as he tossed it down next to the branches. A sacrifice for the good of the people.
Last was his blanket poncho. He pulled the damn thing over his head and dropped it there, too. There were other blankets in the pod—he could always make another poncho. But the raincoats were in rare supply, so he didn’t want to leave that behind.
And there it was. Fully staged. He’d done everything but write on the rock wall, Thomas and Tasha were here.
He just hoped Army—and Army’s CO, whoever that was—believed it.
He picked up the raincoat and shook it out, put it back on. Sweat and ashes, nice combo.
Last steps of his plan: Go back to where Army and the Stooges were tracking him, flash his plaid ass to them again, lead them here, then become invisible for good.
Well, only to them.
He would be very visible to Tasha when he went back into the pod, where after he showered they’d Talk with a capital T.
Oddly, he felt ready.
To Tasha’s relief, Thomas wasn’t lying dead just outside the entrance to the pod.
She really hadn’t expected to find him there, since there’d been no blood anywhere on the landing or the door’s frame, but she was still thankful as she climbed out, leaving the hatch open behind her, in case she needed to get back inside, fast.
And then, immediately, she was filled with the opposite of relief. Anxiety. Overwhelm.
She did not have the—what did Thomas call it? The skillset to be out here, pretending that she was capable of facing down whoever was hunting them.
Sure, she knew how to handle and fire a rifle. Thomas had left this one locked and loaded—another hint that he’d been in a massive hurry—so she treated it with extra care.
She’d had her share of weapons-safety training, starting when she was tiny. This is a firearm. It is very dangerous. Never touch it unless a trusted grownup says that you can. And even then, keep the barrel carefully pointed away from all people at all times. Always. If you’re at a friends’ house and you see a firearm, any kind of firearm, and it’s not secured in a locked weapons closet or safe, do not touch it; go tell an adult. And if the adult won’t take you seriously or tells you not to worry about it, call Mia or Uncle Alan or Thomas or Mrs. King immediately to come pick you up and bring you home.
Of course, as Tasha got older, her training included time on a firing range. She was a decent enough shot, but she’d never thought target-shooting was particularly fun. Still, she knew her lessons were important to Uncle Alan, so she’d dutifully showed up and paid attention and always properly respected the deadly power of weapons of war.
But marksmanship was definitely not something she could call one of her top skillsets. It wasn’t even one of her bottom skillsets.
She was really good at writing. And certain types of creative problem solving. Which was also why she was so good at being Ted’s personal assistant. Give her an iPhone and internet access, and she could research the crap out of just about anything. But that skillset wasn’t going to help her out here.
She looked around her, aware of the sharp coldness that made her breath hang in the air. She was alone on the side of a mountain. The pod was far enough from the ski lodge that it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. A narrow footpath—a trail—led back to the lodge in one direction. Where it led, past the bulkhead, she had no idea.
She hadn’t really noticed much of anything but the concrete bulkhead in the darkness when she and Thomas had first found the entrance to the pod. But the door was built into a gentle hillside that crested about six feet above it.
The top of the hill had an outcropping of partially exposed rock—craggy and sharp, with a cluster of hardy trees growing nearby. Back when she was eleven, she would’ve deemed it the perfect place to play Away Team Explores a Class M Planet—a game she’d been perhaps a tad too fond of during her anti-princess-pro-Star-Trek phase.
But okay. She had to do something besides stand here.
What would Thomas do?
He’d start by rearranging the brush and branches that concealed the entrance to the pod.
As she did that, still leaving the door slightly open, she realized that before emerging, Thomas also probably would’ve opened the door just a crack and listened hard for any sounds of... what did he call them? Hostiles. Any sounds of hostiles in the area. There were at least twenty men wandering this part of the mountain, searching for them.
She’d been lucky—there were currently none in her immediate area.
But reality crashed down around her again. What did she think she was doing? Rushing out to “rescue” Thomas? How exactly? By somehow tracking him? Like she could snap her fingers and somehow know how to do that? Even if she’d had her phone so she could google How to track a Navy SEAL, it didn’t seem likely that was something she could easily learn from a YouTube video.
Tasha looked at the ground at her feet
, at the scattering of dry, crisp leaves on the trail.
Thomas had left behind no tell-tale footprints or even the hint of the direction he’d taken via a pattern of overturned leaves. Assuming he’d taken the trail and not simply gone into the forest.
Although, he’d mentioned that the extraction point—the hollowed out tree she’d imagined or whatever it was that he’d gone out twice a day to check—was to the north of the pod.
Moss grew on the north side of trees, didn’t it? Except as she climbed up to examine the trees above the now-camouflaged bulkhead, the smattering of moss she found was growing on all sides of the trunks, so that didn’t help at all.
Crack.
The sound of a twig being broken made her head snap up, even as she turned and wrestled the rifle into a firing position.
Two men. Ear Flaps and someone she’d never seen before. Looking pissed and heading up the trail, toward the ski lodge.
They spotted her several fractions of a second after she saw them, while she was still swinging the rifle barrel in their direction.
They were armed, but their weapons were casually slung over their shoulders, so while they were rushing to reach for them, she had a heartbeat of a lead, which she took by bracing herself for the recoil and pulling hard on the trigger as she fired vaguely in their direction, hoping to scare them off.
The rifle’s roar startled her—she’d only ever fired a weapon like this with heavy-duty ear protection—as both of the men hit the dirt, buying her even more time to scramble down toward the entrance to the pod.
She swept aside the brush, and yanked open the hatch as she heard the answering roar of at least one gun being fired back at her. She dove through the little door headfirst, scrambling to pull it shut behind her with a solid sounding clank, then swiftly keyed in the numbers that would engage the lock.
She could hear the sound of repeated gunfire, and bullets pinging off the solid metal of the hatch, and she got ready to scramble down the stairs, in case they were somehow able to blast the door open.
But the door didn’t budge and the bullets soon stopped.
She’d hurt herself in that dive—she was bleeding. She’d torn her pants, her knees were a mess, and they really, really hurt.
But as her eyes started to well with tears, it wasn’t from the physical pain, but rather the realization of how completely foolish she’d been.
She’d not only failed to rescue Thomas, but she’d taken his sacrifice, made to keep her and the pod hidden, and she’d thrown it away.
Tasha put her head in her hands and cried.
Thomas heard gunfire.
First one shot—it sounded like a hunting rifle, similar to the model he’d appropriated from the dead man at the ski lodge—and then a second, from a different weapon. A third and a fourth, a fifth and a sixth... All from that same second weapon, before the mountainside descended once again into an echoing silence.
It was close to impossible to pinpoint where the gunfire had been coming from, but the hair had gone up on the back of his neck, and every cell in his body was screaming for him to run.
Run.
As fast and as hard as he could, back to the pod.
To make sure Tasha was okay.
Thomas had yet to reveal himself again to the quartet of men who’d been following him. He’d yet to lead them to the cave, where they could “find” where he and Tash had been sheltering.
He knew he should follow through, but he couldn’t do it, his sense of foreboding doom was so intense.
So instead he chose Tasha, and ran like hell toward the pod.
Chapter Twenty-One
There was blood on the trail about twenty meters from the bomb shelter bulkhead and Thomas felt himself shift even further into firefight mode.
It was a heightened state. Cool and calm. Colors were brighter and the world was sharply focused.
No bullets were flying here, but they had been—this was where the shots he’d heard had been fired—still, his training pushed his fear for Tasha far to the side as he stayed concealed and assessed the scene.
Blood—lots of it—and drag marks. Casings—he could see at least three—glinted in the still-early morning light, there on the trail.
That likely meant whoever had been shot had also been shooting, and that after they’d been killed or injured they’d been taken away.
More bad news: The bulkhead was exposed—his careful cover of branches and debris knocked away from the concrete. The metal hatch was dented and pocked—some of those shots he’d heard had been from bullets fired directly at it, as if attempting to get inside, in pursuit of...?
Hope exploded inside of him, even more colorful and bright, and Thomas emerged from the brush, stopping only to grab one of the casings.
Cool to his touch, it was not their rifle’s caliber, and his hope grew even stronger as he moved toward the hatch.
The metal frame of the small door was streaked with blood, and ice-white fear slammed back into his body with a rush that he ruthlessly tamped down as he quickly keyed in the code that would open the lock.
The hatch popped and he swung it open and leaned inside.
And found himself staring into the barrel of the hunting rifle.
A few inches above it was Tasha’s fiercest warrior-face. But then her eyes widened.
“You’re alive!” She breathed the words he was inwardly shouting as she immediately lowered the rifle onto the floor while he climbed inside and secured the door behind him.
She was already launching herself at him, pulling him down to the floor and nearly knocking him over as the part of him that was flooded with relief waged war with the hospital corpsman who could not ignore those streaks of blood.
“You’re hurt,” he managed to say, only allowing himself the briefest moment of ferocious contact from Tasha’s tackle-of-a-hug before pushing her to arms length so he could examine her in the landing’s dim light. “Were you shot?”
“No,” she told him. “I’m okay. Oh my God, Thomas, I’m so sorry.”
Her face was grimy and tear-streaked and her eyes were rimmed with red. She looked a little dazed sitting there, but other than that bore no real sign of shock. She had a scratch on her forehead, up by her hairline, but that wasn’t bleeding enough to warrant those handprints on the door.
But now Thomas saw that there was blood on him, on his right hand and arm, simply from embracing her, and he slipped back into firefight mode, because she was definitely not okay. He got onto his knees and pulled back even further from her and looked at her hands—her left was bloody. He turned her and yeah, the entire left sleeve of her winter jacket was bloodstained.
His caveman brain spun and screamed about arteries and bleeding out, while his soldier and scientist brain coolly assessed. This hadn’t just happened. The shell casing he’d picked up hadn’t been hot. He’d heard the shots fired and it had taken him twenty long minutes to get all the way back here. She’d been sitting here for all that time. This wasn’t a bleed-out amount of blood. She was not going to die.
His caveman agreed. He would die himself before he let that happen.
“Whoa!” Tasha was genuinely shocked as she looked down at her arm. “What did I do?”
“You left the shelter,” Thomas told her grimly as he yanked down the zipper of her jacket. He was carrying the hunting knife he’d taken from the body by the ski lodge, and ER protocol would have him slice open her sleeve. But she wasn’t bleeding out, she was merely bleeding, and he didn’t want to destroy one of the few pieces of warm clothing they had left. “You got yourself shot in the arm.” He hoped it was only in the arm, and he scanned the rest of her quickly. The blood on her jeans seemed to be from her arm—aside from a pair of skinned knees.
“I think I would’ve noticed being shot in the arm,” she countered.
“Adrenaline can do amazing things,” he told her, pushing her jacket off her shoulders. “Can you help me?”
She pulled her right arm, t
he uninjured one, out of her jacket first even as she wiggled her left fingers. “I can use my left hand. And move my arm. It doesn’t hurt. See?” She demonstrated further, but immediately stopped, cradling her arm to her chest. “Hoh shit, now it hurts! Oh my God!”
She was free from the jacket except for that left sleeve, and Thomas was desperate to see the extent of her injury. Still, he stopped, but she held out her arm to him. “Band-aid pull! Do it, fast!”
So he did.
“Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!” she said.
“It helps if you say fuck.” Thomas tossed the bloody jacket aside. Her shirt had a row of buttons up the front and long sleeves. Again, her left sleeve was saturated with blood. He could see there was a tear, upper arm, posterior, but he couldn’t see how badly she’d been damaged beneath it. Was there an exit wound or was the bullet still in her arm? He started mentally reviewing the contents of the first-aid kit downstairs. “They’ve done studies. People can endure more pain if they swear.”
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” she said. “Yeah, sorry, it’s not working.”
He reached for the buttons on her shirt and Tasha looked at him with disbelief as she pulled away, injured arm again tucked in close to her body. “What are you doing?”
“I need you out of that shirt.”
“Words I have yearned to hear for years,” she said.
He met her eyes at that, and electricity sparked between them—immediate and palpable. But then she smiled ruefully. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
That bruised, dazed look in her eyes had vanished. She was back to being her usual alert and sharply funny self. Another good sign that this wound wasn’t dire.
King's Ransom: (Tall, Dark and Dangerous Book 13) Page 19