B00C74WTKQ EBOK (17 page)

Race’s tone of voice and her calm command of the situation made the men stand silent. Taking the rifles with them the girls backed into the brush and disappeared from the men’s sight. Race whispered, “You two go back to the team and explain the situation. Start moving them back to the truck at a pace that’ll still let you keep security. Tell them that in a little while they’ll hear one shot. I’m going to stay here and watch them until they start to move, then I’ll fire a warning shot to keep them there longer and I’ll double time to join up with you. Remember, move fast but move cautious, we don’t want to run into anyone else by being careless. Now go!”

Race moved laterally so that she wouldn’t be where the men last saw her and lay down. She crawled to a spot that gave her a clear view of the men but they couldn’t see her. The men waited ten minutes then started to move to where the girls had disappeared. After the first couple of steps she fired, hitting the dirt in front of them. They rapidly moved back to the tree and stood still. Race backed up far enough to be out of sight and trotted after the girls.

She caught up to them an hour later and called a halt and told the girls to gather around. She had been thinking about what Adrian would do in this situation.
Never ever underestimate your enemy
, he had often said. Applying that rule, she had considered while she ran what she would do if she were the leader of the men, what his motivation would be, his strengths, and the skills at his disposal.

“Here’s what I think,” she said to the gathered girls in a low voice. “I saw the look on that man’s face. Lust, pure lust. He was thinking that there really must be a God, to deliver women to him in the wilderness. He’s not likely to give up just because we stalled him once. He’ll be thinking we’re just girls and we had the drop on him, but he can outsmart us and take us easily. These men are obviously skilled hunters, meaning they can track well, they’ll follow us for a bit. We left a trail a blind man could follow anyway, plenty of footprints, broken branches, stuff like that. But they won’t just follow us, once they get a bearing on which way we went, they’ll circle around and get ahead of us and set an ambush. They’ll move fast, too. If I’m right, we’re going to have to deal with these apes pretty soon.”

The girls listened silently, nodding in agreement at Race’s assessment of the situation.

“They have the advantage of being able to move fast, of knowing the terrain around here intimately. They hunt it all the time, they know every bush and tree. We have advantages, too, they think there are only three of us.
They’re
underestimating
us
, an advantage we have. We also know the terrain that we’ve crossed to get here. We could circle out and come back to the truck from a different direction, but that would give them enough time to find the truck and set up their ambush there.”

Race paused, thinking for a moment. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll head back to the truck following our back trail, knowing that they will lie in ambush for us at some point. There are three likely places for an ambush along that way. We can’t count on them using one of those spots, we’ll have to move as though it could come anywhere at any time. But, I’m betting they’ll use one of the three. I’ll take the lead, I’m going to move well out in front and watch for them. Lila, you’ll be my second. If they hit us before I expect, the rest of you follow Lila’s orders. She knows the tactics to use: basically stay out of sight until you have them in a cross fire and then come in slow, taking full advantage of cover, and shooting with full control—target shooting from cover. Three other girls will circle around where they’ll be out of the line of fire but to their most likely line of retreat and pick them off if we flush them out.”

Lila nodded, and the rest of the girls looked confidently from Race to Lila.

Race continued. “Each time we come to one of the likely ambush spots we’ll follow the same basic plan: clear the spot and move on until we find them. You two,” she said, pointing to Helen and Regan, “bring up the rear. Stay back a hundred yards and keep a sharp eye on our back trail in case I guessed wrong. If you see them, fire off one shot and run up to us as fast as possible. If that happens, we’ll spread out in a semi-circle and wait for them.”

“Okay, Rangers, is that clear?” She looked at each girl in turn, looking for signs of confusion or doubt. She was met each time by clear eyes, excited eyes. These girls weren’t just ready for the coming action they seemed eager for it. She recognized what Adrian had told her once.
“When soldiers train, train hard, train for a long time, train with discipline to go into combat, they eventually become eager to actually do it. That’s one of the principles of training soldiers, to get them to a point where they want to go into combat and test their skills.”
She saw he was right, these girls were actually eager to encounter this enemy.

She almost felt sorry for the three men. Almost.

“Let’s move out. Give me a five minute head start.” Race rose to her feet and moved down the trail.

Chapter 19

R
ace moved ahead swiftly at
first, then settled down to a slower pace. She moved from cover to cover at a dead run, zig-zagging as she went, scouring the brush ahead with intensity between each move. It was a run, pause and scrutinize, then run again action. In this brush, a man could hide fairly easily. She was taking as few chances as she could.

She continued in this way until she had nearly reached the first ambush spot the men might use. Given the amount of time since the men would have started, she didn’t think it had high odds of being the place. It was, however, not something to bank on and would be a good rehearsal for the girls for when they did encounter the actual ambush spot.

She waited until the rest of the Rangers caught up to her.

“Remember that little knob up ahead?” she asked the girls. “That’s ambush spot number one. There are some small boulders up there they can lay behind that give them a good view of the trail and a good field of fire. We’ll call that knob the center of a clock dial. We’re at six o’clock right here.” She pointed to six of the girls, “You’re Alpha Team, move around to ten o’clock.” Pointing to six other girls, “You’re Bravo Team, move to eight o’clock. The rest of you are with me, we’ll move up to twelve o’clock, it’ll take us a bit longer to get into position. Everyone check your watches. Okay, team leaders, we move on ambush point number one in exactly thirty minutes. Don’t shoot unless you have a target and take your time to shoot accurately. We’ll meet up on the knob. Move out.”

Forty five minutes later the girls had all arrived at the top of the knob. There had been no sign of the men.

“Well done, very well done.” Race said with obvious pride. “That clears ambush point number one. We’ll do the next one in the same way. There’s a draw about a mile ahead that we walked through, that’s spot number two. I’ll be ahead and let you know before you get there.”

Race took the lead and repeated her previous pattern. Watching, then running zig-zag to the next cover. She ran bent over and as silently as possible. Each time she left cover she found she was holding her breath and didn’t breathe again until in the next cover. She was tense, feeling that each time she moved she had a rifle lined up on her. The tension was exhausting. She was in excellent physical condition but mental tension also fatigues the muscles. She thought the rest of the girls would be just as tense, especially the rear-guard. She considered taking a break when they came together again, but decided against it. She wanted to get to the truck before dark and at their current rate of travel it would be a close thing.

At ambush point two the girls repeated the maneuver to secure the location. Still no sign of the men. Race said to the girls, “Alright then, there’s one more likely ambush spot. If they’re not there then we have to assume they’ll be anywhere along the trail or already at the truck.”

As Race approached ambush point three, another knob, higher than the first and covered with brush and boulders, she noticed that she was nearing total exhaustion. The constant tension was draining her fast. Taking a swig of water she waited for the girls to catch up to her.

“This could be it,” she said softly. “Let’s take five minutes’ rest, but stay alert and face outwards in a circle. Drink a lot of water and eat a protein bar. If they’re up there, it could take a long time to finish them off and you can’t be moving around and sloshing canteens.”

Five minutes later she said, “Team leaders check your watches. It’s going to take longer to get into position on this one so we’ll move in on it in exactly one hour. Move out.”

As the girls infiltrated the brush Race was proud of how silent they were and how quickly they melted out of sight. The girls had the natural advantage of being short-statured, allowing them to stay out of sight by crouching only a little as they moved. The youngest girls didn’t even have to do that, but did anyway, their training and discipline showing.

Race said to Lila and Selena, “Remember, our job is to catch them when they flush. Unless we have good, clear shots we don’t want to shoot. We want them to run away from the other girls and expose themselves, then we shoot.”

Forty minutes later Race’s team was in position. She could see the knob clearly, but didn’t see the men. If they were up there they were well-hidden. She knew their hunting skills would make them serious adversaries in these conditions. Now it was watch and wait.

Five minutes before the hour was up, Race noticed a mockingbird start to land on one of the taller mesquite bushes on the hills. Just before it landed it swerved away and flew off out of sight.
Gotcha, you rotten sons-of-bitches.
It was another thing that Adrian had taught them:
“Watch the wildlife, they will often show you where someone is hidden.”
She knew the bird had spotted something just before it settled onto the branch and swerved-off in startled flight.

Adrian had also told them that combat was often long, boring, tense hours followed by short minutes of intense action.
“The trick is to keep your mental focus both while bored and when the action suddenly starts. Losing mental focus has gotten more people killed than anything else,”
he’d said on several occasions. Race had only today realized just how hard that was to do, but she’d be damned if she’d be caught drifting. That constant focus was also draining. But the sight of that bird taking off had ramped up her adrenaline to a heart pumping height.

She whispered to her team mates, “They’re by that tallest mesquite. Be ready, the action will start in a few minutes. I’m changing the procedure a bit though. As soon as I think Alpha and Bravo teams are nearing the target we’re going lay down a barrage at the base of that tree. That’ll signal the other teams that this is a hot spot and to be careful. It’ll also distract the men so they’ll be looking towards us and not where the teams are coming in from. Spread out, twenty yards either side of me and fire when I do.”

Race imagined the scene as though from the air. She mentally pictured where the girls were, how fast they were approaching, the field of view the men had—she was sure they were focused on the trail below—and where they would be waiting in ambush.

Waiting for the two teams to get close enough to be effective was a long, tense, and seemingly eternal time. She itched to start firing, but didn’t want to go too soon, or too late. Finally, with one last glance at her watch she took careful aim at where she thought a man would be likely to be hiding and slowly squeezed the trigger. The gun roared, surprising her with how loud it was. She hadn’t realized how quiet it had been. Immediately following her shot were two more. Race wanted desperately to pump bullet after bullet into the bushes up there but with steely determination waited instead, looking for movement.

There!
She aimed and squeezed off another round immediately. More motion. Now she was on automatic pilot, looking for signs of movement and firing at it, waiting then doing it again and again. She was barely conscious now of the sound of her rifle or the loud cracks from her teammate’s rifles.

Then she heard a shot from across the hill.
They’ve spotted them and are moving in.
She was elated and filled with trepidation at the same time.
Be careful Rangers, be damn careful.