"Copy," another clipped voice said. "What about the girl?"
"Caprizini has her pinned," Frost said. "We can take her any time we want. The important thing is to find Morgan."
"Copy," the other said. "Circling back now."
"Make sure he's in the bag before you move," Frost warned. "And remember: tanglers only. I want him alive and unharmed."
"Copy."
Jack grimaced. So they knew he was back here, and they were on their way to get him. Meanwhile, Draycos had scampered off with his only weapon.
But that was okay. It was time to trade up anyway.
The soldier had a small pistol belted at his right and a pair of concussion grenades ready at his left. His main weapon, still cradled in his slack grip, was a compact over/under weapon with a machine gun on top and a long-barreled tangler underneath.
It took Jack a few seconds to dig the gun out from under the tangler mesh. Folding its collapsible metal shoulder stock out of his way, he headed back toward the tree where Draycos had left him.
He was halfway there when the background chatter on his helmet comm abruptly changed tone. "Dumbarton, looks like Morgan's got Hammerstein's gun," Frost said sharply. "We've got movement on it—heading west."
Jack looked down at the weapon in his hands, his stomach suddenly knotting. So there were trackers in the guns. Frost had been trickier than he'd expected.
But if Frost had been clever enough to put in trackers, maybe he'd been clever enough for something else, too.
Experimentally, Jack swung the weapon in a horizontal arc. As he did so, a small red light just below the sight winked on and then off. He'd guessed right: along with the trackers, Frost had also included a friend/foe system to warn his soldiers if they were pointing their weapons at one another.
On the surface, the arrangement made a lot of sense. Even with night-sight goggles, vision in the middle of a forest was pretty limited. And with these lopsided odds. Jack and Alison could shoot at pretty much anything that moved, while their opponents had to be careful not to shoot one another in the confusion of battle.
The downside to the system was that once Jack had one of their guns, as he did now, all he had to do was find a line of fire that gave him a red dot and pull the trigger.
Problem was, the tangler didn't have nearly enough range to poke its way through all the undergrowth. That just left him the machine gun, and that would mean killing them.
His stomach twisted into a fresh knot. He'd never in his life killed anyone, and he didn't really want to start now. At some point it might become necessary, but that wasn't a decision he was ready to make on his own.
Fortunately, if he did this right, he wouldn't have to.
He swept the gun in a complete circle, noting where the lights went on. The Malison Ring soldiers didn't yet have him surrounded, though they were definitely working on it. From what Frost had said, they would probably wait until they had a complete circle before moving in.
That should give him just enough time.
He set the gun down beside the tree where Draycos had left him. Returning to the half-webbed soldier, he dragged the man over to the tree and rolled him into concealment beneath the reeds. He wrapped the other's limp hands around the gun, propping the weapon up on a couple of sticks. On an infrared viewer, the whole thing ought to look like someone lying quietly in ambush. Digging one last time beneath the tangler threads, Jack helped himself to the soldier's two concussion grenades. Then, taking a moment to heap a few handfuls of dead leaves over the soldier's legs for extra concealment, he returned to where the other three soldiers were sprawled.
Even with the limitations of night-vision systems. Jack's clothing would never pass as a Malison Ring uniform, and there wasn't enough time for him to swatch outfits with someone else. But there were other ways. Lying down on the ground beside one of the soldiers, Jack rolled the unconscious man up onto him, leaving only his helmeted head showing.
Again, it wasn't something that would hold up to close examination. But Jack had no intention of giving Dumbarton's soldiers that much time. Turning his head to face the tree where the fake ambush was waiting, he pulled the pin from one of the grenades and lay still.
The soldiers were good, all right. Even with the darkness and distant noise, Jack had expected he would spot some sign of their arrival. But his first warning was the sudden flurry of tangler shots spattering the decoy's position from all directions. "Done," Dumbarton's voice came in Jack's car.
"You got him?" Frost asked.
"We got him and a half," Dumbarton reported, a note of satisfaction in his voice.
"Watch it," Frost warned. "This kid's clever—"
"Colonel!" a new voice cut in. "I think I just spotted the K'da!"
"Where?" Frost snapped. "Up on a tree near the girl."
"Hammerstein said they already nailed him," Dumbarton objected.
"I guess Hammerstein was wrong," Frost said icily. "What's your excuse, Caprizini?"
There was a sputter of gunfire. "Can't get him from here," Caprizini said. "The trunk's too thick."
"Is he close enough to the ground to use a grenade?"
"He's too close to the girl," Caprizini said.
"Then just keep him pinned," Frost said. "As soon as Dumbarton's got Morgan, he can get over there and flank him."
"Do we still need the girl?" someone put in. "I thought we mostly wanted Morgan."
"Let's make sure we actually have Morgan first," Frost said. "Dumbarton, move in. Slow and careful."
"Copy."
There was a rustling in the bushes. Jack eased his head up a bit and saw a circle of shadowy figures closing in on the decoy's position. Something moved at the corner of his eye, and he flinched slightly as one of the soldiers took a long step over him and the man he was hiding beneath. The circle closed to within three yards of the tree.
And with a flip of his wrist, Jack lobbed the grenade right into the center.
He had expected a mild concussion blast like the ones created by the grenades he'd worked with back with the Whinyard's Edge. They were small, civilized things that would knock down everyone for three yards and leave them stunned and confused for a few minutes.
Unfortunately for Dumbarton and his buddies, the Malison Ring used much more powerful grenades.
The blast was deafening, the sound slamming into Jack like a runaway truck. The shock wave was even worse, lifting the unconscious soldier on top of him a couple of inches into the air and shoving him right off onto the ground.
Carefully, struggling to keep his balance. Jack pulled himself upright. He was shaking all over, half his body numb, and he'd been lying flat on the ground when the grenade went off. The soldiers who'd been moving toward the blast would be lucky if they were out of bed in a week.
There were voices coming from the helmet comm, but it was impossible to make out the words through the ringing in his ears. Pulling off the helmet, he tucked it under his arm and gave his ears a careful rub. His hearing was starting to come back, fortunately. Still rubbing at his ears, he turned toward the north.
And sprawled flat on his back as a pair of glowing silver eyes appeared squarely in front of him.
"Blast it," he muttered, scrambling back to his feet. It was the gray female Phooka, of course, the one Draycos had dubbed Taneem. "Don't do that."
Taneem cocked her head quizzically to the side and started to back up. "Wait a second," Jack said, stepping toward her as an idea started to sift through his still-dazed brain. The soldiers near Alison's position had said they had Draycos pinned up a tree.