Boudreaux stepped from the wood line and began to move toward the cabin. He chose a route following a string of shrubs that separated the last two cabins. He did not want to approach from the lake side, where he would be silhouetted against the smooth, glassy water.
He watched the ground to avoid fallen branches or leaves that might make noise. As he did so, he heard an almost imperceptible sound, like something heavy was sliding. He paused for a second before he realized it was a window to his left. The noise was coming from the target building.
Boudreaux quickly crawled through a gap between two bushes, cursing himself when he snapped a branch off a dead boxwood. He held his position and steadied his breathing.
Boudreaux held still, huddling against the thick hedge, hoping whoever was there was just going out for a nightly smoke or enjoying the fresh country air. But he doubted it. He sensed immediately that he was in the right place. And if he was in the right place, whoever it was would probably have some sort of night-vision device. Maybe not the best in the world, but good enough to see with a quarter moon. So he held still and didn’t risk a look. Any movement might be noticed.
Boudreaux heard talking. It sounded like a woman’s voice, and then he heard the deeper baritone of a man. They were whispering, as if they expected something, someone to be out in the shadows. They were on the defensive.
He was in the right place. This was Ballantine’s cabin. He felt a surge of adrenaline coupled with a tightening of his stomach.
He experienced another flash, like before. A flash of memory, maybe. The flash was a face matched to words. A sound, actually. He was picking out intonations, bits of words they were saying. Something about “inside,” then the sliding of the window. He waited, listening. Had they seen him?
And what was the flash? Like a camera snapping a picture in the night, he had a blind spot in his eyes until he could focus again. In the flash, he saw a face, a haggard, worn man, worried about something. What triggered the flash? The location, the mission, the voice, what?
Five minutes turned to twenty. The rhythmic croak of a frog kept him company as he slowly shifted his vision 360 degrees, watching, listening. Another fifteen minutes. It was almost four o’clock. Serious fishermen would be waking in an hour or two. He needed to move.
He slowly edged his way back using his hands to push into a reverse low crawl. He got to the edge of the shrubs and scanned the cabins one last time. Seeing no movement, he raised himself to all fours and crawled until he reached the dense undergrowth about fifty meters into the woods. The pines began to envelope him, heightening his sense of security. He began to walk hunched over, increasing his speed until he was deep into the forest.
Boudreaux shifted his attention to his front, expecting that he had been spotted near the cabins and that Ballantine had alerted security. It was the worst case scenario, he knew, but it was how he operated. Plan for the worst and expect it to happen. Now he was sliding through the trees, upright, with his M4 carbine at the ready, the reassuring weight of the 9mm pistol slapping his thigh. His goggles pressed against his face and the thin sapling branches reached out, clawing at him, making light scratching noises.
He spotted the flashing strobe, grabbed it, and shut it off immediately. Moving up the stream about one hundred meters, he found a small rock outcropping he could slide under. He checked his night scope on his M4 and braced it against a small rock.
Boudreaux was ready for whoever might come; he would wait to take down Ballantine. Perhaps he would find the operations center first. He figured the command node was probably in one of the mines or caves that he had seen.
As he rested and recalibrated his next moves, he had another flash, blinding him. There was desert, sand, heat, guns, and a face. What was the face? Was he just seeing the target photos of Ballantine that Rampert had prepared? Or was this something from his memory surfacing from another time and place?
CHAPTER 20
Boudreaux’ eyes moved to the sounds of leaves rustling about twenty meters away. During his short rest, his hands never left the butt stock of his M4 carbine. Peering through his scope, he watched two squirrels dart through the brush.
He looked at his watch. It was just past five in the morning; 0500 hours, he translated. Military time for a military man. More firecrackers were popping now, flashbulbs bursting with photonegative images appearing briefly in their wake and fading just as quickly. Uniforms, weapons, men shouting, gunfire, a young man with a radio, someone named Slick, palm trees, rice paddies…
Reality. He had been hiding and resting for an hour. It would be another hour before the sun would rise, so he snapped his night-vision goggles onto his headset, then watched a small deer nose its way past him, stop, stare at him with large eyes, then move slowly toward the lake. He could see the lake shore one hundred meters below him. A beautiful calm morning was about to dawn, just like… Just like what? What exactly was it just like? His hand scraped the dirt. What is happening? So far he had been executing his tasks with machine-like precision. “No emotion, no mistakes”—that was what they had told him.
But the darkness and morning tranquility settled over him like it had another time. He vaguely pictured soft, rolling hills that gave way to mountains — gentle ones that rose subtly from the foothills. There was a stream, with rocks. But where was it?
He slowly moved from the rock crevice, less than an hour until the sun nosed over the horizon. What the military called “before morning nautical twilight.”
Boudreaux picked his way past the stark trunks of the pine trees, sometimes finding more space between the trees than he was comfortable with, increasing his chances of being detected. He listened to the Canadian morning sounds that joined the rhythmic echoes of his breathing. Animals were awakening and so, he figured, was his prey. He counted his paces as he strode, tying a knot in a cord hanging on his equipment for every one hundred meters. He had nine knots so far. He checked his global positioning system, a small on-demand, illuminated watch-like piece of equipment he wore on his left wrist. He was within one hundred meters of the third objective area, according to the data he and Colonel Rampert had preloaded into the system.
He stopped and went down on one knee. His fingers flexed around the grip of his weapon. He had a mental image of his objective. He pictured a small cavern built into the face of a wooded hilltop. He looked up and scanned the higher ground to his front. Through his night-vision goggles he detected a faint shimmer of light, undetectable to the naked eye, sneaking beneath a dark spot in his display.
He moved quietly, one foot over the next; a hunter stalking his prey. He was acutely aware of everything that moved, the slightest twitch of a branch in the wind, the turn of a chipmunk head away from an acorn in its grasp. He was also aware that if he had been detected near Ballantine’s cabin that the objective area would be at a heightened alert status, whatever that meant for this particular group. He moved to the west of the lighted area in order to come down on the objective from higher ground.
Echoes of a past too soon forgotten began to ring in his ears.
CHAPTER 21
“We may have a visitor,” Ballantine had spat into the phone.
Chasteen placed two guards at the only entrance to the mineshaft that housed their command center. One guard was outside of the entrance in a makeshift fighting position that provided clear observation of any approach. The other guard positioned himself directly inside the mineshaft opening in case the first position was compromised.