Which meant it was in Rawls’s best interest to egg him into these constant small-scale attacks in order to prevent him from storing enough energy to launch a full-body penetration.
Sighing as his muscles unclenched, Rawls released a long, slow breath. If this post-attack lull followed the pattern of the previous ones, he had at least fifteen minutes of peace before the bastard showed up again. Rolling onto his side again, he scanned the quiet compound.
Judging by the silvering of the landscape, and the fact that Faith had already escaped to the kitchen, it had to be close to six thirty. Which meant it wouldn’t be long before the compound stirred. He’d watched from the safety of the tree line the afternoon before as the chopper settled, and his teammates, along with Marion, Amy, and her two boys, had disembarked. The whole lot of them had ambled toward the lodge, where the mouthwatering scent of cooking originated.
Zane had held back in order to radio him. Their conversation had been short. After giving his sitrep, which included Faith’s condition, and a recap of his emergency call into Wolf requesting a refill on her meds, Rawls informed his LC he’d be going dark for the foreseeable future. Zane responded with a succinct four-letter curse and demanded an explanation.
An explanation that Rawls couldn’t give. He suspected he wasn’t going to have a choice much longer. Judging by his LC’s icy reaction to his hedging, there was a good possibility that Zane intended to track him down and force the confession out into the open.
His teammates were losing patience.
Grimacing, he rolled his head, and a flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye. Instinctively he froze. The morning was still, which meant no wind to rustle a branch or wave a twig. So the movement was either animal or human. Animals were always a possibility in the woods. But then, so was Zane. After that terse conversation the night before, he had no trouble imagining his LC hitting the woods at dawn in the hopes of catching him bedded down and slow on the uptake.
With painstaking care, he rolled his head in the direction of the flicker. His eyes landed on a pair of thick brown boots. Slowly, his gaze crawled up two legs clothed in the green and gray of camouflage.
Not Zane. Or Cosky. Or Mac.
The figure was standing maybe eight feet in front of him, at an angle, just behind one of the larger trees surrounding the compound. A sniper’s rifle hung from a strap across camouflaged shoulders, a pistol was holstered on the left hip, and a knife staged just below the pistol on his thigh.
He’d moved into place silently, so silently Rawls hadn’t heard him, which pegged him as an operator. The position of the pistol and knife indicated he was left-handed. Maybe Jude? He assessed the figure again, but remained perfectly still. Nah—the height was off. And the stance was unfamiliar.
A chill prickled the back of his neck.
His eyes slid up. An NVD attached to a helmet covered the top half of the guy’s face, leaving only a tight mouth and hard chin visible.
The guy had obviously come in from behind them, through the forest, not via the Jayhawk as Wolf and his men had arrived. Plus—he was in camo and full battle regalia, which Wolf’s team wouldn’t need, and then there was the fixed focus on the compound. Yeah . . . this wasn’t one of Wolf’s boys.
. . . they’d been found . . .
The faint sputter of a radio reached his straining ears. Not his. He’d dialed the volume way back on his until he could barely hear it so his team couldn’t track him through the crackle, but his hadn’t squawked all night. Inch by inch he slid his hand down until it touched the plastic casing of his own radio and carefully nudged the dial to off. One inopportune crackle and he’d be dead.
He’d been damn lucky so far. The asshole in front of him was obviously more interested in the compound and the people occupying it than he was in the terrain at his feet. But if he looked back and down . . .
Too bad he’d left his Sig stashed in the cabin. But damn it, he hadn’t wanted to give Pachico access to the weapon. Sure, his ghost couldn’t manipulate the weapon for more than a second at a time, but that second was enough to blast a hole through him. Or someone else.
He needed to take this guy out, but silently. Which was going to be difficult thanks to his current situation. For Christ’s sake, he was trussed up in his sleeping bag like a caterpillar in its cocoon and just about as easy to squash.
Yet he could hardly remain lying there either. Sooner or later the bastard was bound to notice him. He’d prefer that moment coincided with the Tango’s demise.
“Goddamn it,” Pachico said from above him. “I’m getting—”
Rawls locked down his reaction as Pachico’s voice boomed overhead. At least he didn’t have to worry about his ghost alerting the bad guys to his presence. The Tango in front of him hadn’t even flinched.