Page 33 of Reaper
"Nothing." A voice, muffled by the rain and the cedar trunk. "Thermal's clear. Keep moving up the ridge. They have to be in the rocks."
The boots move on, crunching away up the slope.
Wyatt doesn't move. He waits sixty seconds. Then another sixty.
He slowly lifts his hand from my mouth.
"Stay here." His voice is a ghost of a whisper against my ear. "Do not move. Do not make a sound."
I grab his wrist, panic flaring. "Wyatt?—"
"I have to take the tail. If they double back, they trap us against the high ground." He pulls his wrist free. "Stay down."
He slides out from under the cedar.
He doesn't draw his sidearm. He draws the combat knife from the sheath on his thigh. The dark, matte-black steel absorbs the faint ambient light.
Then he vanishes.
He doesn't step into the trees; he simply ceases to be in the ravine. No sound of boots on mud. No rustle of branches.
Nothing.
I press my back against the freezing mud and wait.
The rain is a steady, deafening hiss. I grip the handle of my Glock in its holster, my fingers stiff and clumsy from the cold.
A shadow detaches itself from the trunk of a pine thirty yards up the slope. The trailing Ares mercenary. He's moving slow, rifle up, the green night-vision goggles strapped over his helmet.
Wyatt materializes directly behind him.
There is no warning. No cinematic struggle. It is the most terrifying, efficient violence I have ever witnessed.
Wyatt clamps a hand over the man's mouth, jerking his head back, and drives the blade upward into the base of his skull. The mercenary's body arches, convulsing silently. Wyatt controls the fall, riding the heavy, armored body down into the wet ferns without making a single sound.
He wrenches the blade free. Pulls the man's sidearm, clears the chamber, drops the magazine into the mud.
He strips the night-vision goggles off the dead man's helmet and puts them on.
He turns and looks down the slope, straight at the cedar.
He knows exactly where I am.
He holds up a flat hand.Hold.
Fifty yards higher up the ridge, the second green beam cuts through the rain, sweeping back down toward us. The lead mercenary. Looking for his trailing partner.
Wyatt turns and melts into the dark, climbing the slope.
I press my back into the mud and watch the green beam slice through the pines. It sweeps left, then right, moving steadily closer to where the first body lies in the ferns.
Then the beam jerks wildly toward the canopy.
It stutters, flashing across the timber in a frantic, broken arc, and abruptly goes dark.
No gunshot. No shout. Just the heavy, wet thud of armored deadweight hitting the ground.
Sixty seconds later, Wyatt materializes at the edge of the ravine.
