“What happens if hedoessee us?”
“He won’t.” Connor knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with that answer. “If he did, he’d relay our location to ground forces, and they would converge here, possibly with dogs, and try to chase us down.”
“How will we know?”
“If he thought he saw something, he would hover, stay right on top of us. See? He’s already moving off.”
She seemed to relax. “What did Tower mean when he said they had created a perimeter?”
“They’ve tried to guess which direction we went and how far we might have gotten and have saturated the area with soldiers and helicopters in hopes that we’ll run into their net.” He pressed his lips to her hair. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
When the helicopter had gone, they pressed on, soon coming to the little creek. It was maybe ten feet across and less than a foot deep.
Connor was going to help Shanti walk across a fallen log, but she stomped into the flowing water and over to the other side.
“My boots and socks are already wet, and they’ll get wetter when it rains. Why waste time crossing the log?”
He found himself grinning. “Now you’re thinking like an operator.”
They pushed west to avoid the village, twice more taking cover to evade search helicopters. When he was certain they’d made their way safely around the village, they stopped for a quick lunch of energy bars and water and then veered to the northwest.
Clouds were moving in now, settling over the mountains like a blanket, sending the helicopters back to the safety of their landing pads.
“Time to break out the rain gear. It’s going to pour.”
They hadn’t gone another ten minutes when the rain began to fall. The dense tree cover kept some of it off them, but the forest floor beneath their feet grew more slippery, especially on steep terrain. It was a hard slog up one slope and down the next, even for Connor, and it slowed them down.
After an hour of this, he stopped for a break, splitting what was left of last night’s MRE—raisins, breadsticks, peanut butter, and grape jelly. “We’ll go for a couple more hours until sunset and find a place to camp.”
They pressed on, one step after another, uphill and down. Eventually, the rain let up, and the cloud cover lifted. With the change in weather, the cries of monkeys and the whirring of the helicopters returned.
Shanti glared up at the sky. “Can’t they give up and go home?”
“Is General Naing the sort of man who throws in the towel?”
She didn’t answer, but it had been a rhetorical question anyway.
They pushed on, twilight settling over the forest.
Connor stopped. “It’s time to make camp.”
“We should just keep going.”
“You’re exhausted, Shanti. You need to rest. The jungle’s a different world at night. Lots of those things you don’t like come out to hunt when the sun goes down.”
From somewhere to their north came the well-timed howl of some angry cat—and not the kitty kind.
Shanti’s eyes went wide. “Right.”
“I’ll scout a good site if you want to—”
“No! No. I’ll come with you.”
After a moment, they came to an area where the forest was pockmarked, small round craters in every direction.
“Shell holes.”
“What?”