Marcus didn't argue. He dropped onto his stomach in the freezing muck, smearing the thick, freezing mud over his face and neck. Ray did the same, rolling in the sludge until his leather vest and skin were coated in a thick, insulating layer of earth.
They pressed themselves under an overhang of thick roots, holding their breath.
Two minutes later, heavy footsteps crunched on the ridge directly above them.
Ray squeezed his eyes shut.
A bright white light swept over the water of the ditch, missing Ray’s muddy boot by inches.
“Lost the thermals,” a voice muttered directly above them.
“Check the road. They might have a vehicle.”
“Captain wants them alive if they have the envelope.”
“If they run, blow their legs out.”
The footsteps moved rapidly away, heading toward the highway.
Ray and Marcus lay perfectly still in the freezing water for another ten minutes, until the silence of the woods returned.
Ray slowly sat up, the mud caking against his skin. He was shivering uncontrollably, but his mind was remarkably clear.
“You okay?” Ray whispered.
Marcus spat muddy water. “Never better.”
Ray reached into his soaked vest. Miraculously, the thick manila envelope was wrapped in a layer of heavy plastic inside. He pulled it out.
Sitting in the dark, shivering in the mud, Ray tore the plastic open.
By the faint light of the distant highway lamps bleeding through the trees, he pulled out the documents.
There were bank records. Transcripts. Photographs of shipping crates loaded with unmarked assault rifles.
But the most damning piece of paper was a printed email, heavily redacted, but with Captain John Sterling’s name clearly visible at the top.
It was an order to deliberately reroute Ray and Thomas’s squad into a known insurgent stronghold in Kandahar, effectively ordering a hit on his own men because Thomas had stumbled upon a manifest for weapons Sterling was selling to the highest bidder.
Sterling had murdered twelve American soldiers to cover a theft.
And Thomas had faked his own death during the chaos of the ambush, knowing that if he survived officially, Sterling would hunt down his mother, and hunt down Ray, to ensure silence. Thomas had spent twenty years compiling the evidence, waiting for the statute of limitations on his own perceived desertion to pass, waiting for the perfect moment to strike back.
But Sterling had found him first.
Ray stared at the papers. His hands stopped shaking. The profound sorrow that had anchored his life for two decades was entirely consumed by a cold, calculating, apocalyptic rage.
Thomas hadn't died an unrecoverable hero twenty years ago.
He had died tonight, defending Ray. Defending the truth.
Ray carefully folded the documents, wrapped them back in the plastic, and shoved them deep into his inside pocket, zipping it shut.
“Can you walk?” Ray asked Marcus, his voice devoid of any emotion.
“I can manage,” Marcus grunted, pulling himself out of the ditch.
“Good. Because we have work to do.”
They limped out of the tree line and onto the paved shoulder of the county road. A mile down the asphalt, parked beneath a flickering streetlight, were the motorcycles.
Sarah and the other three riders were pacing anxiously near the bikes, looking constantly at the dark woods.
When Ray and Marcus stumbled into the light, covered in mud, blood, and smelling of smoke, Sarah let out a gasp.
“Ray! Jesus, what happened? We saw smoke on the mountain, I called the fire department—”
“We need to ride. Now,” Ray commanded, his voice carrying an authority he hadn't used since the desert.
“Ray, you're bleeding,” another rider pointed to a deep gash on Ray’s forehead he hadn’t even noticed.