The Reason: Book Two

Chapter 2
Back to Work 
 
Lying on my belly, I watch the leaves drift down on another autumn day in Northwest Kentucky. Its so quiet that my ears can detect their soft touch down, blanketing the forest floor like nature’s plush  carpet. It helps conceal us from the group on the trail to our right. Keep walking. Don’t stop. Just keep strolling along, friends. I’m glad I decided to leave Skye at home. Sometimes he’s a little vocal during these patrols. That would be most unfortunate.
Thanks to Ryan, on point, we detected them in plenty of time to conceal ourselves. Jen and I saw him react, then he gave the signals for us to go prone and that people were approaching. Then, more signals,  indicating the number of individuals and direction of movement. These types of moments are a definite shot of adrenaline. My heart beats hard and loud against my scarred chest, and we treat these people as hostile until they aren’t.
The trail they’re on is about 150 to 200 feet away. They’re smart, taking their time moving through the area to their destination. Moving slowly can equate to safety. The group of Marauders , five times our size, is lazily patrolling down the trail we’ve been paralleling. I wouldn’t necessarily say patrolling. More like ‘strolling’. Regardless, their presence throws a wrench in our timetable. They’re well-armed, semi-organized and could be mistaken for one of our militia groups. The tale is there’s not one upside-down stars and stripes among them, though. That confirms they’re not tribe or family but… Marauders.
And with only three of us, if this soft contact escalates to hard…
Preparing for that probability, I take my attention away from their column to place a fragmentation grenade in an easily accessible location instead of lying on top it. What I hear forms a clump of ice in my stomach. The sound shifts, quiet footfalls turn into bulls in a china shop crunching through leaves, tells me all I need to know. I look up in dread. Yup. They’ve changed direction!
Moving only my eyes, I watch as their column makes a left turn off the trail, leading them out of the kill box. Weakening our position and taking our advantage away.
Wunderbar!
They’re now to our left, at about 100 feet moving steadily NE, perpendicular to the trail we made. , No stopping it now, they’ll cross the trail we made.
Pucker factor… eight.
As the rear man on a reconnaissance team, it’s my responsibility to sterilize our trail. Let’s hope I did a good job.
Now that I’m the closest to them, I dictate how we act towards them. I’m in favor of waiting them out. A reconnaissance team that experiences hard contact on a mission usually becomes a dead recon team because they’re outnumbered, outgunned and behind enemy lines.
At their pace, they’ll be gone in minutes.
I slowly and incrementally shift myself as far as I dare to orient myself towards them. Though I’m camouflaged, I measure my movements carefully. Humans have the eyes of a predator. They react to movement.
I’m sweating bullets, and I’m surprised they can’t hear my heartbeat.
They’re almost past us. Keep walking. Don’t stop. Move along. The last man, already eyeing his surroundings, hesitates and looks closer at the ground. He comes to a full stop and kneels, his free hand to the ground. Rummaging.
He stops investigating the trail and looks directly in our direction. Eyes following our trail.
Damn. Pucker factor 10 out of 10.

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