Page 47 of Into the Storm

Palmer moved. Relief flooded Paul’s system at catching the sudden twitch of the man’s shoulders, just visible across the dark room. Palmer was alive. Waking up.

This was a good sign. Maybe Krieger was also asleep.

It made sense that the four men would have been drugged. Easiest way to take them down quietly before the training started. At the time, two had been in the forest and two inside the lodge. A tranq gun would do the job.

Paul had been inside the yurt. He’d heard the intruders and had put up a fight, but four on one had made for a lopsided battle.

It had to be a powerful tranquilizer for all four men to be out cold for so long.

Palmer moved again. Another twitch, then his body settled, and Paul wondered if he was awake enough to realize he needed to feign sleep.

The merc commander didn’t notice the movement. He sat with his back to Paul, mask still on, but NVGs set aside, engrossed with something on his laptop screen. Paul wondered when the machine would run out of battery life, hoping they’d turn on a generator, which would signal to the SEALs they were in the lodge.

Not that the team wouldn’t guess, but nothing quite like having X mark the spot when there were a dozen outbuildings they could have been taken to. They’d planned to run scenarios tomorrow with the hostages held in the boathouse, and another with mother and son in the maintenance shed.

He suspected the only reason he, as the lone awake prisoner, hadn’t been moved to a separate room or building was because they didn’t have enough men to guard him separately.

Paul had counted eight mercs so far. There could be more in the forest, but how many? In most instances, a full platoon would be difficult to take down with just a handful of men, but no one had expected an ambush here, and the SEALs didn’t have real guns or explosives.

But the mercs hadn’t counted on Rivera eluding their net, and they were spending energy on tracking him and the Kendrick woman. The merc leader would be told the minute Rivera was caught, making no news good news for Paul and the other hostages.

The door burst open and a minion barged in, dragging a body behind him. Not Rivera or any of the SEALs, thank god.

The merc leader jumped to his feet and swore in Russian as he approached the dead man.

“We’ve got a problem,” the minion said.

“So it appears.”

The leader lifted the man’s head. Paul could just make out streaks of blood covering the face, while something large protruded from the dead man’s eye socket.

The masked man made a sound of disgust as he released the head. “What is this?”

The minion released the collar of the dead man’s jacket, and the body landed in a pile on the floor. Discarded refuse, not a fallen brother.

These men had no loyalty, not even to each other.

“We just finished unloading the supplies from the boat onto the dock. I heard a pop and turned to see him scream and collapse. Shot in the eye with a nail.”

Had the SEALs armed themselves by putting nails in front of the Simunition rounds in their rifles? That might work in a pinch, but a shot in the eye from any kind of distance was too accurate for that. A nail wouldn’t fly far or straight with a Simunition round as the propellant.

No. This was something else. Someone else?

Rivera? His Glock only fired Simunition too. But Kendrick might know where Rivera could find weapons or where he could make them.

Paul averted his gaze and kept his body loose. He couldn’t give off signs he understood their words, or they’d move their conversations to a different room.

“Put his body with the others.”

Others?

He held back the smile that wanted to spread at hearing the plural word.

Rivera had been busy. Unless there was someone else in these woods.

Was it possible they had an unknown ally?