Chapter 3 - THE HUNTED HUNT
"They thought they left me alone in the dark. They forgot the dark is my home."They threw Dan out of a moving SUV onto a dirt road thirty miles outside of Lander, Wyoming. He hit the dirt, rolled, and was on his feet before the dust had even settled.
They had given him nothing. No weapon. No communications. Just a GPS tracker with a digital countdown timer displaying: 10:42:15.
Ten hours and forty-two minutes.
Dan looked around. The sun was setting, casting long, bloody shadows across the sagebrush. He had to get to the ledger, but more importantly, he had to find a way to bypass a proprietary neurotoxin pump.
He didn't head for the road. He headed for the mountains.
He ran for three miles, his pace steady, his breathing controlled. When he reached the foothills, he stopped. He heard it before he saw it—the low, distinct whine of a drone.
Cross wasn't trusting him. They were tracking him from the air.
Dan ducked beneath a thick canopy of pine trees. He needed a weapon, and he needed a way to blind their eyes in the sky. He searched the ground, finding a thick, heavy branch of dead pine, a sharp piece of flint, and a length of wild vine.
With the practiced efficiency of a survival specialist, he fashioned a crude but deadly spear and a deadfall trap. But he wasn't hunting animals.
Ten minutes later, the drone buzzed lower, trying to peer through the thick foliage.
Dan stood in a small clearing, completely still. He held a large, dry pine branch covered in pitch. He struck the flint against his steel belt buckle, sending a spark into a handful of dry moss. The moss caught. He touched it to the pitch.
A thick, oily black smoke billowed upward, directly into the drone’s optical sensors.
The drone wavered, its automated pilot system struggling to maintain a visual lock. It drifted lower to get beneath the smoke plume.
That was when Dan struck.
He didn't use the spear. He launched himself from the branch of a nearby ponderosa pine, crashing down onto the drone. The plastic and carbon fiber shattered under his weight. He ripped the battery pack free, sparks flying, and immediately began dismantling the drone's camera assembly.
He needed the high-frequency transmitter inside.
"Five hours left," he muttered, checking his watch.
He began the trek back toward his cabin. Hannah had hidden the ledger there—he knew her mind. She wouldn't have left it in a public locker or buried it in the woods. She would have kept it close to the only safe place she knew.
When he reached the cabin, the sight made his stomach tighten.
The door was kicked in. The windows were gone. The inside was trashed—drawers pulled out, walls smashed in. Cross’s men had already searched it, but they had found nothing.
Dan walked to the center of the living room. He didn't look at the floorboards. He looked at the ceiling.
Above the fireplace was a heavy, hand-hewn lodgepole pine beam. It was charred from years of rising heat. Dan reached up, his fingers searching the rough bark until he felt a small, smooth indentation.
A magnetic keyhole.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his military dog tags. The silencer band on the second tag was actually a high-strength neodymium magnet. He pressed it to the wood.
A small panel clicked open. Inside was a ruggedized USB drive wrapped in waterproof plastic.
The ledger.
But as he pulled it down, a low growl echoed from the corner of the room.
Dan spun, his hand dropping to his spear.
Out of the shadows of the bedroom crawled Valor. The German Shepherd’s hind leg was bandaged with a bloody strip of cloth, his fur matted with dried blood. He had been shot, but he was alive.
"Good boy," Dan whispered, dropping to his knees and pulling the dog close. Valor whimpered, licking Dan's cheek. "They thought they killed you, didn't they? But you're too stubborn to die."
Valor let out a soft whine, pointing his nose toward the window.
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Dan looked out. Headlights were cutting through the trees. Cross’s clean-up crew had arrived to make sure the SEAL didn't try to run.
Dan patted Valor's head. "Stay low, boy. Let me handle the noise."
