Dead Watch

slowness, placing every foot carefully—but it was impossible to move through the woods without making some noise. If there’d been wind, Jake wouldn’t have been able to pick out the footfalls; but there was no wind. They were pretty decent at it, he thought. He’d have to keep that in mind.
    By six-fifteen, daylight was coming on, enough to shoot, and he’d heard the movement pass him to the south, heading down the hill. A moment later, Madison turned on the kitchen light, and then the television. He gave her four beeps on the walkie-talkie, and she walked by the half-open blind of the kitchen window, fast enough that he caught just a flash of shirt.
    If the men below were watching the cabin, they should have seen it. And they should have focused on the idea that the quarry was inside . . .
    Fixing on any specific idea was a killer.
    Five minutes later, he saw them for the first time. For a moment, he thought there was only one, a man in military camo, complete with head cover, carrying a short black weapon. The gun had a fat snout, as big around as an old silver dollar: a special forces military silencer, a gun they’d bought from the Israelis.
    Then he saw more movement ten yards away, a second man. There’d been no flashes from the cameras on the backside of the cabin. He hadn’t expected any, because the approach was so much poorer on that side. There could be a backstop guy on the other side, but it didn’t feel that way. This felt like a hunter-killer team, well coordinated, moving in on a target.
    A scraping noise came from the cabin, the sound of a chair being moved. Madison was improvising. The TV channels, barely audible from Jake’s position, changed. When they did, one of the men flicked a hand at the other. The other man scurried across the opening to the cabin, ducked down next to the porch steps.
    They waited for a moment. Then the second man crossed the clearing, joining his partner. They both were wearing head and face covering, probably against the possibility of security cameras. Jake was tracking them both in the scope now, clicking the safety off, waiting for the shot. He wanted them on the porch. If he took the first one before they were on the porch, the second man might be able to roll under the cabin before he could get another shot off.
    One of the men gave a hand signal, and they moved up the steps, slowly, slowly, ready to crack the front door, or maybe a window.
    Window. One of the men slid toward the larger window looking into the cabin, while the other crouched next to the door. He was going to do a peek. Jake put the crosshairs on him, watching the other man with his off-scope eye.
    The man at the window did a slow peek, then moved his head back, gave the other some kind of hand signal; the man near the door may or may not have gotten it, but it didn’t make any difference.
    Because at that moment, Jake shot the window man in the back.

21 

    The window man went down and Jake tracked right to the second man as he worked the bolt, but the second man was already moving fast, up in the air, over the porch rail, onto the ground and rolling. Jake snapped a shot at him, had the feeling that the shot was a good one, but the man flipped under the cabin and disappeared.
    Jake said into the walkie-talkie, “One down, but we’ve got a loose one, he jumped the railing, he’s under you, watch the back.”
    Madison said, “Yes.”
    A moment later, a flash went off behind the cabin, one of the game-trail cameras. The loose man had continued under the cabin, putting it between himself and Jake, and was heading for the trees. Jake started moving as soon as he saw the flash, sideways across the hill, running. The walkie-talkie vibrated in his hand and Madison called, “He’s crossing the creek, he’s across the creek . . .”
    Jake jacked another shell into the chamber as he ran, saw the second man ten feet from the tree line, hobbling, straining for the trees. Jake pinned the rifle to a tree trunk to steady it, but had no time, no time, and wound up snapping another shot into the brush where the man disappeared.
    On the walkie-talkie, Jake said, “There’s one on the porch, I think he’s gone. Be careful, though. I’m tracking the other one.”
    “Be careful, be careful . . .”
    Now it was a game of cat and mouse. The man in the woods had big problems: he’d probably been hit, though it was impossible to tell how hard. But if he had been, he was bleeding and under