Four Blind Mice

other hikers on the AT, he kept his men deep in the woods, unseen by their fellow travelers or anyone else.
    It wasn’t hard to do. In their past lives they’d spent days, sometimes weeks, being invisible to enemies who were out to find and kill them but frequently ended up getting killed themselves. One time it had been a team of four homicide detectives in Tampa, Florida.
    Starkey demanded that they treat this like a real-life combat mission, in real-life war. Total silence was imperative. They used hand signals most of the time. If someone had to cough, he did so in his neck rag or in the crook of an arm. Their rucksacks had been packed tight by Sergeant Griffin so that nothing shook or rattled as they walked.
    The three of them had slathered on bug juice, then laid on the cammo. They didn’t smoke a cigarette all day.
    No mistakes.
    Starkey figured that the kill would take place somewhere between Harpers Ferry and an area known as Loudoun Heights. Parts of the trail were densely forested there, an endless green tunnel that would be good for their purposes. The trees were mostly deciduous, leafy, no conifers. A lot of rhododendron and mountain laurel. They noticed everything.
    They didn’t actually make camp that night, and were careful not to leave evidence that they had been in the woods at all.
    Brownley Harris was sent on another scouting mission at seven-thirty that night, just before it got dark. When he returned, the sun was gone and darkness had fallen like a shroud over the AT. The woods had a kind of jungle feel, but it was only an illusion. A state road ran about half a mile from where they were standing.
    Harris reported in to Starkey. “Target One is approximately two klicks ahead of us. Target Two is less than three. Everything’s still looking good for us. I’m pumped.”
    “You’re always ready for a hunt and kill,” said Starkey. “But you’re right, everything’s working for us. Especially this friendly, trust-your-neighbor mind-set all these recreational hikers have.”
    Starkey made the command decision. “We’ll move to a point midway between Targets One and Two. We’ll wait there. And remember, let’s not get sloppy. We’ve been too good for too long to blow it now.”

Chapter 45
    A THREE-QUARTER MOON made the going easier through the woods. Starkey had known about the moon beforehand. He wasn’t just a control freak, he was obsessive about details because getting them wrong could get you killed, or caught. He
knew
they could expect mild temperatures, low wind, and no rain. Rain would mean mud, and mud would mean a lot of footprints, and footprints would be unacceptable on their mission.
    They didn’t speak as they moved through the woods. Maybe it wasn’t necessary to be so cautious out here, but it was habit, the way they had been conditioned for combat. A simple rule had always been drummed into them:
remember how you were trained, and don’t ever try to be a hero
. Besides, the discipline helped them concentrate. Their focus was on the killings that would soon take place.
    The three men were in their own private worlds as they walked: Harris fantasized about the actual kills with real-life faces and bodies; Starkey and Griffin stayed very real-time, and yet they hoped that Harris wasn’t pulling their chain with his description of the target. Starkey remembered one time Brownley had reported that the prey was a Vietnamese schoolgirl, whom he went on to describe in elaborate detail. But when they got to the kill zone, a small village in the An Lao Valley, they found an obese woman well into her seventies, with black warts all over her body.
    The reveries were cut short by a male voice piercing the woods.
    Starkey’s hand flew up in warning.
    “Hey! Hey! What’s going on? Who’s out there?” the voice called. “Who’s there?”
    The three of them stopped in their tracks. Harris and Griffin looked at Starkey, who kept his right arm raised. No one answered the unexpected voice.
    “Cynthia? Is that you, sweetie? Not funny, if it is.”
    Male. Young. Obviously agitated.
    Then a bright yellow light flashed in their direction, and Starkey walked forward in its path. “Hey” was all he said.
    “What the hell? You guys army?” the voice asked next. “What are you doing out here? You training? On the Appalachian Trail?”
    Starkey finally flicked on his Maglite flashlight. It lit up a white male in his late twenties, khaki walking shorts down around his ankles, a