Page 10 of My Forbidden Commander

Okafor halts us at the bend. Danger area. Open rock face, seventy meters of exposure before the pines pick back up. If I were a Dravosian commander with any ambition, my kill zone would be right here.

The radio clicks twice. Then Hayes’s voice, barely above a breath.

“Rear says hold. Reyes’s got something.”

Every man in the file goes to ground. I move back down the slope, keeping low, past Spencer and the gun, past Petrillo pressed into the rocks, and find Reyes prone behind a deadfall with his rifle up and his cheek off the stock, checking the back trail with just his eyes.

I go down beside him until we’re shoulder to shoulder, both of us flat in the wet needles. This close, I can feel the heat coming off him, smell the soap he used in the shower last night, and, fuck, none of that is tactical information.

“Report.”

“Glint,” he breathes. “Back trail, high right, maybe four hundred meters. Ridge past the second bend. Twice, same spot, ten seconds apart.” His eyes never stop moving. “Sun’s behind us now. Somebody’s glass caught it.”

“Or a shell casing,” I murmur. “Wet rock.”

Reyes tilts his head. “Wet rock doesn’t blink, sir.”

I bring my own optic up and walk it along the ridge he pointed out. Rock, scrub pine, shadow. Nothing. Thirty seconds crawl past with the two of us breathing in sync, my eyes on a shadow.

Then it moves. A shape detaches itself from the rock and slips into the trees with the ease of a man who has done this many times before.

“One,” I murmur. “Moving off. No shot, no need.” I key my radio. “All elements, hold. Single observer on our back trail, breaking contact. Nobody engages.” I lower the radio. “He wasn’t here to fight us. He was here to count us.”

Reyes turns his head. This close, his eyes are more amber than brown, and I put my attention back on the ridge where it belongs.

“Count us for who, sir?” he asks under his breath.

“For whoever paid for it. Somebody wanted a headcount of our patrol, and they just got one.” I lower the optic. “They knew our route window, too. He was in position before we ever stepped off.”

“Sir.” Reyes’s voice stays low, all the swagger gone. This is the real soldier now. “If he was set before dawn, he had a hide.”

I dip my head. “He did.”

“If it’s there, we can find it.”

I look at him. He looks at the ridge.

“Okafor holds the file,” I say. “You and I walk the ridge.”

We find it twenty minutes later, tucked into a rock cleft below the crest with an overhead of cut pine boughs. Reyes covers while I go through it. There’s a flattened square where a mat used to be, two cigarette butts pressed into a crack in the rock—dark tobacco, Dravosian—and a tin that held food.

And wedged under a stone, forgotten or abandoned in a hurry, a range card.

I unfold it flat on the rock. Hand-drawn. Precise. The Velin approach—our approach—sketched in pencil with distances marked to every choke point. Three columns of times in the margin, patrol windows logged over days. Ours, and the two units that walked this route before us.

At the bottom corner, a wolf’s head, drawn in three quick strokes.

“Border Wolves,” Reyes says over my shoulder. He’s supposed to be covering us, but his eyes are on the card. “That’s their mark, right? The unit the interpreters won’t talk about?”

“Eyes on our rear, Specialist,” I say, and he swings back out while I photograph the card, the hide, the butts.

“They’ve been pattern-mapping Kestrel’s patrols for at least two weeks,” I say, folding the card into a bag. “Every route. Every window. This isn’t reconnaissance for an ambush on one patrol.”

“It’s targeting for the base,” Reyes suggests grimly.

“Or for something moving through Velin Pass that they don’t want us seeing when it moves.” I stand. “Either way, command’s assessment was wrong. The patrols didn’t shift because of internal Dravosian politics. They shifted to pull our attention while these people did their homework.”

Reyes scans the tree line, rifle steady. “For the record, sir. The glint. I caught it from rear security.”