Page 18 of False Flag

He settled into a protected position near the promised stream and scanned the woods as he waited for whoever was in the cache to emerge.

A sound to his right set him on the alert, and he shifted slightly to see one of his SEAL teammates, Miguel Solis, heading in Cal’s direction. Solis was on Yellow team.

Solis took aim at Cal just as a white woman with a yellow band on her arm appeared beneath the blind—there must have been a trap door—and descended the vine-covered ladder.

Jake fired his weapon, hitting Solis in the arm holding his paintball gun. Not a kill shot, but he’d have to limit use of that arm.

Solis’s shot went wild, thus protecting Cal, who fired at the woman on the ladder, but missed when she released the ladder in favor of a vine that was really a rope and pushed off the tree, then jumped, dropping to the forest floor and out of Jake’s view.

He had a wounded SEAL to deal with, who’d now turned on him, ready to fire with his left arm. Jake ducked and rolled. They played cat and mouse through the thick trees.

His energy surged, senses heightened with the adrenaline of the game. Solis was wiry and nimble, and while they had full headgear and protective padding over their torsos, neither of them was weighed down with the usual body armor. His teammate could well escape.

He couldn’t worry about Cal or the woman who’d recovered the artifact until after he dealt with Solis.

A whisper of movement caught his eye, and he turned and fired just as Solis pulled his trigger. Jake lost an arm, but for Solis, it was endgame.

His arm stung like a bitch where the paintball hit just above the elbow. An easy reminder to limit his use of the arm until he could constrain it with a band.

“Aww damn, Burns. I was sure I had you.” Solis held out his game token. The color of the paint Jake had been hit with was blue, and the token confirmed that Solis had been one of the six traffickers, who were revealed only by the color of their paint and their tokens. Jake would earn double points for removing him from the game.

“Better luck next round.” He accepted the token, then put on an injury band to limit the motion of his left arm. At least it wasn’t his preferred shooting arm.

Solis wrapped himself in a white sheet and set out for the game base—which Raptor called God’s Eye—where all eliminated players could watch the ongoing game on a bank of screens.

All deceased players had to drape themselves in a sheet to cover their wounds and signal they were out as they traversed the woods. If they met any active players, they were not to speak or give clues as to who shot them or their shooter’s role. Dead men told no tales.

Jake went the opposite direction, quietly making his way toward the area where he’d last seen the woman who’d exchanged fire with Cal. Red and yellow paint spatters marked the way. Neither Cal nor the woman was a trafficker.

Good to know.

He came to an area that had a lot of yellow splatters. He pulled out his binoculars and scanned the woods, eventually spotting a bare black head with a white drape wrapped around his shoulders.

Cal was out of the game.

Had Cal come across two people from Yellow team, or had the woman just used a whole lot of pellets to take him out?

Whatever the case, Jake no longer had an ally—that he knew of—in this part of the woods, and Yellow team probably had an artifact on its way to their HQ.

Staci came close to getting one of the three artifacts—close enough to have seen what it was. A gold trident the size of a dinner plate. Not the kind of trident used by mariners and Mer people, but the kind that SEALs were given when they passed BUD/S. Also known as the Budweiser because it looked an awful lot like the beer logo.

She’d bet anything the other two artifacts would be symbols that represented Valkyries and Raptors.

Clever and a good reminder that this was a game among friends. Special forces operators—current and former—did seem to have a tendency to take competitions like this a bit too seriously.

Not that anyone here had shown signs of it, but Morgan had told her stories.

After exchanging fire with another player and surviving with all her limbs and a yellow token, Staci climbed a tree for a better view of the playing field. She heard sounds of battle to the south and jumped down, intending to join the fray.

Then she promptly tripped and hit the dirt. She stifled her grunt as pain shot up her knee. She huffed out a breath. She’d be fine. She just needed a minute.

She turned to glare at the root that caught her foot, but then promptly forgave the plant when she saw the concealed opening of a hunting blind.

She never would have seen it while standing. She might even have walked by ten of these as she wandered the forest looking for action. She crawled into the blind, then sat up and took in her surroundings.

This was a good place to catch her breath and regroup.

She’d earned a point, which had been her goal today. More than anything, she’d wanted Morgan and Freya to see her as a potential Valkyrie. At least, that had been her plan weeks ago when she’d received her invitation to the party.