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Sarah clutched her hands together. “You think we aren’t going to get out of here, don’t you? That we’re going to have to disable or kill the men to escape?”
“Probably. Yeah, we could take as many guns and as much ammo as we could carry with us, but they could pick us off one by one from the trees. They probably have tree stands set up all over these woods. They may think we made it out or they might find our trail back. If we are patient, they’ll come back here. And we have to be ready and waiting for them. There is a lot more firepower here than they could carry with them, so we have the advantage. Once they are out of ammo, they’ll be forced to retreat since we have control of the rest of their stash.”
“They could send one person or more.”
He shrugged. “One person couldn’t carry enough for all the hunters. The main problem is we don’t know how many there are. If there are six or more, they could send several guys while we holdthem off. But my gut says that would be too many to keep their activities secret out here for all this time. I suspect they have no more than four. Maybe just the three we know about.”
She nodded and backed out of the cell block. “I hate this place. I didn’t want to shoot from here anyway.”
“I think we should move more guns out of the armory. We don’t know if they have grenades or anything they could launch to destroy the weapons and ammo. Let’s take as much as we can to the shed and into here in case we have to divide up.”
And it would help occupy his time so he wasn’t so worried about Annie. He prayed for her safety as he began to carry rifles and crates of ammo into the shed. When it was standing room only in there, he transferred more to the cell block. When they were done, the armory was bare bones except for a few empty crates.
He replaced the padlocks and made sure it appeared like the building hadn’t been disturbed. The men would be in for a big surprise if they got back here.
Thirty-Seven
If only she could sleep a few hours. Annie rubbed gritty eyes and surveyed her work. She’d carefully covered her tracks when she went off the fire road, then had waded a distance in a stream before emerging on the side of the water closest to the hunters’ compound.
Her stomach rumbled as she shrugged off her backpack, then dried her feet on dry grass and sat down to pull on her shoes and socks. She’d eaten the last of her jerky a while ago, and there wouldn’t be more food until she got back with Jon and Sarah. They might have eaten all their supplies as well, but she suspected there would be a stash of edibles at the compound somewhere.
She spied a carpet of wild strawberries and moved over to pick them and stuff them in her mouth, stems and all, so there would be no sign of them. They were fully ripe and delicious, but there weren’t enough of them. She glanced around again and found another patch. And another. In a few minutes her belly was full, and she felt recharged to continue the battle instead of wanting to find a cave and sleep for days.
Had Jon and Sarah made it back to the compound? She’d prayed constantly for them to stay safe and to find help at the hunters’ headquarters. Maybe they’d found a sat phone or someway to call for help and were even now rescued and waiting for her, but the chances were slim.
She had no idea what time it was, but judging by how hungry she’d been, she thought it was near dinnertime. Jon and Sarah would be frantic, and she prayed they stayed put and didn’t come out here looking for her. They’d leave a trail a mile wide for the hunters.
She donned her pack again and picked up the tree branch. She had a vague idea of where she was, and she started off toward another deer trail. She’d lay down another fake trail before heading to the hunters’ compound. One false path might not be enough with the wily hunters. She left a footprint here and a broken twig there again until she came to a Y in the path. She thought the left side would take her toward the camp, so she made a few more obvious signs that direction before retracing her way and heading toward Jon and Sarah.
She’d traveled about a mile when she heard voices. There was a large, climbable tree to her left, and she quickly tossed her branch into the bushes and climbed it. She perched on the largest limb with the biggest part of the trunk hiding her from the direction of the sounds. Her pulse roared in her ears, and she barely dared to breathe in the woodsy scent of the bark.
“That ranger is seriously ticking me off,” Eric said.
Annie clung more tightly to the tree. Was Eric talking to Max, Joel, or both?
“You complaining about the sport of it all?” Max asked. “Challenging is good. It tests your skills. We could all take a leaf from her book on woods lore. She knows how to hide her tracks, and she has elevated this hunt above all others.”
“What if she gets away?” Eric whined. “We’ve been out here for hours. I thought we’d have them both by noon.”
“Quit complaining. You sound like a two-year-old. She’s going to make every hunt after this one seem way too easy. We might have to change our possible prey to someone more challenging like Annie.”
Just the two of them. Where was Joel? Having him out there somewhere was worrisome.
The voices were closer now. Annie hadn’t had a chance to cover her tracks, and the grass below was thick and lush. It would show her tracks way too easily. If they searched at all, they’d find her up here. Maybe they’d see the tracks she laid for them and go that way before they discovered her perch.
“When we find her, I want to make her pay for leading us around like donkeys,” Eric said.
“I might give you first shot, but you have to cyclops it,” Max said.
Cyclops it? She struggled to remember the reference on the back of a photo they’d found at Hussert’s.Shoot straight.So the words on the back referred to both who was taking the lead and directions on taking out their prey.
Max’s voice grew closer. “One shot is all you get. We don’t torture our prey. That’s going too far.”
Did he think running for her life didn’t amount to torture? Had he seen the bleeding blisters on one of his victim’s feet? This had been a horrible experience, and it wasn’t over yet. She didn’t know how it would end, and it might get worse.
There came the sound of a zipper and the ripple of a package being torn open. “Want a jerky?” Eric asked.
“I have some if I want one. I don’t want to spend another night out here. We need to find them and end this.”
