Chapter 12

Here"s the problem. We were two naked men armed with some bedsheets, a couple of pillowcases, a backpack, an assortment of survival food and beverages, and, well, that"s about it. With these meager supplies, we needed to take down an unknown number of unknown persons well-equipped enough to fly in at the perfect time to get the drop on us after dark.

In a college town, you get into the habit of classifying all criminals as burn-outs, basement dwellers, and losers. These dudes might get some ink and pretend to be in a gang, but they didn"t have much going on that would intimidate a guy my size.

Professional criminals? Organized crime? Those guys weren"t real, they were something you"d see on a screen.

But you didn"t feel the damp through a screen. You didn"t smell the salt of the sea.

This is happening.

For the first time—or at least the first time without memory blockers—I was going toe-to-toe with professional evildoers that I could see coming from miles away. I still didn"t know who they were, but I could make some educated assumptions about what they were.

Mercenaries. Quasi-military. Criminals or terrorists, but high-level ones, the kind who had all the training and got to play with all the toys.

Should have known that all along. Amateur random nerds might try to invade our team"s security system or mess with security and surveillance networks. But they never would have gotten this far with the NSA and the FBI on their tracks.

I did know that all along. I just didn"t want to believe it.

The odds against us were daunting.

We had to assume they"d come with the full armaments package. Members of the criminal elite didn"t pay attention to any local, national, or international laws that banned felons from the possession of dangerous firearms.

As if that wasn"t enough to make our escape into a level 10 challenge, we didn"t get to sail away on a pirate boat with a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

Oh, hell no. That would be too fucking easy. I"d like to meet the boat I couldn"t float. So no.

We had to figure out a way to take wing and fly away.

Did helicopters come with instruction manuals?

As I settled into my tree-top perch, I glanced over at Noah. Only inches away, he was now virtually invisible except as a dark shadow in a dark night.

"We might not have to fly anywhere," he said. Uncanny how he picked up on what I was thinking. "If we could turn the tables on these dudes, lock them up in the house or, um, tie them up, then maybe all we have to do is break into the helicopter and SOS on its radio. Have somebody fly out to us to save our asses."

"You"re right," I said. "Anyway, we have to tackle the game one play at a time. Before we worry about what we"ll do with a helicopter, we have to get the helicopter."

"We"ll get it."

We"ll have to. There"s no alternative.

Was that a leaf under my bare butt? I lifted a cheek an inch or two. If the adjustment allowed me to nudge into Noah, I didn"t mind. And neither did he.

He"d suggested we get naked before we scramble up the tree.

"If you want to watch my butt move up a tree, you can just say so," I"d said.

He laughed. "Always. But, seriously, let"s be strategic here. Wearing these sheets up a tree has a lot of drawbacks."

Couldn"t deny that. Light fabric catches the light. Any fabric can trip you up.

"We"ll hang them around the place to catch their eyes. Create a little confusion."

"Won"t work if they"re wearing night-vision."

"Sure. But if they"re using regular flashlights, it might distract and even separate them for a few minutes—and we might need those minutes."

Considering how loud the chop of the helicopter blades was getting, I couldn"t disagree. Noah"s toga tore easily at the ripped place to make two pieces. With my toga, we had three white ghosts we could hang at various spots around the nearby forest.

"I feel ridiculous," I grumbled.

"You? I"ve felt ridiculous for weeks."

Scrambling up palm trees is for experts. We dashed into the forest and halfway back up the mountain. The perfect tree for our purpose would have a thick trunk with lots of well-placed sturdy branches. The best candidates were members of a species with broad leaves the size of an open umbrella.

Each leaf had five fingers that made it resemble a giant"s hand. Their shadows were uber-creepy in the dark.

"This one," Noah said.

He was the expert on life in trees, so I followed him up. We ended up on a perch about thirty feet high where a convergence of branches formed a natural platform big enough for both of us.

"This is... nice." I was making too much effort not to sound unthrilled.

"Should we go higher?" he asked. "I wanted to make sure you were low enough to get a good bead on your targets."

"It"s perfect." I couldn"t do most of the other exercises I could do to psych myself up for a big play, but I could still breathe nice and deep. "Besides, we have a solid advantage."

"Yeah?" Even this close, his face was mostly shadow. It was very dark by now, especially in the forest. "Besides having the high ground? What advantage is that?"

I squeezed his leg. "They don"t want us dead."

"True dat," he said.

We both held on tight to that one truth.

They weren"t coming to kill us. They"d do everything they could to avoid killing us. No matter how much we annoyed them, they wouldn"t blast us out of the tree with an AK.

They"d invested too much time and effort to bring us here alive.

"You know they"ll know how to climb a tree, right?" Noah asked in a more serious voice.

Of course I knew that. The know-how to climb a tree with lots of healthy, sturdy branches wasn"t exactly the rare province of a few elite soldiers. Anyone could do it.

"They can try," I said. "But it"ll sure slow them down if I keep bouncing hard objects off their heads. This arm is serious business."

Noah"s smile flashed in the dark like a beacon.