Phantom Game (GhostWalkers 18)

THE GHOSTWALKER CREED

We are the GhostWalkers, we live in the shadows

The sea, the earth, and the air are our domain

No fallen comrade will be left behind

We are loyalty and honor bound

We are invisible to our enemies and we destroy them where we find them

We believe in justice and we protect our country and those unable to protect themselves

What goes unseen, unheard and unknown are GhostWalkers

There is honor in the shadows and it is us

We move in complete silence whether in jungle or desert

We walk among our enemy unseen and unheard

Striking without sound and scatter to the winds before they have knowledge of our existence

We gather information and wait with endless patience for that perfect moment to deliver swift justice

We are both merciful and merciless

We are relentless and implacable in our resolve

We are the GhostWalkers and the night is ours

1

The mountains rose up, climbing higher and higher, towering all around, the peaks reaching for the clouds. All along the mountainsides and in the valleys between, red cedar, whitebark pine and spruce trees vied for space. This was true forest, two million acres of actual wilderness, most of it, left to the animals that were native to the area. Grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions, moose, timber wolves, mountain goats, elk, bighorn sheep and mule deer all made the vast forest home, along with a range of smaller animals.

Jonas “Smoke” Harper, Dr. Kyle Forbes and Jeff Hollister, three of the genetically and psychically enhanced members of GhostWalker Team One, continued along the nearly nonexistent game trail they’d been traveling for the past three hours.

“You still getting that bad feeling in your gut, Jonas?” Jeff asked.

Jonas scanned the dense forest with narrowed eyes, maintaining his purposefully relaxed gait while keeping his hand close to his weapon. “Yep.”

Kyle sighed. “You sure it isn’t just a stitch in your side?”

“Yep.”

“You did notice that the higher we climb, the more bear scat we’re coming across,” Jeff said.

“Yep.”

“Just thought I’d point that out.” A small grin lit Jeff’s face.

“I’m not sure he actually knows how to talk, Jeff,” Kyle said. “Ryland did warn us. Said if we volunteered to come with him, we’d hear nothing but grunts for days.”

“Wait.” Smile fading, Jeff halted abruptly and glared at his companions. “You volunteered? Ryland ordered me to come with you two. Said I had to protect your asses.”

Jonas and Kyle stopped as well, and Jonas took the opportunity to study Jeff without appearing to do so. It had been a couple of years since Jeff had recovered from a stroke that would have put any normal soldier out of commission for good. Jeff had fought his way back.

Jeff, like most men in the government’s GhostWalker program, wasn’t anyone’s definition of a normal soldier anymore. These men were, instead, the products of a military experiment that hadn’t quite gone as expected. They had gone into the program volunteering for psychic enhancements with the expectation of being of more use to their country, but along with removing filters in their brains, Dr. Peter Whitney had also performed experimental gene coding on them. That part they had not signed up for.

Worse, the first of Whitney’s gene-coding experiments had been illegally performed on young orphan girls, with disastrous results. Those initial failures hadn’t stopped Whitney though. Instead, he’d forged ahead with similar gene modifications on the soldiers, believing that grown men could better handle the pressures of the enhancements than the female children had. Team One had lost several of the men in their unit, and Jeff had suffered a brain bleed and stroke. He was fully recovered, but the entire team tended to watch over him, Jonas especially.

The survivors of Whitney’s experiments were all admittedly stronger, and they now possessed some very incredible abilities, but those benefits had come at a steep price. They were all continuing to learn just how steep that price could be. Lily Whitney-Miller, Peter Whitney’s adopted daughter, who was now married to their team leader, Captain Ryland Miller, had given them all exercises to do to strengthen the barricades in their minds. That allowed the ones who had been wide open to be able to be in public without an “anchor”—one who drew emotion and psychic overload from them—at least for short periods of time.

Jeff looked good to Jonas, but still, he glanced at Kyle just to make certain. Kyle would be better at making an assessment. If the doc thought Jeff needed a break, he’d find an excuse to take one. Jeff never shirked the physical therapy designed to strengthen the weaker side of his body or the mental exercises to strengthen the barriers in his brain. He stayed in therapy the brain surgeon recommended to ensure the psychic talents he used didn’t bring on another bleed. He was one of the hardest-working GhostWalkers Jonas knew—and that was saying a lot.