Lightning Game (GhostWalkers 17)

Do you recognize anything about them?

No.

She was adamant and Rubin believed her. He tuned his mind to the trees and the owls there. Diego was the expert, but Rubin could reach out and connect easily. He had done it often as a youth, hunting. He didn’t want Diego’s attention to be divided for even the slightest moment. This was life or death. This team—if Whitney had sent them—was superior to anything they’d ever come across. He wasn’t so certain anymore that Whitney had sent them.

Rubin reached out until he found the owl he was looking for. Great horned owls were powerful, relentless and without fear. More than once, as children, the boys had enlisted the owls as hunting companions. The fierce raptors were ferocious when bringing down large prey, inflicting maximum damage in order to make certain of a quick kill with little or no resistance. The boys had learned a lot from the owls.

The owl was large, but with its coloration it had the ability to camouflage its body by positioning itself onto a tree limb, elongating its body to blend into the bark during the day. Few people would ever spot it. The boys often took to the trees to sleep in, molding their bodies to the tree limbs in an effort to hide from any enemies. Those lessons in stillness had been taught at an early age from their hunting companions.

The owl had been waiting in silence, perched on a limb, using her extraordinary senses to find a meal for the evening. Rubin turned her attention to finding his enemies. She would be his eyes and ears. It was always disorienting to first move from his vision into the vision of another creature, but he had done so often enough that the adjustment came quickly. The owl’s night vision was one hundred times sharper than that of a human. He could see ten times clearer, and the owl had a 270-degree neck rotation, allowing him to see so much more.

Rubin studied the forest below him carefully, using the owl’s vision and acute hearing. He saw squirrel man with his back to a small tree, one knee drawn up, the other outstretched at an awkward angle and bleeding. He was repairing a wound in his shoulder. He looked battered, but was definitely still alive. He’d found a good place to shelter, completely covered on all four sides. He was also very concerned about the wound in his calf. A field dressing was tight on it, but he fussed with it more than once.

Occasionally he would pause, head going up as if listening to someone speaking to him. He nodded once. Was someone speaking telepathically? The owl caught the whisper of a voice. No, it was a radio, but there was no sign of the receiver. If it was in his ear, it was deep.

The owl studied the body hanging from the tree, upside down, swinging macabrely. Definitely dead. That man wasn’t faking. Rubin dismissed him and moved on. The third sniper was located in an old white oak, one of the rarer trees still left that hadn’t been taken years earlier. Diego, undoubtedly, had already pinpointed his exact location.

Rubin continued to push to see the entire surrounding forest, the floor as well as the trees. He was patient. The great horned owl could be still for hours waiting for prey. The owl scanned carefully, sifting through the trees, each of the branches individually. It was an enormous task. An hour went by. A second one. He barely noticed the passing of time.

The wounded squirrel man on the ground drew the owl’s attention twice when he shifted positions, trying to get comfortable at one point, and then whispered a complaint.

“I’m bleeding again. I think that bastard hand-loads his own bullets and he put something in them to make me bleed like this. Nothing is working to stop it.”

There was silence for a long time. Then a slight buzzing sound that indicated someone was speaking. Rubin let the owl sort it out.

“You’d be dead by now if it was bleeding that much.”

The owl’s head snapped around, not toward the oak where the sniper lay in the crotch but behind the owl, farther away. Much farther. A mile? This man was in the trees as well. These men seemed at home in them. He might have eyes on Diego, but Rubin doubted it. Someone else closer. The one a mile out was the leader of the team, directing them, but the one hanging back, being so silent, he was their ace in the hole, just as Diego had been Rubin’s.

Rubin was methodical. These men were comfortable in the trees. They could move fast in them, leaping from tree to tree like flying squirrels. Jonquille might eventually expect that, just as Rubin and Diego would. So their ace would most likely take to the ground. He would locate Diego by the direction of his bullets and creep up on him, using the cover of the dense underbrush.