Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 125037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
The owl called to him five times. Each cry was that of a female calling to her mate, but she was indicating she had eyes on five soldiers. He called back to her to protect herself. If they were enhanced, it was possible one or more might become aware of her presence—of her spying. He didn’t want her injured or killed on his behalf.
Diego set out jogging, using the faint game trails to make his way quickly to where the soldiers rested. At one point, he switched from the game trail to the habitual path the bobcat used to make his way through the denser foliage until he managed to get close enough to hear their conversation. Diego remained very still, becoming part of the trees and brush surrounding him. He rested his palms on the ground, better to read any warning. Mostly, he eavesdropped.
“What’sss wrong, Bobby? Can’t talk?” The voice came from above, somewhere in the branches of the oak tree.
Diego narrowed his gaze, quartering the tree, looking for the soldier who had spoken.
Two of the men resting, sitting on the ground, laughed as if the soldier had said something hilarious.
One man had his arms wrapped around the branches of the large bush in what appeared to be a stranglehold. He hissed, narrowing his gaze at someone or something in the tree above him. “F-f-fuck you, Dean.” His voice stuttered, and spit dripped from his mouth as he delivered the classic comeback. He twisted his body in an impossible coil around the plant, clearly agitated by the taunting.
Diego studied how the body seemed to elongate. The arms were stretched to impossible lengths. As Bobby coiled around the bush, he tightened his body and arms until he appeared to be crushing the plant.
“Don’t get riled up yet, Bobby,” the one Diego suspected of generating heat said.
Bobby turned yellow eyes on the man sitting calmly on the ground. His tongue darted out, long and forked. “Ssshut him up, Russss.” He drew out the “s” of each word.
“You never could take it, Bobby,” Dean snapped. “You dish it out, but anyone says anything to you, and you whine like a little baby.”
Diego had to look with more than his own eyes. He had more than excellent vision, but he still was unable to spot Dean in the trees. The man seemed to have a cloaking device, a way to become part of his background. Diego knew there was a woman married to one of the men on Team Three who could cloak herself and even those around her. Diego tapped into the vision of one of the raptors Whitney had made a part of his genetic makeup.
He knew he shared the traits of an eagle, hawk and falcon as well as an owl. Whitney hadn’t stinted on his genetic cocktail. He chose to use the sight of an eagle to find the soldier the others referred to as Dean.
“Leave him alone,” Russ ordered. “We can’t have him losing his temper when he doesn’t have a target in sight.”
The other man who had been sitting rose abruptly, his wary gaze fixed on Bobby. “Come on, Bobby, don’t pay any mind to Dean. You know he’s full of shit.” There was a soothing quality to his voice. Not compelling, just soothing. He paced away from the others and then back. “We’re all in this together.”
“That’sss what you sssay, Billy,” Bobby said, his spit falling from his mouth in two steady streams. “I don’t think Dean agreesss.” The last word was difficult to understand as Bobby sputtered and stuttered and hissed.
The fifth man slowly switched his penetrating, distinctly warning gaze from Bobby to Dean. Diego could easily follow his line of sight to the soldier in the tree. Even with the sight of an eagle and knowing where he was, Diego might have missed Dean, but the soldier moved, easing away from the trunk to step onto a thick branch. The tree looked as if it came to life, shimmering transparent so Diego had to blink rapidly to bring the apparition into focus.
“It was a joke, Jim. Bobby can’t take a joke.”
As a cloaking device, it was excellent, much more so than wearing clothes that reflected one’s surroundings or changing the color of their skin to mirror the backgrounds they were in. Dean appeared to be part of the tree itself, and even staring straight at him didn’t help to find him. The man seemed to fade until he couldn’t be seen.
But Dean had been looking at the soldier he called Jim. All of them were. Diego had pegged Russ as the one running the unit, but there was genuine fear when they looked at Jim. Jim looked the most normal of all of them. When he spoke, his voice was mild. Even. Nonthreatening, yet the look he’d given Dean had been one that made every one of his fellow soldiers leery.