Poe

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“We’re clearing out now to the observation point,” Cooper said into the phone. “Will move in for extract at the appointed time.”

“Let me know the second you have El-Hashim,” McElroy told him.

“Will do.”

“Don’t fuck this up.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Cooper clicked off before McElroy could reply.

Asshole.

Their camp had already been struck and packed into the back of the car. The only thing left in the roofless barn was the unconscious guard they’d taken prisoner.

“I was thinking maybe we should leave him tied up,” Deuce said. “That way it gives us a little extra time if he wakes early.”

Cooper doubted that would happen, but Deuce’s concern was sound. Still, they couldn’t leave the guy behind with no way to get loose. Out here, he might starve to death before anyone found him. They had no idea how much of a threat the guard really was, but killing an enemy with a gun in your face was one thing. Leaving a man to potentially die simply because he’d made a few bad choices was something else altogether.

Removing the hunting knife from his belt, Cooper drove it into the barn’s hard earth floor a good thirty feet from where the guard was tied up. The guy wouldn’t see it when he first came to, but he’d eventually find it.

Cooper thought it was the best they could do.

As he stood back up, Deuce gave him a nod of approval.

“All right,” Cooper said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They drove out to the main highway, and continued exactly half a mile past the prison turnoff before veering onto a dirt access road between two fields.

The copse of trees they had been using for cover was another two hundred yards in. They parked the car out of sight behind it, and hiked to the top of the hill that overlooked the prison.

When they reached the summit, they stretched out on their stomachs, and Cooper gave Deuce one of the two sets of binoculars in his pack. The other he used for himself, training it on the facility below.

All looked as it should.

He swung the glasses to the right, following a gently sloping field to where it suddenly dropped off into a shallow ravine in the west. Butted up to the side was a stone building that bore a passing resemblance to the barn they’d been camping in — old and roofless. From their current position, they could see almost the entire structure, but from most everywhere else, the ravine would hide all but the very tops of the walls.

Cooper switched his binoculars to night vision, and saw exactly what he expected.

No one.

That would soon change.

Hopefully.