Riley pulled his Silva compass out of its case on the LBE. He laid the Silva down on the map, then rotated the fixed arrow in the compass base to line up with the penciled-in azimuth. By keeping the north arrow aligned with the outer ring, all he now had to do was follow the arrow to stay on the desired azimuth.
At the present moment the arrow pointed straight from the lab toward Lake Barkley. Since the map sheet was the same as the one they used for Fort Campbell, Riley knew the declination difference between magnetic north and grid north. His compass was preset to compensate for that difference.
Riley looked up and called out to the team. "Azimuth is two-oh-two degrees magnetic." He waited while the rest of the team set their compasses. "It's three klicks from here to Lake Barkley, so that's our far limit." He designated personnel with quick jabs of his finger: "I want you five to my left and you four to my right." He checked with Freeman. "Ready, sir?"
"Let's do it."
Riley swept his free hand overhead and they started. The team moved around the building and then spread out on the indicated azimuth. To Riley's immediate left, Chief Knutz beat his way through the undergrowth; to Riley's right, Doc Seay was the closest man. Ward and Freeman followed several paces behind Riley.
Immediately behind the building the terrain dropped off into a creek bed running southwest. Riley selected a tree on line on the far side of the ravine and used that as his aiming point.
As he went down into the creek bed, he wondered what the remains of the monkeys would look like. An explosive charge in a band around the neck was pretty nasty. Riley could understand the concern, though, about letting any sort of biological hazard get free. Stringent control measures did seem necessary.
Despite that, a few things about the operation didn't fit, in Riley's opinion. Knutz's question about how the four had escaped was a valid one. The lab seemed to have a good security system, and if those Biotech people had gone to the trouble of rigging homing beacons and explosive collars, they must have taken other strong steps to prevent an escape.
Another thing that bothered Riley was the lack of any security personnel at the building. He very much doubted that one of the doctors had been on the guard shift last night when the escape had occurred, yet there had been no sign of a guard. Riley had noticed the old pickup truck in the lot: It had a retired enlisted sticker on it, which authorized the driver to enter the closed Fort Campbell main post. He wondered who that belonged to. Obviously not to Ward, Freeman, or Merrit.
Riley was a suspicious and observant person. Harsh experience had imbued him with those characteristics. His boyhood, growing up on the streets of the South Bronx, had taught him the value of observation. A person who couldn't learn to notice the warnings of various developing situations didn't stay healthy very long on those streets. Riley had survived the Bronx for seventeen years, threading a delicate path through the demands of a rough environment and avoiding the kind of trouble that would end any hope he'd had for getting out of the cesspool that lapped at him. Earning a high school diploma under those conditions had been a major achievement and had allowed Riley to enlist in the army.
Riley's introduction to Special Forces had reinforced those early lessons. He remembered his first team sergeant in Special Forces: MSgt. Frank Kimble, Okinawa, 1981. Riley was a young E-4, fresh out of the Qualification course, when he ran into Kimble. Kimble had tried hard to pass on to the younger man knowledge earned in three tours in Vietnam and nineteen years in Special Forces.
Kimble had constantly honed Riley's powers of observation. They'd be sitting in a bar on a Saturday night getting drunk, and the veteran would suddenly ask Riley to describe all the people behind him without turning around. After six months of that, Riley had learned to be much more observant — just in time for his first live mission to Thailand, running classified border operations. In the years since, Riley had sharpened his skills, always trying to notice any anomalies in the environment. Right now, his instincts were buzzing from several anomalies he had picked up at the lab.
Riley pushed his way through the thick undergrowth that lined the watercourse. He carefully extracted his arm from a thorny bush and high-stepped through the storm-swollen creek. Behind him, he heard Ward curse as the man became caught in the brambles. Riley stepped out of the water and halted, listening carefully, tuning out the man-made sounds. Looking to his left he spotted Knutz, who gave him a quick nod. To his right, Seay took a few more seconds to appear.
Riley was pleased that his team was moving silently and staying on line. Riley's philosophy was that the members of 682 had to travel like ghosts through the woods. Despite the fact that there was no need to be quiet here, the team was reacting that way because they knew what Riley expected. To him, every moment was training.
Riley dug in his feet and pushed himself up the far side of the ravine. His eyes were constantly scanning back and forth, searching for any signs of the bodies or the backpacks. When he reached the tree he had designated, he pulled out his compass and selected another target along the azimuth. From his pace count, confirmed by a studied look at the map, he estimated that they had progressed six hundred meters from the lab.
He crested the incline and paused a minute. The terrain flattened out slightly. Looking back, he waited as Ward and Freeman clambered up the slope. Knutz and Seay gave Riley a thumbs-up from fifteen meters away on either side, indicating that everyone on their respective sides was on line. Riley waved his arm, signaling for them to move out again.
After another hundred meters they crossed an old dirt road. Riley knelt and looked carefully at the ground. There were no recent tire tracks or any other markings on it. He moved across and pushed into the woods on the far side. The trees were getting thicker and the cloud-filtered midmorning light was barely penetrating. The men moved through a dripping, dimly lit brown and gray cathedral. Vines looped from trees, forcing Riley to duck his head. Prickly bushes grabbed at his fatigue pants. Yet Riley maneuvered his way smoothly through the woods, his years of practice showing.
Riley glanced at his watch as they walked across a small knoll that he could locate easily on his map: 10:02 A.M. The knoll placed the search line approximately one kilometer from the lab.
Looking up through the trees, he could see that the sun was struggling to break through the clouds. Hopefully, that would take away some of the morning chill. On the far side of the knoll, the terrain descended to another creek running from northeast to southwest. According to the map, this watercourse, labeled Williams Hollow Creek, ran into Lake Barkley, a little more than a kilometer and a half away. Checking to his left and right, Riley began the descent. This slope was steeper than the last, and he divided his time between looking for the bodies and searching for secure footholds.
Riley was startled by a yell from behind him. He wheeled, instinctively swinging his empty M16 around, pointing toward the source. He was greeted by the sight of Doctor Ward tumbling down the slope. Riley slammed his rifle, butt first, into the ground along Ward's path and with his other hand he grabbed hold of a tree. As Ward slid by, he reached out and grabbed the rifle, almost pulling Riley's other hand from its grip on the tree.
The doctor cautiously stood up, cursing. He was streaked with mud and leaves. His small day pack continued the trip downhill without him. Riley continued on his way down. Reaching the bottom, he picked up the day pack and waited for Ward. He silently handed it to the doctor and then led the way across the lowland. Knutz and Seay indicated again that the rest of the team was on line. They were two-thirds of the way to Lake Barkley. Riley hoped they would find what they were looking for soon. He also hoped that none of his men had passed by anything, although he imagined that the results of the explosions ought to stand out pretty strongly. Blood, popped-off heads, and torn bodies was the logical guess of what they would find. Despite the thick undergrowth, that sort of gory spectacle ought to be noticed rather easily.