Progress was slow and fear of apprehension ever present. They had to get away from here, far away. The minute the tree-huggers were discovered, the place would be swarming with soldiers. Time was the enemy. At best, Calin figured they had two, maybe three hours start.

Forty minutes into the journey, he felt a stirring from the body slung over his shoulder. He laid her on the ground while Jess placed a gag in her mouth. The last thing they needed was a scream for help.

Her eyes opened. They were bloodshot and vacant, clouded with fear and still attempting to focus. Calin suspected concussion. He saw no value in interrogation. There were however a couple of questions he had to have answered.

"Soldier, I'm not going to hurt you, but I need you to tell me a couple of things. If you're honest with me I'll let you go free. But first, I warn you, if you attempt to scream for help, I'll have to hit you again. Do you understand? Nod your head for yes." She obeyed.

"Who am I?" Jess removed the gag to allow the restrained soldier to respond to Calin's question.

"According to our orders your name is Calin Roberts." Her knowledge of that name confirmed Calin's suspicions, he had been set up. The question was, why?

"What am I supposed to have done?"

"I don't know. We don't question orders, we just follow them."

"Who issued the orders?"

"The Base Commander, I think the order came from Washington" she said. Her answer appeared credible. Instinct told Calin no Base Commander possessed the authority to issue a termination order. It had come from someone far higher up the command ladder.

"Give me a name."

"Alex Bryant." The soldier's anger peaked. What was it about the name Bryant that triggered such animosity?

"You're lying." With that he had Jess reinsert the gag. He then removed the restraints around her ankles. Calin then assisted her to her feet and said. "A word of warning, when you deal with the devil, you invariably finish in hell. So watch your back, they can't be trusted. And they kill to ensure their secrets remain secure."

She stood still pleading it seemed for a further easing of her restraints.

"Would you have released me?" asked Calin. For a brief instant he saw hate in her eyes. Again she was military, and he was her enemy. Given opportunity she would kill him without hesitation. "Go, before I change my mind," he said.

She half-walked and half-jogged back towards where she'd been taken prisoner. Once she disappeared, Jess and Calin hoisted their newly acquired weapons and military knapsacks and maintained their escape in the opposite direction. Night was fast descending. Darkness would assist in their escape.

"Why did you let her go?"

"What would you have done?"



Running without the balancing support of her arms proved difficult. In striving for more speed she twice lost her footing, finishing face down on the ground. She rolled onto her back, rose to a kneeling position then finally stood. She'd learned a lesson; speed was no longer an option. She'd also experienced some good fortune; the gag had worked itself free.

As darkness closed in, her inbuilt radar faulted. She was, she sensed, close to where she and her companions had been ambushed, but in these conditions she could pass within yards of the location and miss it.

A dense cloud cover hid the stars, Nature's compass points were no longer visible and the weather worsened. What to do? Going forward risked the likelihood of becoming lost while remaining here left her vulnerable to the nasties of the night. With no arms she had no way of fighting off any foe.

Fuck you, Alexis Bryant, why didn't you confront the bastard? Her father was dead, killed by a cowardly assassin, a bullet to the back of the head. And the assassin had been identified, Calin Roberts. A man she and her father knew by another name. One thing now motivated her, revenge.

Military logic imposed the decision. She would wait out the night. Within fifteen seconds that decision was overturned. The silence of the night was shattered, firstly by a one word scream "No." She recognised the voice of one of her colleagues. Seconds later a short burst of rapid fire machine gun thundered through the forest. The young female soldier sought protection behind the nearest tree. It wasn't, she knew, the weapon of a redneck deer hunter. It was a military weapon. The precise make of weapon that had been stolen from her and her two companions. Could the one known as Calin have circled back and executed her fellow soldiers? The answer was yes. They wouldn't have been the first colleagues he'd killed. One question arose, why hadn't he killed them earlier? Coming back made no sense.

She waited, her mind painting a hundred different scenarios. Should she investigate? Was it wiser to wait until morning? Fear sided with procrastination while courage argued for immediate intervention. A murder scene was at its most revealing in the minutes following the killing. Tomorrow morning may well be too late.

Was she walking into a trap? More than fifteen minutes had elapsed since the shootings. It was now or never. And the cloud cover had lifted allowing the moon to make an appearance. There was now a semblance of light.

She thought back to the words Calin had expressed prior to her release....'they kill to ensure their secrets remain secure.'

In contrast she then reflected on this mission, on her colleagues and the duty they had been tasked with, the apprehension of a mentally unstable and rogue operative. Did he in any way appear unstable or behave in an unpredictable manner? Had he displayed violent tendencies? Sure he had no memory, a fact she had substantiated in using the name Bryant, a name that should have but didn't provoke recognition. Could amnesia eliminate one personality and create a new one?

On that basis she proceeded with infinite care. Nothing made sense. Who could be trusted? One fact remained, two women had been killed in Dalton and he was the last one to see them alive. Fingerprints proved he had been in the house. That was history, she now surveyed the present.

The scene displayed no professionalism, bodies tied with their backs to a tree with arms fully extended behind them. Both bodies had suffered extensive wounds. A career assassin didn't kill this way, a spray of bullets to the head and chest. Professionals prided themselves on the single shot or the double tap. This was frenzied pig shooting. It was a staged set-up, the killer long gone.

What should she do? Would reporting back to her superiors see her vindicated? Or executed? Trust was now a foreign language. Who then could offer assistance? In desperation she looked to her dead colleagues. For the first time since being assigned to the mission she felt hope. One wore a holstered knife on his belt. In her trussed up state could she free the clip that secured the knife?

The holster remained just beyond the manageable reach of her tied hands. While she could touch it, she couldn't employ sufficient leverage to release it. The one result of her many attempts was a tightening of the knot, circulation would soon slow the blood flow. Next she tried using her teeth, firstly to bite through the leather and then to free the clip. Neither achieved the desired result. She did however manage to snap her front tooth. In angered frustration she lashed out at the tree trunk with her foot. Again the devil triumphed; an unseen half-inch thick branch remnant snagged her lower leg causing a steady flow of blood. The twig snapped free of its parenting tree.

An idea formed. Then she saw the infestation, a colony of termites had established their home on the foot-long twig. The thought of moments earlier to use it surrendered in the face of the insects. A glance at her bleeding leg revealed the full extent of the injury, it was far worse than it first seemed. Now there was no option. She kneeled down and lowered her face to where the twig lay. She took it between her teeth.

Her tongue felt the slithering feel of the insects, she almost gagged, her every instinct was to spit it out. With an enforced control she didn't know she possessed she endeavoured to wedge the twig into the leather loop housing the metal stud. Success came at the third attempt. She used her tongue and teeth to force the snuggest possible fit.

With the twig in place she released it, leaned away from the dead man's hip and threw up. The sight of insect infested vomit induced further heaving. There wasn't time for this so she again reached for the twig and tweaked it from side to side. Nothing. She tried again and felt something yield. The clip held firm but the leather frayed. Her teeth attacked the weakened cowhide with the ferocity of a shark on a doomed dolphin. Her tenacity was rewarded the knife now free of its restraint.

Once more she used her mouth. She wrapped her lips and then her teeth around the knife handle, it slipped free of the holster and fell to the ground. She grasped it with both hands and drove it into the ground leaving about four inches of blade exposed. The bleeding on the leg showed no sign of abating.

She seated herself on the ground and backed up to the knife edge. With an urgency born of desperation she worked the rope up and down against the blade. Her hands were again independent. On closer inspection she saw considerable swelling and discolouration, they needed attention. The ropes still around the individual wrists required loosening. She'd only severed the rope link bonding the two wrists as one. But first, she had to tend to the leg. She needed a bandage. If only she had one of the knapsacks? In its absence she surveyed the scene. The dead soldier again came to the rescue. She tore the legs of his trousers. Then she used the knife to cut the material into strips. She had her bandage, but would it work? The bleeding slowed and then stopped. It was now time to free the wrists.

On the completion of that task, the female soldier stopped. She could delay her decision no longer. Should she report back for duty? Or flee? The argument against the first option was now dead, minus the legs of his uniform and tied to a tree. The argument against the alternative was desertion, a charge ensuring long-term imprisonment.

If she fled, where could she go? Would anyone believe her? Then a third irrational option came to mind. She turned and again ran back into the night.