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The breeze shifted, and the s air, thick and heavy Lots of blood

Caleb leaned down and eased so of twisted stems and dried leaves he saw an are and a pale hand caked with dried blood Cautiously, Caleb pushed away ht opening

Theon his side with a deep gash a few inches above his right knee Caleb could see bone The heavy fabric of his pants was sliced open and soaked with blood around the wound

Just above the horrible cut, thea tourniquet to stop the bleeding A bloody axe lay on the ground a few feet away next to a partially chopped chunk of firewood

The poor bastard had da wood, and froround, it was a wonder he was still alive

"Got a man down, here," Caleb told Grant

"How bad?"

"Pretty damn bad," replied Caleb

"Anyone we know?"

Caleb turned the ood "He's just a kid Maybe seventeen We need to get him some help"

"The truck is just down the road Closer than the cabin"

"There's nothing in the cabin that can save this kid, anyway He needs blood and lots of it We've got to get him to a hospital" As carefully as he could, Caleb lifted the boy into his arroan that ood

"Can you carry hie

"I'h s, and it seemed to take forever to work his way back out of the heavy brush without jarring his injured leg

This whole thing made Caleb's stoht of a kid cut up like this tore hiirl Caleb wasn't sure he could have handled that Not after what had happened in Ar careful watch, scanning the area with his rifle ready to go when Caleb cleared all the branches

"Let's getabout this"

Oatched the two Delta Force operators until they disappeared around a bend in the gravel road Brian wasn' t going to survive long enough to get to a hospital--Owen had made sure he'd lost too much blood for that--but he'd served his purpose He'd been excellent bait

Owenthe boy the next time they spoke With those two commandos blown into tiny bits by the explosives he'd set in the truck, David and Noelle were going to be ets

Noelle knew her ti short, but she tried not to let it interfere hat she had to do She showed David how he could input new values for thevariables and how to interpret the results She'd even made him practice

While David used a satellite phone to contact Monroe, Noelle burned a backup copy of her work onto a spare disk she had in her laptop tote bag Just in case it fell into the wrong hands, she put a password protection script on all the files It ht not have been the best security software out there, but it was decent, and it sure would slon anyone who didn't knohat they were doing

Across the room, she heard him speak in a low voice over the phone "No, sir She's sure There's got to be another script we didn't recover"

Noelle could hear Monroe's deep voice cursing on the other end of the line, even froht, too"

David's hand tightened on the phone as he listened

"No, it wasn't a waste of time," he said "Find the team that recovered the text and maybe they'll have a clue"

David's eyes closed for abehind his lashes "All of theainst the counter, looking more defeated with every word "Just what do you expect one as far as she can with the intel we've given her You want us to start s up?"

David clenched the phone so hard she thought the plastic housing would crack "No, sir," growled David "That won't be necessary Just give me the coordinates of where the teao there myself"

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place in Noelle's head with a nearly audible click "That's it, David The origin

It has to be from the perspective of whoever wrote this ciphertext Where was it found?"

"Hold on, sir," said David into he phone To Noelle, he rattled off the coordinates that Monroe had just given hira A few seconds later, the results shone bright on her laptop screen David was looking over her shoulder