The Pit (The Bugging Out Series Book 4) Read Online Free Page A

was focused very intently on the mangled bodies at our feet.
    “Your buddies in there saved your ass,” Elaine said.
    Jeremy nodded, grateful, almost teary.
    Elaine, too, nodded. An understanding rising. I saw her fingers flex tight around the MP5’s grip.
    “They meant a lot to you,” Elaine continued. “You were stationed here together. You get to know people pretty good when you’re isolated like this.”
    “Yeah,” Jeremy confirmed, emotion ready to well.
    “You guys were all close,” Elaine said. “You were friends.”
    “We were.”
    Jeremy’s gaze settled toward the ground. Elaine glanced to me, just a quick look, some intensity in the brief connection. Some wariness.
    Then she fixed hard on the soldier trying to sell the tale.
    “Jeremy...”
    He looked up from the ground to Elaine.
    “If they were such a good friends, why are they lying inside in a bloody heap while these invaders are arranged out here like heroes?”
    For an instant he puzzled at the question. An instant in which Neil finally caught the gist of Elaine’s doubt and brought his AK slowly up.
    It was in the next instant when all hell broke loose.
    Jeremy, whose real name was most likely something akin to Yevgeny or Igor or Vladimir, reached fast behind his back and drew a long, dark knife from beneath his shirt. A combat blade meant to be as intimidating as it was deadly. Elaine stepped back first, Neil and I following suit, putting a few yards distance between us and the now obvious imposter. He swiveled his body, tracking each of our movements, shifting the blade between us, keeping us at bay.
    “You’re outgunned,” Neil said, stating more than the obvious. “Put it down.”
    ‘Jeremy’ made no move to acquiesce, his gaze sampling the three muzzles directed squarely at him.
    “It’s over,” I said.
    “All we want to do is talk,” Elaine said.
    Our journey north was mostly in the blind. We’d stopped at Mary Island hoping that the light which had called us to shore might mark a place where answers would be found. Guidance. Now more than ever I believed that to be a distinct probability. That belief was borne of the concocted tale Jeremy had told. A lie sprinkled with truths.
    He’d spoken of people ‘from down south’. And of logging ‘channel transits’. Whether the remainder of his story, including the Russians advancing down the coast, held any basis in fact, I didn’t know. It might. But what he’d shared about people from south of here heading north fit almost perfectly with what we’d believed had happened to those who’d disappeared from Bandon. The symmetry was undeniable. And Jeremy’s knowing that, particularly if he was some part of this unit of Russians who’d assaulted the island, made perfect sense. For one simple reason.
    Intelligence.
    You wanted to know as much about a target before attacking it. That was a concept easy to grasp even for one without extensive knowledge of military operations. If possible, you’d want to infiltrate it. Learn its weaknesses. Its strengths.
    “Drop the knife,” Neil commanded the young man again.
    He did nothing. He said nothing.
    But he had said things. In perfect English. Just how an infiltrator would be expected to speak. To not draw suspicions.
    “You snuck in here,” I said to him, my AR slightly lowered. “You got inside the perimeter. Probed the defenses.”
    It was all metaphorical, what I was suggesting. There was no perimeter but the meeting of land and sea. No obvious defenses other than the sheer bulk of the lighthouse and its base structure. But he knew what I meant. He knew that I knew. That we knew. And, in a way, what I’d just said to him was the impetus for what happened next.
    For what he chose to do next.
    With a swift, clean motion he brought the knife up. None of us fired because the blade did not shift toward us. It moved toward him . Its sharp, stained edge came to the far left side of his neck and carved deep into the flesh as the