Chapter 2 - The Third Man
The stranger did not dress like the others.
He wore jeans, a weatherproof coat, and muddy hiking boots.
Late fifties.
Gray beard.
Calm eyes.
And a pistol pointed directly at Big Guy.
“Step away from the general.”
Big Guy froze.
Nervous Guy emerged behind him.
“Who are you?”
The stranger fired once.
Not at them.
At the shovel.
The bullet struck metal with a violent crack.
Everybody flinched except Silas Ror.
He seemed to recognize the man.
“Cal.”
The stranger nodded.
“General.”
Big Guy reached for his coat.
“Don’t,” Cal said.
He did anyway.
Cal fired again.
The bullet hit the ground at Big Guy’s feet.
Big Guy backed away.
“Next one doesn’t miss.”
For ten seconds, nobody moved.
Then Ror whispered, “Eli.”
Hearing my name from him startled me.
I had never told him.
He noticed.
“You said it while trying to wake me.”
Right.
Apparently terror made me forget things.
Cal’s eyes shifted toward me.
“Who’s the kid?”
“The reason I’m alive.”
Cal looked like he wanted to ask twenty questions.
Instead he said, “We leave now.”
Nervous Guy smiled strangely.
“You won’t make the road.”
Cal’s expression changed.
That sentence worried him.
He grabbed Ror’s arm.
I took the other.
Together we moved toward the SUV.
Big Guy didn’t follow.
That worried me more.
Why were they letting us leave?
Cal saw it too.
“Stop.”
We froze.
He stared at the SUV.
Then at the ground beneath it.
“Back up.”
“What?” I asked.
“Back up now.”
He guided us behind a thick pine.
Then pulled a small device from his coat.
He pressed a button.
Nothing happened.
He swore.
“They jammed the signal.”
Ror leaned against the tree.
“Bomb?”
“Likely.”
I stared at the vehicle I had climbed into minutes earlier.
Cal looked toward the two men.
They had disappeared.
No footsteps.
No voices.
Just fog.
“They never needed the grave,” Ror said.
Cal nodded grimly.
“It was theater.”
“For whom?”
Cal looked at me.
“For the witness.”
I felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the morning.
“What witness?”
Ror’s face tightened.
“Me.”
He asked for the broken insignia.
I gave it to him.
He examined the scratched star and the numbers on the back.
17-4.
“Where did you find it?”
“By your hand.”
He looked at Cal.
Cal’s jaw hardened.
“So they planted it.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Ror closed his fist around the cloth.
“A challenge.”
“From who?”
Neither man answered.
Adults always thought silence protected kids.
It usually just made things worse.
I pulled the stolen phone from my jacket.
“It got a message.”
Cal took it.
The device was still locked, but the notification remained visible.
THE BOY HAS THE GENERAL’S MARKER.
He looked at me again.
“How did they know?”
“I don’t know.”
Ror studied the trees.
“Camera.”
Cal searched the clearing.
After a minute he found it.
A tiny black lens clipped high on a pine trunk.
Pointed directly at the grave.
Someone had been watching everything.
Cal ripped it down.
The phone vibrated again.
A new message appeared.
LET HIM KEEP IT.
Cal’s face went pale.
Ror said, “We move.”
“Where?”
“Not the road.”
We headed east through the pines.
Ror could barely walk, but he refused to stop.
His breathing was rough.
Blood darkened one sleeve.
I asked if he had been shot.
“No.”
“What happened?”
“Injection. Concussion. Maybe ribs.”
“Is that supposed to be better?”
His mouth twitched.
“You ask too many questions.”
“I don’t have parents to tell me not to.”
That shut him up.
I regretted saying it.
Not because it was untrue.
Because pity made adults look at you differently.
Ror didn’t.
He just said, “How long?”
“Two years.”
He nodded once.
No apology.
No fake sympathy.
I liked him a little more.
Cal led us toward a hunting cabin hidden deeper in the Barrens.
It belonged to a friend who, according to Cal, was in Pennsylvania.
Inside were two bunks, canned food, water, a wood stove, and an old landline telephone.
Cal checked it.
Dead.
He checked the windows.
Then he locked the door.
Ror sat at the table.
“You carrying?”
Cal placed his pistol down.
“Two magazines.”
“Medical kit?”
“Truck.”
“Which is where?”
“Three miles north.”
Ror looked at me.
“You hungry?”
The question confused me.
“Always.”
Cal opened a cabinet.
Soup.
Crackers.
Peanut butter.
I ate while they talked.
I pretended not to listen.
They pretended to believe me.
Cal’s full name was Calvin Reese.
Retired Army intelligence.
He had served under Ror years earlier.
Ror had contacted him three days before and said something was wrong inside a classified procurement investigation.
Someone had been selling restricted military tracking technology to private buyers.
But the money trail wasn’t the real problem.
The buyers had access to personnel movements.
Deployments.
Convoys.
Even secure domestic travel.
“Someone knew exactly where you’d be,” Cal said.
Ror nodded.
“My driver changed the route.”
“Who authorized it?”
“My office.”
“Which person?”
Ror stared at the table.
“My deputy.”
Cal stopped.
“General Harlan?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed peanut butter.
Cal noticed.
“You understanding any of this?”
“No.”
It was half true.
I understood the important part.
Someone powerful had betrayed him.
Ror opened his hand.
The torn insignia lay on the table.
17-4.
Cal stared at it.
“What does that mean?”
Ror said nothing.
“You know.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Ror looked at me.
Then back at Cal.
“Seventeen-four was a house number.”
Cal’s expression changed.
“Where?”
“Virginia.”
“That safe house?”
Ror nodded.
“What safe house?” I asked.
He answered this time.
“Seventeen years ago, an intelligence officer disappeared after reporting an illegal surveillance program. House 17, Unit 4 was where he planned to meet me.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“The house burned.”
Cal added quietly, “Three people died.”
Ror stared at the scratched star.
“I thought the officer died too.”
“But?”
Ror looked toward the window.
“He didn’t.”
The cabin became very quiet.
I asked the obvious question.
“How do you know?”
Ror stood slowly and went to a mirror.
He pulled his collar aside.
Behind his left ear was a thin fresh cut.
Inside the cut sat something tiny and metallic.
Cal swore.
“A tracker?”
Ror nodded.
“They wanted me found.”
Cal grabbed a knife and tweezers.
“Sit down.”
Ror did.
I watched Cal remove the chip.
Blood ran down Ror’s neck.
He barely reacted.
Cal held the tracker between the tweezers.
“We need to destroy it.”
“No,” Ror said.
“Why?”
“Because we need them to believe I’m still here.”
Cal understood immediately.
“Decoy.”
Ror looked at me.
“You said you know these woods.”
“Better than them.”
“How well?”
“Well enough to make somebody chase the wrong thing.”
Cal shook his head.
“No.”
Ror agreed.
“He’s not doing it.”
“I can.”
“You’re twelve.”
“I noticed.”
Cal placed the tracker inside an empty soup can.
“We’ll put it on an animal trail.”
I knew a better option.
There was an abandoned maintenance cart half a mile away beside an old cranberry irrigation channel.
Its engine didn’t work.
But downhill, it rolled.
We attached the tracker beneath it.
Then shoved it down the slope.
It rolled for almost a mile before disappearing toward the flooded bogs.
Twenty minutes later, we heard distant engines.
They had taken the bait.
Cal smiled.
“Kid might be useful.”
“I’ve been saying that for years.”
Even Ror laughed.
For a moment, I forgot anyone wanted to kill us.
Then the stolen phone vibrated again.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
It showed the hunting cabin.
Taken from outside.
Seconds earlier.
Cal immediately killed the lamp.
Ror grabbed the pistol.
I stared at the photograph.
In the window, three figures were visible.
Cal.
Ror.
Me.
Under the photo was a message.
YOU FORGOT THE SECOND TRACKER.
Ror searched himself.
Nothing.
Cal searched the cabin.
Nothing.
Then both men looked at me.
My stomach dropped.
I emptied my pockets.
Crackers.
A lighter.
The broken insignia.
The stolen phone.
Then I felt something sewn into the lining of my oversized jacket.
Something hard.
Something that had never been there before.
Cal cut the seam open.
May you like
A tiny black tracker fell onto the table.
And taped beneath it was a photograph of me sleeping in the woods three nights earlier.
