Chapter 4 - The Pattern Under the Heat
Derek stared at her like he wanted to be angry but could not find a safe place to put the anger anymore. “Sixty-one days?” he said. “You’ve been sitting above us for two months?”
“Not always above you,” Sarah answered. “Sometimes ahead. Sometimes behind.”
Rodriguez looked toward the oasis again. “Checkpoint Bravo,” he said slowly. “Three weeks ago. We got rerouted north right before the mortar hit.”
Sarah said nothing.
Kowalski turned sharply. “That was you?”
“The road marker was moved,” she said. “You noticed because I made it noticeable.”
Chen swallowed. “The trip wire near the old culvert?”
Sarah glanced at him. “Your left boot was four steps from it.”
The men did not speak after that. Each of them began silently reconstructing the last two months of near misses, bad feelings, sudden alternate routes, strange delays, and small details they had thought were luck. Luck was easier to believe in than a woman alone on a ridge making impossible calculations while they complained about the heat.
Derek’s jaw tightened. “Why didn’t command tell us?”
“Because the leak is inside your movement cycle.”
That answer landed harder than the warning shot.
Rodriguez looked back toward the base. “Inside?”
Sarah’s eyes moved to the road below, where distant soldiers and vehicles were now shifting under delayed orders. “Someone has been feeding rally points, timing windows, and convoy changes to the cell operating around the oasis. If I surfaced too early, the pattern would disappear. If I waited too long, you would die.”
Derek looked down at the rally point again. The quiet palm line no longer looked peaceful. It looked patient.
“You used us as bait,” he said.
May you like
Sarah met his eyes. “I used myself as the part they couldn’t see.”
He wanted to argue with that. But the dust mark still sat in front of his boots below, a perfect line between the living and the dead.
