The Pit (The Bugging Out Series Book 4) by Noah Mann

stop.
    Neil and I got to our feet just as the door to the wheelhouse swung outward, Hart leaning out, weapon in hand and a single finger to his lips. Behind him I could see Schiavo, Enderson, and Westin coming up from below, M4s at the ready. The lieutenant conversed with Acosta for a moment, then came out onto deck.
    “They saw a light ahead,” Schiavo told us. “On a small island.”
    “Not a reflection?” I asked. “The water plays tricks on you.”
    She shook her head, complete confidence in her men.
    “It’s there,” she said. “We’re out of sight in this cove. I’m sending a patrol to shore to scout ahead overland. That point that’s shielding us will give a decent vantage to scan the way ahead and see what that light is.”
    “Who’s going?” Neil asked.
    “I’m about to decide that,” Schiavo answered, then turned to head back into the wheelhouse.
    My suggestion stopped her before that could happen.
    “Let us scout it.”
    Schiavo looked to me, partly puzzled, partly amused.
    “This is actually what we train for,” she said.
    “I know,” I told her. “But this is actually what we’ve been doing for months. Out where threats exists among the completely innocuous.”
    It was weighing the man walking along a deserted highway holding a dead cell phone to his ear against the little girl on a tricycle who was a distraction that allowed her father to almost impale my best friend. We’d seen and felt and dealt with unexpected oddities of all sorts. And we’d learned that, sometimes, just giving these things a wide berth was the best course of action. My suggestion to Schiavo was based only on that understanding. And on the reality that she, and her men, were warriors, each and every one ready for a fight.
    And maybe too willing to seek one.
    The lieutenant considered my suggestion for a moment, eyeing each of us, up and down, in some silent appraisal. What she spent the most time on, though, were our eyes. How they remained fixed on her gaze. Locked on. Confident.
    Even haunted.
    “You’ve seen things,” Schiavo said.
    “All of us,” I confirmed.
    She weighed what I’d offered, then nodded.
    “Sergeant...”
    Lorenzen came out of the wheelhouse at his lieutenant’s call.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Schiavo gestured to us with a nod.
    “Set them up with the night sight.”
    *  *  *
    W e took the small dinghy lashed to the deck near the stern and paddled the short distance to shore.
    “How far off is this light we’re scouting?” Elaine asked.
    Acosta had given me an estimation before we shoved off from the Sandy .
    “A mile when first spotted,” I said. “Make it half that by the time we reach the point.”
    The point was just a stubby peninsula jutting out into the channel. As Schiavo had thought, it would provide a perfect vantage point to observe whatever it was her men had seen from the wheelhouse.
    “Feet dry,” Neil said, his last stroke with the paddle beaching the dinghy’s bow on the flat and rocky shore.
    We climbed out, boots splashing through a few inches of surf before we tied off the dinghy and began working our way up the shore. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before we reached the point and crept low along its ridge to a spot where a pair of leaning boulders formed a near perfect V which we could peer through.
    “Go ahead, eagle eye,” I told Elaine.
    Neil passed her the thermal binoculars and she took a position at the base of the boulders, turning the device on as Sergeant Lorenzen had shown her. The barest glow escaped past the cups shrouding the eyepieces, a muted grey white light splashed upon her cheeks. She made adjustments to the focus and the zoom, studying the distant view for a moment before easing her face away from the binoculars and turning them off.
    “We can sail right past,” she said, handing the hunk of advanced optics back to Neil and standing.
    Her desire to depart abruptly stood stark against her usual sober and methodical