Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,26

shaky her voice sounded. It was then that she noticed her knees were equally as shaky. She moved to sit.

King’s firm grip on her arm held her up. “Uh-uh,” he said. “Time to go.”

Sara looked up and saw Knight, Rook, and Bishop bunny hopping into the forest. A sob almost escaped her as she realized the night’s action—and danger—were far from over. She stood to run and felt a clap on her shoulder. She saw Queen’s bright smile lined by green lips.

“Don’t worry, Pawn, I got your back.”

With that Sara was yanked into the darkness and began running through the night. With each step her body felt worse, racked with pain from physical and emotional stress, not to mention that running in full-body military garb in eighty-degree heat with ninety percent humidity was like strapping wet sandpaper between her legs. At the same time, she became more relieved as each passing moment took them farther away from the two factions in the field. She had no idea who they were, but King’s reaction to the red and white checkered scarf told her he recognized at least one side of the battle. Still, she doubted the fight had anything to do with them.

A local conflict of some kind, she thought. It is a volatile region.

The Chess Team pushed forward through the dark, each confused by the hot LZ, each remaining silent as Knight led them forward through the night, toward their rendezvous point with Pawn Two. Though the mission had started out with a resounding bang, the team had come through unscathed and on course. Just a bump in the road, Rook would later say.

But not one of them, with their instincts and training, was aware that they were being followed by one who knew the forest infinitely well and stalked them with ease. She’d been following them since their dramatic escape from the killing fields and had been observing them since.

The skinny woman will undo them, she thought.

She would fall first.

TEN

THE SUN ROSE, bringing with it the hope of full-color vision and the chance to rest. The Chess Team had been moving since their landing. They’d traveled in silence, save for Sara’s heavy breathing. She was in good shape for the average person, but due to the level of activity combined with the sudden extreme stress of the battle, Sara moved like the walking dead.

An hour ago, as the sun first began to cut through the canopy and they removed their night vision goggles, Rook had surprised Sara by coming back to help her walk. He claimed her slow pace was going to get them all killed, but after a while he started chatting about his family. Turned out he was a real mama’s boy. Went on and on about her homemade whoopie pies. And he had sisters. Three. She reminded him of the youngest. Hence his chivalry and premission concerns.

But Sara was grateful for the help and conversation, which kept her mind occupied enough to forget her overactive senses. He kept her moving when she slowed. As her legs grew wobbly from the weight of the thirty-pound pack on her back, he took it and carried it along with his own forty-pound pack. He seemed giant. Surreal. Like God had sent a superhuman big brother to watch out for her.

The terrain, which had been blessedly level for the past two miles, began to slant uphill, gradually at first, but the grade grew steep as they ascended the Annamite foothills. Sara did her best to keep moving, but the slippery coating of leaves on the forest floor kept the ground shifting beneath her feet. Upon falling a third time, her muscles gave up and she slouched to the ground, a prone figure in black.

Rook paused. “Knight, hold up a sec. Pawn’s done.”

A half mile ahead, Knight stopped moving, pulled out his canteen, and took a swig. Queen joined him a moment later. Then Bishop. They shared drinks and energy bars, waiting patiently for those lagging behind. They felt secure in the fact that they were in the middle of nowhere and hadn’t seen or heard signs of danger since the previous night.

But they were wrong.

They weren’t alone.

King backtracked to Rook and found Sara nearly unconscious at his feet. He shook his head. Not good, he thought. More than any of them, she had to keep moving or everyone on the planet could be at the mercy of whoever had control of the new Brugada strain. He felt the jagged edges