“He might simply prefer knives. Or he wanted to avoid the noise. Gunshots would have echoed across the lake.”

She rose to her feet. “We need to find George.”

“Audrey,” he said as he too stood.

She looked at him, and even in the dark, with greasepaint covering his face, she could read him. “You agreed,” she insisted.

“That was before we were attacked by a man with a knife and an AK who was guarding the path we were headed up. I lost my NVGs. I’m not taking you up into those dark woods where more men could be waiting. Not without night vision. Not without a gun.”

“I have a gun. A real one. If you want it.”

“You’re carrying?” She could hear the edge of hope in his voice.

She nodded. “A Glock 19. Last spring, some hikers harassed me when I was working alone. It was pretty scary, and they still haven’t been identified. So I got a permit to carry concealed. Jae taught me how to shoot.”

“I’m sorry that happened, but thankful you have a weapon.”

She slipped off her pack and pulled out the gun. She handed it to him, holding the barrel. “It’s loaded, but not chambered. The magazine is a standard fifteen shot. I don’t have any more bullets.”

He took the weapon and racked the slide, chambering the first bullet. “I’ll never complain about you insisting on grabbing your pack again.”

In spite of everything, she managed a smile. She wouldn’t park in an accessible space in front of a shuttered lodge, and she never hiked out of sight of her vehicle in bad weather without taking her pack.

“You still won’t take me to George, though, will you?”

“We need to get to the command center. The SEALs are in the air, on their way here now. They’re doing a High Altitude Low Opening jump. I need to get to a phone and call it off. We just saw proof there are armed men here. He tried to kill us without hesitation. The team only has paint pellets, and they won’t know the tangos in these woods are real.”

The horror of the situation sank in. The SEALs would be facing real enemies, but believe they were fake. Part of an exercise.

Xavier had known the man with the knife was a real attacker. One of the SEALs, in the same situation, wouldn’t know it wasn’t a simulation. They’d fire their paint pellets and expect to tally it as a success. But the tango—as Xavier had called him—would fight to the death. And they had real guns.