“No. I won’t leave your side again. So we need to find shelter to dry out and sleep when daylight comes. It’ll be too dangerous to be out and about during the day. We need shelter with thermal pads. Sleeping bags. A heat source would be good too, but that’s risky. The mercs might have thermal cameras.”

“Mercs. You think these guys are mercenaries?”

“I do. They for sure aren’t a formal military, but they’re well equipped. Some are trained better than others. I don’t think they’re terrorists and here for a cause. They’re moving through the woods like it’s a job. Guns for hire.”

“How many do you think are out here?”

“No idea, really, but my gut says more than eight, fewer than sixteen.”

“Why?”

“The size of the storage pit, for one. But also, except for the two men who went after you in the Jamison cabin, the other ones we’ve encountered are alone. They should be working in teams. The SEALs are in four-man Fire Teams. These guys are working alone. Either they don’t know how to work together, or they need to spread out to cover more ground because there’s only about a dozen of them.”

“So your guess is a dozen, then?”

“Ten or eleven now.”

“You killed one of them.” She’d known it when she realized he had a rifle and NVGs.

“I did. I hope the team finds his body so they’ll know this is no longer a training exercise.”

“What will they do if that happens?”

“The Fire Teams will have a rendezvous point they selected ahead of time. They’ll gather. Share intel. Storm the lodge. Save my team of trainers.”

“We need to get to the rendezvous point, then.”

“I don’t know where or when it is.”

“Damn.”

“So, got any ideas of where we can hole up when daylight comes?”

She racked her brain for a safe refuge. Obviously, all the lakeside cabins were out. “George’s cabin? It’s not on the lake.”

“Too close to the storage pit. They could be all over that part of the forest.”

“Right.” She considered their options. Finally, she said, “I get why cornering ourselves in another cabin is a bad idea, but we can break into one and get supplies. Jeb repeatedly complained that one family—the Baldwins—rented out their place as an Airbnb. His evidence of this was always seeing tents pitched in the yard to accommodate extra guests. Park administrators looked into his complaints, and the cabin wasn’t listed on any public site they could find, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have an arrangement with a property manager to direct clients their way for a nonpublic rental. But what matters to us is, if Jeb’s complaints were accurate, the cabin probably has a stockpile of supplies we could borrow—tents and sleeping bags at the minimum.”