She rose to a thousand feet altitude and slowly advanced. It took less than a minute to start picking up the heat signatures from the fleeing raiders. Jill followed them, confirming her external lights were off. She was a lot higher than she would usually have flown while trying to follow someone, but her orders were explicit; she was not to be detected.

The Apache's crew watched as the raiders reached their motorcycles and sped off into the night. Jill was no longer worried about being heard, so she dropped down and started following the bright heat signatures of the motorcycles.

At one point, she considered how easily she could eliminate the whole group with a few well-placed rockets, but there had already been far more deaths tonight than they'd hoped for. This part of her mission, if all went well, wouldn't involve any weapons at all.

Chapter Forty-Five

“As most of you know, things have started getting interesting around here,” RJ began, addressing the people who'd gathered around the large conference table. “Last night we were contacted by radio by the leader of a group of survivors who've apparently taken up residence in a town about twenty miles from here. Brad will be leading a team later this morning to meet up with the survivors for a face-to-face meeting. While this sounds wonderful, there are some genuine concerns regarding this group. The information they have about the mountain is troubling. In just the few minutes of contact we had last night, it became apparent they knew several vital pieces of information about us, our location, and our mission. In of itself, it's no major problem, but it is something we'll have to investigate further.”

“While I was talking to their leader last night, he told us there are groups of raiders in the area. They attack with violence and don't hesitate to kill if they think you've got something they want. We've confirmed the injured civilians found yesterday evening had been attacked by a group of these raiders. They're usually on motorcycles and in some cases, apparently, have access to other vehicles. Last night a group of twenty-five of these raiders attacked the south gate here at the mountain. They were apparently planning on discovering what we had that could be of use to them.”

There was a smattering of laughs at this statement. Most everyone had heard about the outcome of the battle and some almost felt sorry for the raiders, who'd had no idea what they were coming up against.