Grayson had put Stacy, the heavier of the two women, on point. She looked exhausted and he’d obviously decided to sacrifice her if need be. Probably not realistic in real combat but one of those easy calls to make in a training exercise.

“Wait,” Smith heard Stacy say quietly over his Merge. “Corporal. Come up here and look at this, please.”

Smith stayed where he was, bringing up a window that displayed her unit’s input. She was looking at the ground between two trees and, more specifically, a thin blue line running between them.

“Sneaky bastards,” he heard Grayson say. “Everybody step over the trip wire between the rocks. Don’t worry, you can’t miss it.”

Amazing. The tiny wire should have been virtually invisible, but instead there might as well have been a sign with an arrow and “booby trap” written in foot-high letters.

They continued on, finally stopping just before they reached a broad riverbed with only a few inches of water left. It would be just over twenty-five meters of open ground to the trees on the other side.

“Can we get around it?” Duane asked.

Grayson’s eyes went distant and flicked around as he pulled up a satellite image of the area and examined it in the air in front of him. “Nope. We have to cross it to get to the base of the hill and there isn’t anywhere that’s any narrower.”

“So what do we do?” the lawyer said.

“We run for it,” Grayson said, moving to the edge of cover and scanning the landscape for any sign of the enemy. “You first, Major. Fast as you can.”

That turned out not to be all that fast, but he gave it his all and made it to the other side safe. Grayson went with Carrie next, having her start fifty meters downstream to keep their crossing points random. She looked like she was going to make it, when a distant shot sounded.

It was a hit and Smith winced as her Merge reduced her vision and balance by seventy percent, pitching her against the rocks and sending her rolling into what was left of the river. He’d need to talk to someone about attenuating that feature when people were running or in dangerous terrain.

“Stay down!” Grayson shouted, forgetting that his voice was being projected directly into her mind. Not that it mattered. The software would reduce the volume to optimal.

Despite his warning, she panicked and tried to get up. Smith could have shut down her unit and called it a kill, but decided to instead watch her struggle to her knees and then fall over again. After one more halfhearted try, she just lay there panting.

“Sir?” Grayson said and Smith frowned, trying to decide how much he wanted to say. “Seventy percent damage. With attention, she might survive.”