Free Synbat by Bob Mayer Page B

years, threading a delicate path through the demands of a rough environment and avoiding the kind of trouble that would end any hope he'd had for getting out of the cesspool that lapped at him. Earning a high school diploma under those conditions had been a major achievement and had allowed Riley to enlist in the army.

Riley's introduction to Special Forces had reinforced those early lessons. He remembered his first team sergeant in Special Forces: MSgt. Frank Kimble, Okinawa, 1981. Riley was a young E-4, fresh out of the Qualification course, when he ran into Kimble. Kimble had tried hard to pass on to the younger man knowledge earned in three tours in Vietnam and nineteen years in Special Forces.

Kimble had constantly honed Riley's powers of observation. They'd be sitting in a bar on a Saturday night getting drunk, and the veteran would suddenly ask Riley to describe all the people behind him without turning around. After six months of that, Riley had learned to be much more observant -- just in time for his first live mission to Thailand, running classified border operations. In the years since, Riley had sharpened his skills, always trying to notice any anomalies in the environment. Right now, his instincts were buzzing from several anomalies he had picked up at the lab.

Riley pushed his way through the thick undergrowth that lined the watercourse. He carefully extracted his arm from a thorny bush and high-stepped through the storm-swollen creek. Behind him, he heard Ward curse as the man became caught in the brambles. Riley stepped out of the water and halted, listening carefully, tuning out the man-made sounds. Looking to his left he spotted Knutz, who gave him a quick nod. To his right, Seay took a few more seconds to appear.

Riley was pleased that his team was moving silently and staying on line. Riley's philosophy was that the members of 682 had to travel like ghosts through the woods. Despite the fact that there was no need to be quiet here, the team was reacting that way because they knew what Riley expected. To him, every moment was training.

Riley dug in his feet and pushed himself up the far side of the ravine. His eyes were constantly scanning back and forth, searching for any signs of the bodies or the backpacks. When he reached the tree he had designated, he pulled out his compass and selected another target along the azimuth. From his pace count, confirmed by a studied look at the map, he estimated that they had progressed six hundred meters from the lab.

He crested the incline and paused a minute. The terrain flattened out slightly. Looking back, he waited as Ward and Freeman clambered up the slope. Knutz and Seay gave Riley a thumbs-up from fifteen meters away on either side, indicating that everyone on their respective sides was on line. Riley waved his arm, signaling for them to move out again.

After another hundred meters they crossed an old dirt road. Riley knelt and looked carefully at the ground. There were no recent tire tracks or any other markings on it. He moved across and pushed into the woods on the far side. The trees were getting thicker and the cloud-filtered midmorning light was barely penetrating. The men moved through a dripping, dimly lit brown and gray cathedral. Vines looped from trees, forcing Riley to duck his head. Prickly bushes grabbed at his fatigue pants. Yet Riley maneuvered his way smoothly through the woods, his years of practice showing.

Riley glanced at his watch as they walked across a small knoll that he could locate easily on his map: 10:02 A.M. The knoll placed the search line approximately one kilometer from the lab.

Looking up through the trees, he could see that the sun was struggling to break through the clouds. Hopefully, that would take away some of the morning chill. On the far side of the knoll, the terrain descended to another creek running from northeast to southwest. According to the map, this watercourse, labeled Williams Hollow Creek, ran