Free Hard Rain Falling (Walking in the Rain Book 3) by William Allen Page B

communications gear. No matter for the moment, I still had to avoid detection until the attackers bounced. Thinking about the level of sophistication, I began to wonder if they might also have infrared or some kind of heat detecting technology. If so, they might discover me in the ditch even if I never raised my head. Damn.
    Thinking on that for a moment, I decided to use what I had and started worming my way down the ditch. Using only my knees and elbows, I dragged myself along the bottom of the depression and paused frequently, my ears straining as I moved west, closer to the still flaming Humvee.
    My thinking was that the heat from the fire would help obscure any body temperature trace. No way to know if it would work, but I was all out of alternate solutions. So I crawled. My knees screamed their protest and my arms began to burn a bit at the stress, but I set the feelings aside.  Just like I ignored the heat, and the flies, and the ache in my chest.
    Up ahead, I could see something black and bulky lying in the ditch and I silently prayed it wasn’t a body. I thought the object was covered with something, and my mind tried to decipher the shape into something recognizable.
    Counting in my head, I estimated the enemy force could be no less than four. That made for a two man sniper team and a pair with the RPG—maybe more, but that would be a minimum. Even if I wasn’t too scared to poke my head out of the ditch, those numbers meant I would keep the plan and avoid a fight.
    The object turned out to be a metal grocery cart, crumpled a bit and roofed with a torn piece of plastic sheeting. At first I thought it might be a crude shelter of sorts but as I crawled closer, a second look showed the encrusted grime and the way the plastic wrap stuck to the metal ribs of the cart and I realized this was storm deposit, probably from the most recent rain. There was no way around the cart without exposing myself and frankly, the blazing torch of the Humvee nearby convinced me I didn’t need to get any closer anyway.
    My hands and arms ached as I drew up tight to the cart and once again I realized just how out of shape I had become. The prolonged starvation diet took a lot out of a guy, and I had not been exercising near enough. I worked hard at surviving, but carrying boxes of ammo or turning a wrench wasn’t the same as lifting weights regularly and running.
    Now with a little more cover, I needed to take a quick inventory. I was without my big backpack that was still in the Humvee now speeding away, but I still had more than a few things I would need. If all went according to plan, I still had a long walk ahead of me to Oklahoma City but that was okay since my feet were still accustomed to hoofing the miles. Catching a ride was unlikely, because we’d yet to see a working vehicle on the road after more than an hour of driving.
    In addition to my weapons, I still wore my chest rig with six spare magazines for the CETME and three for the Glock. On the left side of my belt, behind the radio carrier, I wore an old style gas mask pack converted into a small emergency kit. Though it made me feel like Batman with the utility belt, I was glad for the extra supplies. The kit contained a pair of energy bars, a bottle of 30 of water purification tablets, a box of matches, and a stainless steel canteen cup, in addition to a lot of other odds and ends shoved into the bottom. I knew I had one wire snare kit and enough wire to fabricate another if needed.
    With my 10x binoculars and the two canteens I routinely carried, I knew I was better equipped than most of the stragglers trying to make it on the roads. I wished for the first aid bag I’d unwisely secured to a D ring on the big pack, but otherwise I had what I thought I needed to start over.
    I conducted the inventory mostly by feel, my attention focused on the edges of the ditch and the stretch of the depression ahead of me that extended on for what seemed like miles. The stink of the