"Christ, listen to that, would ya?" Big Bill would say, pointing his beer can at the TV and shaking his head. They'd be watching another one of those cowboy and Indian cheapies. "Hear that noise? They're trying to tell us that that's how the Apaches communicate. Jesus, sounds more like someone farting than a bird calling." Then he'd let go with some warbling that always made Eric smile. "Now that's what a fucking owl sounds like."

Eric stood shivering in the dark, waiting for the squeaking to get closer, lifting his crossbow, following the sound with the point of his arrow.

Squeak.

Squeak.

Whoosh.

The bolt zipped through the brush, rustling leaves as it spit into the night, finally chipping the edge of a pine tree and sticking in the ground.

Eric immediately dropped to the ground. He hadn't really expected to hit anybody, but he had expected something else. It came.

A blast from somebody's pistol, a 9mm from the sound of it, maybe a Steyer GB or a Tarus PT-99. Eric could see the flash only twenty feet away, hear the slug whizzing overhead on its way to the creek.

Less than two seconds after the shot, half a dozen other shots drummed the air. All of them directed at the flash twenty feet to the left of Eric. As he'd hoped.

"Stop it, goddamn it!" Dobbs yelled. "What the fuck you doing? Kriegstern? Hey, Kriegstern?" There was no answer. "Nice work, morons. You just blasted Kriegstern. Remember him? He's the guy with the wart on his eyelid. Worst fucking poker player in the squad. You killed him with me still holding his markers worth eight cartons of cigarettes and fifty rounds of ammo. Christ."

Eric crawled behind another tree. He'd been tempted to go after Kriegstern's body, see what provisions he might scavenge. If nothing else, that 9mm would come in handy. But they'd be expecting that. They'd be waiting.