The Battle: Alone: Book 4 Read Free Page B

stayed.
         The main reason he sat for so many hours, thirsty and hungry and being eaten alive by ants, then by mosquitoes, was to glean more information.
         Just as the sun was setting, someone came out to retrieve the laundry. But it wasn’t Sarah, or his daughters. And it wasn’t his sister-in-law Karen. It was a woman Dave had never seen before. Middle-aged and thin. As though she hadn’t been eating well in quite some time. Or maybe she was just built that way. Sarah didn’t look malnourished. But this woman certainly did.
         As before, she was followed by a man with a rifle who kept a close eye on her. It wasn’t the same man as before. But Dave tried to commit his face and other features to memory.
         Dave pondered the meaning of this new revelation. At the very least, it meant there were others besides his family who were being held hostage. And it confirmed the fact that the marauders were all or mostly men, and that the women hostages were being forced to care for their needs.
         But it opened up a whole lot of additional questions, many of which Dave didn’t want to think about.
         If the women were being forced to do the men’s laundry, then surely they were doing the cooking and cleaning as well. But what other “needs” were they being forced to fulfill for their captors?
         The woman’s appearance… the fact that she looked as though she hadn’t had a good meal in a very long time. Did that mean the hostages weren’t being treated equally? Were some being withheld food? Perhaps as punishment for trying to escape or other transgressions?
         And what about the male hostages? Were there any? If there were, why weren’t they being forced to do chores? Were they kept at all? Or were they deemed too unmanageable, too much of a security risk? Were they executed so they wouldn’t have to be dealt with?
         He’d counted the number of men on horseback who’d ridden by periodically throughout the day. There were five men, total. And they weren’t spaced at regular intervals. The second man came by twenty minutes after the first. The third fifty minutes after the second.
         It may have been that way because some of the horses walked at a faster pace than others.
         But Dave didn’t think so.
         Dave thought it was done that way by design.
        Dave thought it was done that way to surprise outsiders who might see a second rider come through an hour after the first. And who might assume they had an hour to prepare their assault, only to be surprised by the third rider just a few minutes after the second.
         The Marines used the same tactic on the battlefield, staggering their patrols to keep the enemy guessing. And occasionally to come across them planting IEDs or setting booby traps in areas they thought were safe. It worked well in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many insurgents were caught off guard and blown away. Many American lives were saved by IEDs and booby traps that were never detonated.
         He noted that as darkness fell, he’d seen a total of seven men, all different.
         He had to assume he was up against a very large force. For them to maintain a perimeter team of such numbers twenty four hours a day would have meant a minimum of twenty men, not counting those guarding the hostages inside the house and their command team.
         Dave knew that to control such a large number of men meant the group had a hierarchy… a chain of command, and a commander who was probably the worst of the bunch. He’d almost have to be especially brutal, in order to keep the others in line.
         Every one of the seven men was working alone. He’d seen none of them communicate with each other. Had he done so, he might be able to start to form a picture. Which one seemed subservient to the other, which might give him clues on which men were just grunts. And which ones were their lieutenants or