Amber scanned the vehicles but saw no markings to identify which army unit they were assigned to, and the soldiers’ uniforms betrayed no patches or insignia that she could recognize from so far away. Behind the boards stood four soldiers, all cradling what looked like assault rifles.Īmber swept the rifle to the east and immediately tracked the position of a second barricade on the far side of the town, likewise manned by armed soldiers. Two vehicles, both of them painted a drab green, were parked nose to nose across the road, and in front of them were a series of boards painted with vivid yellow and black hazard chevrons. From her vantage point high in the hills Amber could not make out any details until she pulled the rifle into her shoulder and aimed it down at the blockade on the west entrance to the town, not so much a proper road as a logging track winding in from the deep forests.Īmber’s heart skipped a beat.
The street lights were all out and there were blockades on both of the town’s exit routes. Amber had normally navigated her way home via the town’s twinkling street lights, an obvious and clearly visible marker in the wilderness as soon as one crested the ridge high above the settlement.
She shifted her position to avoid crushing the bodies of two grouse hitched to her belt as she slipped the rifle she carried off her shoulder and removed the protective plastic shields on the telescopic sights.Ĭlearwater’s deep location within the surrounding mountains meant that it saw sunlight only in the very height of summer and by sundown was always deep in shadow. The next town was more than ten miles away.Īmber, her eyes shielded from the sun’s glare by her sunglasses, slowly lay down in the long grass. A population of just three hundred fifteen. The high hills created a natural, shadowy haven surrounded by deep forests of pine and aspen within which the tiny town of Clearwater had lain since the gold rush of two centuries before. The town below her was nestled deep within the confluence of three valleys and intersected by the silvery line of Hope Creek that wound its way down from the highlands of the Logan Creek Conservation Area. She crouched down amid the sun dappled trees, the dark green and black disruptive pattern material of her camouflage smock blending in perfectly with the light from the setting sun shimmering through the long grass. Amber Ryan knew that there was something wrong the moment she reached the edge of the forest.
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