Finding the cabin had been a rare stroke of luck. Lady Jaye had managed to locate an unoccupied cave near the cabin so that they were able to keep a lookout and be sheltered from most of the elements for the night. She was worried about Hawk. Her wound had stopped bleeding hours ago, only doing so again when she had accidentally reopened it when she had run into the edge of a sharp rock, so she knew she was okay, for now.
She pulled the foil blanket out of her bag that she had grabbed from the plane's first aid kit when she had been rummaging around for a tool to free Hawk. She had propped him up against one of the interior walls and now began to tuck him in.
"What are you going to use?" he asked her in response. She shrugged.
"I have a faster metabolism," she lied, "I don't get cold that easily. Hey," she said jokingly to his disbelieving look, "I was raised in the highlands. It's not like my blood is thin!"
"Be that as it may," he said, putting some bluster in his "commander's" tone, "body heat works better than any foil blanket…or at least to initially warm it," he told her.
While she was not squeamish about being "under the covers" with her commanding officer, she wondered if it was wise, if instead she'd be better off serving as a lookout by the entrance of the cave.
He sighed. "Allie. Even if it is Cobra, or some other terrorist organization, or even some goddamn foreign nation, they won't be looking for us at the dead of night in the darkness. If they are, we'll probably hear them coming and I am sure we'll hear them at the cabin before they find this cave here. Didn't you set those traps?" he reminded her.
She smiled sheepishly. She had set crude, but effective, motion traps where, if anyone crossed them, would put up a loud enough noise that they would know someone was coming.
"Fine," she said, snuggling up in the foil blanket with him, "but if anything happens, I'm blaming you," she said in a tired voice.
He encouraged her to lay her head on his shoulder and rest, telling her he'd take the first watch and wake her if anything happened. He shushed her protests, knowing she had done all the physical labor that day, and whether he slept or not didn't mean much to his knee and ankle. As long as he was off of them, he'd be fine.
He was surprised by the heat coming from her body and wondered if what she had said about a higher metabolism had some truth to it. Flintnevercomplained, came the random thought in his head, which he quickly squelched. He had known Allie since she was little and although he admired her as a person and as a soldier, he didn't feel that way about her.
*On the other side of the forest…..*
"Any sign of them?" asked Tomax, his own eyes searching through night vision goggles.
"No, sir, we thought we had picked up their trail, but we seem to have lost it," reported the viper. "We're working on it now. We know one of them is wounded. The first aid kit in the plane has been used and we can tell something cut through the metal interior of the plane. Seems like someone was trapped and I doubt they got far."
"It depends on which one was wounded," speculated Tomax.
"Not necessarily," corrected his twin, Xamot. "Adrenaline is a tricky thing, brother. Even if Hawk was injured, Lady Jaye would be able to use the extra strength to carry him as far as she could. They'd have to seek shelter from the cold tonight, and so they can rest…."
"So we look for a shelter, then," finished Tomax. He called another viper over.
"Find me the location of all cabins or shelters in this area of the mountain, within a 15 mile radius," he ordered.
"Any progress yet?" crackled the radio, which had both twins' eyes rolling with the sound of Cobra Commander's voice.
"We've picked up their trail and are working on closing in," lied Xamot. "Give us some time, Commander. It's a wide radius, but we think we have them. There's no sign of a Joe rescue team nor from anyone else. We're alone for now, and we'd like to use that to our advantage."
He turned off the communicator, turning to his brother with a smile. "Shall we?"