Chapter 26: Paintball
Slow. Controlled. Graceful as a dance.
The light from the rising sun creeping up the side of the mountain illuminated the two figures; one male, shirtless, muscular, wiry, with short blond hair and black pants; the other slim and curved, with a long red ponytail, black yoga pants and cropped exercise top. Both were performing katas on the grassy lawn in front of the cabin, slow, graceful movements mirroring each other as sunlight illuminated them.
Cam stood at the front window, nursing a cup of coffee as she and Charlie watched Shana and Snake Eyes. They were all military, and accustomed to rising early; for Shana and Snake Eyes, katas in the sunrise were a part of their leave that they enjoyed while here at their cabin, and one that they observed religiously; they did them at Joe base too, in the dojo, but even Cam could see the difference between katas performed out here in the middle of some of the most beautiful scenery Cam'd ever seen, and katas performed in the Joes' dojo a couple hundred feet below ground. There was more of a sense of connectedness here, a feeling of harmony and being in tune with nature.
"I can see why they love it here," Cam said quietly as Charlie placed a warm hand on her back, watching their friends as they went through the intricate controlled movements. "There's a feeling of peace and serenity here that I've only ever found at my cottage on the reservation."
Charlie smiled. "I feel it too," he said. "If you're done with that coffee, care to join me out on the back lawn for a little meditation?"
She smiled and tossed back the last of the coffee. "Coming."
When Shana and Snake Eyes came in, relaxed and invigorated by their early-morning workout, they found the cabin empty. Shana was puzzled as she went through the upstairs, looking for her friend, but was answered moments later when she joined Snake Eyes in the kitchen. He was standing, looking out the window; when he heard her come in, he turned, handed her a cup of coffee, and pointed out the window.
She smiled as she joined him at the window and saw what he was looking at. "I guess they found their own uses for the peace and quiet up here, hmm?" she said as she took her first sip. "They do look like they're part of the landscape out there."
Charlie and Cam sat facing each other on the grassy rear lawn, both wearing traditional Native American garb, he in tunic and leggings, she in dress and leggings. Both had their eyes closed. Each one had their flutes in hand, and the melody they were playing didn't have any sort of rhythm or rhyme to it, just a meandering, random selection of notes. But Charlie's flute had a slightly deeper tone, Cam's was higher-pitched, and she was playing notes that were a counterpoint to his and blended harmoniously with his.
"How does she know what he's going to play?" Shana asked, then answered her own question. "Of course. Their bond." Snake eyes nodded as they listened; at one point, Charlie led the tune, with Cam playing counterpoint, low where he was high, high where he was low…but then they changed leads, so the higher-pitched flute led and the tenor flute followed, flawlessly, seamlessly. "I was wondering how this bond would work, with all of us out in the field—You know now that we're married, Clayton isn't going to send us out on separate missions without each other if he can absolutely help it, so we might as well figure out how this works for each of us."
Snake eyes raised his hands. What do you have in mind?
She grinned wickedly. "Paintball."
His eyes lit up, and her grin got wider. Back when they'd first decided to make this their retreat, their place to come when on leave and eventually to retire, they'd discovered the woods and surrounding grounds were perfect for paintball wars. Usually it was the two of them against each other, but with Cam and Charlie there, it would be a bit more of a challenge. They both loved paintball battles—it was a way to exercise the skills they'd learned as Army officers, but in a non-lethal mock-combat situation. Occasionally when Clayton had sent the team out on 'team-building exercises'—paintball was one of the Joes' favorite activities, and Shana had always enjoyed it, and so had Snake Eyes, mostly because the skills he had acquired as a ninja made him good at this—even better than she was. With Charlie and Cam's learned ability to sneak through woods silently, Charlie as a tracker and Cam as long-range recon patrol, paintball against them was going to be…interesting.
Cam raised her eyebrow when she and Charlie came in, packed their flutes away in the room they'd taken upstairs, and came down to have a breakfast of pancakes, sausage, and fried potatoes, which Shana and Snake Eyes had again cooked with no help from either Cam or Charlie (not that anyone was complaining; Cam was only too glad to relinquish a turn at chow prep and simply enjoy the results—and Shana was only too happy to do most of the cooking if it meant that Cam stayed away from her precious kitchen! "Paintball?" she looked meditative over a mouthful of friend potato. "I've never experienced it before. Is it fun?"
"Is it fun, she asks." Shana rolled her eyes in mock despair. "Cam, you need to get out and play more. You can't spend your whole life either dancing or shooting at people or swinging swords. You have to diversify a bit." She launched into an explanation of paintball, the rules, goals, and objectives. "So it's just like a war game, just like a skirmishing mission, but we'll go against each other, and the ammo is just balls of paint. Now, we do have to wear protective gear because those paintballs hurt when they hit you, but that just adds to the simulated realism—in a real combat situation, you'll be loaded with gear and have to move quickly."
"It sounds like fun," Cam said. "So…it is Charlie and I against you and Snake eyes, or is it going to be girls against boys?"
"If I might make a suggestion," Charlie said before Shana could respond, "Let's make it Cam and I against you two; and since you need to work on your psychic bond, let's have this game be completely silent. You two have the advantage of familiar ground; this is your home, you know the terrain and territory and are familiar with it. Cam and I, however, have the advantage that we have been trained since a young age to use stealth when stalking, to track and navigate, so I recommend Shana and Snake Eyes head out first, and then Cam and I have to track you and find you. And all of it has to be silent."
Shana grinned, green eyes sparkling. "Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Yes, Snake Eyes and I can work on our bond and the two of you can work on working together, something you haven't really had a chance to do because you two have such similar skills that you're more valuable on separate teams."
And Shana can get a chance to work on her stealth. She's good, better than Courtney, or even Allie, but she's still not that good at stealth. So this will give her an opportunity to work on that. Okay? Snake Eyes asked Shana, who nodded.
"Agreed." Shana stood up. "So how much of a head start do we have?"
"Mmm. Say, a half an hour? That should be good. Just enough for it to be challenging, but not far enough that we can't eventually catch up and have a good paintball war."
"You're on," Charlie nodded.
Half an hour after Shana and Snake eyes had left, Charlie and Cam climbed reluctantly out of their bed and started getting suited up. "I don't suppose we could call the whole thing off and just stay in bed the whole day?" Cam said slightly wistfully.
Being military, they were used to getting dressed quickly, and once outside they spotted the place where Shana and Snake eyes had vanished into the treeline almost immediately. Mindful of the rules, they communicated in sign language—as Snake eyes and Shana were no doubt doing; the rules were no talking, but sign language was silent, after all. They didn't try too hard to cover their tracks. Looks like they were mostly focused on getting as much distance between us and them as possible.
Cam disagreed. They know this mountain better than we do. Knowing how good a tactician both of them are, they've got a place in mind already that they can make a stand and would be easily defensible, and they're waiting up there for us. They would have tried to get there as fast as possible so they can make a stand and get an ambush ready. A sudden thought curved her lips. Unless they stopped to enjoy each other the way we did.
Charlie had to bite back the laughter that threatened to bubble out of him. So if they're heading for a spot that would be easily defensible, where would they be going?
Cam pointed up. Farther up the mountain, presumably a place where they can see the paths that one would take. Maybe even a place where they could see us leave the cabin and walk into the treeline.
Charlie considered that. So we operate under the assumption that they can see us, even if we can't see them.
Cam nodded. I'd bet on it.
Charlie grinned. So we're going to move through the underbrush as much as possible.
Cam nodded, thinking as she looked up at the slopes above them. They would have picked a place where they could see us leave the cabin. I'm sure of it. So I say we split up, use our bond to coordinate, and approach this side of the mountain we're facing from behind. If you're coming from one side and I'm coming from the other, we can get them in a pincer move and trap them between us.
Charlie smiled and extended a hand. Sounds like a plan to me. Lead on.
Shana flopped back limply against the side of the mossy boulder. Snake Eyes, I swear you're going to kill me.
He looked at her with wide, innocent eyes. You want me to stop?
She sat up, gloriously nude, and swatted him with an open hand. If you stop I'll make you regret it. She lay back down against the sun-warmed boulder and smiled.
He grinned at her. As my wife wishes.
She cracked open on eye. Smart-ass.
Ah, but it was this smart ass you couldn't take your eyes off yesterday.
She grinned slightly sheepishly. I didn't know you'd noticed.
Sweetheart, if your eyes had been lasers my pants would have caught fire. Yes, I knew you were looking at me. And I didn't mind a bit. Confession? I love showing off for you.
She grinned. And I love showing off for you. She reached across his bare, sweaty chest, and grabbed the binoculars off the rock behind him, peering down toward the cabin. I wonder if they—yes, they just left. Cam's hair is a little messed up—she and Charlie spent their half-hour just like we spent ours. Except that they were in a nice comfortable bed, and we were out here on the hard ground.
He narrowed his eyes. I didn't hear you complaining.
Shana grinned. No you didn't, and you won't. I don't know, but lately I can't get enough of you. It's got to be the last of those hormones that Rosa injected me with back on the island. She leaned back, smiling. Not that I'm complaining.
Snake Eyes peered through the binoculars at the forest spread out before them. So what do you think they're going to do?
Shana thought. One of them is going to follow the trail we left—we didn't try too hard to cover our tracks, so it'll be easy. The other is going to parallel the first one until they reach us, and then one will attack us from the front to provide a distraction while the other attacks us from behind, so expect assault on two fronts. I expect Charlie will be the one conducting a full frontal assault, and Cam will be the one sneaking up behind us. She reached for her suit, started to scramble into it. We have probably a good hour before they reach us if they branch off our main trail to investigate the places where I turned off to lead them astray, but we might as well get suited up now just in case they aren't fooled by false trails I laid out for them. She thought meditatively as they strapped on vests and loaded paintball ammo. We should do this again at some point while we're here, do a full war-games exercise complete with booby traps and surprises. That might be fun, seeing what they come up with. She smiled then, with cheerful maliciousness. And we could do a girls-against-guys exercise.
I thought we were going to enjoy our honeymoon, not spend the whole time running around in the woods. Snake Eyes pretended to pout. Most other people would find this incomprehensible.
She raised her eyebrow. This is relaxing, for us. We're soldiers, Snake Eyes, we have a completely different mindset than most other people. And because we're elite soldiers, we have to work, constantly, to keep our skills sharp and our senses alert. And the best way is to engage in exercises that don't include combat stress. Not only that, Cam's still recovering and she needs to brush up on her skills.
Have you wondered what we'd do when we muster out?
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. I've been thinking about that a bit more lately, I don't know, since we got married, I guess. I want kids, Snake Eyes, and I—we—can't have them while still with the Joes. And I'm thirty-five now, and I'm not getting any younger, and I know the older I am the harder it's going to be—Auggie's birth was incredibly hard on Liv, and she's only eight years older than I am. So my clock is ticking. I assume we'll come back here and decide what we want to do then pursue that. Or, if I'm careful with the restitution money and the bed and breakfast pays off, we can afford to put down roots here and look for something suitable. She sighed. I don't know. We'll have to see. I don't think I'm ready to make that kind of commitment yet. She grabbed the binoculars from him, peered through them. Now where are they?
Cam held up a hand, the nearly-universal sign for stop, then pointed to a low-hanging branch of tree barely four inches above her head. The serrated edge of a wild chestnut tree leaf had caught a single strand of red hair on its edge and held it.
She didn't know if it was deliberate or not, but it was a sure sign that Shana and Snake Eyes had come this way, and further proof that they'd laid a deliberately clear 'come find me' trail. Cam had wasted time branching out to the side, only to discover they were dead ends and Shana had retraced her steps to rejoin the main trail. After that discovery they'd stuck to the trail they were following; a nearly straight path directly up the side of the mountain, heading for a small tumble of sandstone boulders close to the summit. It was the perfect lookout spot for someone with high-powered binoculars to be able to see the cabin, and who left it.
So Shana and Snake eyes knew they were coming.
What they didn't know was from where. Charlie guessed that they would be expecting a two-pronged attack, from the front and from behind, which would explain why they'd chosen that large pile of boulders. They could put their backs to the rocks and defend from the front, then they only needed to figure out which side Charlie and Cam would attack from. Cam was hoping that Shana and Snake Eyes wouldn't be expecting the two of them to split up and hit them from both sides. I'm determined we are going to win this one, Cam thought mentally to Charlie as they met on the other side of the summit for a last strategy meeting before they attacked. Shana and Snake eyes are going to lose. She handed him her paintball gun. Here. Shoot me once with this.
He gawked. Charlie. We were all issued different colors. If I got shot by Shana and Snake eyes or you, I'd be out, but nothing Shana said indicated we'd be eliminated of we got our own paint on us. It could have been a defective paintball exploding during reload.
He stared at her…and a slow smile crept over his face. He took her paintball gun, aimed it at her, and fired a single blue paintball at her chest. It made a satisfyingly messy splat on the front of her suit, then they both started to creep around behind their prey's hideout. She waited until she heard the first staccato report of paintball ammo, then crept around the boulders until she could see the other side of the clearing. She could feel Charlie there, a presence warm and comforting in the back of her mind, there but unintrusive, like the ring around her finger. She waited until Shana had expended her initial run of ammo, and she stepped back to reload more paintballs.
With her distracted by the reloading process, and Snake Eyes busy firing at Charlie, Cam sauntered out of the treeline and sat down, laying her paintball gun across her lap. Shana looked up after she reloaded, did a double take, then saw the paint splat across the front of her suit and did exactly what Cam had gambled on; she figured Cam had been hit and 'eliminated' and turned her attention to Charlie as Snake Eyes started trying to reload.
Charlie stepped out of the treeline, the front of his suit marked with two green splotches of paint—Shana's paintballs. Snake Eyes smiled broadly, stood up from behind his boulder and started to walk toward Charlie.
One short, sharp shot.
A blue flower of paint blossomed across Snake Eyes' back. Even as Shana turned in disbelief, bringing her gun around to shoot Cam, Cam fired again, and a bright blue splotch suddenly appeared on Shana's upper chest. Shana's jaw dropped open in disbelief.
That was how she got blue paint on her teeth.