Camouflage Heart by Dana Marton

operation he wasn’t sure he was fit to attempt. But he was going to do it anyway.
    The job was in his blood, trained into him—complete the rescue, save the weak. He had no fear for himself, no hesitation on that score, and he was glad to discover that here was at last some deep partof him that the guerillas didn’t manage to take away, couldn’t beat out. It was a fragment he recognized, something he could maybe build on to regain the rest.
    She reached out a hand in the darkness and put it over his that somehow had come to cradle her face. “Be careful,” she said again, with tremors in her voice this time.
    That got to him. She was scared, and there was little he could do to protect her. He couldn’t be in two places at the same time. He should have been able to offer some reassurance and comfort, but saying “you’ll be fine” just didn’t seem enough.
    He stepped forward and enfolded her in his arms awkwardly, the gun between them. “I’ll be back for you,” he said, surprised at his own reluctance to move away.
    She leaned her forehead against his chin. “I know.”
    It would have been the most natural thing to press his lips against the crown of her hair, but he couldn’t do it. Instead, he walked away.
    His mind was full of her, every cell of his brain, all his senses. His nose was full of her wet scent, her last words still ringing in his ears. God, he was pitiful. Thinking about her instead of what he was about to do was a surefire way of getting them both killed.
    The mission. He refocused his mind, alert onceagain as he moved forward in the jungle. He could barely see a foot or two in front of him, any noise an enemy might have made was drowned out by the rain. He was deaf and blind, in enemy territory, without as much as a gun. But he wasn’t unarmed. He’d been a soldier an awful long time. He had his instincts.
    He kept close enough to the river to let the sound of the water guide him, then once he reached the trail that led to camp, he followed that. He moved off it just before he reached the hillside camp, creeping forward slowly. Not that he was too concerned about running into anybody, but he was concerned about taking a wrong step and rolling down into a ravine, sinking into a rabbit hole and breaking a leg.
    He reached camp after a couple of minutes. Lights shone in the windows, except for one shack. He kept in the shadows and stole closer to that one. He peeked in through the cracks in the wall, not wanting to put himself in line with the window. Just because the light wasn’t on, it didn’t mean nobody was in there.
    But he lucked out. He could see the outlines of two people inside, both lying down. They were silent and unmoving. Good. He crept to the door, tried it. Unlocked. Which meant the two weren’t hostages. He opened the door a fraction of an inch at a time thenducked inside, waited until his eyes further adjusted to the darkness.
    He put his hand over the mouth of the first guerilla, his knife to his throat. The man woke with a start and grabbed for his wrist. Definitely not a hostage then, his hands hadn’t been tied. Brian slit the man’s throat and moved on to the other one.
    When he was done, he tucked the man’s handgun into his waistband, threw the two rifles over his shoulder. He pocketed the box of matches from the table on the way out.
    He moved on to the next shack, looked inside. Four men there, playing cards, their guns within easy reach. He could have picked them off with a rifle, but didn’t yet want to alert the whole camp to his presence. He waited, ducked deeper into the shadows when the door of another hut opened, then moved forward, keeping an eye on the fighter outlined by the hut’s light. The man fumbled with his pants.
    Damn. The guy was just taking a piss. He had hoped the fighter was on his way to another hut. But with the door open behind him, Brian couldn’t