Donovan O'Niel's Arc

Chapter 4 of 11

The open channel had one clean window. Donovan meant to spend it well. Six raiders had already marched to a supply cart that never existed. When they found nothing, they'd stop trusting the line. So Donovan and Sinclair built a bigger lie. They sent word of a stalled convoy near an icy stretch of trail, an armored truck abandoned with its crew dead, gear scattered, ripe for stripping. The bait was real. Days earlier Donovan had found the wreck himself while mapping the valley. An arctic-camo six-wheeler sat cold on its axles, white and grey against the frost. Three skeletons lay near it in rotted uniforms, an old exploration team gone decades ago. A rusted officer's pistol lay in the dirt beside a cracked field radio. Donovan photographed it all and marked it on his survey board. It looked exactly like fresh salvage to anyone who didn't know better. Brad crouched beside the thermal camera feed inside the garage warehouse. Brad had eight years in the Rangers and read terrain like a book. He watched the monitor without blinking. "Heh. That's a picture," Brad said. "Broken truck, bodies, loose gear. A scav sees that and stops thinking straight. Between you and me, greed makes better bait than any trap I've built." Sinclair keyed the handset. He read the message flat and tired, the way the dead informant used to talk. He named the wreck's position, the loot, the empty road. Then he set the mic down. "Now we wait, friend. If they roll out, the line's still ours. If they don't, we lost nothing but a story." Donovan stared at the camera monitor. His people waited hidden near the wreck. Brad's team held one ridge. Sinclair's Red Hills recon held another. The thermal picture showed the cold truck, the scattered bones, the frost. Nothing moved for an hour. Donovan's tail twitched against the crate. Then heat bloomed at the screen's edge. Engines. Two raider trucks crawled up the trail and stopped short of the wreck. Men climbed down. They circled the six-wheeler, kicked the skeletons, grabbed the fallen pistol and radio. They laughed. They filled sacks with worthless bones and old steel. Then they mounted up and drove back north, thinking they'd won. "They looted a graveyard," Brad said. He grinned. "And they don't even know it." Donovan let out his breath. The trap had worked clean. The raiders had acted on a second false order without a flicker of doubt. The channel wasn't just alive; it was trusted. He now owned a direct line into their movements, and he could steer them anywhere he chose. But steering them meant they'd keep chasing his lies until one lie ran dry. Sooner or later they'd reach a wreck and find Rangers waiting instead of bones. Donovan closed the survey board. He had a weapon now. He had to decide where to point it before the raiders came looking for the liar behind the voice.