Howl: A World at War Novel by Mitchell T. Jacobs

backup infiltrating alongside them. Other companies such as Sacred Sword had to trail behind because they would give away Redd Foxx's position, which could cost them precious seconds. But her scouts would be moving up beside their support now.
    No, that wasn't right, Nora thought to herself. They were all her troops now, and she was Anna's second. She had to get used to that before they went out in the field.
    Nora and Liz moved forward as Selene signaled them to move. That was a good sign. They had run into two patrols, but they were a good distance apart from one another. That meant they couldn't provide a lot of support to each other, and the vanguard team could pick them off before anyone was the wiser. On the other hand, it also meant that they needed to keep moving. If an enemy patrol stumbled on the rear team they were done for. If Zach was shot then they didn't have anyone to trigger the explosives.
    No sight. No scent. No sound.
    That was Redd Foxx's mantra, and it was a solid piece of wisdom. Nora often repeated it to herself as she moved, and she wasn't the only one. She knew that Miko did it as well, and she was pretty sure that Selene had also picked up on the practice. It was good to remember it as they pushed forward. They needed to pay attention to every move, because anything could give them away. The sight of a moving shape, the scent of burning powder or sweat, the sound of a snapping twig, any single one of them could spell doom.
    No sight. No scent. No sound.
    It wasn't simply a skill, however. There was no specific process for being stealthy. It was an art form, not a science, and you had to feel what you were doing. Everything had to be natural, smooth. That was what Gwen had emphasized during her training, and it was still something she struggled with a bit. She was trying to be stealthy. Instead, she should just be stealthy.
    Nervousness and tenseness had no place. Nora moved from shadow to shadow, flowing like liquid. It wasn't like she completely vanished. She simply melted into the background of the forest, too insignificant to take notice of.
    Liz held out her arm in front of her and signaled a stop. Nora took up a position behind a large tree and surveyed the area in front of them. Sure enough, there were four enemies in front of them. Two were soldiers, one was an engineer and one was an assault.
    Liz waved Miko and Selene up to their position. She opened up her menu and pressed a few buttons. Symbols appeared over the heads of each of their enemies, made visible by their HUDs. It was a feature that had been in the game from the beginning but they hadn't taken advantage of until now. Locations, objects and persons in the game would could be market with a symbol which would show up for certain people once they were within visual range. In this case, the symbols were visible for their team only. There were four of them in all, and they signified who they were supposed to shoot.
    Nora brought her gun up to her shoulder and aimed down the sights. She focused on her target, the soldier nearest to her with the yellow x above her head. A ten second countdown appeared in the lower right corner of her HUD. They would all fire when it reached zero.
    She hoped that Liz's hunch was correct. They were probably far enough away from any enemy patrol, but if they weren't they were going to have a swarm of angry NPCs descending upon them. And that wasn't taking into account what would happen if they messed up their shots. It only took a split-second for one of the enemy to trigger the alarm.
    Seven. Six. Five.
    Nora put her finger on the trigger and relaxed. She was a good shot, but this was so much different that the other times she had fought. She had time to think about what she was going to do, and for some reason that seemed to put extra pressure on her. In her previous fights she was simply a soldier in the battle, firing off shots in the rolling chaos of battle. Now, she needed to act with far more