Billy Sunday paused. He held his rifle to point at the tall grass in front of him. The air shimmered in a way he didn't like.

He had walked through the jungle many times. He couldn't recall the air acting like a desert any of those times. He didn't want to advance. The shimmer looked like a trap to him.

“What's the hold up, Sunday?,” asked his radio. He clicked the button twice to show that he had heard and wanted silence until he was ready to talk.

Billy decided that he should fall back and take another route. He didn't like the feel of things.

He retreated from the shimmer, sweeping the air in front of him. Just because you couldn't see the danger didn't mean it wasn't there. He fell back until he could barely see the movement in the air. He dropped down with his back to the trunk of a tree.

“We're going around,” Billy said. “There's something up here that's not on the map.”

“We don't have a lot of time if we want to meet our ride,” said the other side.

“I know,” said Billy. “I have my eye on the clock. I am talking about a ten minute detour around whatever this thing is and down the other side.”

“Cut the trail for us,” said the radio. “We'll be coming up behind you.”

Billy clicked his radio twice before standing up. He looked over his shoulder. The shimmer remained in place. It was better to go around.

He cut a mark in the tree to show which way he planned to go. He started off, climbing to the left of the shimmer. Once they were beyond this section of the map, they would be within sight of their pickup spot.

A heli was supposed to pick up the squad and take them to the coast. From there, they would have to place their weapons in lockers and take a commercial flight home.

Raiding in the jungle was a job that Billy excelled at as a scout for the squad. It tended to work on his nerves after a while. He was glad they were going home for a bit now that the job was over.

He paused at the top of the trail. The shimmer was on his right. The trail headed down to a flat piece of land surrounding a small lake. The trees left a cleared spot around the water big enough for their heli to land and pick them up.

Billy looked around. He didn't see any other problem other than the shimmer. Maybe he was being paranoid.

He decided it didn't matter. He had been hired to scout ahead and not walk the squad into an ambush. He had done his job fine up until now. He would still keep doing his job the best he could.

He started down the trail. He scanned the trees for anything that looked out of place.

He paused when he saw what looked like a break in the coverage. He stepped behind a tree and triggered his radio twice. He sighted down his rifle. He spotted what looked like an antenna sticking out of a bush. He scanned the area. He didn't see anything else out of the ordinary.

He didn't like the antenna sitting out there by its lonesome. Something was wrong.

Billy retreated, keeping an eye on the area as he moved from tree to tree. If they realized that they had been spotted, they might come up the trail after the mercenaries. He didn't have a lot of ammo to burn if that happened.

He found the squad hunkered down below the shimmer with rifles pointed out. Any two of the four men could cover half a circle with that while the other two could make sure nothing came at them from behind the square formation.

“What's going on, Billy?,” said Thad Spinneli.

“I have some kind of radio set up ahead,” said Billy. “We're expected at the lake from what I could tell. I don't have a read on numbers, but I didn't want to draw fire until I knew something.”

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The other four men tensed. If they had to bust an ambush, they could run out their ammunition and still not be able to punch through to the intended landing site. Going around might cause them to miss their meeting. That meant being stuck in the jungle until they could arrange another pickup somewhere else.

It was Spinnelli's call. He looked like he had swallowed a very bitter pill.

The five men were of a type, tall, thin, mostly tanned by the sun. Billy was as pale as any other redhead under the burning sun. He kept his hat pulled down, and sunblock on his exposed skin.

“What's the fastest route around the suspected ambush?,” asked Spinnelli.

“We would have to go down to the left from here and circle around until we walked into the landing zone from the other side of the lake,” said Billy. “It might cost another day in travel time.”

“We can't afford another day,” said Spinnelli. “We only have eight more hours to reach the LZ. After that, we'll have to try to make the secondary.”

Billy looked at the shimmer and the top of the hill it blocked. If they were spotted before they closed with the ambush area, they could be chopped to pieces.

He would rather walk out than engage an unknown amount of hostiles buried behind cover.

“We could maybe try to use smoke to cover our movements while we try to get through their firing lanes,” said Hanson. “If it doesn't work, we'll get shot.”

“I could try to blow their ambush up with my grenade launcher,” said Eckles. “I would have to be close to do anything to them.”

“Which will get you shot unless we were able to cover you from here,” said Hanson.

“Espy?,” asked Spinnelli.

Espy shrugged. Billy had only heard him say four words the whole time they had been in country. He cradled his rifle like a baby.

Espy also shot people from yards away when they couldn't see him.

Billy squinted at the shimmer in the air. It had moved a few feet. He pointed his rifle at it. Should it be moving? Was he seeing things? Did the others see it?

“I think we should move and talk somewhere else,” Billy said.

“Why?,” asked Spinnelli. He looked in the direction that his scout was looking. His expression said he didn't see anything unusual going on.

“You don't see that?,” asked Billy. He indicated the flow in the air with his head.

“No,” said the squad leader. “I don't see anything.”

Billy walked up to the shimmer. He stuck his rifle barrel into the disturbed air. Something pulled on it. The yank unbalanced him. He fell into the direction of the pull.

He saw the ground coming for his face. He bent so that his shoulders would hit and he could roll with the impact. He wound up in a small cloud of dust. He stood up, sweeping the rifle around.

He didn't like what he saw.

Billy had traded an equatorial jungle for a desert. Everywhere he looked looked the same. He checked his watch. It told him that he hadn't lost a second.

He looked for the shimmer. It should take him back to the jungle. He frowned when he didn't see the floating disturbance.

Spinnelli dropped out of the air. He rolled to a stop a few feet away from Billy. He brushed the dust off his jacket as he stood. Hanson and Eckles dropped a few seconds later. Espy walked out of the air. He adjusted his cap in the burning air as he looked around.

“That was interesting,” said Hanson. “Where are we?”

“What were you people thinking?,” said Billy. “There's nothing to point home.”

“We didn't know that,” said Spinnelli. “We definitely didn't want to try to get around that ambush. We didn't have enough bullets to kill them all.”

“Espy scoped it out after you vanished,” said Hanson. “They had three squad weapons mounted on vehicles. The antenna for the rig you saw was from one of those. If we had tried to assault that, Espy would have been the only one to walk away.”

“All right,” said Billy. “We have a different problem here. There's no water, and we have no way to know where the local oasises are. All we have is what's in our canteens.”

Eckles pulled out his phone. He turned it on. He shook his head.

“No bars, no internet,” he reported.

He didn't have to explain what that meant to the squad. There wasn't a cell tower anywhere around so they couldn't call for help. They couldn't get a location without the internet telling them where they were from their phones.

“So we're lost,” said Spinnelli. “We need to pick a direction and start moving. We can eat what we catch on the way. Which direction should we go?”

Espy raised his rifle so he could look through the scope. He turned in a circle to inspect their surroundings. He pointed at something in the distance.

“What is it?,” said Spinnelli. He checked his rig. He still had a monoscope. He pulled it from its pouch and raised it to his eye. “It looks like plants.”

“Really?,” said Hanson. He shaded his eyes and looked in the direction. “Cacti?”

“I can't tell,” said Spinnelli. “Espy?”

The sniper shook his head. He lowered his rifle.

Billy took a reading with his compass. He nodded when he had it down.

“I don't know how far away that is, but greenery in a desert means water,” said Billy. “That should help us until we figure out where we can go from here.”

“We might not be able to go anywhere,” said Hanson. “This whole planet might be like this.”

“Somewhere there is greenery,” said Billy. “Somewhere there are animals. This place is close enough to Earth that I disbelieve that there isn't any place here that is not better in some way.”

“That doesn't have to be true,” said Hanson. “We might be somewhere that's just a tad too close to their sun to support more than a bit of life.”

“It doesn't matter,” said Spinnelli. “We have to keep moving unless we want to burn up out here in the open. Take point, Billy. Hanson and Eckles in the middle. I'm after you two. Espy will drag for us in case we have something try to come up on us from behind. Let's move out. If those plants are edible, we'll have a salad tonight.”

“They might be poisonous,” said Hanson.

“We'll let you have first taste,” said Spinnelli.

Billy headed out across the desert. He pulled out an old pair of sunglasses and put them on to cover his eyes. He didn't want to go blind marching across the hard sand.

It reminded him of Arizona in some ways.

Spinnelli and Hanson were right. They had been yanked across time and space to some hole. They had no way to get home, and had to rely on each other more than usual. He admitted that he was quietly freaking out inside.

He decided that he would do what he could to keep his squad alive until they found a way home. If there was a door to this place, there had to be a door back.