After a while, he heard Jones calling out to the others, telling them to give up the search. The need to press on outweighed the desire to take vengeance on the man who was stalking them. Sokolov waited until he could no longer hear the jihadists moving around, then emerged from his cover very carefully, beginning with a quick bob of the head followed by an immediate retreat. When several such ventures failed to draw fire, he began to feel some confidence that they had not left anyone behind to kill him when he emerged from cover, and he moved more freely. But he had the uncomfortable sense that they were now way ahead of him, and he began to consider how he could make up for lost time. Jones and his crew had made the decision to move through the forest, which was slower than going across the high country above the tree line, and so an obvious way that Sokolov might make up for lost time would be to go back into the mining camp and then continue to move through the scrubland just outside the limit of the trees.