Chapter 17
TRENT
I counted guards as we approached the cell tower installation. Four visible, rotating in a loose diamond pattern in the shadow of the rimrock. Flynn moved at my shoulder, silent in the scrub brush.
“Standard rent-a-thugs,” Flynn whispered. His breath fogged in the cold Montana air. “Not even thermal gear.”
“Don’t get cocky.” But he was right. After the heavy security we’d spotted at the mining facility, this felt almost too easy.
Rafe slid up beside us. He passed me night vision goggles, the weight familiar in my hands.
“Perimeter’s clear beyond those rocks.” He nodded toward a limestone outcropping fifty yards left. “No motion sensors, no trip wires. Just those four gentlemen enjoying their cigarettes and minimum wage.”
I scanned the installation through the goggles.
The cell tower itself looked ordinary at first glance.
Standard lattice structure, about two hundred feet tall.
But additional equipment hung from its frame.
Directional antennas pointing toward town.
Small satellite dishes. And something at the base that hummed faintly, the sound carrying through the still night air.
“That’s not AT&T hardware,” I said, pointing to the base unit.
Rafe nodded. “Neural signal amplifier, if Kate’s intel is right. Same tech they’re using at the mining facility, just smaller scale.”
I checked my watch. 0134 hours. Almost ninety minutes since we’d split off from the main team.
Ninety minutes since I’d seen Evelyn, since I’d promised Sophia I’d make it back.
The mission parameters scrolled through my head automatically: disable tower, secure intel, prep for demolition. Simple. Clean.
Except nothing about this felt simple or clean. Not with everything at stake.
“Alpha Outlaw, moving to position one,” Flynn said, already sliding away through the scrub brush.
Rafe and I waited, counting silently as Flynn disappeared into the darkness.
On seven, a guard at the northwest corner stumbled, a hand reaching for his throat where Flynn’s arm now wrapped in a textbook blood choke.
Five seconds later, the guard crumpled to the ground without a sound, zip-tied and unconscious.
“That’s one,” Rafe said. He tapped his earpiece twice, sending the go signal to Flynn for the next target.
We moved in formation, three points of a triangle, as we closed on the installation.
My suppressed M4 felt like an extension of my body as I tracked the eastern guard through my sights, waiting for Rafe’s signal.
The guard paused to light a cigarette, cupping the flame against the wind.
The brief flare illuminated a young face, probably some ex-military kid who thought he’d landed an easy security gig.
Sorry, kid.
The signal came, and I squeezed the trigger once.
The round caught him in the meat of his shoulder, designed to incapacitate without killing.
He dropped with a muffled grunt, clutching at the wound, his rifle clattering to the gravel.
I was on him before he could make another sound, pressing a sedative autoinjector to his thigh. His eyes rolled back within seconds.
“Two down,” I said into my comm.
Flynn’s voice crackled in my ear. “Three.”
Rafe took the final guard, and suddenly the night was quiet again, just the soft hum of electronics and the cold wind whistling through the tower’s metal frame.
“Thirty minutes till shift change, based on their patrol pattern,” Flynn said, materializing beside me. “Let’s make this quick.”
Rafe jogged toward the equipment building, already pulling breaching tools from his pack. His hands moved through the familiar routine of checking charges and connections, measuring distances.
“Building’s reinforced,” he noted. “Definitely not standard. Good news is the door’s only got a basic electronic lock.”
“Override it,” I said. “Quiet entry if we can.”
Flynn moved to cover Rafe while I approached the tower base itself.
Up close, the strange equipment became clearer: weather-sealed boxes with Innovixus logos, heavy-duty power cables, and cooling systems far more substantial than normal cellular equipment would need.
At the base, concrete footings anchored the tower deep into the rimrock.
I ran my hands over the main support struts, mentally calculating explosive placement. Four charges, one at each corner of the base, set to collapse the tower in on itself. Plus two more in the equipment building to fry the electronics. Clean, contained, effective.
“How’s it look?” Flynn called softly.
“Standard construction, non-standard gear.” I unzipped my pack, pulling out the blocks of C-4 and detonators. “We can bring it down without much collateral.”
The familiar routine centered me: check the clay-like explosive for consistency, press the detonators into place, secure the timers.
This was the work I knew, the work I could do without thinking.
Unlike what waited back at the rally point.
Unlike what faced us at the mining facility.
This was straightforward. No emotions involved.
“Trent.” Rafe’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Building’s ready for entry.”
I nodded, tucking the explosives back into my pack for now. We’d place them after securing the interior. First, we needed whatever intel the equipment building might hold.
That’s when my earpiece crackled, the sound different from our team channel. A local frequency. Dutch’s voice came through, tight with pain and something I’d never heard from him before. Fear.
“Contact! Evac team is under attack! Parker and six hostiles, all armed! Evie is pinned down!”
The night around me seemed to freeze, sound dropping away except for Dutch’s labored breathing and the unmistakable pop of gunfire in the background.
“Evac, report,” I demanded, already on my feet.
“Bastards found us at Howie Hardy’s place. Took a round. Evie’s holding them off, but we’re outnumbered.”
Another burst of gunfire, then Dutch’s grunt of pain. Static hissed through the line.
“Dutch? Dutch!”
Nothing.
My vision tunneled, blood pounding in my ears. Evelyn. Under fire. Possibly wounded. Every cell in my body screamed to move, to run, to get to her. The mission, the tower, the plan—all of it faded against that single driving need.
I was already three steps toward our vehicle when Rafe’s hand clamped on my shoulder, spinning me around. His eyes were hard, knowing.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, fingers digging into my collarbone.
“Let go of me.” The words scraped my throat.
“Stick to the plan, Bricks.” Rafe didn’t back down. “Ethan and Gage are closer—they’ll get to her. We finish this.”
“She could be dying right now.” I shoved against his grip.
“And if we don’t take down this tower, everyone in that town stays puppets forever,” Rafe countered. “Including the ones shooting at her.”
Flynn stepped between us, his usual manner replaced by tactical focus. “Ethan’s already on comms. He’s two minutes from Evelyn. We’re twenty minutes out at best. Do the math, Bricks.”
The logic cut through the red haze of panic. They were right. Ethan’s team would reach Evelyn before we could. And abandoning the tower mission would leave the control signal active. Tactically, strategically, the right call was clear.
But knowing that didn’t make it any easier to turn back toward the equipment building rather than run to her.
“If she dies while we’re standing here,” I said, the words tasting like ash, “I’ll never forgive any of us.”
Rafe’s hand shifted from restraint to support. “Then let’s make this quick. In and out, ten minutes. Then we’ll go to her.”
I took one deep breath, then another, forcing the panic down, locking it away behind years of training and discipline.
Mission first.
It had to be mission first.
But as I moved toward the building, my heart hammered against my ribs with every step I wasn’t taking toward Evelyn.
Focus. I needed to focus.
Evelyn was a fighter. She’d hold until Ethan got there.
Right now, there were five people inside that building who could shut down this whole operation if we didn’t move fast. I nodded to Flynn and Rafe, our shadows stretching long against the equipment building’s wall.
Three fingers up, two, one—and we were through the door, the world condensing to the next five seconds of controlled violence.
The door gave way under Rafe’s boot, the electronic lock shorting out.
Light flooded over us, harsh fluorescent strips that turned the narrow hallway into an overexposed photograph.
My pupils contracted painfully as we pushed forward, weapons up, moving in the staggered formation we’d practiced a thousand times.
“Contact right!” Flynn barked as we rounded the corner.
Two guards in HighPlains tactical gear stood from a break table, coffee mugs shattering on the floor as they scrambled for their sidearms. Behind them, through an open doorway, I spotted three figures in lab coats hunched over computer terminals.
The tech team’s faces drained of color as they registered our presence.
Everything happened at once.
The first guard cleared his holster faster than I expected, squeezing off two rounds that cracked past my ear and thudded into the wall behind me. I dropped to one knee, returning fire with three controlled shots, center mass. He folded backwards over a chair, weapon clattering to the ground.
The second guard was better—ex-military by his stance. He’d already taken cover behind a metal cabinet, his weapon trained on Flynn, who’d rolled left behind a desk.
“Down!” Rafe shouted, already throwing himself sideways as a burst of automatic fire tore through the space we’d just occupied.
The confined space turned gunfire into physical pain, each shot a hammer blow against my eardrums. Shell casings pinged against the tile floor, the smell of cordite thick in my nostrils.
My world narrowed to angles and threats, the part of me that was still thinking about Evelyn locked away behind combat instinct.
Flynn popped up from behind the desk, firing two quick shots that forced the guard back into cover. I used the distraction to slide forward, getting a better angle on his position. Just as I lined up my shot, Rafe moved to flank from the other side.
The guard spotted him at the last second, swinging his weapon toward the new threat. I heard the distinctive thwack of rounds hitting body armor, saw Rafe stagger backward, his breath leaving him in a pained grunt. But his vest held, stopping the rounds from penetrating.
“Son of a bitch,” Rafe wheezed, still managing to keep his weapon up despite the impact.
Flynn seized the opening, rising from cover. Two shots in quick succession, and the second guard dropped, a red stain spreading across his chest.
“Clear!” I called, already moving toward the room with the technicians. “Flynn, check Rafe.”
“I’m fine,” Rafe insisted, though his voice was thin with pain. “Bruised ribs, maybe cracked. Nothing broken.”
The three techs had their hands raised before I even reached them, fear etched across their faces. None of them looked like fighters—two men and a woman, all with the soft physiques of people who spent their lives in front of screens.
“Please,” the woman said, her voice high and tight. “We’re just contractors. We didn’t know what this was for.”
“On your knees, hands behind your heads,” I ordered, not bothering to acknowledge her plea. They complied instantly, practically falling over themselves to follow directions. Flynn appeared beside me, zip ties already in hand.
“Secure them,” I said. “I need to see what they were working on.”