Chapter 6 Attrition
ATTRITION
DECLAN
Ifound Nolan in the kitchen at dawn.
He was standing at the counter with his back to the hallway, both hands wrapped around a coffee mug, his shoulders carrying a tension I could read from six feet away. The posture of a man who'd been awake for hours and was dreading what came next.
I poured coffee. Set the pot back on the burner. Let the silence hold for ten seconds because silence was a tool and this particular silence needed to do its work before I spoke.
"Nolan."
He turned. His face was flushed. Not the surface heat of embarrassment—deeper than that, a color that started at the collar of his T-shirt and climbed to his ears. His eyes met mine and held, and to his credit, he didn't look away.
"I owe you an apology," His voice was steady.
Controlled. The flush told a different story than the voice, and I noted both.
"I heard noises. From your room. I wasn't sure what—I thought something might be wrong, and I came to check, and the door was—" He stopped.
Reset. The glasses came off, got cleaned on the hem of his shirt, went back on.
"I saw. I'm sorry. It won't happen again. "
I studied him. Twenty years of reading men under pressure had taught me what guilt looked like, what disgust looked like, what discomfort looked like.
Nolan's face held none of those things. The flush wasn't shame.
The steadiness in his voice wasn't forced politeness.
And his eyes, when they'd met mine, hadn't flinched.
A man who was disgusted would have avoided me this morning. A man who was uncomfortable would have buried it under professionalism and pretended nothing happened. Nolan was standing in the kitchen at dawn, facing me directly, apologizing not for what he'd seen but for the intrusion.
"You don't need to apologize." I kept my voice level. "The door should have been shut."
"Still. Your privacy—"
"Is fine." I took a drink of the coffee. Held his gaze over the rim. "We good?"
The flush deepened by a shade. But his shoulders dropped a fraction—tension releasing—and he nodded. "We're good."
I nodded back. Turned to leave. Stopped in the doorway.
"How long were you standing there?"
The question landed. I watched it register—the slight widening of his eyes, the half-second delay before his expression recalibrated. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Not long."
Not a lie. Not the full truth either. The space between the two was information enough.
I drained the rest of my coffee and set the mug in the sink.
Pulled my boots from beside the door, laced them tight, and stepped outside into the brightening desert.
The sky was shifting from black to the dark blue that preceded sunrise by twenty minutes, the air still carrying the mineral cold of a desert night.
Dawn patrol. Same route every morning—a mile loop around the property, checking for tracks, disturbances, anything the night had left behind.
Half a mile northeast of the cabin, where the scrubland gave way to a ridge with a direct sightline to the property, the routine ended.
Tire tracks. Two vehicles, wide wheelbase, tread pattern consistent with tactical SUVs—heavy-duty all-terrain, the same tires used by private military contractors and federal tactical units.
The tracks ran parallel for two hundred feet along the ridge, then looped back toward the highway. Twelve hours old. Maybe less.
Surveillance. Not approach. Someone had driven up, observed, and left.
I followed the tracks on foot to the ridge's highest point.
Two sets of boot prints in the hardpack, military-grade soles, deep toe impressions indicating prolonged standing.
Rectangular depressions in the dust where binoculars had been set down and picked up.
Seven cigarette butts, crushed flat. I picked one up and turned it in my fingers.
Djarum Black. Indonesian brand. Popular in Eastern Europe.
Someone had stood here for hours. Counting our windows. Mapping our approaches. Timing our movements.
I collected the cigarette butts in a plastic bag and walked back to the cabin at a controlled pace—not because I wasn't urgent, but because running attracted attention, and if there were eyes on the ridge right now, I needed to look like a man on a routine patrol.
Sean was at the kitchen table when I came through the door. His eyes tracked me immediately—the pace, the set of my jaw, the plastic bag in my hand. He knew my face the way I knew his. Nearly eight years of reading each other.
"What happened?" No grin. No deflection. He'd already shifted.
I pulled out the sat phone and dialed Hawk. Put it on speaker.
"Tire tracks," I said when Hawk answered. "Half a mile northeast. Ridge with direct sightline to the cabin. Two vehicles, tactical tread, military boot prints. Seven cigarette butts—European brand. Someone's been watching us."
Hawk didn't waste time. "Timeline?"
"Tracks are twelve hours old at most. They've completed their reconnaissance. Next phase is approach—tonight at the earliest."
Sean's jaw tightened. His hand moved to his hip—an unconscious reach for the weapon holstered on the back of his chair. Across the room, a door opened. Nolan appeared in the hallway, drawn by the tension in my voice. He stopped at the kitchen entrance, reading the room in two seconds flat.
"Options." Hawk's voice was flat, operational. "You run, they follow. You've got a federal whistleblower with evidence that can bring down a Deputy Assistant AG. They won't stop."
"We don't run," I said. "We use the ground. The cabin's compromised as a safehouse, but it's defensible if we have numbers. They don't know we found the tracks. If we bring in backup and position them before the strike team arrives, we catch them in a crossfire they're not expecting."
Silence on the line. Hawk processing.
"The alternative," I continued, "is we pull back to the clubhouse and they follow us there. Next time they come with more men and heavier hardware, and the fight's at our front door. We put a dent in Holt's hired muscle now, on ground we've already mapped, and we show him we're a step ahead."
"I'll send everyone I can spare. Axel leads the backup team.
Tank, Ghost, Tyler, and Kai—you'll need a medic.
" He paused. "The rest stay at the clubhouse.
I've got Mesa and Dagger running the Tucson pipeline, and I need bodies here in case this is a feint to draw us out.
That's five plus your three. How many hostiles? "
"The truck stop was a four-man team. This is the next level. I'd plan for twelve to sixteen. Possibly more."
"Then eight has to be enough."
"Understood."
"Three hours for the team to reach you. Axel will call when they're close. Brief him on positioning."
The line went dead.
Sean was already on his feet, checking his weapon—press-checking the slide, verifying the magazine, reholstering with the smooth competence of someone whose training hadn't atrophied during four months of recovery. His bad leg bounced beneath him. Not weakness. Adrenaline finding an outlet.
Nolan hadn't moved from the kitchen entrance. The color had drained from his face—I tracked it without comment, the blood withdrawing the way water recedes before a wave. But his hands didn't shake. He looked at me and said: "What do you need me to do?"
No panic. No questions about whether we should run.
"Pack the evidence into the small backpack. Hard copies first, then the encrypted drive. Prioritize the forty-seven matched signatures. Once it's packed, you strap it on and it doesn't leave your back until this is over."
He nodded and went to work.
I followed him to the back bedroom. He was already pulling the hard copies from the desk, organizing them with the precise efficiency of a man whose mind worked best when his hands were occupied. I waited until he looked up.
"Come with me."
I walked him to the hallway and handed him the fire extinguisher from the wall mount. Eight pounds of pressurized steel with a broad base.
"If someone comes through that window tonight, this is your primary weapon. Show me the swing."
He gripped it two-handed. Overhead arc, hip rotation, weight transfer from back foot to front. Clean, but tentative.
"Harder. You're not trying to stun him. You're trying to crack his skull through a helmet. Again."
He swung again. Better. The impact point would have landed square on a temple. The force behind it had the full weight of a man who'd been pressing two-twenty on the bench for two weeks.
"Good. Now—" I pulled one of the spare Sig P320s from my waistband and held it out to him, grip first. "Backup.
Safety's here, trigger's here. Point and squeeze if the extinguisher isn't enough.
But the extinguisher is your first move.
You have no weapons training and a missed shot in close quarters is a bullet in your own wall. "
He took the pistol. Checked it the way I'd just shown him—visually confirming the safety position, testing the weight in his hand. His fingers were steady.
"Extinguisher first. Pistol if I have to."
"Correct."
He met my eyes. Behind the glasses, something that wasn't fear and wasn't courage but lived in the space between—the focused determination of a man who'd decided that running was over and whatever came through that window would have to go through him.
I went back to the kitchen.
Axel's convoy rolled in just after noon.
Two trucks, blacked out, moving fast but quiet on the dirt road.
He stepped out first—tall, broad through the shoulders, the VP patch on his cut catching the sun.
His eyes swept the cabin, the terrain, the ridge I'd marked, and the tactical assessment was visible on his face before he said a word.