Chapter 6 Attrition #2
Tank came out of the second truck like a wall that had learned to walk.
Ghost was right behind him—young, restless, rolling his shoulders, the energy of someone who'd been confined to a vehicle for three hours and was ready to burn it off.
Tyler climbed out beside Tank, staying close, a rifle slung across his chest with the practiced ease of a man who'd been carrying weapons since the Marines.
Then a fifth figure stepped down from the passenger side of Axel's truck. Lean. Dark-eyed. Moving carefully, his left arm held slightly closer to his body than the right. Blade.
Sean saw him and went still. "You're supposed to be on bed rest."
"I'm done being a patient." Blade's voice was flat.
Final. Two rounds to the chest four months ago had put him in Rosa's infirmary for weeks and on restricted duty since.
The scars were still pink under his shirt.
He shouldn't have been here. He knew it.
We all knew it. "I'll stay on the ridge.
Long-range only. But I'm not sitting in the clubhouse while my brothers fight. "
Nobody argued. There was nothing to argue with. The look in his eyes was one I recognized—the same look Sean had carried for four months of forced recovery. A man who'd been told he couldn't, deciding that he would.
Last out: Kai. Shorter than the others, compact, moving with the controlled economy of someone trained to work in crisis.
He carried a medical bag over one shoulder and a holstered pistol on his hip—the tactical pen Tyler had trained him with clipped to his vest beside the trauma shears.
He caught Tyler's eye across the gravel and nodded once.
Foster brothers. The communication was silent and complete.
I briefed Axel at the kitchen table with the map I'd drawn of the approach routes. Sean sat beside me, filling in the tactical gaps with the lateral thinking that made him dangerous in a planning room.
"Two primary approach vectors," I said. "Northeast and east. The ridge gives vehicle cover to within four hundred fifty yards. After that it's open scrubland—no cover, no concealment. They'll come at night. NVGs, suppressed weapons, tactical formation."
"How do you want the backup positioned?" Axel's voice was calm. Methodical. The VP who'd earned his patch by being the man Hawk trusted to run operations when Hawk couldn't be there.
"The ridgeline." I traced the contour on the map.
"Three positions. You, Tank, and Blade take the high ground to the northeast—behind the rock formations at the crest. Ghost and Tyler take the eastern ridge.
Clear sightlines to the approach road and the cabin perimeter.
When they dismount, you wait for my signal.
Let them commit. Then you hit them from behind while they're focused on the cabin. "
"Crossfire," Axel said.
"Crossfire. They'll be caught between the ridgeline and the cabin. The ones who make it inside are mine and Sean's problem."
"And me," Nolan said from the hallway. He'd been listening. The small backpack was already strapped to his back, the evidence secured. "The back bedroom. Fire extinguisher. I remember."
Sean looked at him. I looked at him.
Kai stepped into the room behind Nolan, medical bag open.
"Speaking of which—I've set up a station in the garage.
Trauma kit, saline, suture materials. I've also staged gauze and tourniquets at the two fallback positions inside the cabin.
Anything worse than a graze, you get the wounded to me.
" He looked at Sean. "Don't play hero with the field medicine. "
"Kai, your faith in my medical skills is touching."
"I've seen your medical skills. That's why I'm here."
By mid-afternoon, the backup team was in position.
Tank and Blade had driven the two trucks half a mile south and tucked them behind a cluster of rock formations tall enough to hide the vehicles from any angle.
They'd hiked back to the northeast ridge on foot—forty minutes over rough terrain with water, protein bars, rifles, and enough ammunition to hold the high ground for hours.
Axel was already there, prone behind the rocks, invisible.
Ghost and Tyler had taken the eastern position, Ghost's restless energy finally channeled into the focused stillness of a man waiting for contact.
From the cabin, I couldn't see any of them. That was the point.
I spent the remaining hours fortifying. Furniture repositioned as barriers—the couch flipped and braced at the hallway junction, the kitchen table tipped onto its side against the east wall.
Both bedroom doors off their hinges. Two rifles positioned at the primary and secondary fallback points.
The heavy bag from the gym dragged inside and laid across the back bedroom window as improvised ballistic padding.
Sean rigged the stove's gas burner for the NVG countermeasure he'd been planning—blue flame to wash out night-vision optics and force the goggles off. He tested every light switch and mapped which rooms could be darkened independently.
At sundown, I killed the exterior lights. Took my position at the front window. Keyed the radio.
"All positions, check in."
"Northeast ridge. Set." Axel's voice, low and steady.
"East ridge. Set." Tyler. Professional. Tight.
"Cabin interior. Set." Sean, from the kitchen. A beat. "And bored."
"Back bedroom. Set." Nolan. No tremor.
I checked the rifle. Checked the sight. Settled in.
They came at 2:14 AM.
Four vehicles—double the two I'd tracked that morning. High beams killed, engines cut at five hundred yards, coasting the last stretch on momentum. The low diesel rumble reached me at four hundred yards through the desert silence. Professional. Not perfect. Perfect would have been on foot.
I counted them through the scope as they dismounted. Sixteen. Body armor, helmets, NVGs, suppressed rifles. Two teams of eight, splitting north and east for a coordinated double breach. Rehearsed. Disciplined. Private military contractors—Holt's budget buying the best killers money could rent.
Sixteen against nine. They thought it was sixteen against three.
I keyed the radio. Whispered. "Contact. Four vehicles. Sixteen hostiles, helmeted and armored. Two teams of eight, north and east approach. Four hundred fifty yards."
"Copy." Axel. Calm as stone.
"Copy." Tyler.
"Copy." Sean. The edge in his voice wasn't fear.
"Nolan. Stay low. Stay quiet."
"Copy."
The northern team advanced first. Eight figures in tactical formation, two columns of four, moving through the scrubland in a crouch.
The eastern team circled wide, approaching the kitchen side.
Both teams converging on the cabin in a pincer that would have been devastating against three men in a drywall box.
I let them come. Three hundred yards. Two hundred. My finger rested on the radio. The northern team crossed the open ground toward the front of the cabin, fully committed, their backs to the ridge where Axel, Tank, and Blade lay prone behind the rocks with clear sightlines and loaded rifles.
A hundred and fifty yards. I could see the lead operator's helmet through the scope. The NVGs mounted on it, the suppressed barrel of his rifle, the disciplined way he moved. Professional. Trained.
I keyed the radio.
"Now."
The ridgeline erupted.
Three rifles from the northeast and two from the east opened simultaneously—the sound shattering the desert silence like a thunderclap, rolling across the scrubland in overlapping cracks that made it impossible to count the shooters.
The northern team's rear operators never knew what hit them.
The first volley dropped three before they could turn, rounds punching through body armor at range with a force that put them on the ground and kept them there.
The formation shattered. Hostiles dove for their vehicles, firing blind toward the ridges.
Return fire chewed into the rock formations—sparks and dust erupting from the stone—but the positions held.
The eastern team scattered under Tyler and Ghost's fire, half returning suppressed rounds toward the ridge, half pressing the advance because the mission was Nolan and the mission didn't pause for an ambush.
Chaos. Muzzle flashes from the ridgelines. Return fire from the vehicles. The sharp, overlapping crack of rifles echoing off the basin walls. The desert strobed white with every shot—rock, dust, men running, men falling.
More hostiles made it past the crossfire than I'd wanted.
The ambush had dropped the rear guard, but the operators closest to the cabin had used the first seconds of confusion to sprint forward, closing the distance before the ridgeline team could adjust. Eight—maybe nine—broke through toward the cabin.
The rest were pinned at the vehicles, trading fire with Axel's team in a sustained exchange that rattled the windows and filled the basin with the constant, hammering percussion of a firefight that had no intention of stopping.
The kitchen window exploded inward—glass and frame detonating in a spray of splinters, a flashbang arcing through the gap, bouncing off the counter with a heavy metallic thud and skittering across the floor. I had half a second to turn my head and squeeze my eyes shut.
The detonation cracked the world white. Even with my eyes closed and my head turned, the concussive blast punched through my skull like a hammer.
My ears collapsed into a single sustained tone—high, piercing, flattening everything beneath it.
I opened my eyes and the cabin was a blur of plaster dust and afterimage, my vision swimming, the corners of the hallway bending in ways that geometry didn't allow.
Outside, the ridgeline battle kept hammering—muffled now, distant, the gunfire filtering through the ringing in my skull like sound through deep water.