32. Viper
VIPER
For the last six hours the entire operation has felt wrong in ways I can’t fully pin down.
Not fake exactly. Just… too clean. Every lead evaporates right before we reach it.
Every warehouse gets abandoned minutes before arrival.
Surveillance feeds cut at suspiciously convenient times.
We keep finding evidence people were there without ever actually catching movement substantial enough to matter.
At first that only irritates me.
By the fourth location, it starts feeling deliberate.
Now we’re parked beside an abandoned processing station somewhere in the middle of fucking nowhere Nevada while wind throws dust against the SUVs hard enough to rattle the doors.
Calder’s men are spread around the perimeter checking buildings while the Wolves cluster near the convoy arguing over maps and comms.
Bishop sits in the back of the tech van surrounded by screens and signal equipment.
Silent.
That’s the problem.
Normally he narrates his frustration constantly.
Complains about signal drift. Insults everyone’s intelligence.
Threatens violence against software engineers.
The fact that he’s suddenly gone quiet enough that I can hear keys clicking from outside the van makes every muscle in my body tighten immediately.
I yank the side door open. “Talk.”
Bishop doesn’t answer right away.
The monitors cast pale light across his face while lines of data scroll too fast across multiple screens. He looks tense in a way I don’t see often. Focused past irritation into something colder.
Stryker steps up behind me. “Bishop.”
Still nothing.
Then finally, “Everybody get Reyes away from the captive before he kills him.”
Across the gravel lot Reyes has one of the cartel runners pinned against an SUV hard enough the man’s feet barely touch the ground. Moreno and Mac are both trying unsuccessfully to pull him back while Calder watches with the kind of stillness that means he’s pissed too.
“What happened?” I ask sharply.
Bishop turns one screen toward us. Every communication line tied to Black Rock is dead.
“What am I looking at?” Blade asks quietly from beside Stryker.
“That,” Bishop says flatly, “is every internal system inside the compound dropping simultaneously over the last twenty-three minutes.”
Cold spreads through my chest so fast it feels almost physical.
“No.”
Bishop ignores me. “Backup frequencies started failing first. Then perimeter cameras. Then internal relay systems. Then every emergency channel went dark one by one.”
Stryker’s voice goes frighteningly calm. “Jamming?”
“Massive.”
“How massive?”
Bishop finally looks up at us, his face his pale. “Big enough that I can’t punch through it remotely, even with direct satellite routing. We need to fucking move now.”
Nobody speaks for half a second. Then everything detonates at once.
“FUCK.” Reyes slams the captive against the SUV hard enough to dent metal.
Calder starts barking orders toward his men immediately.
Moreno abandons the interrogation entirely and heads straight for the convoy already shouting route changes.
Mac grabs radios off the hood of another truck while Blade turns away sharply, dragging both hands through his hair once before going completely expressionless.
“We leave now,” Stryker orders. “Bishop get police off of our routes. We are breaking every road law on the way to the clubhouse. MOVE!”.
The convoy flips instantly from offensive operation to emergency return route. Engines roar alive across the lot while Coyotes sprint back toward vehicles and Wolves start rerouting GPS systems manually in case the jamming extends farther than Black Rock.
I barely remember climbing into the SUV.
Blade drives. Stryker rides shotgun, already coordinating alternate comms through three different phones simultaneously, while I sit in the back beside Bishop staring at signal maps that refuse to stabilize.
Every mile between us and the clubhouse suddenly feels impossible.
“Talk to me,” I snap at Bishop.
“I’m trying.”
“Try faster.”
“I swear to God, Viper?—”
“Can you get through or not?”
His jaw flexes hard. “Not yet.”
The SUV fishtails slightly throwing gravel as Blade pushes the road harder. Behind us headlights from the rest of the convoy flood the desert highway in long violent lines.
Nobody says the obvious thing out loud. My brain keeps trying to reject it completely. The alternative makes me feel physically sick.
We left them there. Jesus Christ. We fucking left them there.
Stryker finally hangs up another dead line and says quietly, “How convincing was the false trail?”
Bishop rubs both hands over his face hard enough to leave red marks. “Professional.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer you’ve got.”
The tech screens reflect across the windshield while he keeps talking.
“They used real trafficking routes. Real cartel movement patterns. Real compromised contacts. Hell, some of the warehouse activity was legitimate. They layered enough truth into the operation to make the bait impossible to ignore.”
Calder’s voice crackles over comms from another vehicle. “Meaning somebody knew exactly how we investigate.”
Nobody answers immediately because we all understand what that means. This wasn’t random. This was built specifically for us.
Blade grips the wheel tighter. “Inside information?”
“Maybe,” Bishop mutters. “Or they’ve been watching us longer than we realized.”
The convoy pushes harder.
Speeds climb stupidly high across empty desert roads while Calder’s men spread ahead and behind us running interference for traffic and law enforcement. Radios keep crackling. Dead channels. Failed reconnects. Static.
Nothing from Black Rock. An hour into the drive Reyes finally speaks over comms again.
His voice sounds rougher than usual. “Captive’s talking.”
Stryker picks up the radio immediately. “Say it.”
“He says they were told Alpha Team and primary Wolves leadership would need to be occupied for a minimum of six hours for another group to attack the real target.”
Silence fills the SUV.
Then quietly, “Target?” Stryker asks.
“Clubhouse, the women we took, and our weapons armory,” he says finally.
Every muscle in my body locks.
I look out the window, because suddenly I can’t stand looking at anybody else inside the vehicle. Desert flashes past in blurred darkness while my pulse pounds hard enough that I can feel it behind my eyes.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Blade finally says what nobody else wants to. “How many stayed behind?”
I think about Callum teaching Paxton how to throw a baseball three days ago in the courtyard. About Aiden sitting cross-legged on the floor letting Lena paint his nails neon pink because she threatened emotional warfare otherwise.
The prospects we’ve pulled in are younger than the others, These ones are basically kids against a team of professionals. Bishop suddenly swears viciously beside me and starts typing faster.
“What?” I bark.
“I caught something.”
Every head turns toward him instantly.
He pulls up a distorted signal feed barely holding together through layers of interference. Static tears across the audio so badly I can’t make out words at first.
Then gunfire. Heavy automatic gunfire. Women screaming somewhere farther back. The signal cuts. My entire body goes cold. Blade nearly misses the next turn because he jerks the wheel too late.
“Play it again.”
Bishop does.
“No timestamp?” Calder asks over comms.
“Recent,” Bishop answers. “Within the last hour.”
Stryker leans forward slightly. “Distance?”
“Two hours if we keep this pace.”
“Not good enough drive faster.”
Blade presses harder on the accelerator without another word.
The SUV tears across another stretch of empty highway while the convoy behind us keeps pace hard enough that headlights blur together into one long line of violence racing through the desert night.
Two hours.
Maybe less now.
Every second matters.
And somewhere ahead of us Nora is trapped inside our compound probably thinking we aren’t coming back at all.