Chapter 11 Extraction
EXTRACTION
TANK
The desert before dawn was a study in shades of gray.
I crouched behind a rock outcropping forty miles south of Pendleton, watching the road curve through the emptiness below.
The sky had just begun to lighten along the eastern horizon—a thin line of pale gold bleeding into the darkness, promising a sun that wouldn't rise for another twenty minutes.
Cold air bit at my exposed skin, carrying the smell of sage and dust and the faint chemical tang of the highway.
Danny would have hated this.
The thought surfaced unbidden, sharp as a blade.
My brother had never been a morning person—used to complain that anything before noon was an offense against nature.
I'd dragged him out of bed for a hundred early rides, watched him stumble through coffee and curse the sun until the engine vibration finally woke him up.
I shoved the memory down. Locked it away with all the others, in the box I'd built in my chest where grief couldn't touch me. Not yet. Not until the job was done.
"Convoy's five minutes out." Tyler's voice crackled through my earpiece, low and steady. He was positioned thirty yards to my left, hidden in the scrub that lined the roadside. "Three vehicles. Transport van in the middle, SUV in front, four bikes bringing up the rear."
Four bikes. Cross's people, dressed up as private contractors. The Wolves who'd ridden out last night, positioning themselves for murder.
They had no idea we were here.
"Copy." Hawk's voice came through next, calm despite the stakes.
He was a quarter mile back with the reinforcements—ten more Phoenix members, armed and ready.
We hadn't known what to expect, so we'd brought everyone we could spare.
Sixteen of us in total, enough firepower to handle almost anything.
"Strike team holds position. We move in on your signal if things go sideways. "
"Understood." I checked my weapon for the third time. Magazine seated, round chambered, safety off. The familiar weight settled into my hands like an old friend.
Our strike team was small by design—six of us to stop the convoy, fast and surgical. Me, Tyler, Axel, Blade, Irish, and Declan. Enough to overwhelm a transport escort, not so many that we'd trip over each other in the chaos. Hawk and the others would stay back unless we needed them.
"Tank." Tyler's voice again, quieter now—pitched low enough that the comms wouldn't carry it. Just for me. "You good?"
The question carried more than its words. He was asking about Danny. About the revelation that had cracked my world open eight hours ago. About whether I could hold it together long enough to do what needed to be done.
"I'm good." My voice came out flat. Steady. The voice of a man who'd learned to bury everything that might make him hesitate.
A pause. Then: "Okay. See you on the other side."
The line went quiet.
I settled deeper into my position and watched the road.
The convoy appeared around the curve at 06:12, right on schedule.
The lead SUV came first—black, government plates, two figures visible through the windshield. Standard federal security vehicle, probably armored, definitely carrying marshals who thought they were on a routine transport. They had no idea their cargo was scheduled to die before reaching Barstow.
The transport van followed thirty yards behind.
White, windowless except for the cab, the kind of vehicle that could carry prisoners or equipment or anything else that needed to stay hidden.
Sarah Reyes was in there somewhere—the woman who'd helped Tyler escape Cross, who'd believed him when no one else would.
The same woman who'd organized the FBI agents that helped us take down Chen and her trafficking ring.
Without Sarah's coordination, that final raid would have been a massacre. We owed her.
Now she was about to be murdered for the crime of trusting the wrong person.
Then the bikes.
Four Harleys in a loose formation, riders in civilian clothes but carrying themselves like men who knew how to use the weapons hidden under their jackets.
Cross's Wolves, playing dress-up as private security.
They probably thought this was going to be easy—escort a transport, stage an accident, collect their payment and disappear.
They were about to learn different.
"Lead vehicle passing checkpoint alpha." Axel's voice was barely a whisper. He had the high ground to the east, rifle scope tracking the convoy. "Transport approaching... now."
The spike strip deployed with a sound like tearing fabric.
The transport van's front tires blew simultaneously, rubber shredding against reinforced steel spikes hidden beneath a thin layer of sand.
The driver fought the wheel—I could see him through the windshield, arms straining, face contorted with effort—but physics won.
The van slewed sideways, momentum carrying it off the road and into the shallow ditch that ran along the shoulder.
Metal screamed as the undercarriage scraped against rocks.
The lead SUV's brake lights flared red. The driver tried to reverse, but Declan was already there with Irish, their truck pulling across the road to block any retreat. The SUV skidded to a stop, caught.
The bikes scattered. Two of them went down immediately—Axel's rifle cracking twice from the ridge, precise shots that took out front tires and sent riders tumbling across asphalt.
One of them hit hard, helmet bouncing against the pavement, body ragdolling across the center line.
The other managed to roll, came up on his feet, reaching for the weapon under his jacket.
I broke cover. The distance to the transport was maybe fifty yards of open ground—rocky terrain, sparse scrub, nowhere to hide.
My boots pounded against packed earth, weapon up and tracking.
The Wolf who'd headed for the van saw me coming.
Military training showed in his stance—balanced, stable, the weapon an extension of his arm.
He fired first. The round snapped past my ear—close enough to feel the displaced air, not close enough to matter. I didn't slow down. Just adjusted my angle and put two rounds center mass.
The impact threw him backward. He hit the ground and didn't move.
Tyler was engaging the fourth rider, his pistol cracking three times in rapid succession. The Wolf went down hard, bike skidding across the asphalt in a shower of sparks.
Blade and Irish emerged from the wash, moving on the downed riders. In seconds, all four contractors were neutralized—dead or restrained, no longer a threat.
"Bikes down." I reached the transport van, pressed my back against the metal. "Moving to—"
That was when the desert exploded.
The first RPG round hit the side of Declan's truck.
The explosion threw me sideways, heat and shrapnel washing over my position.
I hit the ground hard, ears ringing, dust and smoke filling my lungs.
Through the chaos, I could hear screaming—someone wounded, definitely Irish, his voice sharp with pain and surprise.
"CONTACT SOUTH!" Axel's voice cut through the static in my earpiece. "Multiple hostiles, fifty yards and closing! It's a fucking ambush!"
I rolled onto my stomach, brought my weapon up, and saw them.
A line of vehicles had materialized from behind a ridge to the south—trucks, SUVs, motorcycles.
At least a dozen men were advancing on our position, using the terrain for cover, laying down suppressive fire that chewed up the ground around us.
Muzzle flashes sparked in the early morning light like angry fireflies.
Bullets whined off rocks, thudded into the transport van's metal sides, cracked through the air inches above my head.
Professional. Coordinated. They'd been waiting for us.
Cross had known we'd come.
"Hawk!" Tyler's voice was sharp with urgency. "We need those reinforcements NOW!"
"Already moving! Thirty seconds!"
Thirty seconds might as well have been thirty years. In a firefight, thirty seconds was an eternity—enough time to die a dozen different ways.
I found cover behind the transport van's wheel well and started returning fire.
Most of the advancing Wolves were spray-and-pray shooters—enthusiastic but undisciplined, burning through magazines without hitting anything vital.
I dropped two of them in quick succession, center mass shots that punched through their inadequate cover and ended their advance permanently.
A third tried to flank around the van's rear end. Blade was waiting for him—emerged from behind a boulder like a shadow given form and opened the man's throat before he could scream.
To my right, Axel's rifle cracked methodically from the ridge. Each shot found its target. Each target stopped moving. The man was a machine, calm and precise while the rest of us scrambled to survive.
But there were too many of them. For every Wolf we dropped, two more seemed to take his place. They were pushing forward, tightening the noose, trying to overrun our position through sheer numbers.
And one of them was different.
He moved with a fluidity that spoke of real training, real experience.
Former federal agent. Former FBI tactical team.
Marcus Cross, leading from the front, his shots precise and measured.
Every time I tried to reposition, his rounds found the space I'd been occupying half a second before. He wasn't just shooting—he was hunting.
"Tyler!" Cross's voice carried across the battlefield, sharp with something that sounded almost like amusement. "I knew you'd come for her. Predictable as always."
Tyler was pinned behind the SUV, exchanging fire with two Wolves who'd flanked to his position. "Fuck you, Marcus!"
"Such language." Cross was advancing, using his men as cover, working his way toward Tyler's position with the patient precision of a predator. "Is that any way to talk to someone who loved you?"