19. Bram
nineteen
Bram
Fourteen of us sat on our bikes off the county road, lights off, engines cut, every headlamp aimed at the Desert Scorpions’ compound four hundred yards ahead.
A chain-link perimeter, eight feet high, topped with razor wire.
Floodlights on both towers cut pale cones into the scrub.
In the yellow-white glow, I could see the black outlines of two guards with rifles, boots propped on the railing, eyes downrange.
Last week’s knife job hadn’t closed the way it should—the tryst with Julie on my bike had made sure the wound didn’t heal. I’m not going to have sex with my lady if I’m injured, said no man ever. It would heal when it needed to.
Sniper stepped in front of me, the way sons do when they’ve been waiting years for the moment. He looked bigger in full gear: helmet, goggles, plate carrier over his kutte, sidearm and shotgun across his chest. Even his walk was different tonight—deliberate, like he’d made up his mind.
“Dad,” he said. He never called me that unless things were about to go sideways. “You command from the road.”
I stared at him, then past him, tracing the fence line for dead zones in the lights. He had to be fucking kidding me.
He planted himself again. “I mean it. You got a hole in your side. You wanna lead, do it from here. We’ll get inside, clear the buildings, and get the job done.”
Trace flanked from the other side, a head shorter than Sniper but twice as loud. “You’re stitched together with fishing line, old man. You go down in there, this whole thing falls apart.”
I watched them both, and let the words hang in the air like bad smoke. Two sons, both alive because I’d never once hesitated to step into the first breach. Now they wanted to wall me off from it, act like the job was above me.
“You want me to put you two assholes back into a playpen, through your ass a bottle?”
Kodiak moved up with the breach team: four men in black jeans and mechanics’ jackets, bolt cutters cradled against their ribs, faces already painted with hard intent.
He didn’t say a word, just eyed the fence, then me, then the tower lights.
He was the only one in the crew who’d seen a real raid, and he had the sense not to try and talk me out of anything.
Behind us, a loose phalanx of the Kingman and Santa Fe crews kept low in the dirt, the bikes lined up in a ragged wedge.
Trace’s squad—four men, counting Drop Miller—fanned out left, while Sniper’s took the right.
The men weren’t talking, not even among themselves.
You could feel the battery in the air, an electric charge from every unspent fear and promise.
I let the quiet run a beat longer than comfortable. Sniper’s jaw flexed. Trace held his breath, waiting to see which way I’d break.
“You know we’re right,” Trace finally said, son number two trying to become son number one.
Finally I said, “Move. Cause if you don’t, I’m sending you back to your chapters to fix carburetors.”
That was it. That was the order. Neither son tried to change my mind.
“This is on you if shit gets out of hand,” Sniper said.
“Move your ass,” I said. “And it’s on me no matter what the fuck happens.”
Kodiak signaled, hand raised then dropped, and the breach team peeled off the line, low crouch, weapons up. The rest of us flowed behind, twin columns, boots slurping in the dry gravel. The bikes stayed put, but I could feel their engines in my teeth, the way a man feels thunder.
As we moved, every sound became a warning: the distant hum of the compound’s generator, the scuff of a boot, the metallic snick as someone chambered a round too soon. The men from Kingman carried old cop radios; in the earbud, I could hear the static whisper as we closed the gap.
The fence line was thicker than expected—someone had doubled the chain-link, maybe to keep out coyotes or men like us.
The razor wire glinted, a wet black shine.
I saw two red dots sweep the field, laser sights from the guard tower, but they skittered past and didn’t stop.
Either we were invisible, or someone was about to shout an alarm.
The first cutter got the chain in two snips. The next man took a second to line up the bolt head, then snapped it clean. Ninety seconds in, and we had a loose flap big enough for a man to crawl through. The last guy in line reached up, cut the wire, and let it drop into the scrub.
Kodiak went first. Then the Kingman man, then Sniper and Trace. I could feel the others behind me, their breath sharp in the night air, no one wanting to be the one who lagged. I ducked, felt the bandage catch for a second, and rolled through.
We were inside.
First checkpoint done, no alarms yet, but I could see motion in the towers—somebody noticed the breach, or maybe a motion sensor tripped.
Either way, we moved fast, two-by-two, low to the ground, each man with eyes up.
My hands were steady, but the blood from my side was already warming the waistband. I ignored it.
Sniper’s hand shot out, stopping me behind a half-dead Joshua tree. “They’re moving,” he said, voice pitched low. He pointed at the main building—a cinder block rectangle with two narrow windows, both dark, but a new shadow cut across the front porch.
Trace hissed from ten feet up, “We hit the garage first, then double back. Clear from the outside in.”
I nodded, motioned him forward.
The rest followed, silent, a string of bodies in borrowed armor. Every man I’d ever trusted was here, most of them already thinking they’d never see another sunrise. If I was supposed to stay behind and watch my sons eat the first bullets, I didn’t get the memo.
I took point for the second wave, trailing just close enough to see Sniper’s hand signals and close enough to hear Trace’s crew as they stacked up outside the side door.
Kodiak was already at the garage, checking the side for a quick way in.
He found it—a weak door, barely hanging on its hinges.
He drew back, booted it open, and the world went loud.
The first Scorpion out the door had a sawed-off in one hand and a tire iron in the other.
Kodiak shot him in the thigh, then in the throat.
The man made a wet grunt and folded, the gun spinning away.
A second Scorpion came up from behind, swinging a crowbar, but Sniper dropped him with a double-tap to the chest, the rounds sharp and tidy.
More shots from the far end: Trace’s boys clearing the second outbuilding. I couldn’t see them, but I heard the muffled sound of flesh on flesh, then a scream that lasted less than a breath.
Main house now. Two windows, one door, no lights inside. I made for the porch, heart pounding in a slow, steady rhythm, every step a wave of pain from the wound. Sniper caught up, panting, his face raw.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“Not enough to matter,” I said.
He nodded, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and signaled the rest forward.
I took the door.
It wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even latched. That should have been a sign, but sometimes the job calls for arrogance.
Inside, three men in a row, two on the couch, one behind the kitchen island. No time for words. I leveled the gun at the biggest one—leather vest, arms bigger than my legs—and shot him in the knee. He buckled, hit the floor, started to bring up a pistol, and I finished him with a round in the eye.
“Fucking assholes,” someone yelled.
“It’s Bram!”
Hearing my name gave me a smile.
The other two tried to get around the island, but Sniper and Trace came in behind me, moving like wolves.
Trace grabbed the smaller man by the throat, drove his head into the counter, and let him sag to the tile.
Sniper aimed at the last one—an older Scorpion with a face like roadkill—and squeezed off one round, perfect placement, right through the bottom of the jaw.
It was quiet again. The whole entry took under a minute.
The pain was worse now, a sharp heat under the ribs. I could feel the blood soaking through the old shirt, but the adrenaline ran ahead of it, kept me standing.
We cleared the rooms one by one—bathroom, empty; back bedroom, two women, naked and screaming, huddled in the closet. I stepped back, let the women crawl out, told them to stay down and keep their mouths shut. They did.
Sniper looked at me, the question already in his eyes.
“Garage next,” I said. “Trace, go.”
He did, running with three men close behind.
I stood in the middle of the kitchen, breathing hard, the floor sticky under my boots. I could smell cordite, sweat, and a strange sweetness, like antifreeze.
A voice from the back room: “All clear.”
I nodded and stepped outside. The dawn was still an hour off, but the sky had lightened to a dirty blue. The floodlights on the towers were still on, but no one stood at the railing anymore.
Kodiak jogged up, blood spattered on his sleeve. “We’re good,” he said. “One down in the garage. Rest took off out the back. You want a crew to sweep for survivors?”
“Do it,” I said. “And find me a fucking bandage.”
He grinned, the smile half gone by the time he turned.
“Sniper’s gonna love that shit.”
“Fucking sons, man.”
Behind me, Trace and his crew were dragging bodies out of the house, stacking them neat by the fence. Sniper was talking to one of the women, voice low, trying to get a name or a number. She wouldn’t look at him.