Chapter 6
The assault came at pre-dawn, exactly when Cargo expected.
He'd positioned Rebecca in the cellar two hours ago, behind a reinforced door with enough supplies to last a week and enough firepower to hold off an army. She'd argued, of course—that stubborn streak flashing in her eyes—but he'd shut it down with three words.
"Trust the plan."
Now he crouched in the tree line fifty yards from the cabin, watching six figures approach through the morning mist. Military formation. Tactical gear. The kind of professional movement that came from years of training or months of private contractor work.
Houser led them. Even in the dim light, Cargo recognized the thick build Rebecca had described, the commanding posture of a man used to giving orders.
The supply sergeant had finally gotten lucky. Some database search had pinged, some contact had talked, and now Houser was here with a kill team to clean up the loose end that had become Cargo's responsibility.
His mistake. His last one.
"Six targets approaching from the north." Ghost's voice crackled through the earpiece, barely above a whisper. "Houser on point. Standard breach formation."
"Copy." Cargo shifted his rifle, tracking Houser's movement. "Let them commit to the cabin."
"Forge is in position. South approach covered."
The plan was simple because simple plans survived contact with the enemy. Let Houser's team breach the cabin, discover it empty, and realize too late that they'd walked into a kill box. The treeline positions gave Cargo and his brothers overlapping fields of fire. The cabin was bait.
And Houser was about to learn what happened when supply sergeants tried to outthink armorers.
The assault team reached the cabin's perimeter. Houser gestured—hand signals, crisp and military—and his men fanned out. Two toward the back door. Two covering windows. Two stacking on the front entrance.
"Breach in five," Ghost reported. "Four. Three—"
The front door exploded inward.
Cargo held fire, waiting. Watching through his scope as Houser's men poured into the cabin, flashlights cutting through the darkness, shouting clear signals for rooms that held nothing but furniture and weapons caches they wouldn't find in time.
"Where the fuck is she?" Houser's voice carried through the broken door. "She's supposed to be here!"
"Sir, the cabin's empty—"
"I can see it's empty!" Houser stormed through the main room, kicking furniture aside. "She was here. The intel said she was here!"
"Now," Cargo breathed.
The treeline erupted.
Ghost's first shot took down the man covering the back door—clean headshot, dropped before he could raise his weapon. Forge's shotgun roared from the south, and the man at the back window went down in a spray of red.
Chaos exploded inside the cabin. Houser's remaining men scrambled for cover, returning fire at muzzle flashes they couldn't pinpoint. Bullets chewed through window frames and splintered the porch railing.
Cargo let them panic. Let them waste ammunition on shadows while he tracked Houser's movement through the structure.
The supply sergeant was shouting into a radio, calling for backup that would never come. Cargo had jammed the frequency three hours ago, set up a repeater that would eat any transmission and spit back static.
No cavalry was coming. No extraction team. Just six men who'd made the mistake of threatening something that belonged to him.
"Moving to flank," Cargo reported. He left his position, flowing through the trees with the silent speed that Delta had drilled into him over twelve years of operations.
The battle sounds covered his movement—Ghost and Forge maintaining suppressive fire, keeping Houser's men pinned while Cargo closed the distance.
The back door was still open, the body of the first casualty blocking the threshold. Cargo stepped over it without looking down and slipped into the cabin.
Two of Houser's men were crouched behind the overturned couch, firing blindly toward the treeline. They didn't see Cargo until his rifle barked twice, and then they didn't see anything at all.
That left Houser and one other.
"Fall back!" Houser was screaming into his useless radio. "We need extraction! Respond, goddammit!"
The last contractor broke cover, trying to reach the front door. Ghost's rifle spoke once, and the man crumpled mid-stride.
Houser stood alone in the center of the cabin, still clutching his radio, finally understanding that no one was coming to save him.
"Glen Houser." Cargo stepped out of the shadows, his rifle trained on the supply sergeant's chest. "You've been using military resources to hunt a civilian. That ends now."
Houser's eyes went wide. Recognition, maybe—the Black Ops Brotherhood wasn't unknown in Fayetteville's darker circles. Or maybe just the primal fear of a man facing his own death.
"You don't know what you're interfering with." Houser's voice shook, but he was trying for bravado. "Slade has connections. People who'll make you disappear."
"Slade's operation is compromised." Cargo moved closer, keeping his rifle steady. "His supply sergeant is about to die in a failed assault. His shipping coordinator is being watched. His cleaner's next on our list. And when we're done with them, we're coming for him."
"You can't—the equipment, the buyers—this is bigger than you understand—"
"I understand plenty." Cargo's voice dropped to something cold. Something deadly. "I understand you helped steal weapons that ended up God knows where. I understand you sent six men to kill a woman whose only crime was noticing something she shouldn't have."
He stepped closer, watching Houser flinch.
"I understand you put a target on someone I'm protecting. And that's a mistake you don't get to walk away from."
"I was just following orders!" Houser dropped the radio, hands rising in surrender. "Slade's the one running things. I just provided access—"
"You provided access to equipment that killed American soldiers." Cargo's finger tightened on the trigger. "You helped send weapons to people who murder innocents. And then you came to my safehouse, threatened my woman, and expected to walk out alive."
"Your woman?" Confusion flickered across Houser's face. "The bartender? She's just a—"
"She's mine." The words came out like bullets. "She walked into my shop bleeding and scared, and that made her my responsibility. My inventory. Mine to protect."
"Jesus Christ, you're insane—"
"I'm thorough." Cargo raised his rifle. "There's a difference."
Houser lunged for his sidearm—one last desperate play by a man who'd run out of options.
He was fast. Military training, years of handling weapons.
Cargo was faster.
The shot took Houser in the chest, center mass, exactly where Cargo had been aiming since he'd entered the cabin. The supply sergeant staggered back, hands clutching at the wound, eyes wide with shock.
"My radio," Houser gasped. "I called for—"
"You called for nothing." Cargo watched him fall. "I jammed your frequency three hours ago. No one heard you. No one's coming."
Houser's mouth worked, trying to form words. Blood bubbled on his lips.
"Supply sergeants don't outthink armorers," Cargo said quietly. "We control the equipment. We control the communications. We control everything."
The light went out of Houser's eyes. His body went still on the cabin floor, surrounded by the men he'd led to their deaths.
Cargo stood over the corpse for a long moment, letting the adrenaline drain, letting the reality settle. Six dead. A supply line severed. One less threat to the woman hiding in his cellar.
"Cargo." Ghost's voice in his ear. "Status?"
"Houser's down. Building's clear."
"Copy. We're moving to sweep. Forge reports no additional contacts on approach."
"Good." Cargo turned away from Houser's body. "I need to get Rebecca."
He moved through the cabin to the cellar door, knocked the pattern they'd agreed on, and waited. Three seconds later, the reinforced door swung open.
Rebecca stood in the doorway with the 9mm in her hands, barrel pointed at the floor, finger off the trigger. Exactly the way he'd taught her.
"Is it over?" she asked.
"Houser's dead." He reached for her, some instinct demanding he touch her, confirm she was real and safe and still breathing. His hand found her shoulder, squeezed. "You're okay."
"I heard the shooting." Her voice was steady, but her eyes were searching his face. "I heard a lot of shooting."
"Six men. All down."
"Any of yours?"
"No." Something loosened in his chest at the question. She'd been worried about his brothers. About him. "We're all fine."
Ghost appeared in the doorway behind them, rifle slung, expression as unreadable as always. "Perimeter's secure. We need to move—police response to gunfire out here is slow, but not nonexistent."
"Give me five minutes." Cargo didn't take his hand off Rebecca's shoulder. "She needs a minute."
Ghost's eyes flicked between them, cataloguing. Then he nodded and disappeared back outside.
"Cargo." Rebecca's voice was quiet. "What happens now?"
"Now we go back to the compound. Regroup. Figure out how to take down Merrick and Graves before Slade can rebuild his network."
"And me?"
"You stay with me." The words came out fiercer than he intended. "You stay where I can keep you safe until this is finished."
She studied his face for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, she reached up and touched his jaw. Her fingers were cold, trembling slightly, but her gaze was steady.
"You killed six men for me."
"I killed six men because they threatened something that matters." He caught her hand, held it against his face. "You matter, Rebecca. Whatever else happens, you need to know that."
"I'm starting to."
He wanted to kiss her. The urge was overwhelming—to close the distance between them, to claim her mouth the way he'd claimed responsibility for her life. But there were bodies cooling in the next room and brothers waiting outside and an operation that was only beginning.
So he settled for turning his head, pressing his lips to her palm. One brief moment of contact that promised more.
"Let's go," he said roughly. "We've got work to do."
She nodded, letting him lead her out of the cellar, past the carnage in the main room—she didn't look down, didn't flinch—and into the gray Carolina dawn where Ghost and Forge were waiting with the vehicles.
Houser was dead. One link in Slade's chain, severed permanently.
But there were more links to cut. More threats to neutralize. More people standing between Rebecca and safety.
Cargo loaded her into the truck, climbed behind the wheel, and headed for the compound.
The war was just beginning.
But tonight, they'd won the first battle.
And he'd learned something important about himself in the process.
He'd killed for the club before. Killed for the brotherhood, for the mission, for the cold necessities of their outlaw life.
Tonight was the first time he'd killed for her.
And it had felt like the most natural thing in the world.