Chapter Six
Cipher crouched behind a dumpster two hundred meters out, the portable jammer heavy in his hands. Ghost flanked left, a shadow among shadows. Forge held position on the right, his bulk somehow invisible against the chain-link fence.
Through his scope, Cipher counted heads. Six men inside the garage, visible through the grimy windows. Russ Henley's scarred face caught the overhead fluorescents as he gestured at something on a workbench.
A list. They were reviewing a list.
"Jammer's hot in thirty seconds," Cipher murmured into his encrypted radio. "On my mark, we breach."
"Copy," Ghost breathed back.
"Ready," Forge confirmed.
Cipher activated the device. A soft hum, barely audible, as the jammer started broadcasting. Every cell phone within two hundred meters was now useless—no calls, no texts, no desperate pleas for backup.
Henley's crew was alone.
"Mark."
They moved.
Ghost reached the side door first, picking the lock in four seconds flat—skills that didn't officially exist, learned in places that didn't officially exist. Forge stacked behind him. Cipher covered the rear approach, then fell in as the door swung open.
The garage interior stank of motor oil and cigarette smoke. Six men, six threats, zero awareness that death had just walked through the door.
Cipher's first target was the nearest collector—a thick-necked enforcer reaching for coffee on a tool chest. The suppressed pistol coughed twice. The man dropped without a sound.
Ghost was already moving, knife work silent and surgical. A second collector crumpled, throat opened before he could scream.
"Contact!" someone finally shouted—too late, way too late.
The garage erupted.
Forge crashed through the chaos like a wrecking ball, his massive frame absorbing a wild punch from a panicking collector before returning it tenfold. Bone crunched. The collector flew backward into a tool rack, scattering wrenches across the concrete.
Cipher advanced through the mayhem, his pistol tracking targets with cold precision. A collector lunged from behind a car on the lift—Cipher put two rounds center mass and kept moving.
Four down. Two left.
One of them was Henley.
The scarred enforcer had grabbed a shotgun from somewhere, racking it with desperate speed as he backed toward the rear of the garage. His eyes were wild, scanning for escape routes that didn't exist.
"Drop it," Cipher called out. "You're done."
Henley laughed—a harsh, jagged sound. "You think this ends anything? Morrow's got a hundred guys like me."
"Then I'll kill a hundred guys."
The shotgun swung toward him.
Cipher was faster.
His bullet took Henley in the shoulder, spinning him sideways. The shotgun blast went wide, tearing a hole in the ceiling. Henley staggered, clutching the wound, blood streaming through his fingers.
"Who the fuck are you?" he spat.
Cipher crossed the distance in three strides. Henley tried to raise the shotgun again—Cipher kicked it from his grip, sending it skidding across the oil-stained floor.
"I'm the man whose woman you've been watching."
Recognition dawned in Henley's eyes. "The florist? This is about the fucking florist?"
"This is about a twenty-year operation bleeding civilians in our territory." Cipher grabbed Henley by the collar, dragging him toward the car lift where the last collector—a young guy, barely twenty—had tried to hide. "She's just the reason I noticed."
"Morrow will kill you. He'll burn down everything you—"
Cipher slammed him against the lift's support column. Henley's head cracked against metal, denting the pole and splitting his scalp.
"Morrow's next."
He pulled his knife.
Henley saw it coming. Started to beg—"Wait, wait, I can tell you things, I know where the money is, I know—"
The blade went in under his ribs, angled upward. Henley's words turned to a wet gurgle. His eyes went wide, then glassy.
Cipher let him drop.
The young collector behind the lift was crying now, pressed against the concrete floor like he could melt through it. Ghost had a boot on his back, keeping him pinned.
"This one's just a kid," Ghost observed.
Cipher crouched beside the trembling collector. "What's your name?"
"T-Tyler. Tyler Marsh."
"How long you been working for Henley?"
"Three weeks. I just—I needed money, man. I didn't know—"
"You know now." Cipher studied his face—young, scared, the kind of desperation that came from bad circumstances and worse choices.
"Here's what happens next. You walk out of here.
You don't go back to Morrow. You don't contact anyone from this crew.
You disappear and find honest work, or I find you and finish what I started tonight. "
"I'll go. I swear to God, I'll go."
Cipher stood. "Then go."
Ghost released him. The kid scrambled to his feet and bolted through the side door, his footsteps fading into the night.
"Soft touch," Forge observed, wiping blood from his knuckles.
"He's twenty. Probably has a mother who doesn't know where he is."
"Still soft."
Cipher ignored him, moving to the workbench where Henley had been standing when they'd breached. The list was still there—a printout of names, addresses, debt amounts. His eyes scanned the entries.
Laura Simmons. 244 Hay Street. $40,000. PRIORITY.
His jaw tightened.
PRIORITY. They'd marked her as a priority target. Whatever that meant in Morrow's world, it wasn't good.
He photographed the list and pocketed the original. Then he started collecting phones.
Six devices in total—cheap prepaid burners, just like he'd predicted. Cipher stripped each one with practiced efficiency, pulling contact lists, call logs, text histories. Names and numbers that would map Morrow's entire network.
"Cleanup's five minutes out," Ghost reported, checking his own phone. "Legion's sending Trooper and Static."
"We'll be gone before they arrive." Cipher finished with the last phone and packed his gear. "Recon, you copy?"
The radio crackled. "Copy. I've got eyes on Morrow's house. No movement. He doesn't know yet."
"Good. Keep watching. He'll know by morning."
The garage was a charnel house now—five bodies cooling on oil-stained concrete, blood pooling in patterns that would take industrial cleaners to erase. Henley's corpse lay crumpled against the lift, eyes still open, the knife wound dark and final.
One down. Three to go.
Cipher took a last look at the scene, committing it to memory. This was the message. This was what happened when you threatened someone under Black Ops Brotherhood protection.
My woman, he'd called her. To Henley's face, in his final moments.
The words had come out without thinking. Without planning. Just truth, raw and simple.
He'd deal with what that meant later. Right now, there was work to do.
"Let's move," he said.
They slipped out the same door they'd entered, ghosts in the Carolina night. The jammer powered down. Somewhere across Fayetteville, Morrow's crew would wake up to find their phones working again—and their chief collector missing.
By morning, they'd find more than that.
Cipher mounted his bike in the darkness two blocks away. Ghost and Forge flanked him, engines rumbling to life in coordinated starts.
The ride back to the compound took twenty minutes through empty streets.
Pine trees lined the roads, their shadows cutting across the pavement like dark fingers.
Fort Liberty's distant lights glowed on the horizon—thousands of soldiers sleeping in barracks, dreaming of deployments, unaware that a different kind of war was happening in their backyard.
At the compound, Cipher parked and headed straight for the tech room—a converted office where he kept his communications equipment. The phones went into a signal-shielded box for later analysis. The list went into a scanner, digital copies uploading to the club's secure server.
Laura's name glowed on the screen.
PRIORITY.
He pulled out his personal phone and typed a message: Henley's done. Stay inside tomorrow. Call you in the morning.
Three dots appeared. She was awake. At 2:00 AM, she was awake.
You're okay?
Two words. But he heard the fear underneath them, the worry she'd been carrying since he'd walked out her door.
I'm okay. Get some sleep.
A pause. Then: Thank you.
He stared at the message for a long moment.
Thank you. For what? For killing a man in a body shop? For starting a war that might get worse before it got better?
Or just for giving a damn when no one else would?
Cipher set down the phone and got back to work.
The contact lists from Henley's crew needed analysis. Devane's location needed confirmation. Noland's stalking patterns needed mapping.
Three more targets. Three more problems to solve.
But for tonight, Laura was safe. Henley would never watch her shop again, never add her name to another list, never threaten what she'd built.
One down.
The rest would follow.