Chapter Ten
The call came at six AM Sunday, and Foxfire was already awake because sleep was something other people did.
Foxfire was pulling on his boots before the sentence finished. "When?"
"Twenty minutes ago. But that's not all.
" A pause that meant Crossroad was reading something.
"Product convoy just blew through the Greenville checkpoint.
Two trucks, armed escorts, running the northern stretch like we don't exist. And there's a second run staging on the Vicksburg highway right now. "
Three hits. Three locations. All at once.
Foxfire stopped moving long enough to think, which was a thing he hated doing.
"That's not Garza." He said it out loud because the thought needed air. "Garza's a builder, not a general. This is scheduled. This is timed."
"Landis."
"Landis." The warehouse coordinator. The man who ran Garza's pipeline like a freight operation—timetables, load schedules, shift rotations.
The logistics brain who'd kept product moving through the corridor for months without a single missed delivery.
"He's treating this like a supply chain.
Hit three points simultaneously, stretch our coverage, prove the corridor can absorb losing Rios and keep running. "
"It's working. Brothers are spread across two highway stretches trying to intercept the convoys, and Boudreaux wants bodies at the fuel stop before his insurance adjuster shows up."
Foxfire grabbed his cut off the chair where he'd dropped it three hours ago. The leather smelled like kitchen grease and Patty's hands, and he shoved that thought down because it wasn't useful right now.
"Where's Landis?"
"Warehouse. Has to be. He's coordinating a multi-front operation—he needs his staging point."
"And his staging point is three miles from Patty's diner." Foxfire was already moving through the compound hallway, boots loud on the concrete. "He's sitting in the one place he feels safe because all his muscle is out running product."
"You're thinking about the gap."
"I'm thinking about the schedule." Foxfire hit the compound's main door and the Delta morning slammed into him—heat and humidity and the smell of cotton fields baking under a sun that didn't care about smuggling wars.
"Landis runs everything on a timetable. The northern convoy left twenty minutes ago.
The Vicksburg run is staging now. That means the warehouse just sent out one load and is prepping the next. "
"So?"
"So there's a window. Between the outgoing run clearing the lot and the incoming product arriving for the next load. Ten minutes, maybe less, when the warehouse is full of product and empty of escorts."
Silence on the line. The particular silence of a Road Captain calculating distances and drive times.
"You can't make it in ten minutes. The warehouse is—"
"Eleven miles from the compound. Back roads, no traffic, Sunday morning." Foxfire swung onto his bike and felt the engine catch on the first kick. "I can make eleven miles in eight minutes if nobody's in my way."
"That's insane."
"That's math." He revved the engine, feeling the familiar vibration settle into his bones. "Get me two brothers at the fuel stop to keep Boudreaux happy. Put the rest on the Greenville stretch to intercept the northern convoy. I'll handle the warehouse."
"Alone?"
"Landis is a logistics man, not a fighter. His escorts are running product across two highways. He's got warehouse workers—drivers and loaders who signed up for shift work, not shootouts." The grin came, fast and sharp. "I don't need brothers for warehouse workers. I need speed."
"Foxfire—"
"Eight minutes. Clock me."
He was out of the lot before Crossroad could argue.
The back roads between the compound and the Vicksburg highway were dirt and gravel, the kind of forgotten cuts that connected cotton fields to processing plants that had closed twenty years ago.
Foxfire knew every one of them. Had ridden them drunk, sober, bleeding, and running from things he'd rather not name.
The bike ate the distance like it was hungry.
Seven minutes.
He killed the engine a quarter mile from the warehouse and walked the bike into a stand of cypress that lined the access road.
The staging area was a converted feed mill—corrugated walls, loading dock on the south side, parking lot that held six trucks when the operation was running full. Right now it held two.
Two trucks meant the outgoing run had cleared. The incoming product hadn't arrived yet.
The window was open.
Foxfire moved through the tree line with the low, fast crouch of a man who'd been sneaking into places since he was old enough to climb a fence.
The loading dock was unmanned. The south-side door was propped open with a cinderblock—ventilation, probably, because the Delta heat inside a corrugated building in June would cook a man faster than Patty's stovetop.
He slipped through the door and into the warehouse.
Product everywhere. Crates stacked on pallets, shrink-wrapped and labeled with fake freight codes.
Cigarette cartons by the hundred. Boxes that had the particular weight and shape of firearms cases.
The whole operation laid out in neat rows, organized with the precision of a man who treated smuggling like inventory management.
Three workers in the main bay. Loading pallets onto a hand truck, moving with the bored efficiency of men who did this three times a week and expected nothing to change.
Tommy Landis stood at a folding table near the office door, clipboard in hand, phone pressed to his ear.
Sharp features, quick eyes, the posture of a man who controlled his environment through schedules and systems. He was talking fast—coordinates, timing, the particular language of a logistics operation in motion.
"—northern run cleared the Greenville checkpoint six minutes ago. Vicksburg staging in twelve. Tell Garza the fuel-stop hit bought us the window we needed—"
Foxfire crossed the warehouse floor in four seconds.
The first worker didn't see him coming. A length of rebar from the construction pile by the door caught the man across the back of the knees, and he went down with a sound like a bag of sand hitting concrete.
The second worker spun, hands up, and Foxfire drove the rebar into his gut before the hands could become fists.
The third worker ran.
Foxfire let him go. The runner would hit the parking lot, find his truck, and drive. That was fine. Running men carried messages, and the message was simple: the warehouse wasn't safe anymore.
Landis dropped the phone.
"You—" His eyes were wide, calculating, the sharp mind behind them processing the situation with the speed of a man who'd built his career on reading logistics. "The escorts are—"
"Running product across two highways because you told them to." Foxfire advanced on the table, the rebar loose in his hand. "You spread your security across three targets to prove the corridor could survive. Smart play. One problem."
"What?"
"You forgot to keep some for yourself."
Landis reached for the desk drawer. Foxfire was faster—he was always faster—the rebar sweeping the drawer shut before Landis's hand cleared the handle.
"Don't." The word was quiet. The grin was gone. "You're a logistics man. You know the math. Your escorts are forty minutes away. Your workers are on the floor or running. You're alone in a warehouse with a man who kills people in bars for fun."
"Garza will—"
"Garza sent you to fight his war while he sits somewhere safe counting money." Foxfire leaned in. "That's what you are to him. A schedule. A timetable. Something that keeps the product moving so he doesn't have to get his hands dirty."
Landis's jaw tightened. The sharp eyes flickered—not with fear, exactly, but with the recognition of a man who'd just run the numbers and didn't like the result.
"I can relocate the corridor. Forty-eight hours, new staging point, new routes. You shut this warehouse down, another one opens."
"Maybe." Foxfire kicked the folding table aside. Clipboards and schedules scattered across the concrete. "But you won't be there to open it."
"Wait—"
The rebar caught Landis across the temple before the word finished.
He staggered. Foxfire hit him again—faster this time, the street fighter's instinct that said the second hit mattered more than the first because the first was surprise and the second was certainty. Landis crumpled against the office wall, blood running from a gash above his ear.
Foxfire stood over him.
The warehouse coordinator who'd kept Garza's corridor running like a freight line—who'd scheduled the fuel-stop hit, the dual highway runs, the coordinated counterattack designed to prove the pipeline survived—was on the concrete floor of his own staging point, brought down in the ten-minute gap between his own product runs.
"You timed everything," Foxfire said. "Every run, every load, every shift change. Your whole operation runs on a clock."
Landis tried to speak. Blood in his mouth made the words thick.
"Here's what you didn't time." Foxfire crouched beside him. "Me. The fastest man in the Destroyers. The brother who doesn't need ten minutes."
He brought the rebar down.
"I need three."
The warehouse went quiet.
Foxfire straightened, breathing hard, the rebar slick in his hand. Around him, the smuggling corridor's logistics center sat in neat organized rows—product that would never reach its destination, schedules that would never be kept, a timetable that had just been permanently disrupted.
He pulled out his phone. Typed a message to Cottonmouth: Warehouse clear. Landis down. Product intact for disposal.
The response came in seconds: The convoys?
Running blind. No coordinator, no schedule, no staging point. They're trucks without a destination.
Good. Crossroad's intercepting the northern run now. Come home.
Foxfire pocketed the phone and walked out of the warehouse into the Sunday morning. The Delta sun was already high enough to make the corrugated walls shimmer, heat rising off the parking lot in waves that bent the light.
Two down. Two to go.
Garza had sent his escort chief to drag a woman from a bar, and the escort chief had died in it. He'd sent his logistics man to prove the corridor survived, and the logistics man had died in his own warehouse during the gap in his own schedule.
The smuggling boss was running out of men to send.
Foxfire kicked his bike to life and pointed it toward the compound, toward the kitchen where a woman with cast-iron hands would be cooking breakfast because that's what she did when the world was falling apart.
The Vicksburg highway stretched out ahead of him, empty and clean in the morning light.
His highway. His road. And getting cleaner by the day.