Chapter Five
~ Cruz ~
I ended the call with Jackson and moved—not because protocol said to, but because standing still wasn’t an option. My body had made the decision before my brain caught up, my feet already carrying me across the cramped Belarus safe house before the connection fully dropped.
Three strides took me past the folding table stacked with radio equipment and laminated grid maps, the surface covered in notes written in Sterling’s tight handwriting.
I’d spent the last seventy-two hours working that table, running frequency sweeps and tracking movement patterns through a sector of Belarus that wasn’t supposed to exist on any American government map. Now it felt like an artifact from another mission, another life.
Sterling sat at the far end of the room, back to the wall, a battered laptop open on his knees.
The green glow of the screen caught the angles of his face—the sharp jaw, the focused eyes, the careful blankness that meant he was three steps ahead of whatever problem he was working on.
He didn’t look up when I stopped in front of him, just continued typing with steady fingers.
“Problem,” I said, the word landing between us like a dropped stone.
Sterling’s hands paused for a fraction of a second—the only indication he’d heard me—then resumed their methodical work. “Define it,” he said, not looking up.
“Peterson’s people on the ranch’s eastern fence line,” I said, laying it out without preamble.
“Cut wire, repaired badly and recently. Cellular trail camera zip-tied to a post with the lens aimed at the main drive. Boot prints near the creek crossing. Military tread, different weights. Two operators, minimum.”
Now Sterling looked up, his eyes meeting mine with the level assessment I’d seen a hundred times before—reading not just my words, but the tension in my shoulders, the set of my jaw, the fact that I was still standing when there was a chair three feet to my right.
“Timeline?” he asked.
“Recent. Past twenty-four hours, probably less.” I kept my voice flat, professional, the same tone I’d use for any operational brief. “Wire’s still shiny where it was cut. Boot prints are sharp, no weathering.”
Sterling nodded once, absorbing this without visible reaction. “Assessment?”
“Not improvised,” I said, the words coming out clipped.
“They picked the right camera position—clear line of sight to the main approach, coverage of both the house and the stable. They used the creek for cover, the tree line for concealment. They knew where to cut the fence without being seen from the main drive.” I paused, then added, “This isn’t their first surveillance operation. ”
What I didn’t say—what Sterling could probably read on me anyway from the way my hand had tightened into a fist—was that Jackson was at that farmhouse alone.
That the thought of something moving on that property while I was sitting in Belarus running comms for a weapons interdiction was making it very hard to think straight.
That for the first time in a decade of fieldwork, I was having trouble separating the mission from the man.
Sterling listened without interrupting, without shifting in his chair, without doing anything except absorbing the operational details with the same focused attention he brought to everything.
It was one of the things I respected about him—his ability to hear what wasn’t being said, to separate essential information from emotional noise without dismissing either.
When I finished, he closed the laptop with a quiet click and set it on the floor beside his chair. For a long moment, he just looked at me, his expression giving away nothing. Then: “We need to get the team in the room.”
I nodded once, relief washing through me—not that the mission was changing, but that it was changing now, not after another twelve hours of radio sweeps and movement tracking. “I’ll make the call.”
Sterling shook his head, already reaching for his phone. “I’ll do it. You get the boards ready.” He paused, his thumb hovering over the screen. “We’re moving the timeline.”
Not a question. A statement of fact, the kind Sterling made when he’d already decided and was just informing the relevant parties.
“Yes, sir,” I said, the response automatic after years of following his lead.
I moved back to the communications table, flipping through the laminated maps until I found the one showing the dealer’s network of safe houses.
Three locations, five potential entry points, twelve guards at minimum staffing.
We’d been planning to take them down sequentially—one location, then another, then the third—giving each team time to clear and secure before moving to the next target.
That timeline just got compressed.
Behind me, Sterling was already on the phone, his voice low and controlled. “Harker, it’s Callahan. We need to move up the operation.” A pause. “No, now works. Wake everyone. Briefing room, five minutes.” Another pause, then: “Reyes called. Someone, probably Peterson, has eyes on the ranch.”
I didn’t turn around, but I could picture the moment—Sterling listening, making whatever calculations he needed to make, then issuing the order that would pull the entire team off their rotation and into the briefing room. Not asking. Telling.
It was why he was running this operation and not someone else. Why, when things went sideways—and they always did, eventually—we followed his lead without question.
I pulled out the dealer’s radio frequency map and laid it on the table, then started gathering the equipment we’d need for a compressed timeline: signal jammers, tactical comms, the specialized radio that could track multiple frequencies simultaneously.
My hands moved on autopilot, muscle memory taking over while my mind was already mapping the fastest route back to Montana.
I caught myself doing it and didn’t stop.
The farmhouse would be my first stop—not the main ranch house where Rawley and Jojo lived, but Jackson’s place across the road.
I’d check the perimeter, secure the doors and windows, make sure the sightlines were clear from all approaches.
Then the eastern fence line, where they’d found the camera.
Then the tree line beyond the creek, where the boot prints had been.
Then, maybe, I’d let myself look at Jackson—really look at him—and figure out what the hell we were doing.
The door opened behind me, and Sterling came in, followed by Harker and Nguyen—our entry team, both still half-asleep, hair sticking up, but already moving with the focused efficiency that came from years of midnight call-ups.
Harker gave me a nod, then headed for the coffee pot in the corner.
Nguyen dropped into the chair across from me and started checking his sidearm with practiced movements.
“Full team in ten minutes,” Sterling said, moving to the whiteboard on the far wall. “We’re running this as a simultaneous takedown instead of sequential. Everyone clears their target at the same time, no pause between locations.”
I nodded, already adjusting the comms plan in my head. “I’ll need a second frequency jammer,” I said. “The dealer’s running alternating patterns on his primary and secondary channels. We jam one, he switches to the other.”
“I’ll get it,” Sterling said, reaching for his phone again. “Anything else?”
I shook my head. “We’re good. The maps are current, the frequencies are locked. Once we have the team, we can brief and move.”
What I didn’t say—what I didn’t need to say—was that the sooner we moved, the sooner we’d be done. And the sooner we were done, the sooner I could get on a plane to Montana.
Sterling looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he nodded once and turned back to the whiteboard, marker already in hand.
I went back to the frequency map, checking each location against our intelligence. Three houses. Twelve guards minimum. One dealer who’d been moving weapons through Belarus for six years without getting caught.
We’d have him in custody by dawn. I’d be on a plane by noon. And Jackson—he’d be waiting, whether he knew it or not.
Sterling called the team together in the main briefing space ten minutes later—a gutted apartment living room with blackout curtains pulled tight across the windows and a whiteboard covered in Cyrillic-labeled grid references.
The air smelled like coffee and gun oil and the mustiness that came from five men living in close quarters for too long.
I took my usual spot at the back of the room, communications board already set up on the folding table behind me. The rest of the team arranged themselves with practiced efficiency—Harker and Nguyen by the door, Rivera by the window, Torres at the whiteboard with a marker ready.
Five operators who had all, at one point or another, eaten at Jojo’s kitchen table or helped Rawley run fence line at Black Butte Ranch.
They knew exactly why they’d been pulled from rotation at three in the morning.
You could see it in the way Torres kept glancing at me, in how Rivera had come in with his sidearm already checked and secured.
They’d all gotten the call from Sterling—wake everyone, briefing room, ten minutes—but it was the last part that had brought them running: Reyes called. Someone has eyes on the ranch.
They knew what that meant. They’d been there for the mess with Burke and Danny, had helped secure the property, had stood watch while Burke and Danny’s baby was born, had driven Jojo and Rawley’s son to the hospital when his fever spiked too high for comfort.
They knew the ranch, knew the people who lived there.
Knew what it meant that someone was watching.