Chapter Ten
The first explosion hit at four AM.
Levee was in the armory when the floor shook—a deep, percussive thud that rattled the weapons on their racks and sent ammunition boxes sliding across the workbench. Not close. Maybe a mile south, maybe two. But the sound was wrong—too clean, too controlled for an accident.
Demolition charge. Professional work.
His phone lit up before the echo died.
"Whiskey Road storage depot," Crossroad said, his voice tight with the forced calm of a man already moving. "The whole building's up. Fire's spreading to the adjacent lot."
Levee was halfway up the stairs before Crossroad finished. "How many?"
"Don't know yet. Prospects were on watch—no contact since the blast."
Second explosion. This one closer—northwest, the direction of Clarksdale's commercial strip. The compound windows rattled and a car alarm screamed to life somewhere in the lot.
"That's the fuel cache on Route 1," Crossroad said. "Levee, they're hitting us on two fronts."
Three fronts.
Because Levee could hear engines now—multiple vehicles, heavy, approaching from the east access road. Not bikes. Trucks. The kind of vehicles that carried men and equipment in quantity.
"They're coming here," he said. "Get everyone up. Full loadout. Now."
He hit the main floor at a dead run.
The compound was already waking—brothers stumbling from rooms, pulling on cuts, grabbing weapons from the emergency caches Levee had positioned throughout the building. Cottonmouth appeared on the upper landing fully dressed, which meant the president hadn't been sleeping either.
"Report," Cottonmouth said.
"Coordinated strike. Storage depot south, fuel cache northwest, and a ground force approaching from the east." Levee's mind was already mapping it—three simultaneous attacks, timed and sequenced to stretch their response across maximum distance.
"This isn't Sutter's playbook. This is operational planning. Military logistics."
"Pryor."
"Has to be. He's running this like a campaign—hit the resources first, force us to split our response, then assault the compound while we're scattered." Levee looked at the president. "Brandt's not here. He sent his operations man to prove that losing Sutter doesn't slow the timeline."
Cottonmouth's jaw set. "Then we teach him different. What do you need?"
"Everyone who's not already deployed stays here.
We hold the compound." Levee turned to the brothers assembling in the common room—Hollow, Burial, six more patched members and four prospects, all armed, all waiting.
"Pryor's smart. He'll have planned the approach, the timing, the withdrawal route.
But he's a logistics officer, not a combat leader. He coordinates—he doesn't fight."
"So where is he?" Hollow asked, racking his shotgun.
"Somewhere with elevation and comms range.
He'll want line of sight to coordinate his teams but distance from the actual fighting.
" Levee closed his eyes, running through the terrain east of the compound.
Cotton fields. Flat ground. One elevated position within radio range—the old water tower on the Millard property, half a mile out.
"Water tower. Has to be. Only high ground in range. "
"I'll take a team—" Crossroad started.
"Not yet." Levee held up a hand. "He expects us to scatter. That's the whole point of the multi-front attack—divide our force, pick us apart. We hold here first. Let his ground team commit. Then we hit Pryor when he's already locked into his position."
The headlights appeared on the access road.
Four trucks. Heavy duty, construction-grade, the kind of vehicles Brandt's development firm used on job sites. They stopped three hundred yards out, engines idling, and men began spilling from the beds—dark shapes moving with military discipline, spreading into an assault line.
Levee counted. Twelve. Fourteen. More still unloading.
"Eighteen," Hollow said from the window. "Maybe twenty. Armed. They're setting up a base of fire on the tree line."
"Pryor brought everyone Brandt has left.
" Levee moved through the common room, positioning brothers at the windows and doors he'd reinforced weeks ago—because the armorer who'd turned a welding shop into a fortress had done the same thing to the compound the day he'd patched in.
"He's betting everything on one assault.
Take us out tonight, and there's nobody left to stop Brandt's operation. "
"Then we make sure that's a bad bet." Cottonmouth's voice carried the cold authority that had founded this club. "Levee has operational lead. Do what he says."
Levee looked at his brothers—men who'd followed him into the welding shop, who trusted his structural thinking with their lives—and felt the weight of what he was about to do settle onto his shoulders like a cut he'd been wearing for years.
"Hollow, Burial—ground floor, east-facing windows. You're the first line. Let them get within a hundred yards before you open up. I want them committed to the approach before they know what they're walking into."
"Copy."
"Crossroad—take two brothers and the prospects to the upper floor. Overlapping fire on the access road. When they hit Hollow's line and try to flank, you cut them off."
"Got it."
"Nobody—" Levee looked at each man in turn. "—leaves this building until I give the word. Pryor wants us outside. Pryor wants us chasing fires and splitting our strength. We give him nothing. We hold, we bleed his assault force, and then we go kill him."
Boots on the stairs behind him. Levee turned.
Megan stood at the base of the staircase in jeans and a tank top, her hair wild from sleep, a Glock 19 in her right hand. She held it the way she held a tattoo machine—with the easy competence of someone who'd been handling tools since she could reach a workbench.
"Don't even think about telling me to hide," she said.
"Wasn't going to." He crossed to her in three strides, took her face in his hands, and kissed her once—hard, fast, the kind of kiss that said stay alive. "North windows. Second floor. You see anyone trying to circle the building, you put them down."
"That's it? No speech about staying safe?"
"You're a better shot than half the prospects." He pressed his forehead to hers for one second. Two. "Don't miss."
She grinned—fierce and wild, the same grin she'd given him in the welding shop. "I never miss."
Then she was gone, taking the stairs two at a time, and Levee turned back to the windows where Pryor's assault force was forming up in the predawn dark.
Come on, he thought. Commit.
They came at 4:41 AM.
The assault was textbook—suppressive fire from the tree line to keep heads down while three teams advanced in staggered bounds, covering each other's movement, closing the distance with the mechanical efficiency of men who'd done this on actual battlefields.
Pryor's coordination was precise. Each team moved on schedule, each fire shift timed to the second. The operational brain behind Brandt's campaign was proving exactly why he'd been able to run a two-year intimidation operation without leaving a traceable pattern.
But he'd built his plan around a target that couldn't fight back.
Hollow opened up at ninety yards.
The shotgun's roar was a physical thing in the enclosed space, and the lead contractor in the center team folded like his strings had been cut. The second blast took the man behind him in the legs, dropping him screaming into the gravel.
Then every window on the east face of the compound lit up.
The crossfire was devastating. Levee had positioned his brothers for overlapping fields of fire—every approach lane covered, every piece of dead ground pre-registered, the compound's thick brick walls absorbing return fire that would have shredded a lesser building.
The contractors hit the ground, scrambling for cover that didn't exist on the flat approach, and the second line of advance stalled behind the bodies of the first.
"South team flanking!" Crossroad's voice crackled from upstairs. "Eight men moving along the fence line!"
"I see them." Levee shifted to the south window, sighting down the fence line where a squad was trying to circle the compound. Smart. Pryor had anticipated a strong front defense and sent a flanking element to find the weak side.
There wasn't one.
Levee's rifle barked three times. The point man on the flanking team dropped. The second man dove behind a fence post that didn't cover enough of his body, and Burial's shot from the adjacent window finished him.
The flanking team went to ground.
"North side!" Megan's voice, sharp and clear, cutting through the gunfire from the second floor. "Two trucks repositioning—they're trying to breach the fence!"
Levee sprinted for the stairs. He hit the upper floor and found Megan at the north window, the Glock braced on the sill, her eyes tracking the trucks grinding across the field toward the compound's back fence.
"They've got a ram on the lead truck," she said. "Welded steel on the bumper. They're going to punch through."
He saw it—a crude battering setup, construction steel bolted to the front of a heavy-duty pickup. Pryor was adapting in real time, recognizing that the frontal assault was failing and redirecting his reserve force to create a new entry point.
Logistics officer, Levee thought. He's managing this like a supply chain. When one route fails, he reroutes.
"Can you hit the driver?"
"At this range with a handgun?" She glanced at him. "Give me your rifle."
He handed it over without hesitation. She shouldered it like she'd been born with one—the stepdad's 1911 training translating to long guns with the ease of natural ability—and put her eye to the sight.
"Windshield," she murmured. "Forty yards. Moving target."
She fired.
The lead truck swerved hard as the windshield spiderwebbed, the driver slumping sideways. The vehicle plowed into the fence at an angle, tangling in the wire instead of punching through, and the men in the bed spilled out in a chaos of limbs and dropped weapons.