GABRIEL
The convoy is nine minutes late. I’m standing at the window of the command hut, watching the gate detail wave two trucks through the wire. Okafor meets the trucks at the vehicle point, where eight figures dismount into the mud with their gear.
The big one with black hair going gray at the temples comes off the lead truck first and has his people formed up before their boots finish sinking.
That’s Maddox. The blond corporal beside him is already grinning at something and bouncing on his heels.
Walker. The medic, Bishop, and the woman, Quinn, move last. Her eyes are scanning the perimeter like she’s already on patrol.
Second truck. Callahan drops down and rolls his shoulders. Sykes and Liu fall in behind him without being told. The last man off the truck doesn’t look at the base at all. He looks at the ridge.
I decide I like him before he’s said a word, which is rare for me and usually reliable.
Okafor leads them up the road, and I step back from the window and take my place at the map board. A colonel who watches new arrivals through a window like a nervous landlord is not the first impression I intend to make.
They file in, dripping. The command hut wasn’t built for this many bodies, and it quickly fills with the smell of wet canvas and truck exhaust. Maddox’s four stack along the left wall, Callahan’s along the right.
“Colonel Wolfe,” Maddox says. His salute is textbook. So is Callahan’s, half a beat behind.
“Staff Sergeants.” I return it and let my eyes make one pass down each line.
Walker meets my stare with a grin he should reconsider.
Quinn meets it level. Bishop is already cataloging the map board over my shoulder.
Wilder is looking at the sector sketch pinned beside it, at the range fans drawn off the guard towers, and I’d bet a month’s pay he’s found the gap in them.
“Welcome to Kestrel.” I tap the map. “Eleven kilometers that way is the border. Behind it, someone’s been doing their homework.”
I give them the short version. The patrol windows. The observer on Hill 604. The hide, the range card, the three units logged over multiple days, the patrol times recorded to the minute.
“Border Wolves,” Callahan says. Not a question. A muscle in his cheek twitches.
I nod. “You’ve heard of them.”
“Heard interpreters go quiet when you say it. That’s usually all the intel I need.”
“Then you know what we’re dealing with. They mapped this base’s routine like a train schedule, so as of six days ago, Kestrel doesn’t have one.
” I draw a line through the old patrol windows chalked on the board.
“Patrols go out on random windows. No set times, no set routes, no pattern for anyone on that ridge to log. You’ll get warning orders with short fuses.
Sometimes an hour, sometimes less. I expect every element on this base ready to step off at any minute of any day.
Weapons maintained, kit staged, boots findable in the dark.
If I call a window at 0300, the only acceptable response is the sound of your gear going on. ”
“Outstanding,” Walker says under his breath, and it’s not sarcasm. His grin has widened. The way Maddox looks at him lets me know he gave up trying to corral him long ago.
“Corporal Walker has a question?” Maddox asks flatly.
“No, Sergeant, Corporal Walker has enthusiasm,” Walker says.
“Ration it. You’ll need it up here.” I move down the board. “Staff Sergeant Callahan, your element runs as our second patrol unit. You’ll rotate windows with my first element. You’ll meet them at chow, and you’ll know Corporal Hayes by sound before you know him by sight. Sergeant Wilder.”
Wilder’s eyes come off the sector sketch.
“That ridge is yours. Somebody’s been glassing this base, and I want somebody glassing back. Tomorrow you and I walk the ground and pick your positions.”
“There’s a gap in the tower fans,” he says. “Northwest, where the wire bends around the rocks. If I were them, that’s my approach.”
Four seconds in the hut, and he found it faster than the engineer who built the towers.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “Bring your solutions.”
He nods once and goes back to the sketch. Contained. Just like the psych eval said.
“Staff Sergeant Maddox, your team stays intact. Command’s orders. You’ll take tasking directly from me. Sergeant Quinn.” She straightens a degree. “Your evaluations say support. Your patrol logs say otherwise. Up here I go by the logs. You’ll sit in on route planning starting tonight.”
She blinks once, the surprise on her face there and gone. Bishop glances at her sidelong, and a corner of his mouth quirks up.
“Yes, sir,” she says.
“Questions.”
“One, sir.” Callahan again. “The observer your element made. He broke contact clean, left almost nothing behind. That read to anyone else like he wanted the card found?”
Everyone’s watching Callahan. It’s a good question. It’s a question I had but haven’t said it out loud to anyone but Okafor.
“It read to me,” I say, “like a man who’s never had to worry about being made before, because nobody on this base had ever caught one of them at it.
Whether the card was a mistake or a message, the answer changes what they do next.
That’s why the windows are random and why you’re all standing in this hut instead of somewhere warm.
” I look over them again. “Anything else?”
Nothing. Even overeager Walker keeps his mouth shut, which I’ll take as a promising sign and expect to be disappointed about later. Once he runs into Hayes, there will be no goddamn peace left in this base.
“Sergeant Okafor will show you to your quarters,” I say into the silence. “Four huts, cleaned yesterday by my first element, which means Corporal Hayes no doubt will tell you about the mouse. Chow at 1730, and I suggest you sleep early, because I meant what I said about 0300.”
“You heard the Colonel,” Okafor says, and gets them moving with a jerk of his chin.
They file out into the drizzle. Through the window I watch Okafor lead them down the row—Callahan’s four peeling off at the huts by the ops line, Maddox’s four continuing toward supply.
Wilder stops once on the way and looks up at the ridge again.
Good. Let the Wolves look down at this base tonight and count eight new heads and wonder which one is the problem.
Then I see him.
Reyes walks out of supply with a crate of stove parts on his shoulder, and his path bends right past the new arrivals. I see him take their measure, then Walker says something to him in passing that makes Reyes throw his head back and laugh.
My jaw tightens before I know it’s happening.
Last night I told myself these are eight new witnesses, eight new reasons to bury this thing so deep it never surfaces. And that’s what I should be thinking about.
Instead, I’m standing at the window with my fists clenched at my side, because a corporal I met eleven minutes ago made Noah Reyes laugh in the rain.