Chapter Fourteen
McCallister Field sat dark and empty under a quarter moon.
Ripcord lay in the drainage ditch fifty yards from the main hangar, watching through night-vision optics while mosquitoes ate him alive.
Ghost was two hundred meters north, covering the access road.
Forge and Trooper flanked the southern tree line.
Static held the exit with the same patient violence he brought to everything that mattered.
Kristin's X on the chart. Her call. Her knowledge of every strip within a hundred miles, distilled into one tactical prediction.
If she was wrong, Peck would hit another target tonight while they lay in a ditch watching nothing.
She wasn't wrong.
At 2252, the sound of a single-engine aircraft broke the silence—low, running without lights, the particular drone of a pilot who didn't want to be seen. Ripcord tracked the sound as it circled once, twice, then lined up on the dark runway.
"Contact." Ghost's voice, barely a whisper in his earpiece. "Single Cessna, no lights, touching down now."
The plane materialized out of the darkness like a ghost—wheels kissing the grass strip with the practiced ease of someone who'd landed on worse. It rolled to a stop near the hangar, engine ticking as the prop wound down.
One man climbed out.
Six-three. Heavy build. Moving with the deliberate confidence of someone who'd spent years hurting people and getting paid for it.
Nolan Peck.
Ripcord watched him through the optics. Peck didn't check the perimeter. Didn't scan the tree line. Didn't do any of the things a trained operator would do before setting up in hostile territory. He walked straight to the hangar's side door, pulled it open, and disappeared inside.
Arrogance.
The same arrogance that had let him burn two businesses in broad daylight and nail a demand note to a telephone pole. The arrogance of a man who'd spent so long making deaths look like accidents that he'd forgotten what it felt like to be the target.
"He's in the hangar." Ripcord keyed his mic. "Moving to close."
"Copy." Ghost. "Holding position on the access road. If he runs, he runs into me."
"South team holding." Trooper.
"Exit covered." Static. "Nobody leaves this strip."
Ripcord rose from the ditch and moved.
The grass was wet, Carolina dew soaking through his boots as he crossed the open ground between the drainage ditch and the hangar. No rush. Peck wasn't going anywhere—the only road out was covered, and his plane was sitting on an open runway with five rifles pointed at it.
He reached the hangar wall and pressed flat against the corrugated metal. Through the thin siding, he could hear Peck working—the clank of containers, the slosh of liquid, the scratch of something being dragged across concrete.
Accelerant.
The bastard was prepping his next fire right here, loading materials into whatever vehicle he'd stashed in the hangar. Efficient. Land at one strip, stage at another, hit the target, fly out before anyone connected the smoke to the sky.
Kristin had read him perfectly.
Ripcord moved to the main door. Unlocked—Peck hadn't bothered. He eased it open six inches, enough to see inside.
The hangar was a single bay, large enough for two aircraft.
A battered pickup truck sat in the center, its bed already loaded with five-gallon gas cans and what looked like road flares.
Peck stood at the truck's tailgate, arranging his materials with the methodical focus of a man who took professional pride in destruction.
Ripcord stepped inside.
"Long night?"
Peck spun.
He was fast—Ripcord gave him that. His hand went for the pistol tucked in his waistband with the speed of someone who'd drawn a weapon a thousand times. But he was drawing from a standing start against a man who'd entered the room with his rifle already up.
"Don't." Ripcord's voice was flat. "You touch that grip and we skip the conversation."
Peck's hand stopped. His eyes—pale, calculating, the eyes of a man who measured everyone he met against a body count—moved from Ripcord's face to his rifle to the door behind him.
Doing the math.
"You're the jumper." Peck's voice was gravel. "The one who killed Mitch."
"And Dale. But who's counting."
"Boyd's counting." A smile crept across Peck's face. "He's counting every man you've taken from him, and he's going to collect on that debt. With interest."
"He's going to have to collect it himself. You're his last errand boy."
The smile faltered. Just for a second—but long enough for Ripcord to see the flicker of something underneath. Not fear. Peck was too far gone for fear. Recognition, maybe. The dawning understanding that the math didn't work in his favor.
"Hands on the truck. Slow."
Peck didn't move. His eyes were still calculating, still hunting for an angle.
"There's no angle." Ripcord stepped closer. "Ghost is covering the road. Forge and Trooper have the south. Static's on the exit. You flew into a box, Peck. The only question is whether you walk out of this hangar or get carried."
"Carried by who? You don't have the—"
"You burned a bar with two people inside.
" Ripcord's voice went cold. "You put a note on a telephone pole threatening to destroy everything unless a woman I love surrenders herself to a drug lord who'll kill her.
You've spent eight years making murders look like accidents, and now you're standing in a hangar full of gasoline getting ready to torch another building full of innocent people. "
He closed the distance to ten feet.
"Tell me again what I don't have."
Peck's jaw tightened.
The hangar was silent except for the tick of gas cans cooling in the night air and the distant chirp of crickets that didn't know a man was about to die.
"Stanton will burn this whole county." Peck's voice was low, certain. "You think killing me stops anything? He's got resources you haven't touched. Money, contacts, people who owe him favors from his DEA days. He'll rebuild."
"He won't."
"You don't know him."
"I know he's out of pilots. Out of logistics men. About to be out of enforcers." Ripcord tilted his head. "What's he going to rebuild with?"
Peck's hand twitched toward his waistband.
Ripcord shot him through the right shoulder.
The round spun Peck sideways, slamming him into the truck's tailgate. He went down hard, gasoline cans tumbling around him, his hand finally finding the pistol and dragging it free with fingers that weren't working right.
Ripcord kicked it across the concrete.
"That was your one warning." He stood over Peck, rifle aimed at center mass. "Where's Stanton?"
Peck laughed. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth—the shoulder wound was worse than it looked, probably clipped an artery. He had minutes, not hours.
"You think I'm going to help you?" Peck's voice was wet. "After you killed Mitch? After you killed Dale? You think I'm going to give you Boyd on a plate?"
"I think you're going to bleed out on this floor either way. The only choice you've got is whether you spend your last minutes being useful or being stubborn."
Peck stared up at him. The enforcer's face was gray now, blood pooling beneath him on the concrete, mixing with gasoline in a slick that smelled like death and arson.
"His airstrip." The words came out in a gasp. "Private field, forty miles west. Hangar complex where he stages everything. He's got a plane fueled and ready—always has. Thinks he can disappear if things go wrong."
"What kind of security?"
"Whatever he can scrape together." Another wet laugh. "Which isn't much anymore, thanks to you. A dozen guys, maybe. Hired muscle. Nobody who's ever been in a real fight."
"Anything else?"
Peck's eyes were glazing. The blood loss was winning.
"Tell your woman something." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Danny didn't just steal money. He copied Stanton's whole network. Names, accounts, routes, contacts—everything. Stanton's not just trying to recover product. He's trying to recover his life."
"Where did Danny hide it?"
But Peck was done talking. His head lolled back against the truck's tire, and the light went out of his pale eyes like someone had flipped a switch.
Nolan Peck—military contractor, professional killer, the man who'd burned two businesses and threatened to destroy everything Ripcord cared about—bled out on the floor of a hangar he'd planned to use as a staging ground for more destruction.
Ripcord lowered his rifle.
"Clear." He keyed his mic. "Peck's down. Permanently."
"Copy." Ghost. "Access road secure."
"South team clear." Trooper. "No additional contacts."
"Exit clear." Static paused. "We leaving the plane?"
Ripcord looked at the Cessna sitting on the dark runway. Peck's transportation. Stanton's aircraft, probably—part of the fleet that had been moving cocaine through Carolina airstrips for eight years.
"Torch it."
He walked out of the hangar into the night air. The quarter moon hung above the pines, indifferent. The crickets had resumed their chorus, unbothered by the violence that had interrupted their evening.
Forge materialized from the tree line, rifle across his chest.
"Clean?"
"Clean enough." Ripcord rolled his shoulders, feeling the adrenaline start its slow drain. "He talked before he went. Stanton's at a private airstrip forty miles west. Hangar complex, skeleton crew, escape plane fueled and ready."
"That's our target."
"That's our endgame."
Behind them, Static and Trooper were already working on the Cessna. Five minutes later, aviation fuel and road flares turned the aircraft into a bonfire that lit up the strip like daylight.
The ride back to the compound took forty minutes.
Ripcord led the formation, Forge on his right, the brothers falling into convoy formation on the dark Carolina back roads without needing to be told.
The wind smelled like pine and smoke—always smoke now, Stanton's signature written across the county in ash.
But the fires were over.
Garvey—dead. The man who'd moved the cocaine.
Odom—dead. The man who'd coordinated the network.
Peck—dead. The man who'd enforced silence through murder.
Three lieutenants, all gone. Stanton was alone now. A former DEA agent sitting in a private hangar with hired muscle and an escape plane, watching his empire collapse one body at a time.
The compound gates opened as they rolled in. Security waved them through, and Ripcord killed his engine in front of the main building.
Kristin was on the porch.
She'd been waiting—he could see it in her posture, the tension in her shoulders, the way her hands gripped the railing. She searched his face as he climbed the steps, reading him the way she read weather patterns and altimeter settings.
"It's done," he said.
"Peck?"
"Gone."
Something shifted in her expression. Relief, exhaustion, and underneath it the particular hardness that had been growing in her since the first fire. She was changing. This war was shaping her into someone tougher, someone who understood violence as a tool rather than an abstraction.
He wasn't sure how he felt about that.
"He talked before he died." Ripcord stopped in front of her, close enough to touch but not reaching for her yet.
"Danny didn't just steal money. He copied Stanton's entire network—names, accounts, routes, everything.
That's what Stanton's been hunting for. Not product. Evidence that could destroy him."
Kristin's eyes widened. "Danny had documentation of the whole operation?"
"And hid it somewhere Stanton can't find.
That's why he's been tearing apart every airfield in the county.
That's why he killed Danny. That's why he's been trying to get to you.
" Ripcord's jaw tightened. "If those records surface, Stanton doesn't just lose his operation.
He loses his freedom. Every contact, every bribe, every corrupt official he's cultivated in eight years—all of it exposed. "
"The storage unit." Kristin's voice sharpened. "Danny's storage unit on Highway 87. We never made it there."
"We will. But first we deal with Stanton." He finally reached for her, pulling her against his chest. "Peck gave up his location. Private airstrip, forty miles west. He's got a skeleton crew and an escape plane."
"When?"
"Soon. Legion's calling church tonight." His arms tightened around her. "This ends, Kristin. One more strike and it's over."
She pressed her face into his shoulder. He felt her breath, warm and steady, felt the strength in her grip as she held onto him.
"Come inside," she said. "You need to eat before you plan another war."
"I'm fine."
"You're running on adrenaline and violence, and you haven't eaten since noon." She pulled back, pilot's eyes sharp. "Eat. Debrief. Then save the world."
Forge snorted from somewhere behind them. "She's got your number, brother."
"Shut up, Forge."
But he followed her inside.
The chapel meeting convened an hour later. Ripcord stood at the table with Peck's intel marked on the aviation charts Kristin had provided, laying out what the dying enforcer had given them.
"Private airstrip. Forty miles west. Hangar complex for staging, a dozen hired guns, and an escape plane Stanton keeps fueled at all times." He tapped the map. "He's running out of options and he knows it. Every day we wait is a day he uses to rebuild or disappear."
"Then we don't wait." Legion's voice carried the finality of a commander who'd made his decision before the briefing started. "We plan, we prepare, and we hit him before he realizes Peck isn't coming back."
"Peck's plane is burning on a runway in the middle of nowhere," Static said. "When Stanton can't reach his enforcer and sees smoke on the horizon, he'll know."
"Good." Ghost's expression was ice. "Let him sit with that. Let him spend tonight wondering which of his people is next. Scared men make mistakes."
"And Stanton's about to make his last one." Legion looked around the table. "Full assault. Every available brother. We end this the way we started it—with enough violence to make sure it stays ended."
The vote was unanimous.
Ripcord walked out of the chapel into the Carolina night. Kristin was waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, reading his face before he said a word.
"When?" she asked.
"Two days. Time to plan, position, and make sure Stanton doesn't slip away."
She nodded. "And after?"
"After, we find Danny's records. We get your airfield back. And we start building something that doesn't involve people trying to kill us."
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "That sounds almost normal."
"Don't get used to it." He pulled her close. "Normal's not really our thing."
She laughed—quiet, tired, real—and let him hold her in the hallway while the brotherhood prepared for the final assault.
Three lieutenants dead. One drug lord left.
Two days until it ended.