Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
If there was one thing Mack knew, it was snipers. His brain instantly catalogued everything.
Eric’s position on the eastern ridge: elevated, maybe three hundred meters out.
That three-second window was the only advantage Mack had.
Blake’s truck blocked the direct sightline from the ridge to their position.
But cover was not concealment—Eric could reposition, find a new angle, wait for movement. The truck bought them time, but not much.
Twenty meters across open tarmac, the hangar offered steel walls, wide enough to block any angle from the eastern ridge. The only real cover on the strip.
But the twenty meters to get to it might as well be twenty miles with a sniper dialed in.
Another shot cracked across the airstrip. This one hit the ground six feet to their left—probing, testing whether they’d move. Tarmac chips sprayed against the underside of the truck.
Alyssa hugged the bumper, her breathing controlled, her eyes clear. She’d stopped flinching after the second shot. She was watching him, waiting for his instruction.
“How many?” she asked. Calm. Steady. As if she were asking about the weather.
“One. Bolt action, three-second cycle,” he told her, as if she understood any of that.
“He’s on the ridge to the east.” Mack checked his weapon.
The sidearm felt small in his hand—a close-quarters tool, useless against a rifle at this range.
“He can’t hit us here, but we can’t move either. Not without crossing open ground.”
On the other side of him, Blake braced his hands on the tarmac. His face was white, but his eyes were tracking—scanning the ridge, reading the terrain. Marine training buried under years of lies and cartel work, but still there.
Mack made the calculation he didn’t want to make.
He couldn’t take Eric alone. Not concussed, not with a pistol against a scoped rifle.
The range was too great, the terrain too open, and his body too compromised to close the distance without being picked off.
He needed a second body to split Eric’s attention.
Someone who could move, draw focus, and create the window Mack needed to get close enough for the sidearm to matter.
He looked at Blake. Blake looked back. Something passed between them that had nothing to do with two years of hatred and everything to do with what they’d both been trained to do.
Mack’s voice was pure operational—no anger, no history. Mission only. “What do you know about this guy?”
Blake glanced around the area, avoiding Alyssa’s eyes.
“He doesn’t improvise well under pressure.
He’s self-trained, not like you. He’s patient but predictable.
He picks a position and commits to it. If you disrupt his sight picture, he has to reset.
That takes time since he doesn’t have a spotter. ”
“How much?”
“Five, maybe seven seconds to relocate and reacquire.”
Seven seconds. Mack could work with seven seconds.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” He pointed north, where the tree line curved around the far end of the runway.
“You move along the tree line on the north side, where there’s cover.
Get to the ridge and come up on his flank.
I’ll push east from here, close the distance.
He can’t track both of us. When he commits to one, the other closes in. ”
Blake stared at him. “You’re asking me to—”
“I’m asking you to do what Morrison did. Move to a position and hold it. Don’t break. Don’t run.” Mack held his gaze. “Morrison would have done it without being asked.”
Blake’s jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed, and for a second, Mack thought he’d argue.
He didn’t. “What about Alyssa?” he asked.
“She stays here. It’s the safest position on the strip.” Mack looked at her. “Stay down. Stay covered. Don’t move until I come back for you.”
She held his eyes. He could see the argument forming—she didn’t want to be left behind, didn’t want to be the person who waited while other people risked their lives for her.
But she was smart enough to know that her presence in the open was a liability, not an asset.
“Come back to me,” she said, touching his cheek.
“I will.”
He gripped her fingers, kissed them. Then he turned to Blake. “Stay low. When you hear me engage, push up the ridge on his flank.”
Blake nodded. His hands had stopped shaking. He gave Alyssa a weak smile, then raced low and fast, sprinting for the tree line on the north side of the strip.
Mack rose and fired several rounds to cover him as best as he could.
Eric’s rifle cracked—the shot hit the tarmac behind Blake’s heels, close but not close enough.
Mack ran. He pushed east, skirting the plane and the hangar. He hit the tree line, staying below the ridge’s sightline, using the terrain the way he’d used terrain in a dozen countries and twice as many engagements.
The concussion made the footing treacherous—roots, rocks, and ice hidden under the snow—but the adrenaline was doing its job, flooding his system with chemicals that overrode pain and sharpened his focus. They turned a damaged body into something that could function long enough to finish the fight.
He could now see Eric’s position. Not the man—the nest. A natural rock outcropping on the ridge, partially screened by brush, with a clear line of fire down to the tarmac.
It was a good position. Textbook, even. But the escape route was limited—steep terrain behind the ridge, dense trees on either side. Eric had chosen the nest for offense, not extraction. He’d planned to take his shot and disappear before anyone could respond.
He hadn’t planned on Mack arriving at the airstrip. And he certainly hadn’t planned on two men closing on his position from different angles.
Distant sirens echoed through the frigid air, rising from the south where the access road connected to the highway.
Garrett. Grizzly. And behind them, Claire and the federal convoy.
Eric heard them, too. Mack saw movement on the ridge—a shift in the brush, the silhouette of a man breaking down his position. He was collapsing the bipod, slinging the rifle, and preparing to move.
Staying meant capture. Capture was a federal prison. His window for killing Mack had just slammed shut.
He broke from the nest into the trees on the far side of the ridge, moving fast, heading for whatever vehicle he’d stashed on the back road.
But the terrain funneled north. The ridge dropped off steeply to the east, and the dense timber channeled any escape route toward the north end of the strip—toward Blake’s position.
Mack pushed harder. Branches whipped his face. His boot caught on a root, and he stumbled, caught himself, and kept moving. His breath fogged in the air.
The ridge was close now—fifty meters, then thirty. He was climbing, his legs burning, his vision tunneling, the concussion trying to pull him under with every step.
He heard the impact before he saw it.
A crash of bodies in the brush. A grunt. The sound of two men hitting the snow.
He crested the ridge. Blake and Eric were tangled in some bushes, fighting. Eric was trying to break free—elbows, knees, the frantic scrambling of a man who knew he was trapped. Blake held on, not with skill or technique, but with weight, desperation, and the stubborn refusal to let go.
It wasn’t elegant. It was ugly and desperate, and it might have been the bravest thing Blake Bennett had ever done.
Eric got an arm free. He swung the rifle, using it as a club. It caught Blake across the shoulder, and he cursed but didn’t let go. His arms locked tighter around Eric’s torso, and he rolled them, pinning the weapon under Eric.
Mack covered the last ten meters at a dead sprint. He arrived with his weapon up and his voice carrying the authority of a man who had ended confrontations on four continents. “Don’t move.”
Eric froze. His chest was heaving, his face contorted with rage and fear. He looked up at Mack.
Mack sucked in air and stared back. Two men connected by the same dead Marine, the same lie, the same grief channeled in different directions.
“David Morrison was my friend, too,” Mack told him. “He was my spotter for six months. He ate peanut butter straight from the jar and could identify birds by their calls. And he died because Blake lied.” He glanced at Blake, still pinning Eric in the snow. “Tell him.”
Blake was breathing hard. He was silent for a long moment, glancing back toward the screaming sirens growing closer.
Blake’s voice was raw. “Mack didn’t get David killed. I did. I broke position, I drew fire, and David died covering my mistake.”
Eric stopped struggling. “What? But you said…”
Blake rolled off him and forced him to his feet. “I lied, okay?”
Mack secured the rifle and stepped back. Through the trees, he could see the convoy coming up the access road—Garrett’s black SUV in the lead, CB’s vehicle behind it, and the unmistakable silhouettes of federal vehicles bringing up the rear. “Time to finish this.”
They came down the ridge together. Mack first, weapon holstered. Blake behind him, hands visible. Eric, between them, limping slightly, his face carefully blank.
Garrett jumped out of his vehicle, weapon drawn, eyes sweeping the truck on the tarmac, the plane, the hangar, the three men emerging from the tree line. “Hawk. Report!”
Mack staggered, straightened. “Target neutralized. Eric Edwards, alive, rifle secured. Blake Bennett cooperated in the takedown.”
Claire was out of the federal vehicle, Hendricks racing to catch up. They moved toward Blake and Eric with the practiced coordination of agents executing an arrest. Both men were handcuffed and read their rights.
Blake went quietly. He looked at Mack once as they put him in the federal vehicle. Mack held his gaze. No nod. No gesture of forgiveness.
Forgiveness was a conversation for another day—maybe a day that would come, maybe one that wouldn’t.
Blake looked away first, his pitiful gaze going to Alyssa. She stood unmoving, watching him as he was guided into the backseat of the police cruiser. A tear slipped down her cheek as the door closed.
Claire approached Mack, her gaze taking in the blood on his temple, the way he held his right arm against his body, the thousand-yard stare that came with a concussion and adrenaline crash. “You need a hospital,” she said.
“I need five minutes.”
She studied him, glanced at Alyssa, then nodded and stepped aside.
Garrett walked beside him for a few yards, probably to acess whether he could make it.
Alyssa stood beside Blake’s truck, exactly where he’d told her to stay.
Her arms were wrapped around herself, her hair loose around her shoulders, her red-rimmed eyes fixed on him across sixty feet of open ground.
“Go,” Garrett said and peeled off.
Mack walked past the Cessna. His legs were unsteady. His vision was doing the thing again—splitting, doubling, refusing to cooperate. He didn’t care.
She started walking toward him, then ran—and she hit him hard enough that he staggered a step, her arms around his neck, her face buried against his shoulder. Her whole body shook with the force of everything she’d been holding in.
He wrapped his arms around her. His body screamed, every insult his body had absorbed in the last hour protesting at once.
He held on anyway. Held her the way he’d held her on the dock at Flathead Lake, the way he’d held her in the safehouse, the way he would hold her for every day he had left, however many that turned out to be.
“I’m here,” he said. “It’s over.”
She pulled back and searched his face. She touched his jaw with trembling fingers. “You came for me,” she said as if it were a miracle. As if there had been any other possible outcome.
“Always.”
She kissed him. She kissed him, and he kissed her back. For one perfect moment, the world was exactly the right size—just big enough for the two of them and the future they’d fought through hell to earn.
“I want to go home,” she said. “Wherever that is for us.”
Home. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”
He kept his arm around her as Garrett brought the vehicle around. Kept her close as Claire and Hendricks took statements.
He kept her close, and she let him, and the Montana sun climbed higher over the mountains. The morning—the terrible, impossible, beautiful morning—settled into something that felt, for the first time in two years, like peace.