“Jude. Hold the corridor.”
Jude positions himself in the hallway between the main room and the rear exit. The last line of defense before Lucia. His sidearm is up. His stance is textbook. Feet shoulder-width. Weight forward. A man who spent a decade in high-pressure environments does not forget how to hold a position under fire. The surgeon’s hands are wrapped around a weapon and they are not shaking.
I put my eye to the scope.
The first man breaks the tree line at a run. Low. Fast. Heading for the cabin’s blind spot on the northeast corner. He is wearing black tactical gear and moving with the confidence of a man who has done this before and expects it to go the way it always does.
It does not.
I track him. Lead him by two feet. Account for the cold air, the altitude, the slight downhill angle. Squeeze.
The rifle kicks against my shoulder. The sound cracks across the mountain and the pine trees eat half of it and the echo rolls down the valley. The man drops. Clean. Mid-stride. The mountainabsorbs him the way mountains absorb everything. Without comment.
The second and third come through together. Suppressive fire. Automatic weapons. Rounds punch into the cabin’s log walls and the impacts are dense, flat, percussive. Splinters fly. The window frame takes a hit two inches from my head and I do not flinch because flinching is a luxury for men who have time.
These walls are eight inches of old-growth pine. They were built by men who understood that mountains do not respect anything that is not solid. The rounds embed. They do not penetrate.
I return fire. Two rounds. Controlled. The second man stumbles backward and falls. The third finds cover behind the woodpile ten meters from the cabin’s front face.
“South contacts down.” Rafe’s voice on comms. Two men eliminated. No elaboration required. The Beast does not narrate. He delivers results.
“Two more on the sensor grid,” Lucia says. “Coming from the road. Vehicles. Moving fast.”
This is not a five-man hit squad. This is an advance team with reinforcements staged on the access road. The Costas sent the first wave to test our defenses and the second wave to exploit whatever gaps they found.
They are not going to find gaps.
“Jude. Move Lucia to the vehicles. Now.”
“Moving.”
I hold the front window. The man behind the woodpile is pinned. He knows it. His weapon is angled around the corner ofthe stacked logs and he is firing blind, the rounds going wide, hitting the tree line behind the cabin. Fear fire. The shooting of a man who knows he is outmatched and is operating on adrenaline instead of training.
He breaks left. Tries to make the tree line. I track. Exhale. Fire. He drops.
The mountain goes quiet.
Quiet on a mountain after gunfire is not silence. It is the absence of threat layered over the ringing in your ears and the smell of cordite mixing with pine sap and the sound of your own breathing coming back to you in a rush because you were holding it the entire time and did not notice.
I move through the cabin. Rifle up. Clearing rooms. The bedroom where three men held a woman through the night is empty. The blankets are still tangled. The fire is still burning low in the stove. The amber lamp is still on.
Rafe comes through the south window. Snow on his shoulders. His golden eyes are flat. Operational. The man who saidOursagainst Lucia’s spine an hour ago is gone. What is standing in front of me is the weapon the MC forged from a man with golden eyes and infinite patience. The Beast is not a metaphor right now. It is a job description.
“Perimeter clear,” he says.
“Vehicles on the road.”
“Two. Armored.”
We have minutes before the reinforcements reach the cabin. The extraction window is closing.
I move for the rear exit. Rafe falls in behind me. We clear the back porch. The SUV is running. Jude is behind the wheel, the engine already screaming. Lucia is shoved into the back seat, sandwiched between Rafe’s massive frame and the rear door, her weapon held tight against her thigh.
I am three steps from the vehicle when the radio catches my eye.
A tactical radio on the ground. Clipped to the vest of a man Rafe dropped on the south approach. Standard cartel comms. Encrypted frequency. Military-grade hardware that costs more than a civilian earns in a year.
I grab it. Strip the earpiece. Plug in.