The pilot had already disappeared inside.
“Eric,” Blake gasped. His face was white. His hands were shaking. “That’s Eric Edwards.”
Mack’s blood went cold. The ghost he’d ignored in his single-minded pursuit of Blake. Here. Now.
Another shot. The truck’s side mirror exploded, spraying more glass and plastic onto the ground.
Blake flinched. Alyssa didn’t. Mack met her eyes. She held his gaze and gave a nod.
He racked the slide on his weapon and started calculating.
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.
Scoped rifle—the Remington 700, same weapon from the parking structure. Bolt action. Three seconds between shots to cycle and reacquire.
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?—”