I keyed the radio.
"Now."
The ridgeline erupted.
Three rifles from the northeast and two from the east opened simultaneously—the sound shattering the desert silence like a thunderclap, rolling across the scrubland in overlapping cracks that made it impossible to count the shooters. The northern team's rear operators never knew what hit them. The first volley dropped three before they could turn, rounds punching throughbody armor at range with a force that put them on the ground and kept them there.
The formation shattered. Hostiles dove for their vehicles, firing blind toward the ridges. Return fire chewed into the rock formations—sparks and dust erupting from the stone—but the positions held. The eastern team scattered under Tyler and Ghost's fire, half returning suppressed rounds toward the ridge, half pressing the advance because the mission was Nolan and the mission didn't pause for an ambush.
Chaos. Muzzle flashes from the ridgelines. Return fire from the vehicles. The sharp, overlapping crack of rifles echoing off the basin walls. The desert strobed white with every shot—rock, dust, men running, men falling.
More hostiles made it past the crossfire than I'd wanted. The ambush had dropped the rear guard, but the operators closest to the cabin had used the first seconds of confusion to sprint forward, closing the distance before the ridgeline team could adjust. Eight—maybe nine—broke through toward the cabin. The rest were pinned at the vehicles, trading fire with Axel's team in a sustained exchange that rattled the windows and filled the basin with the constant, hammering percussion of a firefight that had no intention of stopping.
The kitchen window exploded inward—glass and frame detonating in a spray of splinters, a flashbang arcing through the gap, bouncing off the counter with a heavy metallic thud and skittering across the floor. I had half a second to turn my head and squeeze my eyes shut.
The detonation cracked the world white. Even with my eyes closed and my head turned, the concussive blast punched through my skull like a hammer. My ears collapsed into a single sustained tone—high, piercing, flattening everything beneath it. I opened my eyes and the cabin was a blur of plaster dust and afterimage, my vision swimming, the corners of thehallway bending in ways that geometry didn't allow. Outside, the ridgeline battle kept hammering—muffled now, distant, the gunfire filtering through the ringing in my skull like sound through deep water.
Training. The training took over. My hands knew the rifle. My body knew the position. The flashbang had scrambled my senses but it hadn't touched the muscle memory that two decades of combat had burned into my nervous system.
The front door came off its hinges.
Boot, shoulder, the frame splintering inward. First hostile through—fast, helmeted, weapon sweeping left. I fired twice from the hallway junction. Center mass. The suppressed rifle punched two rounds into his vest at fifteen feet—he staggered, stumbled, body armor absorbing the impact but not the force—and I adjusted. Head. The third round caught the helmet at the temple and punched through fiberglass and bone. He dropped like his strings had been cut.
The second hostile came through over his partner's body. My vision was still swimming—I saw two of him, three, the afterimage splitting and recombining—and my first shot went wide, catching his shoulder, spinning him into the wall. He screamed, high and sharp, the sound cutting through the ringing in my ears. The flashbang still had me. I blinked hard, forced my vision to resolve, found the shape of his helmet against the wall, and fired. The round ripped through the faceplate. The screaming stopped.
Outside, the gunfire hadn't stopped—the ridgeline exchange was a constant roar now, punctuated by the heavier crack of Tank's rifle and the sharp report of return fire pinging off the rock formations. Inside, the cabin shook with every near-miss that hit the exterior walls. Plaster dust rained from the ceiling. The world was noise and concussion and the copper smell of blood.
From the kitchen—separated from me by a wall I couldn't see through—the sound of the gas burner igniting. Sean's countermeasure. Blue flame washing out the NVGs. Then the crack of impact. Sean's fist meeting body armor, followed by the crash of a man hitting the overturned table.
I couldn't see the kitchen from the hallway. Could hear Sean fighting but not reach him without abandoning the corridor. I held position. Trusted him. My ears were ringing, my vision pulsing with residual flash, and every second I spent upright and aiming was a second that training provided and my senses did not.
A third hostile pushed through the front door. Low, staying under my previous firing angle, using the bodies as cover. Smart. I fired and the round sparked off his helmet—a glancing blow that snapped his head sideways but didn't penetrate. He returned fire. Two rounds into the drywall six inches from my head, plaster erupting in a cloud that stung my eyes. I dropped to a knee and waited.
He advanced. I let him take two steps into the narrow hallway—past the bodies, into the funnel—then I rose and fired point-blank. The round entered under the chin, below the helmet's edge, and exited through the top of the skull. He collapsed on top of the others.
Three dead in a space twelve feet long and four feet wide. The hallway was a charnel house. Cordite and plaster dust and blood.
From the kitchen, Sean's voice—raw, electric: "COME ON!"
A crash. A struggle. Then a single gunshot—sharp, deafening, the unsuppressed report of a weapon fired at contact distance.
"Sean—status!"
"Kitchen clear!" His breathing was ragged, adrenaline-scorched. "Two down. I'm good. Dec—I'm good."
Relief hit like a wave. I shoved it down—but not before the thought broke through: his leg held. It must have. He was aliveand standing and his voice was strong, and that meant the leg that had kept him out of every fight for four months had finally done what he'd needed it to do.
A sound behind me. The side entrance—the one I'd barricaded with a bookshelf that morning. The barricade must have been breached while I was focused on the hallway, the noise lost under the constant gunfire that still hammered from the ridgelines. A hostile was already through. Close. Too close.
His forearm slammed across my throat and drove me backward into the wall, pinning me. His other hand found my right arm—my pistol arm—and crushed it against the drywall, trapping the Sig against the timber framing.
No air. His forearm compressed my trachea. My vision narrowed to a tunnel with his helmeted face at the center—visor down, anonymous, professional. Outside, the firefight raged on, muffled through the walls—the crack of rifles, the ping of rounds hitting metal, a shout from the ridge that might have been Ghost's voice. Inside, there was only this: a man bigger than me with leverage and position, and my compressed airway giving me about six seconds before the tunnel closed.
I pushed. Every ounce of force into my trapped right arm, the muscles of my shoulder and chest straining against his grip. The Sig moved—an inch, two inches—not enough to aim at his body but enough to angle the muzzle downward. I fired.
The round hit his foot. The boot blew apart. He screamed, a raw animal sound that vibrated through his forearm into my throat, and his grip weakened for a fraction of a second.
A fraction was enough. I ripped my pistol arm free, caught his choking forearm with my left hand, and wrenched it sideways in a joint lock that hyperextended his elbow. He bent forward, arm straight, the lock forcing him down. I put the Sig's muzzle against the base of his skull—the gap between helmet and collar, three inches of exposed neck—and fired.
