They didn't.
I checked my mirror. Sean was two bike-lengths back, holding position, his silhouette sharp against the stars. Beside him, Blade. Behind them, the rest.
I faced forward. The wind was cold against my face. The engine vibrated through my hands, my arms, my chest—the familiar resonance that had been the backdrop of my life for years.
In my earpiece, Nolan's breathing. Steady. Present. The sound of a man watching his people ride toward danger and holding the line from the only position that made sense.
The desert stretched ahead, empty and vast and patient. Somewhere in it, men with stolen weapons slept behind fences, believing they had two more days.
The throttle opened under my hand.
They had four hours.
13
STATIC
NOLAN
The command van smelled like hot electronics and Tyler's coffee.
01:47. The dashboard clock glowed green in the dark, the numbers steady, indifferent to the fact that in thirteen minutes the two men I loved would walk into a depot full of armed strangers. I sat in the passenger seat with my laptop open across my thighs, the serial number database loaded, the verification matrix ready, the cursor blinking in a search field that was waiting for input the way I was waiting for a voice.
Tyler was behind the wheel. Engine off, lights off, the van parked on a dirt access road a mile south of the depot behind a stand of juniper that smelled sharp and resinous in the cold night air. His hands rested on his thighs, relaxed and still, the hands of a man who had done this before and understood that the waiting was the hardest part.
"You good?" he asked.
"I'm fine."
My heartbeat was 104 beats per minute. I'd counted. I was not fine.
The comms unit sat on the center console between us, a matte black box the size of a hardcover book, its surface dotted with channel indicators and a small speaker grille. My encrypted frequency, hardware-based, completely separate from the compromised cellular network. Three channels: Alpha for Declan's insertion team, Bravo for Irish's dock team, Command for Hawk's backup force staged half a mile east.
All three indicator lights glowed amber. Standby.
01:52. Eight minutes.
The desert was silent outside the van. No wind. No traffic. The stars overhead were dense and cold, the Milky Way a pale smear across the southern sky that would have been beautiful if I'd been capable of registering beauty through the static in my chest. The depot was invisible from here, hidden behind a low ridge, but I could picture it from Declan's recon photos: the chain-link perimeter, the guard towers at the corners, the three warehouse buildings arranged in a U around a central loading yard. The office complex on the west side. The loading docks on the east, where the trucks pulled in and the crates went out.
I'd memorized the layout the way I'd memorized Holt's financial records. Floor plans, sight lines, distances. Every detail encoded, filed, retrievable. The data was my armor. As long as I had the data, I could function.
01:55. Five minutes.
"Nolan." Tyler's voice was quiet. "They're going to be fine."
I looked at him. In the dim glow of the dashboard, his face carried the calm authority of a man who'd spent years in federal law enforcement and understood that reassurance was sometimes more important than accuracy.
"You don't know that," I countered, my tone rougher than intended.
"No. I don't." He took a breath. "But Declan's the best tactical operator I've ever worked with, and Irish is too stubborn to die. So the odds are good."
I almost smiled. My face couldn't quite manage it.
01:58. Two minutes.
The amber lights on the comms unit held steady. I stared at them and counted my breaths. In for four, out for four. A technique I'd read about in a stress management article three years ago and had never needed until a man with a Boston accent and another with desert-quiet hands had walked into my life and rearranged every variable I thought was fixed.
02:00.
