Kolev had pulled his exterior guards inside. The recon team had confirmed four guards on perimeter, down from eight. But the ambush had at least thirteen shooters. Six in the warehouse,seven at the docks. That was more men than the full complement of exterior guards. Kolev had reinforcements. Men hidden inside the depot that the external recon couldn't have seen.
He hadn't trusted the disinformation. He'd hedged. Showed the Phoenixes what they expected on the outside while fortifying the inside for exactly what happened.
But he'd committed those men to the warehouse and the docks. Two positions. And the depot had three buildings arranged in a U around a central yard. The third element was the connector: the east maintenance yard between the warehouse and the loading docks. A narrow strip of open ground with tool sheds and fuel storage.
If Kolev pulled men from the perimeter and positioned them inside the two primary buildings, the maintenance yard was undefended. It was dead ground. And it connected directly to the rear of both ambush positions.
"Tyler." My voice was different now. The cracking was gone. "I need the compound layout."
"What are you seeing?"
I pulled up Declan's recon photos on the laptop. The overhead shots from the ridge, the satellite imagery I'd enhanced, the guard rotation maps. My finger traced the space between the warehouse and the docks.
"The east maintenance yard. Here." I tapped the screen. "Kolev fortified the warehouse and the docks. Both ambushes are oriented inward, toward the teams he expected. Their backs are to this yard. If Hawk's backup enters through here, they hit both positions from behind."
Tyler studied the photo. His jaw worked. "That's a sixty-yard sprint across open ground to reach cover."
"At night. With the Wolves focused on the teams already inside. They won't be watching their backs because they committed everything to the kill box."
"You're sure about this?"
I looked at him. "The math works."
Tyler reached for the Command channel. Static. He adjusted the frequency. More static. The terrain between the van and Hawk's position, a mile of ridgeline and desert scrub, was eating the signal.
"Comms to Hawk are degraded," Tyler’s tone hinting at worry. "Terrain interference. We're in a dead spot."
"Then we drive to him."
Tyler looked at me. I looked back. I was still shaking, still wet-faced, still running on the adrenaline of seventeen seconds that had aged me a decade. But the data was clear. The pattern was clear. And the two men inside that compound needed the backup to hit from the right direction, or the Wolves would reorganize and the kill box would close again.
"Nolan, if we move the van, we lose our position. We lose the stable comms relay to both teams."
"Irish and Declan are inside a fortified compound fighting an ambush they didn't expect. Hawk has eight men staged half a mile away waiting for a signal. If I can get to him and show him where to hit, this ends in ten minutes. If I can't, Dec and Irish are fighting their way out blind."
Tyler started the engine.
The van lurched over the dirt access road, no headlights, Tyler navigating by moonlight and memory. The comms unit bounced on the console. I braced it with one hand and kept the laptop open with the other, the recon photos glowing on the screen.
The drive took four minutes. Four minutes of desert dark and rattling equipment and Irish's voice coming through Bravo in fragments, calling serial numbers between bursts of gunfire that sounded like they were getting closer: "DX-4490... Blade, behind you!... DX-4491, Nolan, you getting these?"
"I'm getting them." I matched them as fast as they came. Green, green, green. Every number a match. Every crate a confirmation.
Hawk's staging point was a dry wash behind a rock outcropping. Two trucks. Eight men. Rifles, body armor, the grim readiness of men who'd been listening to the firefight from a distance and wanted to move.
Tyler killed the engine. I was out before the van stopped rolling, laptop under my arm, boots on the loose gravel of the wash.
Hawk was beside the lead truck, radio in hand, Vega and Santos flanking him with scoped rifles. His face was carved stone in the moonlight.
"Comms are degraded from the van." I gave no preamble. No greeting. "I couldn't reach you on Command channel. I have intel that changes the approach."
Hawk looked at Tyler. Tyler nodded once.
I opened the laptop on the hood of the truck. The recon photo glowed in the dark, bright enough to make the men around me squint.
"Kolev set an ambush. Interior positions, both the warehouse and the docks. But he pulled his men from the perimeter and concentrated them inside. This area—" I pointed to the east maintenance yard, "—is undefended. It connects to the rear of both buildings. If your team enters here, you're behind both ambush positions. They're oriented inward. They won't see you coming."
Hawk studied the photo. Five seconds. His eyes moved from the yard to the warehouse to the docks, tracing lines I couldn't see but he could. Decades of operations compressed into a five-second assessment.
