He waved his hand. “It happens.” He nodded to Ayla. “Locklear tells me we have our first mission. I’ve been briefed on the situation. It’s fluid and moving fast.”
She straightened instinctively, everyone, including her, a piece of the machine she now commanded.
Lindstrom gave a professional nod. “Ready to begin when you are, Blair.”
She nodded once. “We’ll keep this brief. Take your seats. We have a hostage on Canadian soil and a ticking clock. Let’s get to work.”
They circled the main table, the operators settling with fluid precision, her own people joining with equal seriousness. Breakneck took a position at the far end, near Ayla’s bank of screens, close enough to see everything, far enough to disappear when he needed to.
Blair stepped forward, palms braced on the table’s edge, feeling command settle over her like a second skin. “This is a joint American-Canadian TOC,” she said, voice steady, and I’m Sergeant Blair Brown from the RCMP’s Wilderness Interdiction & Logistics Division or WILD for short. She turned to Tom. “This is Lieutenant Commander Thomas Lindstrom, US Navy Command. Let’s have everyone introduce themselves.”
There was a quick go-around the table. Blair nodded once the circle was complete, then squared her shoulders.
“We’ve got two targets,” she said. “Jacques Marques, a Canadian border guard, previously embedded in a classified undercover op, has been taken by the cartel. We believe he’s at imminent risk of torture for operational intel.” She paused, letting the seriousness settle across the table. “His supervisor, Inspector Leo Tremblay, is also at risk. Tremblay knows who authorized the operation and who is hunting the cartel. If Marques breaks under torture, Tremblay’s name is the first one they’ll get, and that puts a target squarely on his back.”
Jackie said, “He has a wife and three children. We need to get them out of there.”
A ripple of tension moved through the room, operators sitting just a fraction straighter.
“We intend to take Inspector Tremblay and his family into protective custody immediately,” she continued. “Once we locate Guard Marques, we extract him as well.”
Ice gave her a sharp nod, deference, approval, and readiness in one controlled beat.
“Ayla,” Blair said, “you’re up.”
Ayla’s fingers flew over the console, pulling telemetry, geotags, and timestamps into a coherent feed. Her jaw tightened with focus, braid sliding over her shoulder as she leaned closer to the largest monitor. Multispectral drone footage flickered through filters until only three vehicles remained inside the radius she had isolated. She reminded herself to breathe. This was her first Tier 1 assignment, a sudden pull from her usual rotation, and she could feel the weight of it in the room. Every movement mattered. Every word counted.
“Constable Robinson sent Marques’s supervisor’s address,” she said, voice crisp despite the tight coil of adrenaline filtering through her. “Inspector Tremblay resides two miles south of Kamloops proper. Sending details to your Tactical Mission Computers.”
Blair glanced over. “What about the truck from the checkpoint?”
Ayla switched feeds instantly. Her pulse kicked. She wanted this to be flawless. “Tracked it. RCMP drone three picked up the heat signature fifteen minutes ago when it left the main road. It diverted west.” A new image populated the wall screen. “They’ve taken him out of town.” She narrowed the feed again, letting the resolution settle. “The signature resolves to a fortified compound on the west side, not an isolated building.”
Her thoughts flickered ahead of her words. She needed this assessment right. Tier 1 was watching. The sniper especially. She could feel Breakneck’s gaze on the screen, quiet and too discerning for comfort. She had seen men like him in training, men who understood violence intimately, but he carried something raw beneath the discipline, something that tugged at her attention before she could stop it.
Ayla tightened her focus and expanded the feed, letting the drone’s optics glide over the timber until the structures at the western fringe came into view. The video clarified first, low-light and grainy, followed by the thermal overlay that bled color across the rooftops and the surrounding ground. Her heartbeat jumped once, a quick pulse she controlled with a slow exhale.
“This isn’t an isolated building,” she said quietly. “It’s a compound.”
She steered the drone higher, widening the frame so the full footprint emerged. “Multiple structures. Heavy heat concentration in the central building. Perimeter movement on the north side. The thermal spacing is irregular, consistent with a large number of people.”
Blair stepped closer. “What kind of compound?”
Ayla zoomed in again, shifting from thermal to optical, searching for anything that gave context. The drone cleared the line of older pines and caught the edge of a wide yard. Metal glinted in the low light. Shapes lined the fence.
Breakneck blinked once, subtle, but enough for Ayla to recognize approval when she saw it. Ayla caught that flicker from the corner of her eye. It sent a sharp, bright tremor through her nerves. She shoved it away and focused on the maps.
She couldn’t afford to feel anything right now.
But something in her noted the shape of him anyway, a daring aura that made him magnetic, even bruised, quiet, lethal, watching the feed like he was already calculating how to kill for the mission.
It rattled something in her that was damned annoying.
“Motorcycles,” Ayla said, her voice steady even as the drone zoomed closer and revealed row after row of chrome and steel in the dim yard.
Blair swore under her breath, a quiet, bitten-off sound, followed by groans from the other WILD people, and the newcomer, Constable Robinson. “Of course.” Blair leaned in, eyes narrowing as the image sharpened. “We had suspicions that the Hell’s Eights were working with the cartel. Biker gang, part of the pack that serves the cartel under the command of The Road King, Joaquín Montoya.” She straightened and turned to Iceman, the full gravity of the realization settling across her expression. “This is bad. Very bad. These guys are ruthless, they have their fingers in every kind of criminal enterprise you can imagine, they do the cartel’s dirty work, and they’re almost impossible to infiltrate.”
Jackie spoke up. “We’ve lost two undercovers to them, and we still haven’t been able to gather enough evidence to bring charges against anyone.”
