Two functional vehicles remaining. Three bikes staged at the ranch road. Kai and Rosa outside the perimeter with a medical SUV. The Iron Wolves compound two hours east, outside Billings. The van convoy heading there now, heavy and slow with human cargo.
The workers still in the housing. Twenty people who'd heard a firefight through thin walls and were waiting to find out if they were next.
"How many dead?" My voice was level now. Tank felt it. His hand lowered from my chest. The nod he gave me was barely perceptible—the mechanic's nod that said the engine had caught and the cylinders were firing in order.
"Six Wolves." Axel, from the perimeter. "All down. Blood loss, gunshots. None of ours."
"Axel. I need three men. Shovels from the ranch outbuildings. You take one of the SUVs and the six bodies, and you drive them far from this ranch. Very far. Find a spot with soft ground. Dig deep. No trace. Nothing that connects this operation to us or to this property."
Axel nodded. Turned. "Reyes. Colton. Vasquez."
Three men stepped forward from the perimeter team. Names I hadn't spoken before tonight, faces I'd seen in Church since they'd patched in. They moved toward the ranch buildings without questions, Reyes already eyeing the tool shed.
That left two vehicles: the remaining assault SUV and Kai and Rosa's medical SUV staged outside the perimeter.
I keyed the comms. "Kai. Rosa. Drive to our position. Now."
"Copy. Two minutes." Kai's voice, steady as always.
"The rest of us go after the Wolves." I turned back to the group. Tank had moved two steps back, the shotgun resting against his shoulder, his stance already shifting from the man who'd stopped me to the man who was ready to follow. Tyler had lowered his phone. Ghost had drifted closer, the Glock holstered now, his eyes sharp and waiting. Irish stood with his helmet under one arm, the grin nowhere in sight, the green eyes flat and hard in the gray light.
"We know where their compound is. Two hours east, outside Billings. They took Logan and more than twenty workers in those vans. If we move now, we arrive before they've had time to process anyone or fortify beyond what they already have."
I looked at each of them. Slowly. The way Hawk looked at us before he gave an order—not for dramatic effect, but because reading the room was the difference between a plan that held and a plan that crumbled. Tank first. The massive frame, the shotgun, the jaw set in the expression of a man who had already decided and was waiting for me to say the words. Tyler beside him—phone in his back pocket now, both hands free, the sharp eyes carrying the operational focus that had made him an asset to the FBI before it made him an asset to us. Ghost, pale beneath the grime, but the restlessness gone, replaced by something still and coiled and ready. Irish, the helmet shifting to his other arm, his body already angled toward the ranch road where the bikes waited.
Each one met my gaze. Each one nodded.
"We end the Wolves today."
"Hardware in the lead SUV's trunk." Axel called from the far side of the compound. He jerked his chin toward the vehicle as he loaded a body into the back of his SUV. "RPGs. Grenades. Hawk's been stockpiling since Holt's siege. It's all in there."
I looked toward the eastern hillside. Declan was descending—halfway down now, a silhouette against the lightening sky, the long rifle slung across his back, his feet finding the slope with the unhurried precision of a man who'd spent his career moving through terrain that could kill the careless. He'd be at the vehicles in three minutes.
"Good." I turned toward the worker housing. "Give me two minutes."
The housing unit door was still open.
I stepped through and the smell hit me like a wall. Sweat. Urine. The chemical bite of industrial cleaner layered over something older and worse—the accumulation of fear in an enclosed space, the smell of people who'd lived inside dread for so long it had soaked into the walls. A single unshielded bulb hung from the ceiling on a wire, swinging slightly from the breeze through the open door, casting shadows that moved across the rows of bunks in slow arcs.
Around twenty people inside. Some sat on the lower bunks with their arms wrapped around their knees, rocking slightly. Some pressed against the back wall on the concrete floor, knees drawn up, making themselves as small as possible. Some kneeling, heads down, hands over their ears, as if the gunfire wasstill happening and the silence that had replaced it was simply the pause before the next volley.
Every head came up when I walked in.
I raised my hands. Palms out. The Ka-Bar on my belt, the Desert Eagle holstered. Hands empty and visible.
"No soy su enemigo."
I am not your enemy.
My accent filled the room. The Mexican Spanish my mother had given me, the one thing she'd passed on that no amount of distance or violence had been able to strip away. The workers’ eyes locked onto me. Every pair. The sound of their own language spoken by a man who looked like them, who carried their geography in his face, landing in a room where no one had spoken to them like anything other than inventory for months.
"Me llamo Diego. Estoy luchando contra las personas que los esclavizaron. Ya hemos contactado a las autoridades. Pronto vendrá alguien a ayudarles."
My name is Diego. I am fighting against the people who enslaved you. We have already contacted the authorities. Soon, someone will come to help you.
Silence. The bulb subtly swinging. Shadows moving across the bunks and the faces.
"Si nadie llega en veinticuatro horas, váyanse. La puerta estará abierta. Tomen el camino del este, busquen el pueblo más cercano, pidan ayuda al sheriff."
