The round slammed into the rock six inches from where my head had been a half-second earlier. The impact sent a spray of granite dust and fragments into the air, sharp chips biting my cheek and the back of my hand. I ducked left, pulling Logan down with me. Ghost flattened against the boulder. Axel rolled behind the adjacent rock.
"What the hell was that?!" Hawk's voice crackled sharply through the speaker, a demand more than a question.
"We've been spotted." I pressed my back against the granite. My heart hammering. The dust still settling around us.
"Spur. Shooting from the watchtower." Declan's voice came, unhurried, steady. "I can take the sh?—"
Another crack. The round hit the rock shielding Declan, close enough to spray fragments across his scope. He rolled sideways behind the granite, fast, flat. The ricochet sang into the empty air behind us. Declan couldn't return fire without exposing himself. Spur had their position locked.
"MOTHERFUCKER!" Irish's voice ripped across the hilltop. "Dec, you good?!"
"Positive. Don't move, Sean." Steady. Even after nearly swallowing a round.
More shots followed. Erratic bursts snapping past our position, higher this time, chewing into the rock face above us. Spur had given the order. Multiple shooters now. They were trying to pin us down.
"We're engaging." I steadied my voice through the rain of bullets cracking onto our rocky shields. "If my instinct is right, this is a real skeleton crew. Not more than the men they brought to the ranch. Something is wrong inside the Wolves and we're going to find out what it is when we bring that compound down."
"In case the Wolves are heading to Nevada," Hawk said, his voice tight and controlled, "I'll keep eyes on the compound here. We'll be ready."
"Copy. Blade out."
I pocketed the phone. Looked at Logan. He was crouched beside me, his back against the granite, the rifle Axel had given him braced against his right shoulder—the uninjured one. His face was calm. The blue eyes steady despite the bullets snapping overhead.
"Hand me an RPG."
Logan reached behind the boulder where we'd staged the heavy armament—the cache from the SUV's trunk that Hawk had been stockpiling since Holt's siege. He pulled the launcher free, checked the tube, and passed it to me.
The weight settled onto my shoulder. Familiar from the army, though heavier than I remembered. I shifted position behind the boulder, finding a gap between the rocks to look through. Spur's last shot had come from the tower platform—northeast corner, six hundred yards out. The trajectory was burned into my mind.
I twisted to the opposite side of the boulder from where Spur's first round had nearly taken my head. Rose into a half-crouch. Found the watchtower in the weapon's sight. The platform. The corrugated roof. The figure shooting beneath it.
I pulled the trigger.
The backblast kicked dirt and grass into a cloud behind me. The rocket left the tube with a sound that was less an explosion and more a sustained rip—the air itself tearing open along themissile's path. The projectile crossed six hundred yards in just over a second, a white contrail burning through the morning air.
It hit the watchtower in the upper section, dead center of the platform.
The explosion was enormous. A fireball bloomed outward from the impact point, orange and black, the shockwave reaching us a full second after the light—a deep percussive thud that I felt in my chest and teeth. The corrugated roof peeled upward like paper. The wooden supports cracked.
A body—large, unmistakable—launched from the platform, arms spinning, and hit the ground thirty feet from the tower's base.
Spur. Alive or dead, I couldn't tell from here. But out of the tower.
The tower groaned. The upper section, where the rocket had hit, was burning. The structural supports on the impact side gave way, and the tower began to lean—slowly at first, then accelerating, the wood and metal cracking in a sustained shriek as the structure folded at its break point and toppled like a felled tree. It hit the ground inside the compound walls with a crash that sent dust billowing outward through the fence.
"Blow the gates!" I dropped the spent launcher. Drew the Desert Eagle. "Radio Tank—vans to the base of the hill. We're going in!" I turned to Irish, crouched behind the rocks ten feet below us. "Irish! Keep the last two RPGs. You and Declan stay as overwatch. Fire only when we're clear of the blast zone, and radio before every shot. You see Wolves heading back on that road, you signal immediately, fire, slow them down."
Irish nodded. His green eyes flat and locked in.
"Declan—you know what to do."
"Already doing it." Declan's voice came from between the rocks. His eye was back on the scope.
Logan stood beside me. The rifle on his right shoulder. The bandage on his left was dark with dried blood.
"You should stay with Irish." I said it knowing the answer before the words left my mouth.
"No." His blue eyes held mine. "I can move my shoulder. Kai bandaged it. I'm not staying behind."
