Sterling moved to the center of the room, a satellite image of the ranch already pulled up on the tablet in his hand. “Peterson situation,” he said, the words clipped and precise. “Active surveillance on the eastern fence line. Trail camera mounted on a post with clear line of sight to the main house. Cut wire at the creek crossing, military tread boot prints in the mud. At least two operators, working with patience and discipline.”
He laid it out plainly—no embellishment, no speculation, just the facts as Jackson had given them to me and as I’d passed them to Sterling. The team absorbed it without comment, their faces set in the careful blankness that came from years of hearing bad news and not letting it show.
“Timeline’s recent,” Sterling continued. “Past twenty-four hours, maybe less. Wire’s still shiny where it was cut. Boot prints are holding detail.”
“Surveillance only or movement toward action?” Harker asked, his voice level.
“Surveillance for now,” Sterling said. “But patient surveillance operations don’t stay passive forever. And Eleanor Peterson’s still in custody awaiting trial, which means—“
“Someone else is holding the operational thread,” Torres finished, the marker in his hand leaving a dark line across the whiteboard as he wrote it down. “Either she’s got people on the outside running this or someone else has picked up where she left off.”
Nobody in the room needed a second pass at the math. We’d all seen what Eleanor was capable of—the calculated cruelty, the patient planning, the absolute certainty that her money and connections put her above consequences. We’d helped put her in jail, had sat through the preliminary hearing where the judge had set bail at an amount even she couldn’t meet.
And now someone was watching the ranch. Someone with training, with patience, with a clear target in mind.
“The primary objective,” Sterling said, switching to the Belarus operation without missing a beat, “is the weapons dealer. Three locations, twelve guards minimum, one dealer who’s been running guns through Minsk for six years without getting caught.” He tapped the tablet, bringing up a map of the city with three locations highlighted in red. “Original plan was sequential takedown—one location, then another, then the third. That timeline just got compressed.”
He looked at the team, meeting each set of eyes in turn. “We’re running this as a simultaneous takedown instead. Everyone clears their target at the same time, no pause betweenlocations. We move at 0500, which gives us two hours to finalize the approach and get in position.”
The team nodded as one—no questions, no pushback, just the immediate acceptance of a changed timeline.
He picked up his phone and made the call to his superiors without hesitating, his voice flat and clipped as he laid out the revised plan. “Yes, sir. Compressed timeline. Simultaneous instead of sequential. Yes, we’re aware of the risks. Yes, we’re prepared to execute. The primary objective remains unchanged.”
The kind of call that took ninety seconds because he’d already decided before he dialed. The kind where the person on the other end of the line said “Make it happen” instead of asking questions.
When he hung up, he looked at the team again, his expression giving away nothing. “We move at 0500,” he said. “Cruz is running comms from the secondary location. Harker and Nguyen take the north house, Rivera and Torres the east, I’ll handle the south. Everyone in position by 0445. Questions?”
There were none. The team had been running together for three years, had cleared dozens of buildings in conditions far worse than a Belarus winter. They knew their roles, knew the risks, knew exactly what was at stake.
They also knew why the timeline had changed. You could see it in the careful way they avoided looking at me, in how Harker made a point of checking my communications board before heading for the door.
They knew about Jackson—had pieced it together from the three nights he’d spent at the ranch house while I was there, from the way I’d taken the eastern watch position every time, the one with the clearest view of the farmhouse across the road.
They knew, and they were moving anyway. Not because they’d been ordered to, but because it was the right call. Becausethe sooner we finished in Belarus, the sooner I could get on a plane to Montana.
I felt the locked-up pressure behind my sternum ease by a fraction—not gone, but enough to breathe around—and started pulling up the dealer’s radio frequency map on my board. Three locations, five entry points, twelve guards minimum.
I’d need to track each team simultaneously, keep the channels clear, make sure the dealer’s people couldn’t coordinate a response when things went loud.
Basic communications work. The kind I’d done a hundred times in conditions far worse than a Belarus winter.
Behind me, the team was already moving—gathering gear, checking weapons, running through mental checklists of approach routes and entry points.
Sterling moved among them, speaking quietly, making adjustments to the plan with quick gestures and shorter sentences. This close to movement, words were unnecessary.
We all knew the drill.
I finished with the frequency map and moved to the signal jammer, checking the battery and range with quick, practiced movements. The dealer was running alternating patterns on his primary and secondary channels—a smart move that would have made him harder to track if we’d been running the original timeline. As it was, we’d jam both simultaneously, cutting his people off from each other before they knew what was happening.
“Comms check,” I said, my voice carrying to the far corner of the room without being raised. “One, two, three.”
Five responses came back immediately—“Clear” from Harker, “Loud” from Nguyen, “Copy” from Rivera, “Five by five” from Torres, and a single nod from Sterling that counted as confirmation.
We were good. Board was set, team was ready, timeline was locked. In two hours, we’d move on the dealer’s network. By dawn, we’d have him in custody. By noon, I’d be on a plane to Montana.
And Jackson—he’d be waiting, whether he knew it or not.
I checked the time—0345—and started the countdown in my head. Two hours to target. Then home.
