It would have to be enough.
The last stretch of the mission ran tight and clean. I worked my communications board from a rented building two blocks off the target site—a narrow room that smelled like mildew and old cigarettes, three monitors, a rack of radio equipment with green LEDs blinking in sequence, and a window I’d kept covered with a strip of black tape since day one.
Outside, Belarus was coming awake—early morning light seeping around the edges of the tape, the distant sound of traffic building as the city started its day. Inside, the room was bathed in the blue-green glow of the monitors, my reflection visible in the darkened screen when I leaned forward to adjust a frequency.
The dealer’s network was spread across three locations in the northeastern quadrant of Minsk—a warehouse by the river, an apartment building in the old town, and a shipping container yard on the eastern outskirts. Twelve guards minimum, rotating in eight-hour shifts, communicating on alternating frequencies that changed every six hours.
Smart operational security for someone running weapons through a country that officially didn’t allow private arms sales.
Not smart enough.
I’d spent the past seventy-two hours mapping his communications pattern—tracking the frequency shifts, identifying the guard rotation, building a complete picture of how his network moved and talked and coordinated.
Now that map was spread across my three monitors, each location a cluster of moving dots, each guard a numbered position with a call sign and a radio frequency.
“Team One, this is Control,” I said, my voice steady on the primary channel. “You are clear to approach the north entry point. Target is moving between positions three and four. Estimate thirty seconds to clear your sight line.”
“Copy, Control,” Harker’s voice came back, clipped and professional. “Moving now.”
On the left monitor, a blue dot began moving toward the warehouse—Harker and Nguyen approaching from the north, using the cover of a delivery truck to mask their movement.
I watched their progress with half my attention, the other half on the middle screen where Rivera and Torres were positioning themselves at the apartment building’s service entrance.
“Team Two, hold position,” I said, tracking the guard moving past the service door. “Target in your sight line. Wait for my mark.”
“Team Two, holding,” Rivera confirmed, his voice barely above a whisper.
I switched to the third channel, where Sterling was approaching the shipping container yard from the south. “Team Three, you are clear to the first checkpoint. No movement on your approach vector.”
“Copy,” Sterling said, the single word carrying the weight of complete understanding.
I threaded my team through the dealer’s network using intercepted radio traffic and real-time frequency jamming, keeping the dealers blind to each other’s positions until it was too late to coordinate a response.
It was delicate work—too much jamming would alert the guards that something was wrong, too little would let themcommunicate—but it was the kind of problem I’d been solving since my first deployment.
The kind that usually kept my full attention.
Except today, my mind kept mapping flight paths west—Belarus to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Chicago, Chicago to Billings, Billings to the ranch. I caught myself doing it between frequency shifts, between position updates, between the hundred small calculations that kept three separate entry teams moving in perfect synchronization.
I didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Not with the image of that cellular trail camera fixed in my head—the lens aimed directly at the main drive, the zip ties still shiny where they’d been cut.
Not with the knowledge that Jackson was at that farmhouse alone, with ten acres between him and the nearest neighbor.
Not with the memory of his voice on the phone—level and controlled as he’d laid out the operational details, but with something underneath it that had made my chest tight. Concern, maybe. Or fear he wasn’t willing to name.
“Team One, you are clear to entry point,” I said, forcing my attention back to the monitors. “Guard rotation in three minutes. You have a ninety-second window.”
“Copy,” Harker said. “Moving now.”
On the screen, the blue dot advanced toward the warehouse door, then paused—Harker checking the lock, Nguyen covering the approach. Thirty seconds passed, then forty-five, then the dot moved again, disappearing into the building as Harker picked the lock and slipped inside.
“Team One is in,” I said, switching to the secondary channel. “Team Two, you are clear. Guard moving away from your position.”
“Team Two moving,” Rivera confirmed.
The middle monitor showed two green dots advancing toward the service entrance—Rivera and Torres using the coverof a maintenance cart to approach unseen. They reached the door in perfect synchronization, Torres keeping watch while Rivera worked the lock with practiced movements.
“Team Three, hold position,” I said, tracking movement at the container yard. “Two guards approaching from the east. Estimate sixty seconds to clear.”
