Page 52 of Crossfire Creek Siege

Live drone feed from Site Alpha filled the main screen, a wide, overhead view of the facility tucked deep in the woods. The hangar roofs gleamed faintly under the moonlight, ghostly pale in the dark. No movement. No vehicles.

Nothing but stillness.

“Infrared sweep running,” Isla let them know, and she tapped a key. Another monitor blinked red, then blue, then stabilized into a wash of muted tones.

Rena leaned forward, studying it. The screen had no heat signatures. No bodies. No engines.

“Could mean it’s still shielded,” Sheriff Chase remarked.

True, and if so, that meant their attacker likely wanted them there. Wanted to draw them in and have another chance to kill them.

The van’s headlights cut through the darkness, twin beams slicing across the narrow, winding road. It was just after one in the morning, and the world outside felt hollowed out. No traffic, no lights, not even the faint glow of a farmhouse in the distance. Just stretches of oak and cedar crowding in on either side.

Thick with shadows.

Team Two had taken a separate route to reach their own target, which made the emptiness feel even more absolute. No backup in sight. Just them and the night.

On one of the monitors, the GPS tracked their slow progress toward Site Alpha. The glowing line crawled inch by inch, the miles and minutes dragging like molasses. Every turn Cal took seemed to twist them deeper into nowhere, unpaved roads narrowing into dirt paths, hills rising and dropping away again.

“Feels like we’re driving straight into the dark side of the map,” Garrett muttered from across the van, his tone low but not joking.

It did indeed. Rena’s pulse had settled into the rhythm of the road, steady, contained, coiled. Every bend brought them closer to whatever waited out there.

After what seemed an eternity, Cal turned off the road and onto a narrow trail that barely qualified as a lane. Ruts gouged into the clay, fresh tire tracks cutting through the brush. The no-trespassing signs sagged on warped posts, half-hidden by thornbushes. Moonlight skinned the edges of the trees, but the undergrowth drank the light and threw everything into pockets of black.

“We’re about a third of a mile out,” Isla informed them. “Get ready.” Her fingers were already dancing across the keyboard on the console beside her, and the glow lit her face in the rearview like a ghost.

Cal stopped and killed the engine. The sudden quiet felt enormous, only the hiss of a cooling radiator. They all stayed seated for a beat, checking kit, sliding magazines home, listening to one another breathe.

“On foot from here,” Cal said. “Isla’s staying with the van. She’ll run overwatch and comms. You all have trackers and helmet cams.”

Rena felt the now familiar calibration—strap, check, click—moving through muscle memory. Gage was beside her, close enough she could feel the heat off his shoulder. He tapped the side of his vest and nodded toward the pouch where he kept a set of smoke bombs and a couple of flashbangs. She checked hers and felt the reassuring weight of the hardware under her palm.

Garrett hauled a small, hard case forward and cracked it open with the efficiency of someone who’d done this too many times. Inside, the portable jammer glinted like an insect trapped in light.

“If comms go weird,” Garrett said, his voice low, “we’ve got a local shield. Won’t stop everything, but it’ll buy us a second or two if someone’s listening.” He clipped the jammer to his belt with a practiced motion.

Cal’s eyes swept the group. “Grab extra smoke and stun. Better to have more than less. We move slow, silent, and tight. No hero moves. If Isla calls it hot, we back out.”

Isla fed them one last burst of details. Camera angles she’d left running, thermal sweep windows, the drone’s ETA back to orbit if they needed more eyes.

They stepped out of the van together into the night, boots sinking slightly in the soft dirt. Every footfall was careful, deliberate.

Rena’s chest tightened, adrenaline threading through her limbs, but the presence of the team around her steadied the edge. They moved like a single unit, each person an element of a plan that could go sideways in a heartbeat.

The woods quickly swallowed them whole. Branches snagged on their gear, the scent of cedar and damp earth thick in the air. Every sound—the soft crunch of boots on leaves, the faint rustle of wind through brush—felt amplified in the dark.

“Drone’s doing another sweep,” Isla’s voice murmured in Rena’s ear, crisp through the comms. “Altitude three hundred feet. No movement detected.”

Rena tipped her head, searching for the faint hum of the drone, but there was nothing. Good. That meant it was flying high enough not to give away their position. She couldn’t hear the helicopter either, though she had no doubts that Noah was nearby and ready if needed.

They pressed on, moving in staggered formation through the dense undergrowth. Gage took point beside Cal, Sheriff Chase just behind them, Garrett near the middle with the jammer pulsing a low, green light at his hip. Rena brought up the rear, watching their six. The deeper they went, the thicker the shadows became, until even the moonlight struggled to find them.

“Eyes up,” Cal murmured over comms. “We’re close.”

Rena saw it a moment later, the faint gleam of metal through the trees. The facility. A chain-link fence rose out of the darkness, topped with concertina wire that caught flashes of moonlight like tiny knives. Beyond it lay a helipad and two hangars, just as Isla’s feed had shown.

They crouched low, taking cover behind a cluster of scrub. Garrett slid forward, a compact scanner already in his hand. The device pulsed once, twice, and the screen flickered red.