Page 44 of The ARC Unit: Breach

I waited.

“How often?”

“Less than Jackal would like.”

Movement near the concrete training building caught my attention.

Bear stood beside a reinforced practice door wearing a plate carrier over a dark green shirt. Even with the gear, he moved carefully around the frame, checking the hinges and lock before choosing anything from the equipment laid out nearby.

“I thought the point was to break it,” I said.

“The point is to get through it. Those aren’t always the same thing.”

Bear rejected the heavy ram first and reached for a Halligan tool.

Raven nodded toward him. “Bear handles mechanical and explosive entry. Doors, gates, barriers, whatever somebody has decided should stay closed.”

“Because he’s huge.”

“That helps. It’s not why he’s good at it.”

Bear wedged the tool into the practice frame and worked the lock with controlled force rather than swinging wildly. The door gave after a few hard movements. He looked toward someone outside my line of sight and shook his head.

“What?”

“Wolf asked whether he wanted the shotgun.”

“How do you know?”

“Comms.”

Raven tapped the headset he’d given me and a low voice came through the channel.

“Reset it. Reinforced frame next.”

Wolf.

I looked around.

“Where is he?”

“Coming.”

I heard him before I saw him.

His steps came from behind the training building, slower than the pace everyone else used while carrying heavy gear but somehow more commanding because of it. Wolf rounded the corner in full kit, black tactical pants beneath a plate carrier loaded with magazines and equipment, the HK416A5 slung across his chest. His head was covered now, and the tactical mask over his lower face carried the diagonal stitched mark I’d noticed the day before.

He looked different in gear. Larger somehow, though nothing about his body had changed. The weight across his chest and hips should have made him look cumbersome, but the equipment seemed to settle into the way he moved rather than fight it.

His shoulders remained loose, his hands calm, every step placed with the same certainty I had noticed inside the compound. The effect annoyed me because I had spent most of breakfast being angry at him.

I could hate a man and still recognize that he looked very good carrying a gun.

Wolf saw Raven and me near the marked observation line.

“Why is she here?”

“Tour,” Raven said.