Page 133 of Under Arthur’s Protection

The one who’d nodded waved us over to show us two extra sets of gear set apart from the rest. His eyes told me he was at least ten years my senior, but he clearly hadn’t skipped a gym day in a while.

“One,” he said, and tapped a small patch on his shoulder with the number. Black text on black kit, only visible up close. “And you can call them Two through Eight. Keeps the radios clean.”

I shook his hand. “You know the job?”

“We do,” One said. “Command is yours?”

“It is.”

He looked me up and down. He knew who his orders had come from, but did he know who I was? Would he complain about answering to Penn Jr.? Whatever he made of me, his answer was a nod. “Good.”

The men staged their gear in silence. Running teams of my own had taught me that the smallest habits were the most revealing. My father had sent veterans who’d worked together before.

In my first year on Task Force Legacy, my father’s word had put me in charge of men like these, and I’d spent every year since asking what I’d have been without his word. The fist squeezed around my heart, reminding me I had no time for those questions tonight.

For the next few minutes, Lance and I adjusted our vests, checked for rattles as we moved, and memorized the position of each piece of gear. One of the men—whose patch said he was Four—had two drones up before I’d found the med kit. Once we were done, Four waved us over to one of the vehicles.

“Four men outside.” Four had a rugged laptop open in the rear of the vehicle. It mirrored the feeds from his control unit, alongside the architectural diagrams from my father. “One rover walking a loop, roughly ninety seconds of blind time per circuit. Two static at the west doors, one on the east.”

“Windows?”

“Lit on the ground floor, south and west. And that.” He zoomed in. One bright room on the far side, which appeared to be a full kitchen. “Chow time.”

More good luck. “East wing?”

“Dark upstairs. One lamp on the ground floor, could be a hall light left on. The men at the doors haven’t moved. One just finished a cigarette.”

“So they’re bored,” Lance said.

“Bored men with a captive in the house.” I turned to the huddle. “A place like this goes years without a bad night. Normally those men would be asleep on their feet. Tonight they’re holding someone, so assume they’re alert. We have blueprints and two cameras in the sky, but we don’t have eyes inside the house.”

Heads nodded around me.

“Plan A.” I laid out our approach, avoiding the kitchen—the drone feed didn’t show Gwen with them. “We go in quiet, try to find her and get her out with as few contacts as possible. Lance and three men with me through the west service door. Two of you monitor the kitchen entry and move if needed. Your best two snipers on overwatch, one at the chapel rise and one at the hedgerow opposite. Four flies both birds from here. If they’re smart, they’ve put her upstairs, away from the exits. Treat it as a guess, not intelligence.”

“And Plan B?” asked One.

“Scare the shit out of them.”

“Rules of engagement?” One’s question told me these men were prepared to use lethal force.

“Nobody dies tonight. Anyone who fights, you put him down and cuff him. Anyone who runs, let the fog keep him.”

“Cuffs are risky.” One shifted his weight. “It means an alarm goes up faster, and we need to watch our backs as well as what’s in front of us.”

“I know the price. The rule holds. Nobody dies.”

He weighed that and frowned, but said, “Your op.”

“Count on five trained men at minimum. One of them came out of Pendragon—Rick Younge.” None of the men blinked at the name. “He’ll know your playbook, because it used to be his. If you meet a man who moves like you move, that’s him. Don’t give him a fair fight. Everyone else is a noncombatant until they prove otherwise.”

More nods.

“Last thing.” I approached Four’s laptop and pointed at the floor plan. “We’ve got a safe room under the main hall. If an alarm goes, they’ll likely fall back to it. If they take her down with them, tonight turns into a siege we lose. So quiet is critical. From the first man we put down, every check-in he misses is a clock running against us.”

“Do we put a man on that door?” asked one of the men.

“It’s in the center of the house. It’s too risky. But if the night gets loud, that’s our target.”