Page 17

The quarry comes into view as we crest the last hill before the access road, the main structure darker than the surrounding sky, smoke already beginning to thread from somewhere inside the compound in thin ribbons that suggest Deadwood has started their own contingency.

They expected us.

I pull up and the column stops behind me with practiced discipline, engines dropping to idle.

Miller comes forward on foot to my left, and I give him the nod without words because we have already discussed everything there is to discuss. He moves back toward the tactical group, four men in dark gear who peel away from the main column in silence and go left along the fence line toward the outer lookout positions.

The objective is simple: no alarms reach the interior before we are already inside.

Morgan's trucks go right immediately after, swinging wide on the lower access road to block the single vehicle exit from the compound's south end. Three trucks parked heavy across the road guarantees nothing rolls out that we have not approved. Morgan climbs out of the lead truck and posts his men without ceremony.

Luke is in the second vehicle running what he is always running — systems he is not supposed to be in, camera feeds that are not ours, a signal tap on Deadwood's internal communication line that he cracked two hours ago. His voice comes through the earpiece low and efficient: four confirmed bodies at exterior positions, two have already been neutralized by Miller's advance team, the main building holds eight to ten, Doctor Drake's vehicle is confirmed in the compound, west side, which matches what Leah told me and confirms the route he will attempt when this goes bad for him.

I give the signal.

Grave moves without waiting for a second instruction, taking the central approach with the prospects, the group moving at a controlled sprint across open ground toward the main entrance of the compound building.

He is carrying something that has been building in him since the parking lot last night, and I understand that better than I should. Grief and fury, and neither of them needs managing right now. They need directing.

This is what they were built for.

The flashbang hits the main entrance a half-second before Grave reaches it and the concussion rolls back across the open ground in a wave I feel in my sternum from twenty yards back.

Then we are moving, all of us, the remaining members flooding through the breach points with the controlled urgency of people who have done versions of this before and understand that momentum is the only thing that matters in the next three minutes.

Inside the compound the scale of Deadwood's desperation becomes immediately visible.

The main building is a large industrial space that has been used as both storage and operations center, and whatever records or inventory they have been holding in here, they attempted to start burning perhaps twenty minutes ago. Fires are working at the far wall of the space, crates alight, flame crawling upward in a slow, thick progression that has not yet become structural but will within the hour.

Smoke is already sitting heavy at the ceiling, the air acrid and gray, and the interior light is half-flame and half the flat gray that bleeds in through damaged upper windows.

The first exchange of gunfire happens immediately.

The sound in the concrete space is enormous — not like gunfire outdoors, where the sound disperses, but something physical and enclosing, each shot bouncing off walls and floor and ceiling in rapid succession until the room is filled with overlapping echo.

Two Wolves take the left corridor, driving Deadwood's response to the north end of the building. Grave's team takes the center. I go right.

Two men at the first junction, both armed, both already moving toward cover when I come around the corner. The first has his weapon half-raised when I put two rounds into his chest, and the second makes the decision to close distance rather than fire, which is either desperation or the absence of options, and he covers ground fast.

We collide at the corridor intersection and I drive my elbow into his jaw on the way down, feel the impact travel up through my arm, and follow him to the floor. He is bigger than he looked from distance and he fights back with the energy of someone who understands there is nothing behind him worth retreating to.

He gets a hand on my weapon arm and tries to turn the barrel. I crack my forearm across his throat with enough force that his grip goes slack and his body's priorities shift without consulting him, and when he stops being a functional problem I stand and move forward without looking back at him.

My magazine runs dry in the next corridor when two more come from a side door simultaneously, and I go hand-to-hand for the six seconds it takes to drive one of them into the wall hard enough to split the plaster behind his skull, come back around on the second, and end the engagement with a round from the backup piece before he can do more than swing wide.

Luke's voice in my ear: Drake's moving. West maintenance tunnel. Two minutes, maybe less.

I change direction.

The west maintenance tunnel is accessed through a service door at the back of the building's lower level, a narrow staircase that descends into a passage cut through the quarry's natural stone foundation, the walls rough-hewn and wet with snowmelt that comes through the rock in thin threads.

The air changes immediately when I come through the door, colder, damper, the smell of stone and standing water and underneath it, sharp and recent, gasoline.

The tunnel is lit by a single emergency strip running along the ceiling at intervals, the light unsteady and orange-tinted, casting everything in a color that belongs to warning signs.

I hear him before I see him, footsteps fast and uneven on wet stone, the sound bouncing back toward me from the bend ahead.

I come around the corner and he is there.