เข้าสู่ระบบSableI heard Jarek say Mateo’s name through the comms before I saw either of them. He did not say it loudly because he did not need to. Every person still moving inside that building understood what it meant.Bryce and I were coming through the western loading corridor when gunfire cracked from the center section. Marcus answered from the east almost at the same time, and for several seconds the reinforced interior became nothing but noise bouncing off concrete.“Jarek?” I said.No answer.I
JarekThe first thing I heard after we killed our engines was Marcus breathing steadily through the radio.Then Sable came through. “West in position.”Brian checked in from the old Luke lane. Max answered from the north. One by one, every piece of the plan settled where it belonged until the compound ahead of us stopped looking like Mateo Serrano’s last stronghold and started looking like a box with every exit closed.I stood behind a low rise south of the main gate with Smitty and three Daggers spread around me.
MarcusBy seven that evening, the war room had stopped looking like a place where we chased Mateo Serrano and started looking like a place where we were going to end him.Nixx had the final property on the center screen, enlarged from recent satellite imagery and county records. The compound sat beyond an old service road west of the highway, fenced on all four sides with one main vehicle gate, a smaller delivery entrance on the west, and enough open ground around the central buildings to make a bad approach expensive.Brian’s old Vipers map lay open beside the laptop.Max stood on the opposite side of the table with Emilio. Tag leaned beside Brian. Stone, Bryce, Sable, Jarek, and I filled the rest of the space while Benny worked a second screen, matching recovered Serrano phones against the tower sector around L7-4.Nobody needed a speech.We needed assignments.Jarek tapped the main building on the screen. “This is the center. County plans show offices here, warehouse here, maintena
MarcusBy the time we regrouped after The Bullet, Brian had three old Vipers maps spread across the war-room table and looked offended by every line.“Luke used this one for years,” he said, dragging a finger across a faded route west of Belen. “Stopped after he started dealing directly with Gino. Nobody touched it after that.”Nixx leaned over the map. “Why?”“Because it was dirty even by Luke standards.”Sable dropped into the chair beside me with fresh medical
JarekThe Bullet had been Black Dagger ground long before Sable came back into my life bleeding, pissed off, and too stubborn to admit she needed somewhere safe. After the clubhouse got hit, she insisted we spread operations between properties instead of giving Mateo one place to watch.Years ago, she had walked through The Bullet’s doors bruised and hunted because Hannah told her she would be safe there. Now she moved through the same bar wearing a Black Daggers patch, deciding how we defended it.By ten-thirty that morning, half the tables had been pushed against the walls. Ammunition, radios, medical kits, and printed route maps covered the pool tables while Sable worked beside Stone and two brothers sorting what would go north for the aggregate-yard hit.We had only gotten a few hours of sleep since the warning Jackal gave us the location, but nobody suggested waiting. The trucks were already loaded. Every minute mattered.I was there because the President belonged where the decis
SableWe found him because running scared made him predictable.For almost three hours after the warning Jackal abandoned his phone, Nixx stitched together traffic cameras and private security feeds along the route west. The bastard changed roads twice and doubled back once, but a motorcycle was hard to hide at three in the morning.By the time Jarek called me into the war room, Nixx had his bike on a camera outside a closed feed store north of Socorro.“He’s heading toward Nowhere?” I asked.“Not exactly.” Nixx enlarged the map. “If he wanted home, he had a cleaner road twenty miles ago. He passed the Jackal routes we know, skipped two Serrano properties, and he’s still cutting southwest.”Marcus leaned over the table. “So he isn’t leading us up.”“Doesn’t look like it.” Nixx traced the road with one finger. “And we’re about to lose him. Maybe twenty miles before the cameras thin out almost completely. After that, he can disappear onto rural roads until he decides to come back out.”







