I glance around at the assembling fighters. Despite the fact that we determined a morning raid would be wisest – against Gabe’s considerable disagreement – their faces are drawn and tired. No one, with the exception of Rattlesnake, slept last night.

  “Bumble Bee, as soon as Team One goes active, you come in.”

  The stocky pilot, still sitting astride his four wheeler gives me a two-fingered salute. Despite his overt cynicism over the long night of planning, he has followed orders well so far this morning. Beneath the outer layer of his morose misgivings, I see a cold focus in his stare. He is ready.

  If only we weren’t going blind. Danielle hasn’t answered my calls for the last 12 hours. Given how specific her earlier information was, I try not to imagine what that implies about her location or what her subsequent silence could portend. It could be a trap. It’s probably a trap.

  “Move out,” I say, and the rest of us begin moving forward, our bodies cloaked in light camouflage jackets and pants. The supplies we requested were waiting for us in two large rental trucks at the airport. Those trucks now sit four miles back at the fork in the road that turns into the woods.

  The walk toward the house is slow. I feel the tight cinch of my bulletproof vest with each deep breath. My body yearns to run, to ignite the conflict that must come, but I keep my face still. Next to me, Chain looks forward, the rifle case thumping softly across his back. The air is already warming, and I feel the first trickles of sweat run down my back. The trees are thick around us and alive with foliage. I appreciate the abundance of cover.

  I continuously consult my phone. Our feet cross the distance. Closer to Maya. Closer to the end of this journey. I hold up my hand again, and the team huddles around me. Rattlesnake is breathing hard, her face flushed. We’re 100 yards away from the home now. I’ve judged that we can’t move any closer without the angels picking up on our auras.

  A dozen guards outside the compound. That’s what Danielle had said, but that was yesterday. If she got discovered and they know we’re coming…or worse, if she fed me false information on purpose. I take a deep breath. Even assuming we haven’t been betrayed, this is going to be a highly risky approach. Bloody. And I need to keep the Totem members as safe as possible. This is about my family, not theirs. The distraction Gabe suggested must work better than it has any right to.

  They won’t take the bait, I think, but I don’t have a better option.

  I turn and review everyone’s condition. Sweat beads across Bear’s forehead, but his gaze is steady when I meet his eyes. He impressed me on the plane and through the night with his considered suggestions. He’s got a good tactical mind. Chain meets my eyes briefly and looks away. Rattlesnake doesn’t look nearly as nervous as she should.

  “Team One, go,” I say.

  Gabe holds out his fist to Bear. The older man is taken off guard, but then he smiles and gives my brother a fist bump.

  “Give ‘em hell, Yogi. And you,” he turns to Rattlesnake, swoops her into his arms, and lays a kiss on her cheek. She twists in his grip and lays a heavy kiss right on his lips.

  “For good luck,” she says.

  “Damn, girl,” Gabe gasps with a grin.

  Rattlesnake and Bear make their way north. It’ll take them at least twenty minutes to make a wide circuit toward the front of the house while staying out of the visual and audio radius of the guards. They both carry rifle cases on their backs along with small backpacks filled with extra ammo.

  “Watch for traps,” I say. Probably unnecessary for Bear, but Rattlesnake is too relaxed. She could get sloppy. The small bag clutched in Bear’s hand holds two bricks of Semtex and the wires for direct detonation.

  I’ve concluded that Gabe obtained the explosives from the weapons dealer we visited two days ago. The fact that he didn’t see fit to tell me about the transaction is worrying but not something I can afford to address now.

  I glance at my watch. 6:53 a.m.

  “Your turn,” I say to Rain and Chain.

  Rain’s breath comes out in uneven pants. High nerves. Understandable, but not ideal for a role that requires calm and precision. I remind myself that he has shown other impressive talents. Chain stands straight, chin up. I recognize that mask of placidity that he’s trying to wear. Sometimes it helps to hide behind stoicism.

  “Take your time and stay out of view. You don’t need to rush it,” I tell them.

  They both nod. It could all go so terribly wrong if either of them gets disoriented, wanders too close to the house and is seen before our diversion starts.

  “Hey, my man, you’ve been…” Gabe holds out a hand, and Rain grasps it. “Damn. Four wheelers. You actually got them. Should’a asked for the grenade launchers.” He gives Rain a slap on the back. “I’m officially changing your name from Bird Brain to David Copperfield.”

  Rain smiles a small smile. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “And you,” Gabe turns to Chain, “don’t get your crazy ass shot, K?”

  Chain raises an eyebrow. “Not on my agenda.”

  Gabe gives him a fist bump then looks up at me warily as if expecting a lecture on professional behavior. But Rain is more composed, Chain more relaxed. Gabe has no idea that he actually possesses excellent leadership qualities. He can connect with people in a way that I never could. I realize that I’ve been remiss in expressing this to him.

  “Team two, out,” I say, forcing my focus on the present. The two men break off, Rain moving west, Chain going east. Their rifle cases thump, thump quietly against their backs, and their camouflaged shapes soon meld within the shaded tree trunks.

  My watch says 6:57 a.m.

  Now the waiting. Gabe shuffles his feet, making a little pit in the loose ground soil. I feel sweat building across my chest. Is this how Odysseus felt clinging to the underside of a giant sheep as the thick fingers of the blinded cyclops groped every wooly back searching for him and his men? Did every second of waiting wind his fear tighter and tighter until it felt like the softest breeze could snap him in half?

  “Tammy would love this,” Gabe says to me. “She’d already be running toward the house, screaming her head off, gun plowing bullets in front of her.”

  He must have muted his phone, because I don’t hear his voice echo through my earpiece. I focus on his words. Tammy wouldn’t be that strategically foolish, I think, even as her face and all the accompanying pain hits me hard.

  I understand Gabe’s sentiment, though. Tammy was brave. Too brave. And brash and invincible…until she wasn’t. I look at my brother, wondering if this is a punishment. He knows what it costs me to hear her name.

  “We can’t forget her,” he says as if he heard my unvoiced question. “I won’t.” Gabe’s face is open, eyes bright with energy and anticipation. I don’t see anger or resentment. Maybe this isn’t a punishment. Maybe it’s an olive branch.

  I mute my phone. “She would insist on going in, of course,” I say. “Taking the most dangerous position.” The position I’m taking, actually.

  Gabe nods. “And she’d be chewing gum. Chewing, chewing, chewing.”

  “And if Mom were here, she’d say…”

  “The angels will smell that!” Gabe says, pitching his voice soft and stern, a decent impression of our mother.

  “Even the smallest mistake could get you killed.” We say the worn refrain together.

  “Tammy would just smile and keep chewing. She knew Mom hated the sound,” I say, and I wonder what our mother would think of us now, preparing for such a foolish charge, putting so many lives in danger for a sister who might be cold and dead. Mom believed in rationality, in saving the many over the few. But for her own daughter, wouldn’t she risk everything?

  I would.

  “And you would be shaking in your boots,” Gabe says with a laugh.

  “I’d be back with the car,” I say. I was a different person before Tammy died, so resentful of the mission our parents forced upon us. So afraid to die. After I stabbed that knife into my sister’s heart, I never feared death again. Only the night. Only sleep.

  “Team One, in position,” Bear says.

  I hastily un-mute my phone. “Team Two?”

  “Almost there,” Rain says, a huff of exertion in his voice.

  “Five minutes for me,” Chain growls.

  “Team Two, wait for my signal.”

  “Check.”

  “Check.”

  “Bumble Bee?”

  “Still breathing,” he says from his position a mile back with the four wheelers and the medical kit.

  “Be ready.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Team One, you’re a go. Stand back.”

  Bear doesn’t dignify that with a response.

  Two seconds later – BOOM!

  The explosion is louder than I expected, and the shockwave comes rumbling after, churning the air and the ground beneath my boots. The echo crackles over the forest, and a cloud of birds hurtles into the sky screeching in confused outrage.

  My heart picks up, and I work to steady it. Deep, even breaths. Detached emotions.

  “Here.” Gabe’s black backpack is on the ground, unzipped. He holds something out to me. A small device with an antenna. I instantly recognize what it is. I remember to mute my phone before I answer.

  “I don’t need that,” I tell him.

  “I asked my guy for two remote detonators,” he says. “You need to take the other one, in case I…” He doesn’t finish, and I’m glad he doesn’t. He didn’t discuss this on the plane or last night, and I know why. It was important to show the others confidence.

  “I won’t need to use it,” I say, but I take the second detonator anyway, because maybe I will, and if I do and Gabe is dead, I already know that I’ll stay in the house with him. Then I hear it, the faint shout of voices far away to the north.

  They took the bait, at least some of them. From the voices, at least three. It’s a foolish division of their forces for such an obvious ambush. Gabe and I unmute our phones.

  “Three coming our way,” Bear hisses.

  “Bumble Bee, get to Team One.”

  “Roger that,” he calls.

  Now that we’ve played our first hand, it won’t matter if the angels hear the growl of the four wheeler’s engine. The coordinates of all our phones are synced to each other, so Bumble Bee should get right to them. Towing a second four wheeler behind him, he’ll have to go slow, though.

  Gabe pulls in a deep breath. We wait.

  Then, BANG, BANG, BANG! The tight spit of gunfire starts. I assume that it’s from Team One as the angels get into range.

  Shouts. Cries. BANG! BANG! BANG!

  I don’t know if Bear and Rattlesnake are still firing or the angels are returning fire.

  “Team Two, move in,” I hiss. “Don’t leave the treeline. Go slow!”

  “Check.”

  “Check.”

  I imagine Rain on the western side of the house and Chain on the east, crawling in closer on their bellies, the brand new Security Pro bulletproof vests chafing with each wiggle. If the angels had tactical training or decent common sense, they would maintain coverage of the entire perimeter, but my hope is that they gather to the north where Bear and Rattlesnake are keeping up the diversion with sporadic gunfire as they fall back toward Bumble Bee’s rescue.

  More waiting. The hardest kind. Knowing the battle has started but your part still has yet to be played. I wonder if Bear and Rattlesnake are alive.

  “In position,” Rain hisses. “They’re sending another group off. Three. But more are coming out of the house. I count…eight guarding the premises.”

  Gabe and I glance at each other. The numbers are lower than Danielle’s report. Are they keeping guards in reserve inside the house?

  “Team Two, don’t let anyone else off the premises,” I say. “Team One, as soon as you get to the four wheeler, double back and take up position. Time to seal them in.”

  “In position,” Chain whispers, his voice hoarse.

  “I see you,” Bumble Bee says.

  “Two, positions?” I bark.

  “Three at the front. Two on my side. Just one in the back.”

  “Team One,” I start.

  “We’re getting the hell outta’ here,” Rattlesnake cuts me off. “We put two down. Other one’s wounded. Bee, help me with him.”

  “I’m fine,” Bear wheezes.

  Injured but conscious. I push away the pang of regret. We all knew the risks. “Rattlesnake, get to your second position.” She was stationed north, at the front of the house. “Don’t let anyone leave. Bumble Bee, get Bear back to the trucks, then tow in another four wheeler.”

  With Bear out, our net of containment will have a gaping hole at the southern point. War now has a possible avenue of escape, but killing him was never my first priority. The rest of our plan will have to go forward even with less suppressing fire.

  In my ear, all their voices respond to my instructions.

  “Roger that.”

  “Check.”

  “Going.”

  I feel a moment of pride that our little team is holding together. That orders are being followed. I hear Bear groan, and the pride vanishes.

  “I see the wings. Comin’ in fast,” Rattlesnake hollers. “Get that thing moving!”

  I check my watch again. 7:01 a.m.

  “Team Two, you’re up,” I say. “Whenever you’re…”

  BOOM! The rifle shot from the east is big and deep, like it came from the belly of the earth.

  A second later, BOOM! From the west.

  Our turn. “Team Three going in,” I say.

  Gabe stands ready at my shoulder. Always at my shoulder. Unafraid. Lucky hat in place, now strategically smeared brown with mud. I blink and see him through all the years, through all the missions, and then farther back when he was just a twig of a boy begging for another piggyback ride. I remember him tied to the oak tree in the front yard, tears crawling out of his big eyes, Tammy’s jump ropes burning marks into his arms.

  He glances over. Our eyes meet for just a moment. We don’t need words.

  BOOM! Another shot from the east.

  “Go,” I hiss, and we both run forward.

  The trees shield us for the first 50 yards, but then we’re out in the open. A martyr’s run. My vest is strapped tight, but it still jostles under my jacket. Gabe and I angle away from each other to give them two separate moving targets. I have both of my Glocks out and ready.

  I see figures moving along the old, wooden house, hear the hollering. One figure lays in shrubby grass surrounded by bright, bright blood.

  They should have at least put up a fence, I think randomly as I rush forward. That would have at least slowed us down.

  BOOM! Another angel goes down as Chain makes a killing shot from his position in the trees 50 yards away. A spill of wild shots comes from both sides of the house.

  BOOM! From the west. The angels are getting tagged on both sides. Divide and conquer. They are clearly distracted, unsure of where the shots are coming from, but then a holler. Someone sees us coming. A tall, bulky angel rushing toward one side of the house, stops at the call, sees us, and swings his gun toward me. Another angel comes around to the back. Their guns rattle. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Hard, fast breaths pour out of me. Adrenaline. Have to keep moving forward. Bullets kick around us. 30 yards to go. I’m a little ahead of Gabe. Forward. Forward. Forward.

  I feel the impact as an explosion of pain in my midsection. Then I’m sitting on the ground trying to breathe, my hand already probing. I expect wetness.

  “Tarren!” Gabe’s cry is raw.

  “Got the vest. Keep moving!” I yell back at him. I push my fingers through the hole in my jacket and feel the dent in the plate of the vest, confirming the truth of my statement. The pain is stunning. It echoes through me. Tears prickle the edges of my eyes. Every breath is a new stab. Might have cracked a rib. I take the pain, accept it, absorb it, and then push to my feet.

  Forward.

  “I’m getting heavy fire,” Rain cries. Then, “Damn.”

  “Fall back,” I manage. A bullet hits the ground in front of me, sending up a puff of dirt.

  BOOM!

  One of the defenders falls off the roof with a squawk. Clearly, the angels aren’t wearing vests. Gabe is close enough now to start laying down fire as he runs. His shots are erratic, but it forces the two angels in front of us to scatter. One goes down clutching his leg.

  “We’re at the depot.” Bear’s voice wavers.

  “Looks like I’m as stupid as the rest of you,” Bumble Bee says. “I’m going out to take Bear’s position. Here. Put pressure on that. Lots of gauze.”

  “Tow in another four wheeler,” I say. “If anyone is wounded, your first priority is transport. Rain?”

  “Just a flesh wound,” he huffs.

  Gabe pauses, aims, and his next shot is a good one. The man screeching and clutching his leg pitches backwards, his cries silenced.

  More shots. The angels are taking refuge on the side of the house.

  “BOOM!”

  “BOOM!” Nearly identical rifle shots from east and west, and our enemies drop down, some crawling toward the front of the house.

  Gabe is ten yards ahead of me now. My steps are slow but gaining speed. A bullet whizzes close, and then I hear the noise of an empty chamber. I spot a middle-aged female angel with short brunette hair kneeling in an open doorway. Her face is blanched with fear as she grabs for a fresh clip and drops it. All she has to do is roll or dive out of the doorway, but this is what fear does to the untrained. Gabe and I both stop, both aim. She goes down with only the whisper of a whimper.

  Gabe makes it to the house, shoots at the bulky angel to force him back around the side of the house for cover, then elbows through a small window near the ground that will drop him directly into the basement. In one swift motion, he sweeps his pack off his back and throws it through the window.

  I’m mildly surprised that the glass isn’t reinforced, but I really shouldn’t be. So far, our enemies have shown nothing short of incompetence. Did War really believe he could just put guns in the hands of his followers and turn them into elite soldiers? Or is it a trap? As Gabe kicks in the rest of the glass around the window, the bulky angel peeks around the corner.