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I watched the last of the vehicles roll to a dusty halt. The smoke cleared, leaving them in a rough semi-circle. I picked Dietz from the crowd again, zooming out a bit to follow him.

“KANE’S IN POSITION.”

That part I had to rely on Maddox for. Kane was positioned three-hundred feet directly beneath me, tucked into the terrain. From the original ridge, Maddox could see him. I couldn’t.

I hope this works…

It certainly wasn’t ideal. ‘Hoping’ for something wasn’t in our playbook — planning was. Hope was for the weak, the lazy, the ill-prepared. Of course we always did have prayer, but was the last page, the final resort. And it generally didn’t do any better than hope when it came to determining outcomes.

Person by person I scanned the crowd, thumbing the ‘save’ button on my optics for each. I was taking pictures of the bad guys. Digital images that would become records proving their involvement tonight… provided someone were to ever download the scans.

That of course, would all depend on who won and who lost. What was the old adage? History is always written by the victors?

My eyes fell back on Dietz. He looked stiff. Nervous. Jumpy…

Dammit Dietz, stay chill.

Mentally I projected the words. If he heard them, it didn’t show in his body language. I was happy to see he was still carrying his weapon. If they hadn’t taken it yet, they couldn’t suspect too much on his end.

Then… next to Dietz…

“I HAVE ALACARD.”

I said the words low, as if trying to keep them from Dallas. But of course that was silly. Dallas had an earpiece too.

It was strange, how calm she’d gone after learning who killed Connor. As if the knowledge had alleviated the anger, instead of releasing all the pent up rage, sorrow, and other emotions.

I knew better though. If anything, she was bottling it up even more. It was something she’d eventually have to talk about, or at the very least let out. And the longer she went in silence…

“DIETZ IS MOVING.”

Maddox’s last phrase caused me to drop my binoculars. I grabbed my weapon and looked through the scope, where everything seemed smaller and further away, yet just as clear. Finally having a target reticle on these assholes felt pretty damned good. I switched from target to target, assigning each of them a value. Assessing each in terms of threat level.

Basically figuring out which of them I’d do first.

“BE READY…”

I’d been ready for months. For just over a year, to be precise.

“WAIT FOR THE SIGNAL…”

I couldn’t be more ready.

“DIETZ IS—”

BOOM!

An explosion rattled the rough stone valley, sending up a thick plume of dust. It was followed by another, more familiar sound:

BBBRRRRAAAAPPP!

Gunshots! Fully automatic fire.

The restless milling in the canyon suddenly became frantic, as half the men dropped instantly to their bellies. The other half scrambled for cover.

“FUCK!” I heard Maddox swear over our channel.

More dust swirled upwards, whipping into the air. Too much dust. Someone had set something off — a concussion grenade, or maybe a small explosive device. In the confusion I lost everyone; Dietz, Alacard, the guy with the Kord 12.7mm I wanted to nail first. No, scratch that. The guy I needed to nail first, because if I didn’t get him the Russian heavy machine gun would tear us all to shreds.