The Threat Assessment:
Vehicles: Three unidentified SUVs.
Location: Corner of Route 7 and the mountain road junction, under the old rail bridge.
Tactics: Barriers laid across the road to bottleneck the column.
Force: Twelve to fifteen men armed with heavy weapons.
Orders: Wait for the bikes. Nobody rides out.
“They kept saying 'the mayor said,'” Leo explained, his voice trembling slightly. “Like, ‘The mayor said make it look like a gang thing.’ And, ‘The mayor said make sure nobody finds the bikes.’” He paused. “Mayor Sterling.”
Riker went completely still. “You heard that name specifically?”
“Yes, sir. Three times. I wrote it down.”
Leo produced a folded piece of notebook paper from his pocket. On it, in the careful block letters of a child who understood the importance of accuracy, were names, times, and fragments of conversation.
Riker read it, folded it carefully, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his cut. He looked at the rust-eaten bicycle, then at the bruise on the boy’s shoulder. He thought about what it cost a nine-year-old in pure nerve to ride twenty minutes up a mountain road to warn a dozen Hells Angels.
He paused, staring at the screen. “Silas Vance is the man running this. I want Vance intact and talking.”
One of his brothers racked the slide of his sidearm and grinned in the darkness. “Rangers lead the way.”
The rail service trail was narrow, unlit, and not designed for eleven men moving in single file. But it put them on the ridge directly above the rail bridge in eighteen minutes of careful, silent movement.
Below them, the ambush team was still waiting. The drone feed showed their thermal signatures perfectly still, their confidence entirely intact. That confidence was about to expire.
The man watching from the bridge was focused entirely on the empty road. Riker moved down from the ridge like a shadow, reaching the sniper before the man even registered a shift in the air. What followed was quick, disciplined, and brutally quiet—close-quarters control designed to end resistance without fatal damage.
Riker lowered the unconscious man to the concrete and slipped off the mercenary's communication headset, pressing the earpiece to his own ear.