His voice was quiet, but in that silence it landed like thunder.
“You coming in, or are you just here to let the cold air out?” the major asked dryly. Boar tried to answer, but his throat had gone tight. His brain scrambled for a way out.
Running made no sense. His own men were behind him and wouldn’t understand. Attacking would be suicide. The bat he’d always trusted now felt about as useful as a toothpick against forty rifles.
He swallowed hard, and the nervous bob of his throat gave him away. Outside, the others—still unable to see what was happening—were getting impatient. “Boar, what’s taking so long?” one of them yelled from the rain.
“Move it! Get those people off the bus—we don’t have all night!” another shouted. One of the men, a bald bruiser in a track jacket, stomped up to the bus and pounded on the metal siding. “Hey, driver, kill the engine or I’ll shoot out every tire!” he yelled, trying to peer inside over Boar’s shoulder.
Boar finally found his voice, but it came out thin and strained, nothing like the growl he usually used to scare people. “Guys,” he croaked without turning around, “we’ve got… a problem.”
“What problem?” the bald one snapped, shoving him aside and sticking his head into the bus. “You deaf in there? Hand over the cash—”
The words died in his throat. He saw what Boar had seen.
A forest of black rifle barrels was aimed straight at them. The big operator nearest the door, a man they called Stone, calmly clicked his weapon off safe. In the silence, that metallic sound was as final as a judge’s gavel.
Major Warren tilted his head slightly. “A problem, huh?” he said, looking right into Boar’s widening eyes. “No. The problem was leaving the house tonight. This is just the result.”
Then he made a small motion with one hand. “Bring them in,” he said in the same tone somebody might use to ask for a cup of coffee. The team moved instantly.
Stone lunged forward with startling speed for a man his size. He grabbed Boar by the collar and yanked him into the bus like he weighed nothing. The gang leader flew a few feet down the aisle and hit the floor hard, his bat skittering away.
The bald thug tried to jump back, but another operator was already at the door, blocking the exit as he moved outside. On the rain-soaked road, chaos broke loose. The two remaining men by the SUV saw their buddies disappear into the old bus and finally understood this was not going the way they’d planned.
Still, they didn’t fully grasp how bad it was. In their minds, they were still the predators, and the bus was still supposed to be easy prey. They simply couldn’t process the idea that the prey might hit back hard.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” one of them shouted, yanking a Makarov pistol from his waistband. “I’ll drop every one of you right here!” That was enough. Major Warren’s patience ran out.
The exhaustion of the past weeks and the strain of the mission hardened into cold resolve. These road pirates hadn’t just delayed his men—they had threatened armed professionals who spent their lives protecting other people. “Move,” Warren said into the radio clipped to his shoulder.
The bus doors hissed fully open. From the dark rectangle of the doorway, armed men in camouflage poured out like shadows. No yelling, no wasted motion. They moved in disciplined pairs, taking positions with practiced speed.
Rain drummed on their helmets, blurring their outlines in the dark. The thug with the pistol barely got his shaking arm up before a shot cracked through the night—but it wasn’t his.
The first operator onto the pavement had fired a warning shot into the air, more out of habit and procedure than necessity. Startled, the gunman flinched and jerked the trigger. His round pinged harmlessly off the bus bumper…
