When the call ended, Warren nodded once. “Good enough,” he said. Then he turned to his men. “Positions. Now.”
They had maybe forty minutes before the rest of the gang arrived. Every minute mattered. The dark woods came alive at once.
Forty professionals turned the clearing by the abandoned sawmill into a carefully built trap. Men placed diversion charges, assigned sectors of fire, and set up concealed sniper positions. It was tactical work at a high level, and this team knew it cold.
The bound robbers watched in growing dread. They understood now that they had not just doomed themselves. They had put their whole organization on the line. Before dawn, one of the region’s most dangerous crews might stop existing, and nobody in town even knew it yet.
The old sawmill, half-rotted and forgotten in the woods, looked like the skeleton of some giant animal. Broken beams jutted into the moonlight like ribs. The air smelled of wet leaves, rotting wood, and mushrooms.
The silence that settled after the bus engine shut off felt unnatural, as if the forest itself were holding its breath. Major Warren stood in the center of the clearing, studying the setup one last time.
His men—forty nearly invisible shadows—had melted into the terrain with impressive skill. Even knowing where they were, he could barely pick them out. The gang’s captured SUV sat with its hood up, convincingly staged as disabled.
Nearby, the old bus leaned slightly in the muddy track, all its lights off, looking abandoned and vulnerable. “Stone, report,” Warren said softly into his headset.
“Left flank is solid,” came the answer. “We’re in the hazel brush. Road’s covered out to about a hundred and fifty yards. Nothing gets through.”
“Copy. Snipers?” Warren asked.
“Set on the roof of the drying shed,” replied a voice with the call sign Hawk. “Visibility’s good. Wind’s dead. We’re ready.”
Warren nodded to himself. The trap was clean and simple: a classic horseshoe, an open pocket of ground the enemy would walk into on their own. Once they did, there would be no easy way back out.
And the most important part of the whole setup wasn’t the bus or the disabled SUV. It was fear. Fear would do half the work for them.
Warren walked over to the tree where Boar and the others were secured. They sat on the damp ground, shivering in their soaked jackets. Boar, who had once thought of himself as the king of this road, now looked like a beaten stray.
His eyes darted around the darkness, searching for movement, for a chance, for anything. The forest gave him nothing back.
“Listen carefully, Nick,” Warren said, crouching in front of him. His voice was calm, almost friendly, which somehow made it worse. “Your people are going to pull up, see your SUV and the bus, and come over to collect. When they do, you’re going to call out to them.”
