The deputy city manager, a man named Collins, covered for Cat at the city level. Signed permits, buried inspections, steered prosecutors away. Perfect machine.
A clean little system. Gangster, law enforcement, city hall. The classic local triangle that grinds ordinary people into the dirt while nobody can stop it.
I learned all of that in the first three days. Walked the city, talked to people. Most were afraid even to say Cat’s name out loud.
But some talked. Old folks with nothing left to lose. Drunks who didn’t care.
Women crying in kitchens, whispering about sons and husbands beaten half to death for falling behind on payments. I stood in the middle of that city and understood one simple thing. The police were not going to help.
The DA wasn’t going to help. The courts weren’t going to help. The whole machine worked for Cat.
The only person who could stop it was standing in busted prison boots on the corner of Maple and Third, smoking the last cigarette from somebody else’s pack. Former convict. Former special operator.
A man with no money, no connections, not even decent clothes—but with something more useful. Skills that don’t rust. And brothers who don’t quit.
I found a garage. Old, abandoned, out by the warehouse district beyond the railroad tracks. Concrete walls, steel door, roof leaked in one corner but held well enough.
I picked the lock in thirty seconds. Military lock picks I’d kept hidden for years, even through prison, tucked in the sole of a boot. The garage became my base, my operations room.
That’s where the operation that would bury Cat’s empire began. But I couldn’t do it alone. Even with my training, even with my experience, one man against a whole criminal organization is just suicide.
I needed a team. And I knew where to get one. There’s a word people throw around too easily: brotherhood.
Brotherhood in arms. Brothers forever. Nice words for reunions and speeches. But real brotherhood isn’t tested in speeches.
It’s tested by one phone call at three in the morning. One sentence. And what happens next.
I made three calls. Code red. Rally point.
In the twelve years we served together, those words had been used twice. Once in the mountains when we were pinned down and nearly out of ammunition. Once in a hot zone when our team got left without extraction and we spent three days walking out through desert to friendly lines.
Both times those words meant the same thing—everything is bad, but we’re together, and we’ll get through it. Now I said them a third time, and every person who heard them understood without explanation. First I called Sam.
Samuel Parker. Call sign: Bulldog. One look at him explained why I called him first.
Six foot five, 270 pounds of muscle and bad temper. Former explosives specialist on our team. A man who could disarm an IED barehanded in subzero weather and not blink.
His hands were the size of cast-iron skillets. Thick fingers, rough, scarred from wire and detonators, but precise when it came to mechanisms and timing. After the service Sam settled in a neighboring city.
Worked as a bouncer at a nightclub. Lived alone. Never married. Said no woman should have to put up with a man who wakes up in the middle of the night checking for tripwires around the bed.
Didn’t talk much. Hit hard. In combat even our own men were wary of him, because when Bulldog got going, only one person could stop him. Me.
One word: “Stand down.”
And he would, because the team leader said so. He answered on the second ring. Voice low as an idling diesel.
“Yeah.” “Sam, it’s Alpha,” I said. “Code red.
Rally point. Address coming. Need you with the full kit.”
The pause lasted one second. Then Bulldog asked, “When?” “Tomorrow evening.”
“I’ll be there.” Then he hung up. Not one question.
No details. No hesitation. Code red. He’d be there.
Second, I called Ian. Ian Walker.
Call sign: Shade. The opposite of Bulldog. Lean.
Wiry. Not tall. A face so ordinary you’d forget it a minute after talking to him…
