Page 102 of Crosscurrent

The click of Wade snapping a magazine into the grip of his Sig Sauer hit Gabe's ears. "We need more shooters. I'll take my chances with his guys. More guns is more guns."

"More guns is more pressure on Cartwright," Cara argued. "She hears a convoy, our people are leverage before his people's boots hit the ground."

"And if one of those badges is bought," Reagan added, "Tom and Skye and Owen are toast. Us too."

"It's not like we're not anyway." Bennion's voice was flat. "I don't see a good way out of this one."

"You're all not wrong." Wade's knee pressed the back of Gabe's seat as the big man shifted. "Looks like it's the A team."

It came together, fast and overlapping, everybody holding one true thing. Gabe made the call out loud, so it was made.

"Cole comes. The guns are worth the chance one of his is a plant. He stages short, half a mile from the cabin road, dark, engines off. Nobody moves until I say." He caught Cara's eyes for half a second. "We go in first. The four of us. The way nobody comes."

Nobody argued. One hand on the wheel, Gabe thumbed the phone and gave Cole the plan, emphasizing the word hold. Cole said copy, brother, and nothing else, because that was Cole.

The launch ramp was where Bennion said it would be, a cracked slab of crumbling concrete slipping down into black water under a dead light. The flatboat was where she said it would be. A dented jon boat chained to a piling. Wade had the chain off in under a minute.

The four of them filled the narrow craft. Wade took the tiller, taking them out low and slow, the little outboard barely above an idle.

Bennion crouched in the bow calling the channel by feel. "Stay left of that dead cypress. Mind the trap floats on your left. Cut here."

The marsh slid past close enough to touch, the air thick and rank and loud with the drone of insect life that never stopped. Then the channel opened and the bay was in front of them, flat and wide, a shade lighter than the dark they'd come through.

"The access'll be on our left," Bennion said. "Head for shore. We'll poke along until we find it. It'll be harder for them to see us if we stay out of the open water."

"Copy that." Wade turned the little boat toward the black shoreline.

"How do you want to do this?" Wade kept his voice under the idle.

Gabe had been constructing the plan the whole way across the bay, out of almost nothing. "There's a utility hatch under the galley where Tom ran his cable up through the floor. It’s out behind the workbench, the one corner of that box nobody will think to guard. We park the boat far enough away they can’t see us approach, then we head along the water.”

Cara fiddled with her seatbelt. “I walked down to that old dock when we got there. There’s plenty of cover on that side of the structure. There are weeds and bushes all the way up to the side of the cabin there.”

Gabe couldn’t help but grin. He was starting to believe they shared a brain sometimes. “We should be able to go up the hatch. Wade, you’re on point. I'm on him. Cara, second gun and my eyes. Reagan, you stay behind the door until I call. Somebody in there is going to need you, and you're no good to them shot."

"And me," Bennion said.

"You hold the boat and the water. Anyone leaves that dock who isn't us, make sure they don't reach the bay."

“What about their boat?” Wade asked. “I’m betting they’ll have one. Can you disable it?”

“Just tell me what to do.” Bennion answered instantly.

“Will do.” Wade tapped Gabe on the shoulder. “We should be getting close now. Slow up.”

Both Gabe and Cara slowed their paddle strokes, careful now not to make a sound. Not that anyone could hear much over the incredible hum of insect life surrounding them.

"Nobody fires," Cara said, "until there's no other answer."

"Until there's no other answer." Gabe nodded. "Then it's loud everywhere at once. Cole rolls, and we stop being quiet and start being fast. We've got one card, surprise. We only get to play that once."

"Four against a house," Reagan said. Not arguing. Just naming it.

Wade’s teeth shone white in the dark. "I've had worse odds."

A long row of weathered, leaning fishing cabins materialized in the dark, aging docks leaning and tilting every which way. Gabe pulled his paddle out of the water and held up a fist. The boat drifted forward a few more feet before the sluggish current caught it, stopping their forward progress.

The stilted boxes sat gray against a tree-choked sky. No lamps. No generators.