Page 1 of Echo: Spark
1
RHETT KANE
Dawn breaks cold over the Montana warehouse, ice crystals catching the first light through reinforced windows like scattered diamonds on black velvet.
The monitors cast their familiar blue glow across the concrete floor—six screens showing nothing but empty roads, frozen fields stretching toward distant mountains, and the perimeter fence standing untouched against the pale sky. I adjust the angle on camera three, a habit more than necessity, my fingers moving across the controls with the precision of ritual. Six months of this routine has carved grooves into my movements, each morning beginning with the same systematic check, the same quiet inventory of a world that hasn't found me yet.
The warehouse breathes around me, twenty thousand square feet of carefully orchestrated paranoia. Motion sensors ping their steady rhythm like electronic heartbeats. The backup generator hums its low note from the corner, a mechanical purr that vibrates through the concrete beneath my boots. Everything exactly as I left it eight hours ago when sleep finally claimed me on the narrow cot in the corner, another night survived through the mathematics of vigilance.
My boots echo against concrete as I move to the equipment cache, each footfall sharp in the cavernous space. Three rifles cleaned yesterday, cleaned again this morning, the ritual soothing in its completeness. Ammunition sorted by caliber, counted twice, brass cases gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights. The satellite phone charged to full, its encryption protocols updated weekly through channels that officially don't exist but carry the weight of old promises and older debts. Four different vehicles registered to four different identities, each with go-bags containing cash, weapons, and documents that would pass any inspection by men who don't ask too many questions.
The weight of it settles familiar across my shoulders—not burden but purpose distilled to its essence, refined through months of careful operational planning. Survival as methodology. Isolation as tactic. Every exit mapped, every contingent operation planned, every possibility accounted for except the one that matters: what comes after survival becomes its own kind of death.
My fingers trace the edge of a tactical vest, Kevlar plates positioned precisely where they need to be, the fabric worn smooth from handling. The warehouse holds enough supplies for six more months, maybe eight if I stretch, but the math of survival has started to feel like counting down instead of up. Each day marked off on an invisible calendar that leads nowhere except tomorrow's identical dawn.
The satellite phone chirps. My hand finds it before the second ring, muscle memory faster than conscious thought, fingers wrapping around the device like a weapon. The encryption readout confirms the source—Tommy Walsh, burning through three proxy servers and a military-grade scrambler, digital suspicion that speaks of panic even before I hear the voice.
"Kane, they found Stryker in Whitefish." Tommy's voice cracks across the connection, words tumbling over each other like stones down a hillside.
"It’s Viper Solutions. Brennan's leading them personally. Two million bounty. He's—Christ, Kane, Stryker’s too drunk to get himself out. Been holed up in some shit bar for three weeks straight."
The name hits like ice water flooding my veins. Brennan. He runs the kind of cut-rate operation clients hire when they want brutality with plausible deniability. He uses pliers and blowtorches and leaves signatures meant to bury bodies and reputations alike.
My jaw tightens, molars grinding as the tactical computer in my brain starts running calculations, probability matrices spinning through scenarios that all end in blood.
Tommy adds, urgent and clipped, that there’s already a geofence set up on a rural vet clinic east of town.
"How long?" My voice comes out steady despite the cold spreading through my chest.
“It started after two county calls flagged a chemical odor from that location. They’ve been tracing the vet truck’s movements for hours—a small, noisy breadcrumb that put them on a predictable route.”
"Maybe six hours before they move. They're being careful, setting up the perimeter like it's a military operation. But Kane…" Tommy's breath catches, static crackling. "It's about Kinshasa. That Belgian executive Stryker killed, the one using kids in his mines. Turns out he had friends. Rich friends with long memories. The kind who hire Brennan when they want someone to suffer before they die."
Of course. Stryker's particular brand of justice—effective, brutal, and completely outside the lines that civilized men pretend exist. The executive had been using children as youngas seven in cobalt mines, working them until they dropped, tiny hands pulling wealth from darkness while their childhoods died in tunnels. Stryker's response had been predictably direct: the executive plus his entire security detail, painted across the walls of a Kinshasa hotel suite in patterns that spoke of methodical rage. No one mourned the dead, but someone always mourns the money that dies with them.
I move to the desk where a single photograph sits in a plain metal frame, the only personal item in this vast building of tactical sterility. Crete, three years ago. My team intact, alive, grinning at the camera like they'd live forever, like the world couldn't touch them. My thumb finds Stryker's face without looking—the big man squeezed into the middle, arms around everyone's shoulders, that crooked smile that appeared after three beers and a successful op, the expression of a man who believed in tomorrow.
The memory surfaces unbidden, crystal clear despite the months I've spent trying to bury it. Mosul, air thick with concrete dust and cordite, the taste of destruction coating my tongue. The building was collapsing around us, secondary explosions erupting from a hidden weapons cache we hadn’t known was there. Reality fractured into chaos as the air turned unbreathable, every gasp burning my lungs. Rubble pinned me down, earth, steel, and concrete pressing in until it felt as though the world itself meant to claim me.. Then Stryker's hands, bleeding through shredded gloves, pulling debris away piece by piece with the methodical patience of a man who refuses to accept loss. Stryker's voice, steady despite the shrapnel in his shoulder, despite the blood running down his face: "Not leaving you, brother. Not happening."
The math is simple, carved in blood and brotherhood. Blood debt. The kind that doesn't calculate risk or probability or thetactical inadvisability of walking into what's obviously a trap baited with the life of a man who saved mine.
I set the photograph down, decision already made, the weight of it settling in my bones like gravity finding its proper direction. The warehouse feels different now—not a fortress but a cage I've been waiting for an excuse to escape, walls that have protected me within a kind of living death.
My fingers find the old frequency on the satellite phone, a number that exists in no database, no record, nowhere except the memory of men who traffic in different kinds of silence, who understand that some services can't be bought, only traded between souls marked by the same wars.
Three rings. Then Dutch's voice, gravel and cigarette smoke given sound: "Thought you'd gone native up there."
"I need a distraction at the old lumber mill. North side of Whitefish. Big enough to draw every gun in town, every badge, every curious eye."
Dutch laughs, the sound like rocks in a tumbler, like old machinery finding its rhythm. "That's a big ask for a ghost."
"Tonight. Whatever your rate is, I'll double it." My voice carries the weight of desperation disguised as certainty.
Silence stretches across the encrypted connection. Then: "This about Stryker?"
"Yes."
"Should have said so from the start. No charge for family business. Give me four hours to make some calls."
