Harlo’s words stayed between them while Kira’s hand rested on the false panel of the medical bag.
She did not open it immediately.
“Seventy-plus,” she repeated.
“Estimated,” Harlo said. “The intelligence picture is incomplete.”
Kira looked at him. “And the eighteen Marines?”
“Still outside. Their communications are intermittent. We lost two perimeter sensors eleven minutes ago.”
That was enough.
Kira opened the compartment.
The rifle inside was wrapped in oilcloth, compact enough to disappear beneath the medical supplies. She lifted it carefully, checked the action, and laid it across the bunker table. Her hands were steady, but Harlo noticed the hesitation in her eyes.
“Three years,” he said.
“Three years without firing at anyone.”
“I remember.”
“No. You remember the paperwork.”
Harlo did not answer.
Kira assembled the rifle without ceremony. Then she pulled a folded optic from beneath the false bottom and secured it to the rail. She moved like someone returning to a language she had spent years refusing to speak.
Outside, the wind pushed snow against the bunker wall.
Then the radio crackled.
“Bunker, this is Cole. We’ve got movement north.”
Kira froze.
Harlo reached for the handset, but she stopped him.
“How far?”
Brennan answered through static. “Maybe eight hundred yards. Three heat signatures. Could be four.”
Kira looked toward the ceiling.
“They’re testing the perimeter.”
“That’s what I think,” Brennan said.
A second voice came over the radio, sharper and younger.
“Contact!”
The transmission erupted into static.
Kira was already moving.
Harlo caught her arm. “You can’t go out there.”
She looked down at his hand.
“I’m not going out there.”
She stepped to the bunker window.
“I’m going up.”
The old limp returned the instant she left the medical bunker.
Brennan saw it from twenty yards away and almost shouted at her to get back inside. Then he noticed the rifle case in her hand.
His expression changed.
“What the hell?”
Kira kept walking.
“Where’s your highest point?”
“The communications shed.”
“Roof?”
“Flat enough.”
“Good.”
Brennan stared at her. “Kira, you can’t even—”
She dropped the limp.
It happened so quickly that Brennan stopped mid-sentence.
Kira crossed the snow with a speed that did not belong to the woman he had escorted to the bunker an hour earlier. She climbed the short service ladder, settled behind the communications shed, and unfolded the rifle.
Brennan looked at Harlo.
Harlo said nothing.
The first muzzle flash appeared beyond the tree line.
Kira’s rifle moved once.
A distant figure dropped behind the snowbank.
Brennan heard himself whisper, “No way.”
A second flash appeared farther east.
Kira adjusted less than an inch.
Another shot.
Another figure disappeared from view.
The Marines around Brennan stared toward the tree line, trying to understand what had just happened.
Then a third hostile position opened fire.
Kira did not shoot immediately.
She watched.
She tracked the rhythm of the flashes, the delay between them, and the way snow lifted from the ground when rounds struck near the defensive line.
“Three shooters,” she said.
Brennan looked up. “You sure?”
“Four. The fourth isn’t firing yet.”
“How do you know?”
Kira pointed toward a stand of black spruce.
“Because someone keeps moving the branches without firing.”
Brennan turned.
Nothing looked unusual.
Then Kira fired.
A branch jerked.
The fourth position went silent.
The radio erupted.
“North sector clear!”
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Kira lowered the rifle.
She had stopped three immediate threats, but she knew better than anyone that the first exchange was rarely the real attack.
She turned toward Harlo.
“How did they get this close?”
Harlo’s expression tightened.
“Someone showed them the way.”
That changed the problem.
The Marines had been prepared for an outside assault. They had not been prepared for someone inside the position to compromise their defenses.
Kira climbed down from the shed.
Brennan met her at the bottom.
“Who are you?”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“Someone who was supposed to stay dead.”
Before he could ask another question, the radio crackled again.
This time the voice was from inside the perimeter.
“Medical bunker! We’ve got wounded!”
Kira ran.
No limp.
She reached the bunker in seconds and dropped beside the first Marine, who had taken fragments to the shoulder and upper arm. Another Marine sat against the wall, blood soaking through his sleeve. A third was conscious but barely responsive.
Kira worked without hesitation.
Pressure. Airway. Tourniquet. Assessment.
The movements came back with the same precision as the rifle.
“You,” she told Brennan, “hold this pressure. Don’t let up unless I tell you.”
He obeyed.
“You,” she said to another Marine, “start an IV.”
Nobody questioned her authority anymore.
Harlo watched from the doorway.
Kira had spent three years trying to become a person who only saved lives.
Now the two halves of her past were standing in the same room.
A sniper who could see a threat before anyone else did.
A medic who could keep a wounded Marine alive after everyone else thought the situation was lost.
Then the lights went out.
The bunker became black.
Someone swore.
Kira immediately reached for the emergency lamp.
It did not turn on.
“Power was cut,” Harlo said.
Kira listened.
Not to the wounded Marines.
Not to the wind.
To the silence outside.
“Everybody down.”
A burst of gunfire ripped across the position.
The bunker wall shook.
Kira pushed one of the wounded Marines beneath the table and moved toward the narrow rear vent.
She could hear boots outside.
Too close.
“They’ve breached the outer line,” Brennan said.
“No,” Kira answered.
She looked toward Harlo.
“They’re already inside.”
A shadow passed across the bunker entrance.
Then the door opened.
A Marine in winter gear stepped through with his weapon raised.
Brennan nearly fired.
Kira stopped him with one hand.
“Wait.”
The man removed his face covering.
It was Lieutenant Mason Vale, one of the officers assigned to the exercise.
His face was pale.
“They’re coming from the east storage road,” he said. “We lost the south position.”
Kira studied him.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Twenty. Maybe more.”
“And how did you get here?”
Vale hesitated.
Kira noticed the snow on his shoulders.
Only one shoulder was wet.
His boots were nearly clean.
He had not crossed the open ground recently.
He had come through a covered route.
The same route the attackers had used.
Kira raised her rifle.
Vale’s eyes widened.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking at your boots.”
He moved.
Kira fired once.
The round struck the weapon from his hands, sending it skidding across the bunker floor.
Brennan stared at her.
Vale dropped to his knees.
“I didn’t betray anyone.”
“Then tell me who opened the road.”
Vale said nothing.
Harlo stepped forward.
“Mason.”
The lieutenant looked at him.
And that was when Kira understood.
Harlo had recognized him too.
The bunker went quiet.
Outside, the attackers were closing in.
Inside, the Marines had just discovered that their greatest vulnerability was not the enemy beyond the tree line.
It was the person who had been trusted to guide them through the snow.
Kira picked up the fallen radio.
“All units, this is Angel Six.”
Brennan looked at her sharply.
The name seemed to travel through the bunker before the radio transmission did.
“You know that call sign?” one of the wounded Marines whispered.
Brennan did not answer.
Kira continued.
“Fall back to the medical position. Do not pursue. Repeat, do not pursue.”
A Marine responded through static.
“Angel Six, who authorized—”
Kira interrupted.
“I did.”
Silence.
Then the answer came.
“Copy.”
Kira looked through the bunker window.
Snow swept across the mountainside, hiding movement and distance.
She knew what the attackers expected.
Panic.
Confusion.
A desperate attempt to hold every position at once.
Instead, she gave them something they had not planned for.
A defensive line built around eighteen living Marines, one compromised route, and a shooter who could see through the storm.
The next wave emerged from the trees.
Kira fired.
One shot.
Then another.
Then another.
Each round came from a different angle, forcing the attackers to believe there were multiple shooters on the ridge.
They changed direction.
Kira anticipated it.
She shifted before they did.
A man sprinted toward the western barricade.
One shot stopped him.
Two others moved together through a narrow gap.
Kira waited until they separated.
Then she fired twice.
Brennan watched the impossible pattern unfold.
“She’s doing it again,” he said.
Harlo nodded.
“She’s protecting the Marines.”
But Kira knew ammunition was finite.
So was time.
She lowered the rifle and looked at the wounded men behind her.
The next decision would not be about how many enemies she could stop.
It would be about how many Marines she could move before the position collapsed.
“Brennan,” she said, “get the wounded ready to evacuate.”
“In this weather?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Kira pointed toward the old maintenance tunnel beneath the ridge.
“There.”
Harlo frowned.
“That tunnel was sealed years ago.”
Kira looked at him.
“Not completely.”
She had noticed the vent when she entered the bunker.
The same vent she had inspected in less than two seconds.
The same structural detail Brennan had mistaken for simple caution.
It was not caution.
It was reconnaissance.
Kira had been studying the bunker before she ever knew she would need it.
The Marines began moving.
One by one, they carried the wounded toward the hidden route.
Kira remained behind.
Brennan stopped at the tunnel entrance.
“You’re coming.”
She shook her head.
“Not yet.”
“Kira—”
“If they follow us, they’ll find eighteen Marines in a tunnel with nowhere to run.”
Brennan understood.
She was staying behind to make the attackers believe the position was still occupied.
Harlo approached her.
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
Kira smiled without humor.
“I know.”
She handed him the radio.
“That’s why you’re going with them.”
Then she turned back toward the snow.
For three years, Elena Vance had lived as Kira Ashford because she believed the only way to honor Jackson Reed was to stop being Angel Six.
But Jackson’s final words had never been about killing.
They had been about saving the person beside him.
Tonight, eighteen Marines were beside her.
Kira settled behind the rifle again.
The storm thickened.
The attackers advanced.
And somewhere beyond the white curtain of snow, another figure raised a weapon toward the bunker.
Kira saw the movement before anyone else could.
She exhaled.
Then the mountain flashed white.
