The mist rising off the stone gorge at 0610 on Friday morning was thick enough to swallow the pine canopy whole. From the high mountain ridge overlooking the eleven-mile marker, the world below looked like a silent, slate-gray ocean.
Avery pressed her body against the damp earth beneath a sprawling outcrop of ferns, her tactical visor tracking the heat signatures descending the winding pass. Beside her, Jake was a silent, monolithic shadow, his breathing so perfectly regulated that not even a wolf's sharp ears could have picked it up over the rushing water below.
Down on the narrow asphalt, the headlamps of the three-vehicle convoy pierced the fog. The lead enforcer scout rolled across the obsolete timbers of the logging bridge first, its suspension groaning under the weight. Fifty yards
