The convoy was three minutes from the compound secondary entrance when the rear radio channel went to flat static.
Not interference. Not equipment.
I knew it before Caleb told me. The specific quality of the silence was wrong — not the ambient noise of an open frequency, not the crackle of range degradation. The flat clean nothing of a channel that had been cut.
"Rear vehicle," I said.
Caleb was already on the secondary unit. "Rear team, confirm position." Nothing. "Rear team—"
"They know the route," I said.
The word *know* landed in the vehicle like a stone into still water. Damon, beside me, went very still in the way he went still when he was running rapid-fire threat assessment and the numbers had come back bad.
"They can't have the route," Mara said, from the front seat. "Six p
