Chapter 15

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Nick stepped out of the pack house to be greeted by utter chaos.

"What the hell is happening here?" he demanded to no one in particular.

"Not sure alpha" one of his pack members responded. They all gathered to see the chaos.

The house assigned to the Roma wolves that they used as operations base was afoot with activity. No, not activity it was more like they were acting like the house was on fire. The way they were running out if it.

People were running out of the building their hands bundled with guns, armored vests and other equipment.

Men jumped in to the vehicles and pressed the metal to the pedal as the vehicles screamed in to life and lurched forward in maniacal speed.

Some more men pooled out of the house and shifted in to wolves, shredding their cloths and raced out of the pack territory.

Nick moved forward to one of the men.

"What the hell is happing?"

The man looked at the intrusion and was about to dismiss him when he recognized the alpha.

Nobody heard what the man told the alpha but as soon as he spoke the Roma wolf shifted and hightailed leaving a trail of dust behind him.

It took a minute to get his bearings together but Nick turned to his pack and shouted.

"Shift" He commanded to his pack members.

And one after the other they started shifting, heeding to the alpha command.

He himself shifted, without undressing. Destroying his clothes in the process as well.

Once shifted he let out a howl that tore through his pack territory as every wolf stopped what he or she was doing as the heard their alpha's call.

The call to heed. The call of war.

Something was very wrong.

***

Alex and Evelyn were sitting in the SUV being driven by one of the Roma guards, they were being driven to Joe's their regular breakfast joint before Alex dropped her off at school.

They had just started ten minutes before and had got out of the pack territory and heading towards to city where Evelyn's school was located. There was a twenty mile road from the pack to the city. They had just settled in on the road when the SUV in front of them slowed and their SUV followed suit.

They came to a standstill.

Alex tapped on the drivers shoulder "What happened?"

Before the driver could respond the two way radio which the driver carried came to life.

"We have a blockage on the road. A tree uprooted."

Alex frowned. Extended his hand to the driver indicating him to hand over the radio. Once in his hand he pressed the button to open a communication channel.

"Anything unusual?"

"Negative. Control" Came back the respond.

Control was a code name for a person in command of the unit and right now Alex was in command.

"Any unusual weather last night?" Alex asked in to the radio.

"Negative. Control." Came the response.

Till now, none of them had got down of the SUV's. Everyone was sitting in the convoys.

Alex fiddled with the two way radio for a minute, deep in thought and then crisply responded.

"Code three. I repeat we have a code three. All units acknowledge code three"

"Acknowledging Code three command" came back the response over the radio.

The driver jumped in to action, he pressed a button on a device installed on the dashboard under the audio system of the car and a small box installed underneath the vehicle came to life, a small light started blinking on it.

The driver pulled out a cell phone and dialed a number and put it on speaker on the dashboard and while it was ringing he bent down and pulled two small boxes from under his seat. One box he calmly handed over to Alex.

The phone was picked up "This is Base two" the voice on the other end answered.

"We have a Code three in progress" The driver spoke at the phone which was on speaker phone lying on the dashboard of the vehicle. His hands were busy opening the box.

"Acknowledged" the voice responded and hung up. The phone beeped indicating the other end hung up and fell silent.

Evelyn silently watched all this in confusion but apprehension mounting by the minute. While Alex was calm...too calm for her taste, something was wrong.

"What is code three, Alex?" she asked him softly.

He opened the box and it revealed a pair of guns. He out one gun from the box and ejected the magazine, checked it and satisfied with what he saw pushed the magazine back in with an audible click indicating the magazine was correctly plugged in place.

He repeated this same activity with the other gun.

Evelyn's eyes widened when the guns came in to view and her stomach clenched. Her throat went dry and refused to work. She sucked in deep breath and unconsciously leaned back from Alex.

If Alex noticed this he didn't comment. He turned around and bent over the passenger seat of the SUV to the rear and pulled out two vests. One he handed it over to the driver who wasted no time putting it over him. The other Alex wore it himself.

The two way radio crackled to life. "This is base one can you RTB?" Base one was located in Nick's pack. Base two was located at the hotel where Max was staying. RTB meant return to base, so base one was asking the convoy to turn around and come back to Nick's territory. Which would be a logical step to take.

Alex took it and spoke in to it "Negative. That is what they would expect. We will stand ground."

"Acknowledged control. Reinforcements have already left ETA is ten minutes."

"Acknowledged. Base one"

The vest has small pockets which he filled with spare magazines from the box and then finally turned towards Evelyn, who was now huddled in one corner of the seat.

He looked at her calmly and said "Code 3 means ambush. Whatever you do. Do not step out of the vehicle." And then he raised his voice "Do you understand me?" his tone left no room for argument. She had never seen this side of Alex before and was totally unprepared to handle him. She gave him a jerky nod.

He turned around. Collected his guns, opened the door and got out.

***

They were all huddled over a map.

Beta Crawford had a pen in his hand and was marking stuff and explaining it to the group huddled around him.

"There is a twenty mile stretch between the pack territory and the city. The traffic is minimal early in the morning when the convoy leaves. He said pointing to the rout on the map. There is only one road to reach the city and the convoy leaves every day at the same time." He said highlighting the road with a red marker.

"Now we have enough pictures of the road thanks to surveillance of our human assets. There is a sweet spot ten miles out, where the forest on either side of the road is thick and gives us enough cover" He circled that area on the map with a blue marker.

"Are we clear till now?" He asked his audience. As they dutifully nodded.

"Good. That was the easy part" he said and added "now can you tell me how we would attack?"

"We surround the convoy in the area you mentioned and jump on them. We know it's a four car convoy and our targets might me in any one of the vehicles, with high possibility of car two or three as car one and four would be too exposed. So we split up, one group focus our attacks on car two and the other will focus on car one and four." One of Crawford's men said.

"Good, sound logic" Crawford said and the man beamed with pride.

"But, the moment they realize there is an attack what is stopping them from speeding away?"

"We can block the road, put up an overturned car or something. Make it look like an accident."

Crawford shook his head in negativity dismissing the idea. He picked up the pictures of the SUV's the private investigator tool and threw it towards the guy who voiced out the idea.

"Take a look at the SUV's, what do you see?"

He looked over and said "Seems regular to me" and passed the pictures around for the others in the group to see.

"They are Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG SUV's tough sons of bitches. They would ram through any debris on road" Crawford added.

"What about a tree?" One more member of his team added, he was looking at a surveillance picture that was sent by the human. This was of the terrain and the terrain had some freaking huge trees on both sides of the road.

"What about this tree?" he added and handed over the picture. Crawford looked at the tree, it was huge and there was no way anything would get through it. He looked at the mile marking on top of the picture, one more little tip by their human source. On the top corner of the picture in hand writing was scribbled eight miles from city.

He looked at the map that would be twelve miles from the alpha's pack. Perfect.

"That tree is perfect" Crawford exclaimed happily and added "How long would it take to cut it down?"

One of the member who was a carpenter and had experience with such stuff looked at it for a moment and said "with some heavy duty chainsaws, an hour tops. All we have to do it cut it in such a way that it falls on the road. The best thing about trees this big is that once we cut half way through it would crumble on its own weight."

"We will need to cut it down in thirty minutes" Crawford said "The longer the tree is on the road the higher the possibility that someone would notice it and call it out. We need the time between the tree to block the road and the convoy passing as minimal as possible."

"Thirty minutes is what you get, I need you to work with that" Crawford said looking at the carpenter.

"Will do it beta" the carpenter promised "will not let you down"

"I know" Crawford added. "Thank you"

"But what is stopping them from simply turning around and driving back?" one his members asked.

"They won't" he confidently said and smiled. "I have a plan for that" and went ahead and explained the plan.

They revised the plan a couple more times. Some of them went out to procure the necessary hardware. The others went and laid down to sleep, they had an interesting night ahead.

***

The door swung open and Adrian rushed in. Max paused mid bite as he saw Adrian rush in.

"What's up?" He asked him.

Adrian walked over and pulled Maxwell from the dining table. "I need you to come with me."

Maxwell did not resist he was just dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of boxers.

"Where are we going?" he asked Adrian.

"Will tell you on the way, but we need to move" by now he was already dragged out of the room and to the elevator.

"I don't think I am dressed appropriately where ever you are planning to take me" Max quipped.

Adrian did not respond and instead pulled Max in to the elevator as it opened. The ride down was a silent one and as the elevator opened more men flanked them.

For the first time Max realized something was afoot.

"Adrian" he asked his tone turning serious, his senses alert.

"On the way Max" Adrian curtly cut him out. As they moved in the lobby, SUV's screeched to stop at the entrance and Adrian and Max quickly bundled in to one as they pulled out in a hurry.

One thing Max noticed once inside the SUV was radio chatter.

"ETA is seven minutes..."

"....control is standing ground."

"...we expecting imminent engagement"

"....stand by for visual from location, we have one of our folks streaming over FaceTime"

"What the hell is happening Adrian?" Max demanded in all seriousness. He was in full alert mode. His gut was clenching with anticipation of what Adrian would tell.

"Maxwell...." Adrian hesitated having an indication of how he would react, but told him nevertheless because he deserved to know "Evelyn's convoy is under attack"

The SUV's sped away, breaking every speed limit racing out of the city....

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