“The first thing we need to do is set up a multi-layered defense,” Nathan says, looking around the room at us, his new band of recruits. We might not be eager, but at least we're determined. “The first level is detection, the second is our main reaction level, and the final level is our static defenses.”

“No offense, Nathan, but why not just get the hell out of this place?” Katrina asks.

“I have a couple of reasons,” Nathan says. “First, whoever this guy is, he knows more about us than we know about him. I would still like to know how he tracked you guys to that clinic. The van isn't exactly uncommon. I know that Melissa may have given this man information, but that does not explain it all to me.”

“I'm more worried about how good this guy is with knives,” Jackson says, and I have to nod in agreement. “He was fast. Freaky fucking fast, excuse my language.”

“I agree,” Katrina adds. “Whoever this guy is, he's good. Real good.”

“Better than you?” I ask, and Katrina nods somberly. “Really?”

“I'm not Bruce Lee,” Katrina says with a small smirk. “I've had my butt handed to me plenty of times, Andrea.”

“Jesus,” I whisper, and Katrina nods. I remember watching some, but I was too scared trying to hold BA and to get the van going to really focus on the rest of the fight. “Did you guys even get a lick in?”

“Not one,” Jackson says angrily. “The guy made me feel like a clown. Even more than when you and I sparred that time back at the plantation house.”

Nathan sighs and nods, his fingers tapping the table. “Then it is worse than I feared. I examined the van. The two knives I found were both custom jobs. Clearly handmade, and not just cheap ones procured from the Net. The balance on them alone demonstrates that. It adds to why we need to stay static here, though. I have been all over this house, and these grounds. We all have. We have the advantage of terrain and territory, even if we don’t know our attacker.”

“The natural formation of the country is the soldier's best ally,” Katrina says, then looks at me when I give her a questioning glance. “Sun Tzu.”

Melissa gives us a questioning look, and I laugh. “Get used to it, 'Lissa. This woman spent a decade doing little more than absorbing martial arts philosophy and learning how to become a one-woman killing machine. She doesn't know a thing about any of the good music released in the past five years though.”

“There's been good music in the past five years?” Melissa asks, and Katrina laughs.

“Yep, I knew I liked you for a reason.”

We all stop laughing when we realize Nathan’s as serious as a heart attack. “In the Berets, briefings had their share of jokes too. But let's move on. The basic plan is simple. I am going to put Maverick on the perimeter of the house, where he will be the first level of our security. Before you ask, I have trained him for this, and he is a natural protector. Honestly, he is probably one of the best dogs I have ever had for this purpose. For such a large animal he is quiet, and he is trained to stay silent until he finds something. He knows when he has occasion to use that voice. He is loud, and he will be a great early warning system.”

“And what's next?” Jackson asks, but before Nathan can say anything, I interrupt.

“Wait. Nathan, Maverick opens his mouth around this guy, and he's in trouble. You understand that, right?”

Nathan nods, his eyes heartbroken in advance. “I know, Andrea. But I just have to hope that doesn’t happen. The next level is having a person on watch at all times. We can’t afford teams of two, so the next best option is to station one person at the stairs to the second floor. When all access to the house is sealed, we will be better able to pinpoint where they will try to breach the house, and be better able to defend. We’ll work in shifts.”

“And the third level?” I ask, and Nathan looks around.

“There are too many of us to fit inside even the largest bedroom together. So we will split into two groups. Melissa, you will have Katrina, Jackson, and BA as your bedmates, while I will share with Andrea and Carson in Carson's room.”

“Is that the best idea?” Carson asks, then blushes. “You know, for peaceful sleep.”

“Yes,” Nathan says without any hesitation. “BA needs her parents nearby. Melissa's room has a full bathroom for changing diapers in the middle of the night. Yours is only a half-bath. And only your master bedrooms are the most secure. The other bedrooms all have more than one window, and are easily accessible from the roof.”

“How long can we keep this up?” I ask, and Nathan shrugs. I get it. As long as we need to.

“Then let's get to work,” Carson says, standing up. “We've got about six hours of daylight left, let's use what we've got in the barn to help secure this place. By the way, why aren't we using the barn?” Nathan shakes his head.

“It can be a fallback position in a pinch,” Nathan says, “but it is not tenable for something long-term. If more than one person comes, they can lay siege to the barn. To be quite frank, the barn is not as bulletproof as the bedrooms.”

* * *

I'm tired as ten o'clock rolls around and everyone else goes to sleep. By luck of the draw I get first shift, which I guess is better than Jackson, who is pulling watch from two to four a.m. The only two people exempt from drawing lots were BA and Melissa, who has never fired a gun in her life. Katrina got the lucky draw tonight, she'll get to sleep the whole night through while pulling early shift tomorrow.

“You going to be okay?” Katrina asks, staying out a few extra minutes since she'll be able to get a full seven or eight uninterrupted hours of sleep. “You worked like a madwoman.”

“I feel bad about how I screwed up last night,” I acknowledge, looking over. The fact is, I've been burning up with shame about the way I acted last night, and I worked as hard as I did to try and make up for it, or at least start to. “It was my job to watch Melissa. And all this, this is new to me.”

“I know, sis,” Katrina says softly. “If it helps, I feel like crap, too. Knowing that Nathan compromised his training in order to guide me, to make sure I stayed safe... I feel like an amateur.”

“Well, we'll get through this,” I tell her, forcing a smile. It helps, knowing that a certified badass like Katrina can still feel bad and make mistakes. Nathan I can understand, but Katrina's always been semi-mythical in my eyes. It's nice to see her as a real person.

Katrina pads silently down the carpet and I settle down on the top step, a borrowed Stephen King paperback next to my Glock. I think about the past six hours, and the work we put in. I can feel it still in my fingers, which are raw and a little achy. After raiding the barn for wood and other supplies, we'd gone to work, hammering and screwing the storm shutters closed first. Next we took care of the windows, locking each one from the inside. The only window that didn't get covered is the big kitchen window that overlooks the dooryard, because the shutter is broken. We're going to board it up tomorrow after Carson takes his truck to a nearby Home Depot and gets some plywood.

After that we'd moved the mattresses from the other bedrooms to Carson's and Melissa's bedrooms, laying them on the floor to try and optimize the sleep space for the extra people. We all sat down for a big dinner together, Maverick with us as well. He ate not only his big bowl of dog food, but also a giant hamburger that Nathan cooked up especially for him. Maverick wolfed everything down before Nathan took him on a walk, coming back after dark and after the rest of us had retreated to the upper floor.

“Maverick's on duty,” he said to me thickly before going into Carson's room. I can see in his eyes. The walk was also a way for him to start to say goodbye to the dog he loves so much. “I will be ready at midnight.”

Now I'm on duty, and as the minutes crawl by, I try to think about what to do. Finally, I turn on the small red LED lamp that we set up for the person on duty and open the book. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed...”

The night is quiet as I read, and when the clock next to me beeps the hour, I reach out and hit the timer, resetting the sixty minute countdown. It was a final touch that Nathan came up with, a kitchen timer on a sixty minute loop, so that even if we got tired and nodded off, we wouldn't stay asleep too long. You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them...

“Good book,” Nathan says quietly behind me, and I look up, realizing I've got five minutes still on my shift. “Quiet?”

“Not a sound,” I reply, marking my point by folding over a corner of the page. “But I suspect you know that, since you probably didn't sleep at all.”

“No, but I made sure Carson did. He will not do well from four to six otherwise.”

“I'm sure. But he's strong, he'll do fine.”

Nathan sits down next to me, his eyes sweeping the darkness below. “I have a bad feeling this time, Andrea. Even worse than last time.”

His phone buzzes, and he takes it out of his pocket, reading. “This is not good.”

“What?” I ask, and Nathan reads silently for a minute. “What?”

“A contact of mine, someone who owes me a favor, found out who our 'Victor Orton' is. His real name is Vadim Orloff. He is with the Bratva, the Russian Mafia,” Nathan says quietly, showing me the phone. “I will make sure that everyone knows this as they come on duty, but this profile... and I have heard of this guy. He is no amateur. This is serious.”

“How serious?” I ask, and Nathan licks his lips. I think it's the first time I've ever seen him show even a touch of fear, and that's scarier than anything else.

“It says here he is from St. Petersburg, but that might be false. He spent fifteen years in prison, from the ages of eighteen to thirty-three, originally for drug trafficking. In order to survive in prison he quickly joined the prison mob, where he found a certain affinity for his mental temperament. He was an enforcer first, and later became a contract killer for them inside the prison, but continued once he was released,” Nathan says, shaking his head.

He shows me a picture of Vadim, and it's the same man I saw earlier for sure. In particular, the eyes and hair are a dead giveaway. He's shirtless in the picture I see, and he's covered in tattoos. There are a lot of religious symbols, but also a lot of other things I can't really make out on the phone. “What's all the ink?”

“His resume,” Nathan explains softly. “The Russians are a lot like the Yakuza. They ink themselves to show who they are, and what they have done. From what I can read here in these pics, he has killed a lot of people. See the knife that is tattooed on his collarbones, like it was shoved through his neck?”

“Yeah... gruesome shit,” I say as I shiver, and Nathan nods.

“It means that he killed in prison, and that he is for hire. The drops of blood represent each kill he has done. These photos were taken by Moscow police when they brought him in for questioning about five years ago. Judging by the other symbols, it’s probably safe to assume he is the top hitman in their mob. But each drop of blood and star tattoo represents a life he has taken.”

“I can't even count the stars,” I say, and Nathan nods. “So what do we do?”

“Stay frosty, as we said in Spec Ops. You go get some sleep. Tomorrow no one goes alone anywhere, for any reason. But for now, try to get some rest. I will see you in the morning.”

“You sure?” I ask. “I mean, if this Orloff tries something...”

“Then you guys will be up and watching my back before he can get in the door,” Nathan reassures me. “Don’t worry, Andrea. He is good, but he's not that good.”

He's feeding me a line of shit, I know it. He wants me to relax and not freak out, and to be honest he's doing a piss poor job of it. Still, I nod, and stand up. “Okay. Goodnight, Nathan.”

“Goodnight, Andrea. Sleep well.”

“If I can.”