The western bank of the Mississippi was a different kind of graveyard. On the eastern shore, the ruins of Wisconsin were wild, choked with brush and left to rot in the dark. Here, the ground was organized, sterile, and cold.
Cronauer killed the boxer twin’s ignition two miles inland, rolling the heavy GS into the deep architectural shadow of an abandoned limestone quarry. He didn't use the kickstand; he wedged the bike flat against a clay bank, covering the metallic sheen of the panniers with handfuls of wet fern and pine boughs.
He pulled the PVS-14 visor down over his left eye. The world turned back to a grainy, phosphor-green landscape of calculated tradecraft.
"Dave, you copy?" Cronauer breathed into the mic, his voice barely moving the air. "I’m on the western perimeter. The bike is cold. Give me the loop."
Silence stretched for five long seconds before the Yaesu handheld buzzed. "I’ve got the waterfall display grid locked, Cronauer. You’re sitting right on the edge of the processing zone. The Aegis crews aren't patrolling the woods—they don't need to. They’ve lined the inner perimeter with 24-gigahertz microwave fences. If you cross the tree line vertical, you’ll trip the Doppler return."
Cronauer grunted, adjusting the strap on his pack. "Then I don't go vertical."
He dropped to his belly, slinging the custom AR-15 Takedown flat across his lumbar. He dragged his weight through the wet grass, his boots scraping softly against the limestone shale as he bypassed the main checkpoint. Through the green glow of the goggles, he could see the microwave towers—thin, tripod-mounted rods humming with a low-frequency click that made the fillings in his teeth ache.
He cleared the perimeter wire through a drainage ditch and rose into the shadow of three massive shipping containers. The area had been laid out with geometric precision—this was the "Harvest" processing facility Vance had engineered.
Rows of temporary chain-link pens held groups of civilians huddled under silver space blankets. These weren't refugees; they were being inventoried. Cronauer watched through the green lens as an Aegis clerk moved down the line with a ruggedized tablet, checking teeth, calling out technical skill-sets, and separating families based on a corporate spreadsheet meant to populate the deep shelters at Mount Weather.
He stayed low, tracking the weak medical beacon he’d pulled off the VHF Marine band hours earlier. The signal wasn't coming from the main holding pens. It was drifting out from a sagging, corrugated metal field office near the old barge slip.
He moved from container to container, a shadow moving between corporate assets. The air smelled of wet wool, diesel exhaust, and the underlying rot of the river bottoms. Two conscript guards in oversized helmets were posted at the door of the field office, their rifles held loose, their attention drifted toward a small fire burning in a oil drum fifty yards away.
Cronauer slid the Microtech Troodon out-the-front blade from his pocket, the titanium handle cold against his palm. He didn't want the noise of a round, even a suppressed one, echoing off the metal walls of the containers.
He stepped out of the fog behind the first guard like a ghost born from the river mist.
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