Copyright 2026 by DJ Rawlings

The Operation

At 3:42 Tuesday afternoon, Vic sat behind the wheel of an undercover SUV and turned the modified key fob between his fingers.

Jason and I had parked beside him in the shade of an abandoned service station three miles from Denson Park. The rest of the team was already positioned well outside the area. Nobody would be close enough to help Vic without first being called in.

That distance had made sense in the conference room. It felt different now.

Vic rested an elbow on his open window. “You’re going to explain everything again, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I was afraid of that.”

I pointed to the key fob in his hand. “Five seconds on the panic button activates the transmitter.”

“I know.”

“Distress phrase?”

“Steve.”

“Say it.”

He sighed. “‘You’re scaring me.’”

“If I hear those words, we come. I don’t care what’s happening or who’s standing in front of you.”

“I know.”

“If they change locations and anything feels wrong, leave.”

“I know.”

“No heroics.”

That earned a laugh. “You ran into a burning car yesterday.”

“Different situation.”

“Obviously.”

Jason leaned across the passenger seat. “He has a point.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Whichever side gets all three of us home without bullet holes.”

The joke died as soon as he said it.

Vic checked his watch. 3:47.

He reached through the window with a closed fist. Jason bumped it first, then I did. Vic and I had been doing some variation of that since we were fifteen—before badges, guns, undercover assignments, or any reason to wonder whether the other person would be alive tomorrow.

“See you afterward,” he said.

“Count on it.”

Vic pulled into traffic.

Jason watched the SUV disappear. “You believe that?”

I turned toward him. “What kind of question is that?”

“The kind neither one of us wants answered.”

I started the engine.

The surveillance aircraft picked Vic up before he reached Denson Park. From several thousand feet above Houston, the crew could follow him without giving Oscar’s people anything to notice. Jason monitored Vic’s GPS while I handled the radio and listened through the transmitter.

At 3:56, Vic entered the north lot.

The audio came alive with the thump of his door, footsteps across pavement and wind moving across the microphone. Somewhere in the distance, children were playing baseball.

Then Vic spoke.

“What a beautiful day.”

Our confirmation phrase. Nothing suspicious on arrival.

I sent the text. Don’t forget to pick up milk.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

The sounds from the baseball diamond came and went: aluminum bats, children shouting, a coach calling instructions. At four-fifteen, Jason checked the GPS even though neither of us needed to. At four-thirty, Vic was still in the same place. By five, Jason had finished one soda and opened another.

“Stop checking the time,” I said.

“You’re checking it more than I am.”

He was right.

The park gradually emptied. Parents folded chairs and loaded equipment into cars. Children disappeared from the fields. With every departing vehicle, the open space around Vic became more exposed.

“I don’t like this.”

Jason kept watching the screen. “Neither do I.”

“We could pull him.”

“He was told to wait.”

“For how long?”

“That may be what they’re testing.”

We both knew how Oscar operated. Patience could be part of the screening process. So could making a man sit alone for hours while somebody watched from a window or a parked car we would never identify.

At 6:22, Vic’s phone rang.

He answered. “Yeah.”

A man’s voice reached us faintly through the transmitter.

“Red brick warehouse. One-forty-two Jackson. Fifteen minutes.”

The line went dead.

After several seconds Vic spoke clearly, giving us what we needed. “Confirming. One-four-two Jackson.”

Jason already had the address on his screen. “Industrial district. Six miles.”

I keyed the radio. “All units, Shepherd is moving. Maintain distance. Bird keeps visual.”

“Bird has Shepherd.”

Vic left Denson Park.

Nobody followed.

The warehouse stood in an aging industrial strip east of downtown, surrounded by machine shops, fenced storage lots and low brick buildings left over from another version of the city. Jason and I stopped two blocks away. Darin’s team held farther south while the aircraft tracked Vic from above.

A delivery truck idled outside a machine shop with its bay doors open to the heat. Each time our air-conditioning cycled, diesel seeped into the car. A worker rolled a tool chest toward the sidewalk, watched us for a moment, then went back inside. Jason noted the time. I watched the warehouse.

His GPS slowed.

“Parked,” Jason said.

Through my earpiece came the opening of a car door, footsteps over gravel and, a few moments later, metal scraping against metal.

The warehouse door.

Vic went inside.

His footsteps changed on the concrete floor, echoing for several seconds before they stopped.

The silence that followed was worse.

I checked with the aircraft. “Anything moving near the location?”

“Negative.”

“Vehicles?”

“Nothing associated.”

Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.

A faint sound came over the transmitter.

Jason glanced at me. “Rat?”

“Could be.”

Neither of us smiled.

By twenty-five minutes, every explanation I could invent had become a bad one. Oscar could be testing Vic. Someone might be watching the warehouse from another building. We might already have been identified.

Or Vic could simply be standing alone in an abandoned warehouse because nobody intended to come.

“Bird?”

“Still nothing.”

Jason rubbed a hand across his jaw. “If it’s a test, we leave him.”

“That’s the plan.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m not required to like the plan.”

Another ten minutes passed before Vic finally spoke.

“I’m done. Looks like a no-show.”

Relief arrived tangled with disappointment. Two years of work, and our closest approach to Oscar had ended with Vic standing alone in an empty building.

“All units, Shepherd is standing down,” I said. “Hold positions until he’s clear.”

Vic walked outside, got into his SUV and drove away.

We stayed where we were.

Following an undercover officer immediately after a meeting was exactly how surveillance teams got noticed. If Oscar’s people had been watching the warehouse, this was when they would be looking for us.

Vic reached the intersection at the end of Jackson Street.

My phone rang.

His name appeared on the screen.

I answered on speaker. “Talk to me.”

“Steve.”

Something in his voice changed the air inside the car.

“What happened?”

“I just got a text.”

“Same number?”

“Yes.”

“What does it say?”

Only his breathing came through the transmitter.

Then he said, “RAT.”

Vic’s SUV stopped at the light.

A lifted black pickup entered the intersection from the right.

The passenger window dropped.

Muzzle flashes erupted from the cab.

“Vic!”

His driver’s-side window exploded. The sound of gunfire reached us a fraction of a second later, sharp and fast across the industrial blocks.

Jason grabbed the radio. “Shots fired! Officer down! Jackson and Mercer!”

I was already moving.

Vic’s SUV rolled into the intersection and struck a delivery van.

The black pickup kept going.

That was what I remembered most clearly afterward. It didn’t roar away or fishtail around the corner. The driver completed the turn at almost ordinary speed, as though the man inside had just finished a piece of business that required no urgency.

I ran toward Vic.

Jason caught me halfway there. “Steve!”

The radio erupted.

Darin’s voice cut through everything else. “We’ve got him. Steve, go after the truck.”

Vic was less than a block away.

So was the man who had shot him.

“Go!” Darin shouted.

I turned.

Jason and I sprinted back to our vehicle. I was moving before his door had completely shut.

“Bird, find the truck.”

“Coming around.”

“Black lifted pickup, eastbound from Jackson. Oversized tires.”

We hit the next intersection.

Nothing.

Jason searched the side streets. “Where’d he go?”

The aircraft answered. “Two possible black pickups. Stand by.”

“Which one is lifted?”

A pause.

“Second vehicle. Eastbound toward Mason.”

Jason pointed. “There.”

The truck emerged two blocks ahead.

I hit the lights.

The driver accelerated immediately.

“He sees us.”

The pickup blew through a red light and kept going.

Evening traffic thickened as we reached the freeway. The truck cut through it wherever an opening appeared, forcing one sedan onto the shoulder and narrowly missing another as it crossed two lanes.

I pushed past eighty.

Jason braced one hand against the dash. “We don’t know that’s Oscar.”

“He just murdered Vic.”

“We don’t know that either.”

The words hit both of us at once.

We didn’t know whether Vic was dead.

Ahead, the truck climbed toward ninety and disappeared briefly around a bend. When it came back into view, traffic had stopped.

A wall of brake lights covered every lane.

Jason leaned forward. “Does he see it?”

The pickup’s brake lights flared.

Too late.

The driver cut left, found a sedan blocking the lane, then snapped right and tried to squeeze between the shoulder and a stopped semi.

The front of the pickup clipped the trailer.

The truck lurched sideways, lifted and rolled off the pavement. Metal folded as it came down on its roof. It rolled once more before sliding upside down against the guardrail.

I stopped fifty yards back.

Jason and I drew our weapons and approached from opposite sides.

“Police! Show me your hands!”

Steam hissed from the wreck. Fluid spread across the pavement.

Nobody moved.

Then the rear passenger door opened.

A man crawled out.

He stumbled to his feet and turned toward us. Blood covered part of his face. Dark hair. Medium build. Nothing distinctive enough to survive the speed of the moment.

“Don’t move!”

He ran.

We followed him between stopped cars toward the bridge. Drivers watched through windshields while Jason and I shouted for them to stay inside.

The man reached the railing.

“Stop!”

He turned.

For one second we were facing each other across less than twenty yards.

I saw his face.

Then he climbed over.

“Don’t do it!”

He jumped.

I reached the railing in time to see him strike the river below.

The water swallowed him.

A few seconds later his head broke the surface downstream.

“There!” Jason shouted.

The current carried him farther from the bridge. He surfaced once more, then disappeared.

We waited.

Five seconds.

Ten.

Nothing.

Jason relayed the wreck’s location and requested medics for anyone still inside. Then he gave dispatch the side of the bridge the fugitive had jumped from. Drivers were getting out of their cars; a responding patrol officer began forcing them back behind the stopped traffic.

“Bird, follow the river.”

“Already searching.”

“Do you have him?”

“Negative.”

Brown water moved beneath us as though nothing unusual had happened.

Jason bent forward, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “You think that was Oscar?”

“I don’t know.”

My phone buzzed.

Darin.

I didn’t answer.

It rang again.

Jason straightened. “Take it.”

I couldn’t.

Instead, I called Harding.

He answered immediately. “Status?”

“Suspect vehicle crashed at the freeway bridge. I’m sending our exact location. One male fled on foot and jumped into the water. We saw him surface twice, then lost him.”

“Identification?”

“None.”

“Could it be Oscar?”

“Yes.”

It was the only answer available.

Harding spoke to someone on his end before returning to me. “Marine units are moving. State is covering downstream access. Stay where you are.”

“Rich.”

A pause. “Yeah?”

“Vic?”

The silence told me first.

I still made him say it.

“Is he alive?”

“No.”

Traffic noise faded until all I could hear was the river.

Harding continued. “Darin said there was nothing the paramedics could do.”

One of the bolts holding the bridge railing had rust around its base. I fixed on it because it was small enough to understand. Metal. Rust. A circle no larger than a quarter.

“Steve?”

My palm rested against the railing.

“I’m here.”

“We’ll handle the river. I want you and Jason back at the shooting scene.”

“Somebody told him.”

“What?”

“The message said RAT.”

“Steve—”

“Vic was inside that organization for two years.”

“I know.”

“Then today, the day he might move into Gordo’s position, they send him to an empty warehouse. They wait until we stand down. They hit him after he leaves.”

Harding’s voice hardened. “We will investigate that.”

Seven people had sat in that conference room.

Harding.

Jason.

Darin.

Jake.

Jeff.

Bryan.

Me.

Seven people who knew where Vic would be, how far away the surveillance teams would stay, and when the operation would begin.

Seven people I had trusted.

“We’ll figure it out,” Harding said.

The river slid beneath the bridge.

“I will.”

“No. Not tonight.”

But tonight had already changed the question.

For two years, I had been trying to find Oscar.

Now I needed to find the person who had given him Vic.