The words hadn't even finished echoing before Rafael's crew scattered.
Zubair caught it in the fine-tuned movements first. The quick coil of muscle in a shoulder, the way rifles snapped shut with the same practiced cadence.
A ledger vanished into a pocket. Boots struck steel steps like dominoes falling. Whatever tasks had mattered a heartbeat ago were erased by that single command.
Now there was only one order that mattered: move.
Engines roared to life below in the barricade yard.
Doors slammed in unison, the sound rolling across the yard like thunder.
A convoy that had been lounging like wolves in the sun became a storm of teeth and claws in motion, each truck jerking forward in a spray of gravel.
No one explained, no one even said a word.
Not like Zubair was expecting them to.
Words weren't needed when survival was speaking.
Men didn't drop everything with that kind of precision unless the danger was already too close for comfort.
