Day Two of probation at Camp Ridge opens before sunrise. Three Black Vulture spotters were in the north tree line at midnight, counting. John Moon held the second sandbag position, let them read him, and watched them walk back through the dark without an engagement. By five-forty the camp's cooks were moving faster than they had moved the morning before. The morning brief inside the church was the first time Mark Smith saw the working operational map from across a small table, and the first time he heard the name Pryor said in a room with the door closed.

Calloway accelerates the camp's posture. The supply route the camp has run nine times in three weeks runs for a tenth, and the new family volunteers for it. Mark. John. Justin. The seventeen-year-old. The dog. The store on the corner of Henley Road and County Road 142 is not as empty as it ...