Each night Leah continued her combat training, her running and her swimming. Twice more she took the drone and drove to Ortega’s ranch to do reconnaissance. She hovered the drone close enough to take enhanced light footage of the license plates on the cars parked near the house and then slowly withdrew the drone. She explored the ranches on three sides of the Ortega ranch. She studied the highway that ran past the gate and the mailbox. But most carefully, she used the heat-seeking infrared camera to search for guards or sentries or patrols. She ran the same camera along the upper parts of the house, the three big old oak trees nearby, the fence posts along the gravel access road, and randomly in the nearby fields to detect any faint heat glow of a security camera. She detected nothing.

On the next night Leah was only two nights from the date she had chosen from the start. She was as physically and mentally ready as she was likely to get. She had studied the Ortega ranch and the area around it on several nights. If the men in that house had come expecting to repel an attack, they had long ago become satisfied with their preparations and stopped patrolling. All she could do if she waited was make mistakes and let them see her. The weather service said that in two nights it was supposed to be cloudy with a new moon, so it would be the darkest night she would get for a month.

Over the next two nights she became fully nocturnal. She spent half of each night training and the other half inspecting and preparing every item of her equipment and making sure there was no chance it would fail in stressful conditions. She had been on many police raids in her career, and she knew the time to worry about the smallest details was before leaving home. She didn’t want any piece of clothing or gear that pinched or rubbed or made a sound when she walked or made her more visible. She made sure that her firearms were cleaned, oiled, and loaded, and that each magazine was backed up by another loaded magazine. Her electronics all had fresh batteries and spares.

She cleaned the cabin thoroughly, getting rid of any sign that she had ever been there. She washed sheets and towels, vacuumed the cabin, washed the dishes, put the trash in black plastic bags to take with her, wiped every counter, bedpost, and doorknob with antibacterial wipes, and then went over all of them again.

She packed a set of civilian clothes in a black backpack she stored on the floor in the passenger side of the front seat. When she had finished preparing, she closed and locked the door of the cabin and drove away. It was 1:00 a.m.