He raised his fist. The formation began to move toward him. But then from the south on a frequency that carried further than it should have amplified by the canyon walls, the sound of more bikes. Not four.
Not eight. Crow's voice came back on the radio stripped of everything except the facts. "Secondary group wasn't eight. It was 12.
Rex gave them the full route. They'd been waiting at the south exit. We're boxed." The fists came down.
The formation stopped again. And from the south end of Devil's Pass, 12 Iron Wolves bikes came into view, spread across the full width of the road moving slowly and with the deliberate patient pace of men who believe they have already won. Ethan looked north, south, at the canyon walls, at the bike under him, at the formation behind him, 80 men who had given him their trust in the form of a raised fist 30 seconds ago, and were now looking at him for the next decision. He thought about his father, about a man who had spent 20 years building something that was also a test, not a malicious test, but the kind of person sets up when they believe in someone enough to leave them the hardest problem they know.
Who had built hidden chambers and secret blueprints and a calibration sequence that could only be finished by the right hands and had tucked it all inside the most beautiful and impossible machine he could conceive of, and had waited. Ethan looked at the 12 bikes closing from the south. He looked at the road between them and the formation. He looked at the canyon walls on either side, at the geometry of the space, the angles, the distances, the way the road curved 20 yards south of where he was standing, cutting the line of sight so that the Iron Wolves at the south end couldn't see what was happening at the north end, and vice versa.
He understood something. He pressed the ignition, turned to face Joker. "When I move south, you take the formation north. Full speed.
Don't stop." He held Joker's gaze. "When they see me coming toward them alone, they'll hold position. They want the bike.
While they're watching me, you clear the pass from the north exit." "And you?" Joker said. "I know this bike now," Ethan said.
"I'll find the way." Joker stared at him for three full seconds. Three seconds of calculation and something beyond calculation, the assessment of a man who has spent decades deciding who to trust with the things that matter most, making that decision again with everything that implies. "You come back," Joker said, quietly, directly, not a request, something closer to an order with a human heart inside it.
"I come back," Ethan said. He turned the bike south and opened the throttle and rode directly toward 12 men who wanted to take from him the only thing his father had ever left him. Behind him he heard the formation begin to move north. The Iron Wolves at the south end saw him coming one rider alone on the most valuable motorcycle any of them had ever seen in person riding toward them at rising speed.