Operation Triple Crown

The mission went from theory to throttle. Case-I-H and Seabass mapped three routes with pivot turns, duck spots, and markers flagged with gravel jugs and empty Mudcat cans. Stone Cold and Catfish ran intel while working at Mudcat Queen’s fish house. Pipe Wrench ran junior high surveillance, cafeteria recon, hallway signals, eighth-grade rumor mining. I handled the dossier and Iron Bull sub-team coordination while the moles holed and sniffed around. By the following Wednesday, the operation was greenlit.

We were boys on four-wheelers built from overconfidence, duct tape, and the blunt-edge discipline of twice-boiled southern puberty. A group of teenage idiots, a few grown men who should’ve known better, and not a single synaptic linkage among us. We were built to move fast, stay low, and to never ever admit who dropped the badger call that almost blew our cover. We had codenames sharp enough to pierce gossip, dodge screen doors, and stake a claim in the Kahlúa-colored waters of St. Francis’ promised land. If you knew the names, you knew the game.