She found the stairs, moved up slowly, knife in hand. If she encountered a guard, it had to be silent. One gunshot and the entire compound would wake up.
Top of the stairs. Long corridor. Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Cell doors every ten feet, metal reinforced, small windows at eye level.
She moved down the corridor, checking each cell. Most were empty. Two held prisoners she didn’t recognize.
Then the last cell on the right.
She looked through the window.
Garrett Blackwood sat on the concrete floor, back against the wall. He was thin, emaciated. His face was bruised. His hands showed signs of torture. But his eyes were alert. Alive. Unbroken.
He looked up, saw her face in the window. His eyes widened. Disbelief. Recognition. Something that might have been hope.
She worked the lock. Thirty seconds of careful manipulation.
She entered.
Garrett tried to stand but couldn’t quite manage it. She knelt beside him.
“Ghost,” he whispered. His voice was rough, damaged. “You came.”
“Always,” she said. “Can you walk?”
He tried. Managed to get halfway up before his legs gave out. Four years of captivity, four years of torture, four years of malnutrition. His body was broken, even if his mind wasn’t.
“I’ll carry you if I have to.”
But then Garrett’s expression changed. Fear replaced hope. He grabbed her arm.
“Ghost, this is a trap. They’ve been waiting for a rescue attempt. You need to abort. Now.”
The words hit her like ice water.
“They knew someone would come. They’ve been planning for it. This compound—it’s designed to lure in rescue teams and eliminate them. You have to get out.”
Evelyn’s mind raced. The good intel. The perfect satellite imagery. The convenient drainage culvert. It all made sense now.
They’d been set up.
She keyed her radio.
“Hawk, Doc, Demo. Mission is compromised. We’re walking into an ambush. Abort.”
The radio crackled.
Sullivan’s voice came through, tight with something that wasn’t quite right.
“Ghost, we can’t abort. We’re already committed.”
And that’s when Evelyn understood. The way Sullivan had hesitated. The way he wouldn’t meet her eyes. The phone call she’d sensed but not seen.
“Sullivan,” she said. “What did you do?”
Silence on the radio. Then, quietly:
“They have my daughter. I didn’t have a choice.”
The corridor lights blazed bright. Alarms wailed.
The trap had been sprung.
“I’m sorry,” Sullivan said. “God, I’m so sorry.”
Evelyn grabbed Garrett, hauled him up.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
But the corridor was already filling with hostiles. Weapons raised, shouting in a language she didn’t need to translate to understand.
Surrender or die.
She keyed the radio one more time.
“Brennan, Callahan. I need a distraction. Big one. Give me chaos.”
Brennan’s voice came back immediately.
“On it.”
Through the wall, she heard the first shot. Brennan’s rifle, the distinctive crack of a .338 Lapua round traveling at supersonic velocity.
Then another. Then another. Precise, measured. Death delivered from four hundred meters away.
Then explosions. Sullivan, despite his betrayal, doing the one thing he could do to make amends, detonating every charge he’d brought, creating chaos.
The guards in the corridor turned, confused, responding to threats from outside.
Evelyn didn’t waste the opportunity.
She fired. Suppressed rounds. Double tap to center mass. First guard down. Second guard down. Third guard taking cover.
She put two rounds through the wall where he was hiding. Heard the sound of a body hitting the floor.
She pulled Garrett forward. He tried to help, tried to move on his own, but four years had stolen his strength. She half carried, half dragged him toward the stairs.
Behind them, more guards poured into the corridor. She fired without looking, suppressing, buying seconds. Each second costing ammunition she couldn’t spare.
They reached the stairs. She descended fast, Garrett stumbling beside her, his weight against her shoulder, his labored breathing in her ear. The sound of pursuit echoing from above.
The basement. The drainage culvert. Thirty meters of crawling while enemies closed in.
Impossible.
She’d never make it carrying Garrett.
She keyed the radio again.
“I need evac at my position. Culvert exit, south side. I can’t extract alone.”
Callahan’s voice.
“Moving to you. Thirty seconds.”
She dragged Garrett into the culvert, started crawling backward, pulling him behind her. Her rifle across her chest, firing back up the corridor, muzzle flash in the darkness, brass ejecting into water. The sounds of her own desperation.
Twenty meters.
Fifteen.
Ten.
She emerged from the culvert.
Callahan was there, reaching in, grabbing Garrett, pulling him out. Strong hands. Combat medic’s efficiency.
“He’s hypothermic, malnourished, multiple injuries,” Callahan said. “We need to move fast or he won’t survive the exfil.”
Evelyn looked back at the compound. Lights everywhere. Alarms screaming. Guards mobilizing. The quick reaction force would be here in minutes.
Sullivan appeared from the tree line. His face was anguished, destroyed.
“I didn’t know they’d activate the trap tonight. I thought I’d have time to warn you. To fix it.”
“Then save it,” Evelyn said. “Can you walk?”
He nodded.
“Then help Callahan carry Garrett. We move. Now. Fifteen kilometers to the coast. If we’re not at the exfil point in three hours, the submarine leaves without us.”
They started moving. Brennan appeared from his hide position.
“QRF is mobilizing. Approximately thirty hostiles, five minutes behind us.”
“Then we make them pay for every meter.”
They moved fast, as fast as Garrett’s condition allowed, which wasn’t fast enough. Behind them, the sounds of pursuit grew closer. Organized. Professional. These weren’t random guards. This was a trained unit.
“Brennan, stop,” Evelyn said. “I’ll slow them down. Buy you five minutes.”
“Don’t be a hero.”
“I’m a sniper, Captain. This is what I do.”
He moved to a hide position overlooking their back trail, settled in, breathing slowed, rifle steadied.
The first pursuer appeared, four hundred meters back. Brennan squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked. Four hundred meters away, a man dropped, gone before he heard the shot.
Brennan worked the bolt, acquired the second target, fired. Another drop.
The pursuit stopped, taking cover, trying to locate the sniper.
Brennan gave them two more rounds, two more casualties. Then he moved, relocating before they could pinpoint his position.
Evelyn and the others kept pushing forward. Garrett between Sullivan and Callahan, being carried more than walking. His breathing was labored. His skin was cold. Hypothermia setting in.
They reached a river, chest deep, freezing. The kind of cold that stopped your heart if you stayed in too long.
No choice. They had to cross.
Evelyn went first, testing the current. Strong but manageable. She crossed, established security on the far bank, then signaled the others.
Sullivan and Callahan carried Garrett across. The cold water hit him and he gasped. His body temperature, already critically low, plummeted further.
By the time they reached the far bank, he was shaking uncontrollably. Early-stage hypothermia.
Callahan worked fast. Stripped Garrett’s wet clothes. Wrapped him in a thermal blanket. Activated chemical heat packs, placed them at Garrett’s core, armpits, groin—anywhere that would warm the blood before it circulated to vital organs.
“We need to stop. Let him warm up. Another hour in this condition and he’ll go into cardiac arrest.”
“We can’t stop. The pursuit is ten minutes behind.”
“Then he dies before we reach the coast.”
Evelyn made the calculation. The impossible math of triage. Save one man and risk everyone. Push forward and guarantee one death to possibly save four.
She thought about Syria, about leaving Preacher, about the choice that had haunted her for four years.
Not again.
Never again.
“We hold here. Fifteen minutes. Warm him up enough to survive. Then we move.”
She looked at Sullivan.
“You want to make amends? Go set charges on the far side of the river. Make them pay for crossing.”
Sullivan nodded, moved back to the riverbank, started rigging Claymore mines. M18A1. Seven hundred steel balls per mine. Fifty-meter kill radius.
He placed three of them, overlapping fields of fire, covering the crossing point.
Brennan arrived, moving fast.
“They’re two minutes out. We need to—” He saw Garrett, saw the situation, understood. “Right. I’ll hold them here.”
He took position behind a fallen tree, rifle rested, breathing controlled.
The first pursuers appeared on the far bank.
Brennan’s rifle spoke. One down. Two down.
The others took cover, but they kept coming—professional, organized, using fire and maneuver, advancing under covering fire. These weren’t amateurs.
Sullivan finished setting the Claymores, ran back to the position.
“Charges set. I can detonate when they’re in the kill zone.”
The first pursuers reached the riverbank, started to cross.
Sullivan watched them come, counting, waiting for the maximum number to enter the water.
Five hostiles in the river.
Then ten.
Then fifteen.
“Now,” Evelyn said.
Sullivan triggered the Claymores.
The explosions were simultaneous, overlapping. The river erupted in steel and
