Chapter Thirty-Five
Phoenix
For the next eight hours, Helios and I piloted the Paragon through the storm.
Ares kept his distance.
Helios didn’t speak except to curse every time we took a large wave.
And I fixated on a little trespasser with a tight cunt that I could still smell on me.
When we got close to Tenerife, I turned navigation over to Helios. “Bring us into port.”
“You fucking pull this boat up to refuel.” Helios glanced at the onboard GPS before looking at the Inertial Navigation System.
I checked the internal security feeds for the main deck, companionways, and internal hallways. No movement. “I have something to handle.”
Helios threw me a glare. “I don’t give a fuck if that smart-mouthed blonde you got a hard-on for has a vibrating cunt and ten fucking tongue piercings. I’m not parking your floating fucking death trap in that port by myself.”
My trigger finger twitched. “Call Ares.” I turned toward the stairs.
“You know what’s gonna royally fuck you one of these days?”
My hand on the door, I didn’t pause.
“That goddamn—”
As I shut the door to the bridge, Helios’s warning cut off.
Thirty seconds later, I was striding down the companionway toward her cabin.
Five seconds after that, I was hesitating outside her door.
Daybreak had crawled above the horizon. Clouded, ambient light had filtered into the ship. No noise came from inside her cabin.
Silent, slow, I opened her door.
Curled on the bed in a fetal position, facing the windows, covers pulled up to her waist as she clutched a pillow, the woman was asleep.
I scanned the room.
Besides her backpack pulled close to the foot of the bed and her, there was nothing else disturbed in the cabin.
Picking up the pack and retreating into the hall, I shut the door behind me.
Then I searched through everything.
Helios was right. No personal effects minus the passport, but he was remiss on the journal.
Over a hundred entries, all in different handwriting, seven different languages, and dates that went back ten years.
Exactly ten years.
To the very month I’d gone off the grid after my death had been faked.
I stared at the single-line journal entry in neatly printed English.
Here we go!
The date and timestamp followed. Six-oh-two a.m.
The second page was the same handwriting and was dated three days later, timestamped at nine-fifty-seven p.m.
Adventure waits for no one!
I turned the page.
The third entry was dated seventeen days later.
Our Doubts Are Traitors.
Shakespeare. Partial quote. The font, in heavy block print, was written so large, it took up half the page. Then in smaller print, bottom right, different handwriting, was a timestamp.
12:03 a.m.
Immediately, I thought of another Shakespeare quote. One I’d heard over fifteen years ago from a SEAL on a different Team, but it’d stuck.
Coming off a two-part mission where we’d hit our initial objective, the entire Team was pissed because we’d been ordered to exfil before we’d hit all targets.
Command’s excuse was that they were waiting for positive IDs on the remaining HVTs.
It didn’t matter to them that those same HVTs were leveling every innocent villager within a five-klick radius. We were ordered to RTB.
Another Team coming in on deployment rotation was handed the mission.
At a joint debrief, as Team Leader, Alpha downloaded a detailed sitrep, including the civilian genocide.
A hushed rage hit the room, then Alpha stood to exfil.
As our Team got up to follow, a guy from the other Team, one I’d never met and couldn’t place because he’d had his head down, muttered the quote.
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”
The rest of the memory surfaced.
“Shut the fuck up with that Shakespeare shit, Wolf,” one of their assaulters hazed.
“Focus up,” their Team Leader ordered.
We walked out of the room, and I flanked Alpha. “Wolf?” I didn’t know any SEALs with that call sign.
“Nickname from childhood. Call sign’s Legend. New to the Teams.”
I fucking laughed. “He’s new and got that call sign?”
Alpha leveled me with his Team leader look. “He’s Severn King’s son.”
I stopped in my tracks. “That was Coast’s kid?
” Severn “Coast” King was before my time, but everyone knew the infamous SEAL and his ruthless tactics.
No one had seen Coast in over a decade though, not since his last deployment.
But his infamy and unparalleled skills were still talked about.
“How old is the kid?” From the partial glance I’d gotten, he’d looked young as hell.
He also had the same last name as a new member on our Team. “Any relation to our Breacher?”
“No,” Alpha clipped sternly before adding, “Legend’s twenty-one.”
Jesus. “And he’s already on the Teams?”
“He earned his Trident.” Alpha glanced over my shoulder and tipped his chin at Delta and Echo as they passed.
“While quoting Shakespeare?” I wasn’t hazing. You saw every walk of life in BUD/S, but usually only a certain type of personality made it through. Minus a Danish Special Forces Huntsman we’d encountered on a couple deployments, I’d never met a Tier One who quoted classic literature.
Alpha gave me a pointed look. “When you’re Severn King’s son, anything’s possible.”
Compartmentalizing, I filed away the memory and turned the page of the little trespasser’s journal.
Then I stilled.
In the same larger font written with a heavier hand stroke, taking up the entire page, I read the block print handwriting.
Some rise by sin,
and some by virtue fall.
Ares stepped up behind me. “Shakespeare. Measure for Measure.”
I shut the journal.
Ares held out his cell. “Cypher’s looking for you.”
I took his phone. “Cypher.”
“Alpha’s Falcon landed at Tenerife South Airport thirty minutes ago.”
“Anything else?” Already doing the math, I was calculating statistical probability on a coincidence.
“Yeah. Blade’s with him. What the fuck is going on?”
Nothing I was going to explain over the phone. “We’re coming in now for our refuel before getting back underway.” I glanced at my watch, adjusted for the time in port, then rattled off coordinates and gave him orders. “Sixty-one hours. Pack up and meet us there.”
Cypher quickly typed. “That’s—”
I knew where it was. “Sixty-one hours,” I reiterated before ending the call and handing the cell back to Ares.
“When are you going to tell them?”
“Nothing to tell.” Yet.
“If Cypher’s in Florida, the rest will want to know why.”
Ares wasn’t wrong. Where the servers went, Cypher went.
The location had moved several times over the years, including being on the Paragon at one point, but that wasn’t what Ares was referring to.
Cypher handled all of Paragon Operations’ equipment, including our firepower.
What wasn’t on board the ship was with Cypher.
Every one of my operators dealt with him.
If you wanted something, Cypher procured it.
Shoving her journal back into her pack, I acknowledged Ares. “Understood. Anything else?” Ares didn’t stick around unless he had a reason.
“The port’s busy, and we’re next up for bunkering. Helios wants you on the bridge. I’ll be on the decks.” Not waiting for confirmation, Ares headed toward the bow.
Resigned to dealing with Isla and that journal entry later, I quietly opened her door.
Still asleep or faking it, she hadn’t moved.
I set her pack just inside the cabin, then pulled the door shut and locked it.
Ninety seconds later, after a stop in my cabin to secure her cell and passport in my desk, I walked onto the bridge.
“We’ve got fucking company,” Helios clipped, throwing me a glare before tipping his chin toward the starboard side of the bow and stepping away from the helm station. “Take the controls. You’re bringing her in.”
I backfilled Helios’s position, and Ares’s voice came through on the TETRA.
“Helios, copy?”
Grabbing the handheld radio, Helios answered his brother. “Copy. Oscar Mike to your POS.” Still looking pissed as hell, Helios glanced at me. “Next time you want to fucking surprise me, don’t.” He walked off the bridge.
Taking over navigation, I followed Helios’s glance.
Alpha and Blade were standing on the docks.