33. Rook
ROOK
The mountain covered the wall of the operations room.
Satellite images.
Thermal scans.
Elevation maps.
Tunnel systems.
Everything Shadow Division had gathered in less than twelve hours.
It wasn’t enough.
I knew it.
Everyone did.
But we didn’t have the luxury of waiting.
Every hour we lost gave Director Alan Madow and the men above Marcus Lane another chance to make Wade Parker disappear.
The room hummed with activity.
Fathom worked across three monitors, building a three-dimensional map of the facility from fragmented heat signatures and geological surveys.
Falcon studied approach routes and wind conditions.
Sniper compared historical reconnaissance photographs.
Shark packed medical supplies.
Cobra drew red circles around objects he wanted to destroy.
Far too many objects.
I stopped behind him.
“Why did you circle the mountain?”
“I’m keeping our options open.”
“You are not blowing up the mountain.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“You circled it.”
Cobra looked down at the map.
“That could mean anything.”
I took the marker out of his hand.
Across the room, Sarah stood near the largest screen with her arms folded.
Her eyes were fixed on the mountain.
It was as if she believed she could see through the rock.
Through the steel.
All the way into Wade’s cell.
Her father noticed.
“You need to sleep.”
Sarah didn’t look away.
“So does Wade.”
Her father wisely said nothing else.
Neither of them had slept since we discovered the facility.
I doubted either would sleep again until Wade was standing in front of them.
Fathom suddenly stopped typing.
Completely.
Every operator in the room noticed.
Because when Fathom stopped working, it usually meant he had found something none of us wanted to see.
“What?” I asked.
I was already moving toward him.
Fathom enlarged a personnel file.
The document was partial. Damaged. Deliberately corrupted.
But enough remained.
A military portrait appeared.
Decorated uniform.
Rows of ribbons.
Combat badges.
A familiar face.
Sarah’s father swore softly.
My stomach tightened.
I recognized him too.
The dead commander from the photograph we recovered.
The man escorting prisoners beside Marcus Lane.
The man who had supposedly died six years ago.
Fathom enlarged the name.
COLONEL JONATHAN REEVES
STATUS: KILLED IN ACTION
The room went silent.
Fathom opened another file.
Then another.
Medical authorizations.
Transportation orders.
Classified expense accounts.
Years of records hidden beneath false identification numbers.
The same man appearing over and over.
Not dead.
Active.
Protected.
Working.
“His death was staged,” Fathom said. “The official record lists a helicopter crash during an operation in Afghanistan. No body was recovered.”
“Because there wasn’t a body,” Falcon said.
Fathom pulled up a financial authorization.
“Reeves has been running Black Site Theta under a compartmentalized identity. His orders were approved through an intelligence program overseen by Director Alan Madow.”
Sarah stepped closer.
“Reeves commanded Wade’s team.”
Her father stared at the photograph.
“He recruited him.”
Something painful moved through the older man’s face.
“Reeves came to our house. Ate dinner at our table. Told me Wade was one of the finest operators he had ever trained.”
His hands curled into fists.
“He stood beside Sarah at Wade’s memorial service.”
Sarah went pale.
“He gave me the flag.”
No one moved.
Reeves hadn’t simply betrayed Wade on a mission.
He had looked into the eyes of Wade’s family and helped them bury an empty coffin while Wade was being tortured inside a mountain.
“I want him alive,” Sarah said.
The quietness of her voice made the threat more dangerous.
Sniper looked at her.
“So do I.”
Her father’s eyes never left Reeves’s photograph.
“Wade trusted him.”
I understood what that meant.
A commander knew his team’s strengths.
Their weaknesses.
Their routines.
He knew how they moved, how they fought, and what they would risk their lives to protect.
If Reeves had designed the operation that captured Wade’s team, he had known exactly how to draw them into the trap.
Marcus Lane had done the same thing to Shadow Division.
The ambushes weren’t merely similar.
They had come from the same playbook.
Fathom pulled up a series of current thermal scans.
“I found another problem.”
The latest image showed heat gathering inside the facility’s vehicle tunnel.
“Engines,” he said. “At least six transports. Possibly more.”
“Preparing to move the prisoners,” I said.
“Or kill them somewhere the bodies will never be found,” Sarah’s father replied.
I looked at the clock.
Time was bleeding away.
“Find us a way inside.”
Fathom turned back to his monitors.
“I’m working on it.”
“Work faster.”
Wade
The facility had changed again.
The nervousness was becoming panic.
Wade sat on the edge of his bunk, listening to equipment move through the corridor.
Heavy boots.
Weapons being checked.
Doors opening.
Orders shouted and repeated.
The guards were preparing to empty the prison.
A steel door slammed somewhere beyond his cell.
Voices rose in argument.
The sound carried through the ventilation system.
Wade moved closer to the door.
Information wasn’t freely given inside Black Site Theta.
It had to be stolen.
One fragment at a time.
A voice drifted from the security office.
“The transports leave at zero three hundred.”
Another man answered.
“What about the prisoners who can’t walk?”
A pause followed.
Then Wade heard a voice he hadn’t heard in five years.
Cold.
Controlled.
Familiar.
His blood froze.
Colonel Jonathan Reeves.
The man who had recruited Wade into the program.
The man who had trained with his team.
The man Wade had trusted with his life.
The man reported dead six years earlier.
Wade remembered standing in dress uniform while Reeves’s empty coffin was carried beneath an American flag.
He remembered speaking at the memorial.
Calling Reeves a warrior.
A leader.
A brother.
Except Reeves hadn’t been dead.
He had been hiding.
Waiting.
And one year later, he had sent Wade’s team into an ambush.
Wade moved closer to the door.
Reeves’s voice traveled down the corridor.
“Director Madow wants it finished before Shadow Division reaches the border.”
“What about the transfer order?” someone asked.
“The transfer is the cover story.”
Silence.
Wade’s heartbeat pounded in his ears.
“Once they’re loaded,” Reeves continued, “take them to the eastern ravine.”
“And then?”
A short laugh followed.
Humorless.
Cruel.
The sound belonged to a stranger.
Not the man Wade remembered.
“Then we close Project Nightfall permanently.”
The corridor went silent.
Wade remained perfectly still.
Every piece fell into place.
The transports.
The extra guards.
The weapons.
The nervous interrogator.
They weren’t relocating the prisoners.
They were taking them somewhere remote enough to execute them and burn the bodies.
A cell door rattled farther down the corridor.
One of his teammates.
Still alive.
Still fighting.
Still trapped.
Wade closed his eyes for one heartbeat.
Five years.
They had survived five years of interrogations, beatings, deprivation, and isolation.
They had refused to break.
Now the end was coming because someone outside the mountain had gotten too close.
Wade opened his eyes.
The fear lasted exactly one heartbeat.
Then it disappeared.
Something colder took its place.
Determination.
His men deserved the truth.
They deserved a chance.
And if death was coming, they deserved to meet it on their feet.
Wade stepped to the wall and knocked three times.
The old signal.
Prepare for contact.
Silence followed.
Then three knocks answered from Grant’s cell.
Another came from farther down.
Dawson.
Then another.
Miller.
Another.
Hale.
Wade’s throat tightened.
Five of them.
Five men still alive after entering the mountain with a team of eight.
Five men who had protected one another through years of hell.
Wade rested his hand against the concrete.
“They’re going to kill us,” he whispered into the vent.
The corridor remained silent.
No one questioned him.
No one panicked.
Every man understood what had changed.
Grant answered first.
“How?”
“Transport to the eastern ravine.”
“Guards?”
“At least three per prisoner. More on the trucks.”
Dawson spoke next. “Weapons?”
“Find what you can. They open the doors, we hit them before the restraints go on.”
“You think we can take the corridor?” Hale asked.
“No.”
Wade looked at the bolt concealed in his hand.
“But we might take the first truck.”
Silence followed as each man calculated the odds.
They were weak.
Injured.
Outnumbered.
Unarmed except for whatever scraps they could tear from their cells.
The odds were terrible.
They had faced worse.
Grant’s voice came through the vent.
“What about the rescue team?”
“We don’t know when they’ll get here.”
“Then what do we do?”
Wade smiled.
A hard smile.
A warrior’s smile.
The kind that had carried them through hell before.
“We make enough noise to help them find us.”
A quiet chuckle came from Grant’s cell.
“I’ve missed you, boss.”
Wade wrapped his fist around the metal bolt.
“Get ready.”
“For what?”
Wade stared at the steel door.
“For the last mission they’ll ever give us.”