41. Rook
ROOK
The mountain shook beneath another explosion.
The floor pitched hard enough to throw Sarah against the wall.
I caught her before she fell.
“Still with me?”
She pulled free and raised her rifle.
“I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
No.
Wade was somewhere below us with the surviving prisoners.
So was Reeves.
Warning lights flashed red through the northern access corridor. Dust poured from widening cracks in the ceiling.
Black Site Theta was dying around us.
And we were running deeper inside.
Fathom’s voice broke through the radio.
“Rook, the collapse sequence is accelerating.”
“How long?”
“Seven minutes. Maybe less.”
“Find Reeves.”
“I’m tracking movement through the internal cameras, but I’m losing feeds.”
A steel door slammed somewhere ahead.
Sarah heard it too.
“He went that way.”
She broke into a run.
I stayed beside her.
“Falcon, status.”
His answer came from the landing pad.
“Madow is secured. Helicopters are two minutes out.”
“Get him aboard the first one.”
“Understood.”
Another explosion tore through the lower level.
The overhead lights went dark.
Emergency illumination returned a second later, covering the corridor in a bloodred glow.
“Rook,” Fathom said. “I found Reeves.”
A grainy security image appeared on the screen attached to my wrist.
Reeves moved through the eastern access tunnel with a rifle in his hands.
He wasn’t heading toward an exit.
He was moving toward the prisoners.
Toward Wade.
“He’s intercepting the survivors,” Fathom warned.
Sarah’s expression turned deadly.
“He’s going after my brother.”
“I know.”
We ran faster.
Wade felt the mountain dying beneath his feet.
The eastern transport tunnel was less than two hundred yards ahead.
Freedom was that close.
After five years, the night sky waited beyond one final gate.
Grant Barrett and Jackson Cole took point.
Luke Dawson and Jack Parker supported Eric Hale between them.
Sniper covered the rear.
Shark and Reef cleared the intersections.
Wade moved beside his father.
Neither man had stopped watching the other since their reunion.
As if five stolen years could be reclaimed through glances.
As if looking away might make one of them disappear again.
A support beam groaned overhead.
“Move faster!” Sniper ordered.
They reached the final intersection.
Grant raised his fist.
Everyone stopped.
Wade heard it.
A faint scrape of metal.
The click of a rifle selector.
Someone was waiting beyond the corner.
Grant looked back.
Wade pointed toward the right wall, then the ceiling.
One shooter.
Elevated position.
They had used the same signals years ago.
Grant nodded.
Wade motioned Jackson toward the opposite wall.
Sniper started forward.
Wade stopped him.
“This one is mine.”
“You don’t know who’s waiting.”
“Yes, I do.”
He could feel it.
Some betrayals never stopped following a man.
Wade stepped into the intersection.
A rifle appeared above the railing.
“Don’t move.”
Wade froze.
Colonel Jonathan Reeves stood on the elevated walkway.
Blood covered one shoulder where Sarah’s knife had struck him. His face was pale, but his weapon remained steady.
The man had aged.
More gray.
More lines.
But Wade knew him immediately.
The commander who had recruited him.
Trained him.
Eaten beside his team.
Led them into war.
And sold them to Project Nightfall.
Reeves stared down at him.
“Wade.”
Hearing his name in that familiar voice tore open something Wade had kept buried for five years.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Wade said.
Reeves almost smiled.
“So are you.”
Grant moved slightly behind the wall.
Reeves shifted his rifle.
“I can see your team, Lieutenant. Tell them to drop their weapons.”
“No.”
“I won’t ask twice.”
“You spent five years asking me the same questions. You should know how I answer by now.”
Reeves’s expression hardened.
“You always were stubborn.”
“You used to say that made me a good SEAL.”
“It did.”
“Then you used it to build a trap.”
The mountain trembled.
Concrete dust rained between them.
Reeves glanced toward the ceiling.
“We don’t have time for this.”
“For once, we agree.”
“Tell your men to stand down. I can get you out.”
Wade laughed.
The sound held no humor.
“You expect me to trust you?”
“I’m the only reason you’re still alive.”
“You’re the reason we spent five years in cages.”
“Madow wanted you executed after the ambush. I convinced him the team had intelligence we could use.”
“You want me to thank you?”
“I saved your life.”
“No. My men saved my life.”
Wade looked toward Grant.
Jackson.
Dawson.
Hale.
“They kept me alive every day inside this place. You only made certain we suffered longer.”
Something flickered across Reeves’s face.
Guilt.
Weak and years too late.
“I did what I had to do.”
“You attended my funeral.”
Reeves said nothing.
“You stood beside my family. You watched my sister bury an empty coffin.”
“I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
Wade’s voice remained calm.
“You made yours.”
Reeves adjusted his grip on the rifle.
“And now you’re making yours.”
His muzzle moved toward Jack Parker.
Wade stepped into the line of fire.
“Leave my father out of this.”
Reeves’s eyes shifted toward the tunnel behind Wade.
“You still don’t understand what your father did.”
Wade went still.
“What does that mean?”
A voice sounded from behind Reeves.
“It means you talk too much.”
Sarah.
Reeves spun.
Sarah stood at the opposite end of the walkway with her rifle aimed at him.
I moved beside her.
“Drop it, Reeves.”
His attention shifted between Sarah and Wade.
Trapped.
The mountain shook again.
A section of ceiling collapsed behind him, blocking one end of the walkway.
“Rook,” Fathom warned through the radio. “Four minutes.”
Reeves heard him.
His desperation sharpened.
He aimed at Sarah.
Wade fired.
The round struck Reeves’s rifle, knocking it from his hands.
Reeves staggered.
Then Wade moved.
He climbed the metal stairs before anyone could stop him.
Reeves drew a knife.
Wade reached the walkway as the blade came toward him.
He caught Reeves’s wrist.
The two men slammed into the railing.
Wade’s weakened legs nearly buckled.
Reeves drove a fist into his ribs.
Pain tore through Wade’s body.
Five years ago, the blow might not have slowed him.
Tonight, it nearly dropped him.
Reeves raised the knife again.
Wade drove his forehead into the colonel’s face.
Cartilage broke.
Reeves staggered.
Wade twisted the knife from his hand and threw it over the railing.
Then he hit his former commander.
Once for Grant.
Once for Jackson.
Once for Dawson.
Once for Hale.
Once for every man who hadn’t survived the mountain.
Reeves fell.
Wade stood over him, breathing hard.
Blood ran from the colonel’s nose.
“Do it,” Reeves said.
Wade stared down at him.
“What?”
“You’ve waited five years. Kill me.”
The mountain groaned around them.
Wade picked up Reeves’s discarded rifle.
For one terrible second, Sarah believed her brother might pull the trigger.
No one would have blamed him.
No one inside that mountain would have called it anything except justice.
Wade looked toward his men.
Then his father.
Then Sarah.
He lowered the weapon.
“No.”
Reeves stared at him.
“You don’t get to disappear.”
Wade pulled plastic restraints from the colonel’s vest and secured his wrists.
“You’re going home with us.”
“Why?”
“So every family you lied to can see your face.”
Wade hauled him upright.
“You’re going to tell the world what you did.”
Something close to fear entered Reeves’s eyes.
Wade smiled.
“That’s worse than dying, isn’t it?”
Reeves didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to.
I reached the lower level as Wade shoved Reeves ahead of him.
Sarah ran to her brother.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’ve been hurt for five years.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“It makes this particular injury less impressive.”
The mountain shook violently.
A section of the ceiling collapsed between us and the northern corridor.
“Reunion later,” I ordered. “We have less than four minutes.”
Sniper took Reeves.
Wade moved beside Sarah.
Jack Parker joined them.
For one brief moment, the three members of the Parker family stood together.
Alive.
The mountain had tried to take all of them.
It had failed.
Fathom’s voice came through the radio.
“Eastern gate is still open, but you need to move now.”
We ran.
Operators.
Survivors.
Prisoners.
One captured commander.
All of us racing toward freedom while Black Site Theta collapsed behind us.
The eastern exit appeared ahead.
Beyond it waited darkness.
Snow.
The night sky.
Wade slowed.
For one heartbeat, he stared outside.
Five years without wind.
Five years without stars.
Five years without seeing anything that hadn’t been built to hold him.
Sarah caught his hand.
“Come on.”
Wade stepped beyond the gate.
Snow touched his face.
He closed his eyes.
The mountain exploded behind us.
And Wade Parker took his first breath as a free man.