Chapter 29
Rav
“Tourist with the blue backpack at ten o’clock,” Percival murmured. “Fourth time he’s circled that column.”
I tracked the kid from behind my sunglasses, noting his relaxed posture and curious interest in the architecture. “Not a threat. I’m betting he’s an art history major.”
The area near the sewer entrance at the House of the Arches was too busy for the first hour we’d been there. Tour groups with flag-waving guides, families corralling children, and solo travelers, but nobody I recognized from Fenix, nor anyone sporting the phoenix tattoo of the organization’s elite.
“We need to get down below.” I checked my watch. “It’s already eleven hundred.”
This morning, cameras one, two, and three had gone dark entirely. It had to have been a battery failure. But three out of five cameras? Had we simply forgotten to charge the damn things?
We didn’t forget shit like that.
Unless it was me, and I was distracted by Brooke.
It wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Let’s move,” I said when the crowd seemed to move as one, away from our target entrance.
Percival nodded, shouldering his pack. We both wore the tourist uniform—cargo pants, hiking boots, moisture-wicking shirts. My cap and sunglasses concealed most of my face. Nothing that would draw attention.
We moved separately through the growing crowds, maintaining visual contact without appearing connected. It was a more tactical approach than when I’d been here with Brooke the past two times.
Damn Brooke. My focus kept slipping. Her face flickered through my mind—her eyes when she’d revealed her scars, her vulnerability, how completely she’d expected me to reject her.
The way her breath had caught when I’d touched them. The small sounds she’d made when—
Shut it down. Not now. Not here.
The maintenance entrance was tucked inside a small building, designed to resemble the excavated ones. Mario had shown us out this way yesterday, so Percival and I were familiar with the lay of the land.
We slipped inside the door Mario had unlocked for us two hours ago, closing the door behind us.
After donning helmets and coveralls hanging inside the maintenance building, we made our way into the cool tunnel.
I switched on my helmet’s lamp, keeping the beam low.
“Ten minutes straight ahead. Take a right. Then the second left.”
The weight of stone pressed down from above.
Centuries of history; life and death; buried, forgotten, and found again.
The passage narrowed, then widened, the walls streaked with mineral deposits that reflected our light.
A few times, we had to crawl on our hands and knees through particularly small junctions.
“You’re different today,” Percival said after several minutes of silence.
“Different how?”
“Tense, but not in the way you usually are. It’s the kind of tense that comes after…” He trailed off, no doubt expecting my fist to fly in his direction.
The passage split ahead. I paused, mentally reconstructing the tunnel system from our previous visit, rather than checking the map in my backpack. “This is our first right turn.”
We moved forward in the dank corridor, the sounds of tourists filtering down through drainage holes above us. Water dripped somewhere ahead in the dark.
“I mean, you’ve had that look since you arrived,” Percival said, breaking the quiet.
I huffed out a breath. “What look?”
“The same one you had in Masum Ghar when you’d sneak back to quarters at 0400 and think nobody noticed.”
My jaw tightened. “We have dead cameras and thirty-five hours until the Greek Fire is deployed.”
He didn’t press. But that would only last so long.
We reached the chamber where the scaffolding had been erected, where three of our five cameras were situated. The air hung heavy with moisture, the smell of wet stone filling my nostrils. Camera two was mounted in a shadowed recess near the ceiling, aimed at the chamber’s primary entrance.
“Hold this,” I said, handing Percival the battery tester and my pack. I climbed onto a narrow ledge, stretching to reach the device. No damage, no sign of tampering. That was good. I removed the back panel and held the camera out to Percival.
He shone his light on the small device and placed the tester against the battery. “Dead.”
“Calisse,” I muttered under my breath. Had I forgotten to check they were fully charged? “Pass me the spare. It’s in the front pouch.”
Percival dug in my pack and handed up the replacement.
I swapped the batteries, secured the panel, and checked the indicator light. Three steady blinks, then it went out. Operational. I pulled out my phone and connected with our comms experts for the op. “Drew, Huck, camera two is live. Confirm signal.”
Both men responded, “Confirmed.”
Once I had repositioned the camera, Drew added, “Video and audio are clear, too.”
“Copy,” I said, “moving to camera one.”
I hung up and jumped down from the ledge, taking my pack from Percival. As we continued through the tunnels, the walls narrowed, forcing us to stoop and move in single file at times. The stone floor was slick with moisture, treacherous in the limited light.
“You’re going to have to tell me what happened eventually,” Percival said.
I clenched and unclenched my fists. Percival had always been a talker. It had initially irritated the shit out of me, but I’d come to appreciate him on the long drives. He was always coming up with things to talk about, so I just had to answer his unending questions.
Unfortunately, it also meant he would keep asking questions today.
“We talked. That’s all.”
“About?”
“That day.” Before I could stop them, images flashed through my brain. Her smile. The gunman appearing at the window. My body moving before my mind processed. The searing pain of the bullets.
“About what you had for breakfast?”
I rolled my eyes heavenward, which he couldn’t see, since he was a couple of feet behind me.
“Oh, you mean about the whole incident? The gunfire and stuff?”
My throat tightened, but what was the point in hiding it from him? He’d been there. “That I spotted the threat too late. That I blamed myself for knocking over whatever bottle or jar the fucking Lewisite was stored in. That the chemical splashed her because of me.”
As casually as if I’d told him it was going to rain later in the day, he said, “That’s a lot.”
The words burned in my throat. “That I couldn’t face her afterward.”
He grabbed my arm to force me to turn and look at him. “Let me get this straight. You still think you failed her?”
“I was looking at her instead of securing the room properly. Checking her position instead of the corners. If I’d been focused on the mission rather than her specifically—”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.” He raised his voice, almost startling me in the quiet, confined space. “We did a fucking perfect job clearing that entire building. The guy was hiding outside in some fucking shed.”
“I should have seen it.”
“You took three rounds meant for her. It would have been worse, but your plate carrier took another four. The chemical splash was collateral damage when one of the other rounds hit the shelf.”
“Your arm—”
“My arm was my own fault for getting too close to where the splash happened without putting on my protective gear. How many times did Brooke remind us about the safety protocols?” He fixed me with a hard stare.
“You didn’t cause what happened to either of us, Rav.
You prevented her from fucking dying, and I’ve told you all this before. ”
“It doesn’t matter now.” I continued walking. “She forgave me, so it’s done.”
Percival shut up for a while, until we reached the passageway that had been widened recently, where we’d mounted our first camera.
Repeating my earlier steps, I retrieved the camera, found the battery was dead, and replaced it.
“The guilt I understand, but what really surprises me,” Percival said as I worked, “is how you still think no one knew.”
“Knew what?”
“About you and Brooke.”
My hands stilled on the camera. “What are you talking about?”
He laughed, the sound bouncing harshly off the stone. “Come on. The whole team knew. Not day one, but we figured it out.”
“Bullshit.”
“Sure, you were assigned to her, but the way you volunteered for every detail inside the FOB? The equipment checks that took twice as long as they should have? The way you two somehow ended up running into each other on trips to supply closets?”
None of them had said anything. “Why didn’t you report it?”
“Because it wasn’t compromising the mission. You were both professionals.” He paused. “And we liked her. She was good for you.”
“How?”
“You were less…”
“Less what?”
“Less like everything was life or death all the time. You actually smiled occasionally.”
I frowned at him and pulled out my phone, connecting to the group call. “Drew, Huck, camera one is operational. Confirm signal.”
“Signal confirmed. Both feeds are clear.”
“Moving to camera three.” I turned back to Percival, unsure how to process this revelation. All those weeks of careful distance in front of the team, sneaking around, the tiny touches when we thought no one was watching—and they’d known.
Had we been that obvious?
Percival led the way this time, toward the camera I’d mounted to watch the robot dog. When we arrived, the robot was gone. “Fuck.”
We’d missed them. Goddamn Fenix had collected their robot while the camera was out. I joined him, studying the ground for traces. “I don’t like this timing.”
“Me either.”
Had Fenix discovered our surveillance? Had they screwed with it in order to retrieve their robot? Part of me had hoped the malfunctioning cameras were exactly that, but the doubting part of me knew I’d screwed up.
“Either way, it confirms they’re still active in Pompeii.” I stood, brushing dust from my hands. “We need to brief the team.”
We completed our final sweep methodically, checking each drainage pipe and access point for signs of tampering or new installations. Finding nothing, we headed back toward the western exit.
“Did she tell you about after?” Percival asked as we navigated a narrow section of the tunnel.
“For fuck’s sake, Percival. After what?”
“After Germany. After you were evacuated.”
I shook my head. We hadn’t gotten to that part yet.
“She refused evac from Kandahar for three days,” he said. “She was waiting for you to come visit her. I think it was the drugs, but she couldn’t accept the condition you were in. If I hadn’t known she was in love with you before that, it sure sealed the deal.”
Something twisted in my chest. She’d been in love with me?
“She told me once that she called you. After her surgeries were done.”
“Left a message. I never called back.”
“Why not?”
Because I was an idiot.
We continued for not nearly long enough in silence before he said, “You’ve spent six years punishing yourself for protecting the woman you loved the only way you could.”
“We’ve got thirty-three hours to stop Fenix,” I said, checking my watch. “Then I’ll figure out what’s going on with Brooke.”
“If there’s one thing I learned across all my deployments,” Percival said, “it’s that there’s never a perfect time. You take what you can get, when you can get it. And then you hold on for dear life.”