Chapter 2
Wyatt Meyer trusted chaos a hell of a lot more than he trusted calm.
Calm meant something was about to break. And today’s drill had way too much fucking calm.
Below him, Mike Rey hit the Pacific like a dropped flare, bright orange against the gray. The universe liked to haze new guys. Today’s swell was ugly—cross chop, wind shear, cold enough to kill a man in twenty minutes.
“Swimmer in the water,” Jake Henley called from the cabin.
Ben Bishop steadied the MH-60 Jayhawk at forty feet, knuckles easy on the collective. “Sandra’s holding smooth.” He patted the control panel. “Let’s keep her sweet.”
Wyatt sat right seat. Co-pilot today—part of their rotation—but Bishop always made jokes about Wyatt hogging the stick whenever things got interesting.
Down below, their rookie, Rey, surfaced, already fighting the rotor wash. He raised one gloved hand.
Not bad form for his first helo-SAR evolution with the team.
Henley lowered the hoist—basket first, then hook. “Rey, retrieve your patient,” he radioed. “Victim is unconscious, suspected spinal injury.”
A mannequin bobbed fifteen yards away, half-submerged, pitching from swell to swell. Rey swam for it, got slammed by a crosswave, and had to recover fast.
Wyatt’s knee bounced. He pinned it down with his palm.
This was the part he hated. The stillness and waiting that left too much room inside his own head—where a whiff of diesel could ghost in from nowhere and drag half the desert in after it.
Training evolutions crawled. Seconds stretched.
His mind filled the gaps with threats that weren’t there—engine vibration that didn’t exist, a shadow under the surf that vanished, a wind gust that didn’t match the forecast.
Bishop shot him a glance. “You scanning for alien kraken again?”
Wyatt didn’t look away from the water. “Eyes out.”
Henley snorted from the cabin. “Meyer, you’re a riot.”
Wyatt ignored that too.
He wasn’t built for small talk. Not anymore.
“He’s fumbling the harness,” Henley muttered, half-hanging out the cabin door. “Rey, under the arm—no, the other one—yep, you got it.”
Rey finally secured the mannequin and signaled. Henley initiated the hoist.
The motor whined as Rey rose through the spray, spinning gently. Halfway up, his foot snared the tagline.
“Stop,” Henley barked.
Wyatt leaned, muscles braced to intervene before Henley corrected with practiced taps.
“Kid’s gonna give me gray hair.” Henley shook his head. “Simulated cable foul next run. Let’s see if baby swimmer can keep his lunch down.”
Wyatt stayed silent. He tracked the cable angle, the rebound of the swell, the exact moment Rey cleared the rotor wash—the dozens of places things could break, suffer, die.
Henley hauled Rey inside. “Swimmer recovered. No fatalities except the dummy’s pride.”
Rey coughed seawater. “Did you crank the swell up for me?”
“Pacific did.” Bishop grinned. “Try threatening it next time.”
Wyatt didn’t smile. But the kid hadn’t drowned or dropped the mannequin, so he’d take it.
The radio crackled to life.
“Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is NORPAC-7. We have a medical emergency. Crew member with severe head trauma. Requesting immediate medevac.”
Wyatt didn’t move, but inside him everything snapped into place.
He keyed the mic. “NORPAC-Seven, this is Coast Guard One-Nine-Zero-Nine. We copy. Send coordinates.”
“We’re at—”
Static chewed up the rest.
“—forty-seven miles west-northwest of Aurora Cove. LZ is clear. Patient is critical.”
Wyatt pulled the mission map and punched in the coordinates. Twenty minutes out. “NORPAC-Seven, Coast Guard One-Nine-Zero-Nine inbound. ETA twenty. Prep your patient for transport.”
“Copy, Coast Guard. Defense grid has you marked as friendly. You’re clear to approach.”
Bishop wrapped his hand around the cyclic and pushed forward, the nose of the Jayhawk dipping into motion. “Let’s move.”
Wyatt tightened his harness, pulse steadying as the rotors bit harder into the air.
Finally.
Something real.
The weapons platform rose from the ocean. Industrial. Brutal in its bones. Gray steel and antennae arrays bristling like spines. NORPAC-7: North Pacific Defense Station Seven. Missile interceptors aimed at the sky, ready for the threat that hopefully would never come.
Bishop brought them in smooth, rotors kicking up spray across the helipad. The skids touched down with barely a shudder.
“Nice,” Wyatt said.
“I know.” Bishop cranked an eyebrow at him.
Henley slid the cabin door open. Cold air blasted in. “Let’s move, kid. They said critical.”
Rey grabbed the med bag and jumped out first. Henley followed. They ran toward a group of station personnel clustered near the tower entrance. An older guy with a graying beard waved them over.
Wyatt stayed in the bird with Bishop. Standard procedure. He scanned the platform. Elevated pad. Railings around the perimeter. Wind cutting sideways. Workers in coveralls moving between units.
His gaze landed on a young tech near the south railing. Mid-twenties. Alone. Frozen.
The kid stood still, eyes down, shoulders tight—the way people stood when attention could get them killed.
Wyatt had seen that posture before.
Fallujah. Helmand. Villages where civilians looked away because danger was already in the room.
He keyed his radio to an open frequency. Background chatter mostly. Then—faint, almost buried under static—a woman’s voice.
“—Missile command. I’m en route—”
The transmission cut.
Wyatt’s hand balled. Hair pricked on the back of his neck.
Her voice had been tight, breathless—but controlled. Someone thinking while they ran.
Missile Command. I’m en route.
His thumb hovered over the transmit button. Every instinct said to respond. But if someone was sweeping levels on a military platform, an open transmission would paint a target on whoever she was.
He lowered his hand.
Something’s wrong.
He looked back toward the tower entrance. Henley and Rey had the patient secured and were carrying him toward the helo.
A man in coveralls crossed the helipad. Wyatt tracked him automatically. Rig workers moved easy—shoulders relaxed, heads down against the wind.
This one didn’t.
Balanced. Controlled. The walk of someone used to carrying a weapon.
Wyatt logged the shape under the jacket.
Rifle stock or compact SMG.
The man’s eyes swept across the Jayhawk as Rey and Henley began loading the casualty.
The man blinked.
For half a second, their eyes locked.
And there it was. The silent moment when two professionals recognized each other.
Wyatt’s heart didn’t race. It never did. His vision telescoped. Time stretched.
The man broke eye contact, casually circling toward the tail boom. He pulled something from under his jacket and crouched near the tail rotor gearbox.
Wyatt knew that shape—knew exactly what it would do to a bird in the air.
Fuck.
“Stay in the bird.” He released his harness clip. “Keep her hot. Prepare to lift.”
Bishop’s head snapped toward him. “What—”
Wyatt shrugged off his harness. Door open. His boots hit the deck.
He sprinted for the tail. The man bolted.
Wyatt skidded to his knees. Fuck. Magnetic charge. Wired casing. Digital timer counting down.
One minute forty.
“Bomb on the bird!” he shouted.
Henley’s voice rattled on the radio. “What the hell—”
Wyatt gripped the casing and pulled. The magnetic clamp held. His fingers found the edge, dug under the housing, and he wrenched it sideways. Something gave with a teeth-rattling crack.
Heavy. Five pounds, maybe six.
The timer kept counting.
One minute thirty.
He ran.
Hard.
“Wyatt!” Henley’s voice behind him. “Get back here!”
“Can’t! Device is live!”
He sprinted flat out, legs and lungs burning, the timer in his hand counting down.
Men rounded the corner of the tower. Black tactical gear, weapons up. Not two or three. A dozen. Maybe more.
Not a hijacking. An organized assault.
Wyatt hit the platform edge. Sixty-foot drop to black water. “Bishop, go! Get out now!”
“Not without—”
“That’s an order! Report hostile takeover and bring backup!”
He hurled the bomb. It arced out over the water, end-over-end.
Fifty feet.
Sixty.
Seventy.
Splash.
Forty seconds.
He turned. The Jayhawk’s rotors were spooling up. Henley on his knees in the cabin door, face white. Rey was shouting something as he secured the medevac patient.
Between Wyatt and the helicopter, armed men were closing in fast.
The underwater explosion kicked a geyser of white water twenty feet into the air. The pressure wave rolled across the surface of the helipad like a fist.
“Go!” Wyatt screamed into his radio. “Get them out of here!”
The Jayhawk lifted. Nose dipped forward. Banking hard.
Bullets sparked off the deck where it had been moments before. Sparks and ricochets and the sharp crack of rifle fire.
The helo climbed. Rounds punched through the tail section, the cabin door—but Bishop kept it airborne and it banked away from the station.
The armed men turned toward Wyatt.
He was alone on the platform. No weapon. No backup. Just him and the enemy, and sixty feet of black water behind him.
The Jayhawk banked hard over the water, trailing smoke from the tail section. Bishop was good. He’d get them home.
Wyatt turned back to the men closing in on him.
Good.
He worked cleaner alone.
His breathing leveled, his hands didn’t shake.
To his side, the tower.
Wyatt took off. The tower meant cover, corridors. A hundred places where one unarmed man could make himself a very expensive problem.
He’d been a problem before.
Time to be one again.